Here is a link to an article I wrote on interdisciplinarity published in Time News:
http://www.studyoftime.org/TimesNews/Times_News_06.pdf
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Friday, October 27, 2006
Telemachus' Lament
The wind that whips across the shining sea
Brings tales of loss and love back home to me.
Brings tales of loss and love back home to me.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Grammars
Here is an interesting article on peptide grammar. I am also incidentally reading a book by Hauser titled "Moral Minds," in which the author argues for a moral deep grammar similar to Chomsky's language deep grammar. I'm not surprised to learn that grammars are older and go deeper than the human mind.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_sc/anti_bacterial_grammar
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_sc/anti_bacterial_grammar
Sunday, October 15, 2006
An Aphorism on American Poverty
You cannot simultaneously have an obesity problem and a proverty problem.
Satire
I made the mistake of reading one of Juvenal's satires. There is so much fodder right now in the world. So much fodder. And it has historically not been good news for a society when the satires begin to get written. So, shall I begin?
And where to begin? I'm almost tempted to just run through each and every Senator and Congress person. Then hit the White House and the SUpreme Court, move on to various states, various social leaders, issues of education -- here I have a lot to work with, since my wife works in a public school, and I work in a charter school. A blessing and a curse all at once. So much to work with, so little time to work.
So much work to do, so little time to work. I need a patron. Then I could do the work I need to do. Anyone out there want to be a patron of the arts? Of philosophy? Of an up-and-coming vicious satire?
I've always thought the doom-sayers were full of it. But I've seen too much of late, I see the wheels of history turning in a way that they have turned before. The barbarians are at the gate, and they are being let in by those so weak they don't want to offend anyone. Even those who claim to be the strongest are weak beyond compare. The most terrifying difference is that the barbarians are also the most educated among us. On 9-11 we were attacked by a cadre of the college-educated. They were not the poorest, they were not the least among us, they were not even desperate -- they were highly educated, highly motivated, and highly religious. This is a religious war. Those who say otherwise are those who have never had religion in their lives, and have no idea what it is even about, who don't think religion has any real effect on peoples' lives. It is these people who will the death of us all. Well, them, and others like them -- people like Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong-Il -- who only plan, like the dogs they are, to make cynical use of others' religious fervor.
I've been all over the place -- or have I? The satire seems to have begun a little earlier than I originally thought.
And where to begin? I'm almost tempted to just run through each and every Senator and Congress person. Then hit the White House and the SUpreme Court, move on to various states, various social leaders, issues of education -- here I have a lot to work with, since my wife works in a public school, and I work in a charter school. A blessing and a curse all at once. So much to work with, so little time to work.
So much work to do, so little time to work. I need a patron. Then I could do the work I need to do. Anyone out there want to be a patron of the arts? Of philosophy? Of an up-and-coming vicious satire?
I've always thought the doom-sayers were full of it. But I've seen too much of late, I see the wheels of history turning in a way that they have turned before. The barbarians are at the gate, and they are being let in by those so weak they don't want to offend anyone. Even those who claim to be the strongest are weak beyond compare. The most terrifying difference is that the barbarians are also the most educated among us. On 9-11 we were attacked by a cadre of the college-educated. They were not the poorest, they were not the least among us, they were not even desperate -- they were highly educated, highly motivated, and highly religious. This is a religious war. Those who say otherwise are those who have never had religion in their lives, and have no idea what it is even about, who don't think religion has any real effect on peoples' lives. It is these people who will the death of us all. Well, them, and others like them -- people like Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong-Il -- who only plan, like the dogs they are, to make cynical use of others' religious fervor.
I've been all over the place -- or have I? The satire seems to have begun a little earlier than I originally thought.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Bad Eggs
Oftentimes we believe something -- understand what it means in theory -- but don't really know for certain, since we don't have any actual evidence for it. For example, I understand that disruptive students severely harm the educations of their fellow students. If there is but one in the class who will not be quiet, who is rude and disruptive and a showoff and won't sit down and won't do his work, then that prevents his fellow classmates from doing well. I understood this in theory.
I have a 7th grade English class that has a student who is exactly this way (loud, rude, etc.). Recently I have been reading Aesop's fables to teach my students the very basics of storytelling. I read them one, then ask them 1) What happened? 2) Who is the protagonist? 3) Who is the antagonist? 4) What is the setting? 5) What could you learn from this fable? They do the work in class. I have done this several times already. Let me give 1) the statistics for the two days this student was in class, then give 2) the statistics for two days he was suspended.
1) Day 1:
Average grade = 24
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all, out of 24 students) = 14
Average grade without counting zeros = 58
Day 2:
Average grade = 34
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 11
Average grade without counting zeros = 62
2) Day 3:
Average grade = 64
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 6
Average grade without counting zeros = 87
Day 4:
Average grade = 81
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 2
Average grade without counting zeros = 89
That's right, the average grades doubled with the absence of this student. More, this absent student has a friend in my class. Here are his grades, from day 1 to day 4: 42, 10, 100, 90. He went from a 10 one day to a 100 the next day. Am I really to think that he suddenly "got it" within a day? That's not an impossiblity. However, his highly disruptive friend was not there -- and his grades leapt up.
What does this mean? Should be just get rid of some students, count them as a lost cause? Perhaps not -- I'm not quite so pessimistic as that yet. However, this does indicate that one major problem with our schools is the very presence of such students. How to fix it? How does one fix bad parenting? Or poor societal influences? However, we can reintroduce actual discipline to our classes (I have discovered that the only students detentions work on are those who don't get them -- those who do, their own parents don't want them around, and those parents are happy to get rid of them an hour earlier). And we need to have strong discipline from early on. Teach manners, ethics, posture -- things we have abandoned long ago. These will lay the foundation of good behavior later. Will this mean there will be no bad eggs? Of course not. But there will be many, many fewer -- and those we do still have, we can remove from the classrooms more easily and put them in classrooms together, away from the rest of the students, so the rest of the students have a chance to become educated.
I have a 7th grade English class that has a student who is exactly this way (loud, rude, etc.). Recently I have been reading Aesop's fables to teach my students the very basics of storytelling. I read them one, then ask them 1) What happened? 2) Who is the protagonist? 3) Who is the antagonist? 4) What is the setting? 5) What could you learn from this fable? They do the work in class. I have done this several times already. Let me give 1) the statistics for the two days this student was in class, then give 2) the statistics for two days he was suspended.
1) Day 1:
Average grade = 24
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all, out of 24 students) = 14
Average grade without counting zeros = 58
Day 2:
Average grade = 34
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 11
Average grade without counting zeros = 62
2) Day 3:
Average grade = 64
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 6
Average grade without counting zeros = 87
Day 4:
Average grade = 81
Number of zeros (did not turn in work at all) = 2
Average grade without counting zeros = 89
That's right, the average grades doubled with the absence of this student. More, this absent student has a friend in my class. Here are his grades, from day 1 to day 4: 42, 10, 100, 90. He went from a 10 one day to a 100 the next day. Am I really to think that he suddenly "got it" within a day? That's not an impossiblity. However, his highly disruptive friend was not there -- and his grades leapt up.
What does this mean? Should be just get rid of some students, count them as a lost cause? Perhaps not -- I'm not quite so pessimistic as that yet. However, this does indicate that one major problem with our schools is the very presence of such students. How to fix it? How does one fix bad parenting? Or poor societal influences? However, we can reintroduce actual discipline to our classes (I have discovered that the only students detentions work on are those who don't get them -- those who do, their own parents don't want them around, and those parents are happy to get rid of them an hour earlier). And we need to have strong discipline from early on. Teach manners, ethics, posture -- things we have abandoned long ago. These will lay the foundation of good behavior later. Will this mean there will be no bad eggs? Of course not. But there will be many, many fewer -- and those we do still have, we can remove from the classrooms more easily and put them in classrooms together, away from the rest of the students, so the rest of the students have a chance to become educated.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Coveting
"In coveting is evil's root" (Chretien de Troyes, "Eric and Enide," Ruth Harwood Cline, tr. line 2935).
I'm reading one of Chretien de Troyes' Arthurian romances, "Eric and Enide," and I ran across the above line. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife or goods." Indeed, without the sin of covetousness, there would be no need for "Thou shalt not steal" nor "Thou shalt not committ adultery." I would venture to guess that there would also be no need for "Thou shalt not murder" either. When one covets what others have, one wants precisely that thing that they have, and not just something like it. Coveting results in theft, adultery, and even murder, as well as resentment, which incidentally gives rise to redistributionary economic and political theories, giving rise to taxation, the welfare state, and the various forms of socialism, especially communism. When one covets, one can even learn to hate the good for being good.
It seems to me that there is a difference between coveting -- wanting precisely what others have -- and . . . what is the word? ambition, perhaps? still, this word seems insuffient -- wanting the kinds of things others have. If one wants the kinds of things others have, one is compelled to work hard to get those things. This attitude is the very basis of capitalism. But if one wants the exact thing someone else has, one is guilty of the sin of covetousness, which leads to theft, adultery, and any number of other sins. We have typically failed to differentiate between these two attitudes toward what others have. That too, it seems to me, is a great sin as well -- for then we cannot tell the difference between good and evil.
I'm reading one of Chretien de Troyes' Arthurian romances, "Eric and Enide," and I ran across the above line. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife or goods." Indeed, without the sin of covetousness, there would be no need for "Thou shalt not steal" nor "Thou shalt not committ adultery." I would venture to guess that there would also be no need for "Thou shalt not murder" either. When one covets what others have, one wants precisely that thing that they have, and not just something like it. Coveting results in theft, adultery, and even murder, as well as resentment, which incidentally gives rise to redistributionary economic and political theories, giving rise to taxation, the welfare state, and the various forms of socialism, especially communism. When one covets, one can even learn to hate the good for being good.
It seems to me that there is a difference between coveting -- wanting precisely what others have -- and . . . what is the word? ambition, perhaps? still, this word seems insuffient -- wanting the kinds of things others have. If one wants the kinds of things others have, one is compelled to work hard to get those things. This attitude is the very basis of capitalism. But if one wants the exact thing someone else has, one is guilty of the sin of covetousness, which leads to theft, adultery, and any number of other sins. We have typically failed to differentiate between these two attitudes toward what others have. That too, it seems to me, is a great sin as well -- for then we cannot tell the difference between good and evil.
The Gift of Education
I don't know why I take it personally, but I do -- students' refusal to do their homework, to study, to listen and learn. Perhaps it is because education is a gift, and I, as a teacher, wish to bestow this gift on my students. Who would not be insulted, offended, hurt if their gifts were turned down and even distained? Imagine ofering a gift of great value to someone and they turned up their nose at it, sneered at it, threw it back in your face? How would you feel? That, indeed, is how I feel when students don't want to learn, don't want to work, disrupt class and talk and refuse to listen when I speak. That is why I take it personally when students won't do everything they can to accept the gift of education I offer. To refuse a gift is a hateful thing indeed. That is why I feel my anger is justified. That is why I take it personally.
Higher Education or Trade School?
One of the major reforms I would encourage in education includes a restructuring of attitudes toward higher education. Not everyone needs to go to college to get an academic education. Many need to go to trade schools or technical colleges. Our high schools need to reflect that reality. In Europe, grade school students take aptitude tests to determine if they go into academics or to a high school to help them learn a trade. I think that would be a good step for the U.S. to take -- though with some ability for the child and parents to choose, of course. The following essay: http://www.johnlocke.org/acrobat/pope_articles/the_overselling_of_higher_education_report.pdf explains the position I support in greater detail. I am fortunate that at the charter school where I teach, there is an honors program that allows me to teach the academic children at a much higher level, meaning they can get a properly classical education, which will truly prepare them for university. The rest of the students, who either will not go to college, or who should be going to a technical school, but will go to college instead (making the mistake the essayist is talking about), should be given an education that will more directly involve the kinds of situations they will actually encounter in work and life. Which could lead me into a discussion of the need for reintroducing ethics (including basic things like manners and good posture) into the schools (starting in pre-K), but that is another posting for another time.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Miscellaneous Education
Not that I spent a lot of time posting on this blog anyway, but ever since I started working at A+ Academy teaching 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th grade English, I've found myself with less and less time to do anything other than prepare for classes. And my computer crashing as completely as a computer can seem to crash hasn't helped any. No place to do any work. Not that I have the time anymore.
This is not to say that I'm not enjoying myself teaching. I am teaching The Iliad to my honors 8th grade class and The Odyssey to my honors 9th grade class. I am reading them out loud to my classes because the only version of The Iliad available at the school is this godawful prose translation, and I want my students to get the best translation of it, so they can get closest to what it is like in the Greek. More, I am reading them out loud so my students can experience these works as they were originally experienced (or at least close to that, since I'm not about to sing them, and nobody would want me to). Finally, I am doing it to develop their listening skills. We don't teach our children to listen.
I am also incredulous at the level of ignorance I have had to face. I knew, with experience teaching Freshman composition, that there was almost know knowledge of grammar -- or much of anything, for that matter. But still, I am shocked anew at how little students learn in school. More, I am shocked at how little anyone expects of them. I have honors English students who actually asked me "what's a predicate?" and "what's a subject?" I've decided these children will not leave my class not knowing grammar. I have told them I will give them grammar quizzes at least every week until they all make a hundred. And I am talking about having them pick out the subject, the predicate, the nouns, the articles, the verbs, the adjectives, the adverbs, the direct objects, and the indirect objects -- of simple sentences. My honors students (8,9,10th grades) have done poorly with me, and it is because I am having to teach them about a decade's worth of information that they should have known by now.
But this is nothing compared to 7th grade, where I cannot teach anything at all because I have to get them under control first. I only received these 7th graders a few weeks ago, after 9 were siphoned off from another class. I have had to come up with a set of extremely strict rules, ranging from the complete abolition of speaking in the class unless I call upon them to making them have good posture and have a zero-tolerance policy for not bringing paper and pen to class. I had to give out 5 detentions today for people not bringing back signed copies of the class rules -- that's right, only 4 brought their back, and a few said they had lost theirs. I told them they had better find them, and that they would get detention every day until I received those papers back, signed.
All of which made me realize that if I ran my own charter school, there would be a few things that I would absolutely enforce in the school:
1. A true physical education, centered around gymnastics
2. A requirement for all students to learn good posture
3. A musical education (my best students are all in band)
4. A poetic education, where poetry is the core around which all reading is based. I am sick of having to re-teach the love of poetry after teachers have taught students to hate it.
5. Repetition and memorization -- which, according to both traditional educational theories and modern brain science, is the only way the brain learns anything
6. A language curriculum based on what we have learned from linguistics -- meaning, students will be taught foreign languages when they can learn them, between the ages of 5 and 10.
7. An ethical education, where students are taught to take responsibility for their own actions and not whine over every little thing.
8. A reintroduction of classes such as shop and automechanics, as well as plumbing and electronics, since not every child is an academic or will go to college.
9. A high standard of excellence -- since this is what is lacking in most schools anymore.
The most important thing that needs to be done with schools is the abolition of Rousseau and all his thoughts about everything from education. If there was one person who was completely wrong about everything, it was Rousseau. Even Marx got a few things right. But it is appalling that educational theories exist that are based on the theories of a man who said the best thing that happened in the world was the destruction of the Great Library, since it destroyed so much accumulated knowledge.
This is not to say that I'm not enjoying myself teaching. I am teaching The Iliad to my honors 8th grade class and The Odyssey to my honors 9th grade class. I am reading them out loud to my classes because the only version of The Iliad available at the school is this godawful prose translation, and I want my students to get the best translation of it, so they can get closest to what it is like in the Greek. More, I am reading them out loud so my students can experience these works as they were originally experienced (or at least close to that, since I'm not about to sing them, and nobody would want me to). Finally, I am doing it to develop their listening skills. We don't teach our children to listen.
I am also incredulous at the level of ignorance I have had to face. I knew, with experience teaching Freshman composition, that there was almost know knowledge of grammar -- or much of anything, for that matter. But still, I am shocked anew at how little students learn in school. More, I am shocked at how little anyone expects of them. I have honors English students who actually asked me "what's a predicate?" and "what's a subject?" I've decided these children will not leave my class not knowing grammar. I have told them I will give them grammar quizzes at least every week until they all make a hundred. And I am talking about having them pick out the subject, the predicate, the nouns, the articles, the verbs, the adjectives, the adverbs, the direct objects, and the indirect objects -- of simple sentences. My honors students (8,9,10th grades) have done poorly with me, and it is because I am having to teach them about a decade's worth of information that they should have known by now.
But this is nothing compared to 7th grade, where I cannot teach anything at all because I have to get them under control first. I only received these 7th graders a few weeks ago, after 9 were siphoned off from another class. I have had to come up with a set of extremely strict rules, ranging from the complete abolition of speaking in the class unless I call upon them to making them have good posture and have a zero-tolerance policy for not bringing paper and pen to class. I had to give out 5 detentions today for people not bringing back signed copies of the class rules -- that's right, only 4 brought their back, and a few said they had lost theirs. I told them they had better find them, and that they would get detention every day until I received those papers back, signed.
All of which made me realize that if I ran my own charter school, there would be a few things that I would absolutely enforce in the school:
1. A true physical education, centered around gymnastics
2. A requirement for all students to learn good posture
3. A musical education (my best students are all in band)
4. A poetic education, where poetry is the core around which all reading is based. I am sick of having to re-teach the love of poetry after teachers have taught students to hate it.
5. Repetition and memorization -- which, according to both traditional educational theories and modern brain science, is the only way the brain learns anything
6. A language curriculum based on what we have learned from linguistics -- meaning, students will be taught foreign languages when they can learn them, between the ages of 5 and 10.
7. An ethical education, where students are taught to take responsibility for their own actions and not whine over every little thing.
8. A reintroduction of classes such as shop and automechanics, as well as plumbing and electronics, since not every child is an academic or will go to college.
9. A high standard of excellence -- since this is what is lacking in most schools anymore.
The most important thing that needs to be done with schools is the abolition of Rousseau and all his thoughts about everything from education. If there was one person who was completely wrong about everything, it was Rousseau. Even Marx got a few things right. But it is appalling that educational theories exist that are based on the theories of a man who said the best thing that happened in the world was the destruction of the Great Library, since it destroyed so much accumulated knowledge.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Game Theory and Literature Essay Now Online
My essay has been published. It can be found at: Consciousness, Literature, and the Arts
It is all the fun of game theory combined with the excitement of literature. :-) I, at least, find them fun and exciting, anyway.
It is all the fun of game theory combined with the excitement of literature. :-) I, at least, find them fun and exciting, anyway.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Virtue
David Friedman has an interesting take on virtue that I think is exactly right.
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Virtue1.html
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Virtue2.html
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Virtue1.html
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Virtue2.html
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Note from Seth Lloyd
I received a reply from Seth Lloyd regarding the e-mail I sent him (mentioned below). Here was his response:
Dear Dr. Camplin,
Thank you for your email. I won't be able to addressall the questions that you raise, but I can try. I don't think that the square root speedup in Grover's quantum algorithm is related to Kauffman's formula. The square rootin quantum search arises out of the wave nature of quantum mechanics, while that in Kauffman's formula arises from combanitorics, as your detailed discussion indicates. There might be some connection, though. Ask Stuart! I hope that you enjoyed Programming the Universe.Good luck with your inquiries.
Yours,
Seth Lloyd
MIT
I sent the question to Kauffman, with this e-mail. I hope to hear from him.
Dear Dr. Camplin,
Thank you for your email. I won't be able to addressall the questions that you raise, but I can try. I don't think that the square root speedup in Grover's quantum algorithm is related to Kauffman's formula. The square rootin quantum search arises out of the wave nature of quantum mechanics, while that in Kauffman's formula arises from combanitorics, as your detailed discussion indicates. There might be some connection, though. Ask Stuart! I hope that you enjoyed Programming the Universe.Good luck with your inquiries.
Yours,
Seth Lloyd
MIT
I sent the question to Kauffman, with this e-mail. I hope to hear from him.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Game Theory and Literature Essay
August approaches, so soon an essay of mine will be appearing in the following journal: http://www.aber.ac.uk/cla/
Monday, July 24, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Friday, June 30, 2006
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Nietzsche and Truth
"Truth" for Nietzsche - the No and the Yes of truth - traced through "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," and beyond to that autobiography of a mind and a body - the two inseparable - that is Ecce Homo. Truth traced to understanding what Nietzsche meant by truth.
The No of truth:
The "senses nowhere lead to truth" (TL, 80) - how can they when our bodies deceive us about our own bodies, masking and thus making us forget about "the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers!" (TL, 80)?
Does truth exist outside of man? No. Truth was invented so we can live together socially (TL, 81). Truth: "a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth" (81).
Are words truth? No. "What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus" (81). The designation of certain sounds to certain objects or, more accurately, concepts, is arbitrary (82), that is: "truth alone" is not "the deciding factor in the genesis of language" (81).
"With words, it is never a question of truth" (82).
"The thing in itself" - a Kantian concept - is this the truth? "The "thing in itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for" (82). Words, therefore, do not correspond to "the thing in itself," and "the thing in itself" is itself a pointless pursuit - why pursue what, by definition, you cannot know? And what of the "would be"? Does not this "would be" require an "if"? If, perhaps, there were such a thing as "pure truth?" In any case, "pure truth" is something Nietzsche sees as "something not in the least worth striving for" since words do not correspond to pure truth, to "the thing in itself." The "genesis of language" is "not derived from the essence of things" (83).
Why? "We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things – metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities" (83). What is a metaphor? Saying one thing is another. Words, therefore, themselves are metaphors. What are words for? Particulars? No. Words are for concepts. We cannot name each particular, unique object. Therefore, words "correspond in no way to the original entities." More: "a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases" (83). And what is a concept? "We obtain a concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts" (83). Concepts are created in the human mind: "our contrast between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things" (83). "Concepts, forms, etc. is based upon" "an equation between things that are unequal" (94). There is no perfect "original model" of things, like leaves "according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted" (83), presumably be a deity – the only thing capable of such weaving, sketching, etc. This is a truth that does not need a god. This is a truth found only in the mind of man. The "essence of things" does not appear "in the empirical world," (86), but only in the mind of man, since artists "reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world" (87). It is we who bring "truth" into existence (87-88), "truth" as "the essence of things."
So, "What then is truth?" (84). What, indeed, is the Yes of truth? Truth is:
A moveable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are not considered as metal and no longer as coins (TL, 84)
That is: "to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors" (84), which means that it "is the duty to lie according to fixed convention" (84). We have forgotten that these are lies, and that is how we have arrived at our "sense of truth" (84). Truth means using things "in the designated manner" (85). Truth, therefore, is mere convention - the way things have been done. Truth, therefore, is not permanent. "New truths" are possible - new truths are merely new ways to do things. But these are all"anthropomorphic truths," which means we have designated concepts with words, and then act surprised when we find something else that fits that category, and so declare the concept we originally created as "truth" (85).
Is all truth anthropomorphic? What about the "true in itself"? Is there something "really and universally valid apart from man" (85)? By forgetting metaphors and being particular – "this sun, this window, this table" – do we come to "truth in itself" (86). Knowing "truth in itself" is knowing the world as a place, not of concepts and forms, but as a place of unique particularities.
So, can we get away from anthropomorphic truths and get at the "true in itself"? "The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive" (88), and the mind "seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally" (89). Indeed, "it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn apart by art" (89). We prefer our anthropomorphic truths to the "true in itself," they create comfort, convince us we are awake. It reflects the regular, the rational - and it is in fact the rational man who wants to use the usual metaphors. But it is the intuitive man, the "liberated intellect" who creates new concepts and shatters (by dividing up) old ones (90). This is the artist, the creator of new metaphors, the creators of untruths, without which "there can be neither society nor culture" (92).
"His nose wrinkled into a prune" creates a new concept – one that includes human noses and prunes – and therefore creates a new truth. It is also a particular – a particular nose, "his," that is associated with this thing, "prune," to make his nose have a particular look – thus making it unique and, therefore, a "truth in itself" as well as a "new truth." The new metaphor creates a new concept (new grouping of objects) that results in a "new truth" in the anthropomorphic sense, while bringing us closer to "truth in itself" by unveiling the particularity of the wrinkled object. How does it do this? Because art admits it is a lie: "Artistic pleasure is the greatest kind of pleasure, because it speaks the truth quite generally in the form of lies" (96), and therefore comes closest to revealing itself as truth. "Art works through deception – yet one which does not deceive us" (96). Why? Because "art treats illusion as illusion; therefore it does not wish to deceive; it is true" (96). "His nose wrinkled into a prune" – an artistic statement, and therefore closer to truth than anything else in this protokoll. Why? "Truth cannot be recognized. Everything which is knowable is illusion. The significance of art as truthful illusion" (97). A redundant statement: "truthful illusion": since truth is identified by Nietzsche as "illusion" (93). Thus art is an "illusionful illusion," and, as such, like love and religion, one of "the truest things in this world" (95).
This then leads us to Ecce Homo, to the autobiography of an intellect. In keeping with the theme of truth, I thought we should see how Nietzsche’s ideas on truth have evolved. A lifetime of philosophizing has passed, and this immoralist, this Anti-Christ, has come to proclaim that "Overthrowing idols (my word for "ideals") – that come closer to being part of my craft (EH, 218, 4). (I give first the pg. of the Kaufmann translation, then the Hollingdale) And what are ideals (idols)? "What is called idol on the title page is simply what has been called truth so far. Twilight of the Idols – that is: the old truth is approaching its end" (EH, 314, 86). He shows the old truths – the anthropomorphic truths – are what have been called "ideals." He reiterates that the world of ideals, what he is now calling the "true world," or what philosophers past have considered the true world, is really the invented world (218, 4), the world invented by man, through concepts. Only Nietzsche’s words have now become stronger: "The lie of the ideal has so far been the curse of reality" (218, 4). And not only this. "Error (-belief in the ideal-) is not blindness, error is cowardice . . . Every acquisition, every step forward in knowledge is the result of courage, of severity towards oneself, of cleanliness with respect to oneself . . . I do not refute ideals, I merely draw on gloves in their presence . . ." (218, 4). So, error is "belief in the ideal," and, not only that, but cowardice as well. Naturally, courage is the opposite of cowardice, meaning courage is disbelief in the ideal. For Nietzsche, only those who do not believe the lie of the ages – truth, ideals, "the thing in itself" – are courageous. He sees this "truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the "idealist" who flees from reality" (328, 98). "Cowardice in face or reality" is "cowardice in face of truth" (320, 91). But Nietzsche here, as in "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," refuses to be dogmatic – that has not changed. This is why, despite his saying those who do not believe in ideals have courage, Nietzsche says "I do not refute ideals, I merely draw on gloves in their presence . . ." Why gloves? He does not want to be soiled by the filth of "ideals." This, despite his acknowledgment that "ideals" had been "the real fatality in my life, the superfluous and stupid in it, something out of which there is no compensation, no counter-reckoning" (241, 25) – ideals have been difficult for Nietzsche himself to rid himself of – they are "the fundamental irrationality of my life" (242, 26). Looking back, Nietzsche realizes that it is difficult to shed ones life of the lies one is raised with. "We all fear truth" (246, 29), undoubtedly because we fear change – and we fear the world unmasked of truth. At best, ideals have been frozen by Nietzsche, if not truly refuted (284, 60). He hopes he has gotten us to see, as he has, that "all idealism is untruthfulness in the face of necessity" (258, 38), while acknowledging that most are not capable of seeing: "‘where you see ideal things, I see – human, alas all too human things!’" (281, 59). Truths remain mobile. There are "my truths" (259, 39), and Zarathustra "creates truth" (307, 76). And if truths can be created, they are impermanent, changeable, "a moving army of metaphors." While the "true in itself" comes "upon every image (metaphor)," while "words and wordchests of all existence spring open to you; all existence here wants to become words" (301, 73) because words, concepts, are more comforting than "truth in itself." Only when we realize that "Nothing that is can be subtracted, nothing is dispensable" will we be able to realize that "precisely by this measure of strength does one approach truth" (272, 50) – again, it is the particular that is the "true in itself," not words, not concepts, which require that something be subtracted in order to be conceptualized, in order to be given a sound tag – that is, a word to represent it. And the more conceptual – the further from reality – something is, while claiming to be truth (unlike art, which admits to being a lie), "Those things which mankind has hitherto pondered seriously are not even realities, merely imaginings, more strictly speaking lies from the bad instincts of the sick, in the profoundest sense injurious natures – all the concepts ‘God,’ ‘soul,’ ‘virtue,’ ‘sin,’ ‘the Beyond,’ ‘truth,’ ‘eternal life’" (256, 36). Why do we do this? "The concept of the "beyond," the "true world" [was] invented in order to devalue the only world there is – in order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality" (334, 103). In fact, "Twice, at precisely the moment when with tremendous courage and self-overcoming an honest, an unambiguous, a completely scientific mode of thinking had been attained, the Germans have known how to discover secret paths to the old ‘ideal’, reconciliations between truth and ‘ideal’, at bottom formulas to a right to reject science, for a right to lie" (320, 91). So now science, in addition to art, is a path toward the truth, since the "right to reject science" is seen here as the "right to lie." The "true in itself" now seen as achievable through both art and science, through the breaking apart of the old metaphors and the realization of the particularity of the world, that the world is first perceived, then conceived, and not vice versa. This is now Nietzsche "was the first to discover the truth by being the first to experience lies as lies" (326, 96). This is how Nietzsche can say " – the truth speaks out of me. – But my truth is terrible; for so far one has called lies truth" (326, 96), and he has shown us the lies we live by.
The No of truth:
The "senses nowhere lead to truth" (TL, 80) - how can they when our bodies deceive us about our own bodies, masking and thus making us forget about "the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers!" (TL, 80)?
Does truth exist outside of man? No. Truth was invented so we can live together socially (TL, 81). Truth: "a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth" (81).
Are words truth? No. "What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus" (81). The designation of certain sounds to certain objects or, more accurately, concepts, is arbitrary (82), that is: "truth alone" is not "the deciding factor in the genesis of language" (81).
"With words, it is never a question of truth" (82).
"The thing in itself" - a Kantian concept - is this the truth? "The "thing in itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for" (82). Words, therefore, do not correspond to "the thing in itself," and "the thing in itself" is itself a pointless pursuit - why pursue what, by definition, you cannot know? And what of the "would be"? Does not this "would be" require an "if"? If, perhaps, there were such a thing as "pure truth?" In any case, "pure truth" is something Nietzsche sees as "something not in the least worth striving for" since words do not correspond to pure truth, to "the thing in itself." The "genesis of language" is "not derived from the essence of things" (83).
Why? "We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things – metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities" (83). What is a metaphor? Saying one thing is another. Words, therefore, themselves are metaphors. What are words for? Particulars? No. Words are for concepts. We cannot name each particular, unique object. Therefore, words "correspond in no way to the original entities." More: "a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases" (83). And what is a concept? "We obtain a concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts" (83). Concepts are created in the human mind: "our contrast between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things" (83). "Concepts, forms, etc. is based upon" "an equation between things that are unequal" (94). There is no perfect "original model" of things, like leaves "according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted" (83), presumably be a deity – the only thing capable of such weaving, sketching, etc. This is a truth that does not need a god. This is a truth found only in the mind of man. The "essence of things" does not appear "in the empirical world," (86), but only in the mind of man, since artists "reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world" (87). It is we who bring "truth" into existence (87-88), "truth" as "the essence of things."
So, "What then is truth?" (84). What, indeed, is the Yes of truth? Truth is:
A moveable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are not considered as metal and no longer as coins (TL, 84)
That is: "to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors" (84), which means that it "is the duty to lie according to fixed convention" (84). We have forgotten that these are lies, and that is how we have arrived at our "sense of truth" (84). Truth means using things "in the designated manner" (85). Truth, therefore, is mere convention - the way things have been done. Truth, therefore, is not permanent. "New truths" are possible - new truths are merely new ways to do things. But these are all"anthropomorphic truths," which means we have designated concepts with words, and then act surprised when we find something else that fits that category, and so declare the concept we originally created as "truth" (85).
Is all truth anthropomorphic? What about the "true in itself"? Is there something "really and universally valid apart from man" (85)? By forgetting metaphors and being particular – "this sun, this window, this table" – do we come to "truth in itself" (86). Knowing "truth in itself" is knowing the world as a place, not of concepts and forms, but as a place of unique particularities.
So, can we get away from anthropomorphic truths and get at the "true in itself"? "The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive" (88), and the mind "seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally" (89). Indeed, "it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn apart by art" (89). We prefer our anthropomorphic truths to the "true in itself," they create comfort, convince us we are awake. It reflects the regular, the rational - and it is in fact the rational man who wants to use the usual metaphors. But it is the intuitive man, the "liberated intellect" who creates new concepts and shatters (by dividing up) old ones (90). This is the artist, the creator of new metaphors, the creators of untruths, without which "there can be neither society nor culture" (92).
"His nose wrinkled into a prune" creates a new concept – one that includes human noses and prunes – and therefore creates a new truth. It is also a particular – a particular nose, "his," that is associated with this thing, "prune," to make his nose have a particular look – thus making it unique and, therefore, a "truth in itself" as well as a "new truth." The new metaphor creates a new concept (new grouping of objects) that results in a "new truth" in the anthropomorphic sense, while bringing us closer to "truth in itself" by unveiling the particularity of the wrinkled object. How does it do this? Because art admits it is a lie: "Artistic pleasure is the greatest kind of pleasure, because it speaks the truth quite generally in the form of lies" (96), and therefore comes closest to revealing itself as truth. "Art works through deception – yet one which does not deceive us" (96). Why? Because "art treats illusion as illusion; therefore it does not wish to deceive; it is true" (96). "His nose wrinkled into a prune" – an artistic statement, and therefore closer to truth than anything else in this protokoll. Why? "Truth cannot be recognized. Everything which is knowable is illusion. The significance of art as truthful illusion" (97). A redundant statement: "truthful illusion": since truth is identified by Nietzsche as "illusion" (93). Thus art is an "illusionful illusion," and, as such, like love and religion, one of "the truest things in this world" (95).
This then leads us to Ecce Homo, to the autobiography of an intellect. In keeping with the theme of truth, I thought we should see how Nietzsche’s ideas on truth have evolved. A lifetime of philosophizing has passed, and this immoralist, this Anti-Christ, has come to proclaim that "Overthrowing idols (my word for "ideals") – that come closer to being part of my craft (EH, 218, 4). (I give first the pg. of the Kaufmann translation, then the Hollingdale) And what are ideals (idols)? "What is called idol on the title page is simply what has been called truth so far. Twilight of the Idols – that is: the old truth is approaching its end" (EH, 314, 86). He shows the old truths – the anthropomorphic truths – are what have been called "ideals." He reiterates that the world of ideals, what he is now calling the "true world," or what philosophers past have considered the true world, is really the invented world (218, 4), the world invented by man, through concepts. Only Nietzsche’s words have now become stronger: "The lie of the ideal has so far been the curse of reality" (218, 4). And not only this. "Error (-belief in the ideal-) is not blindness, error is cowardice . . . Every acquisition, every step forward in knowledge is the result of courage, of severity towards oneself, of cleanliness with respect to oneself . . . I do not refute ideals, I merely draw on gloves in their presence . . ." (218, 4). So, error is "belief in the ideal," and, not only that, but cowardice as well. Naturally, courage is the opposite of cowardice, meaning courage is disbelief in the ideal. For Nietzsche, only those who do not believe the lie of the ages – truth, ideals, "the thing in itself" – are courageous. He sees this "truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the "idealist" who flees from reality" (328, 98). "Cowardice in face or reality" is "cowardice in face of truth" (320, 91). But Nietzsche here, as in "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," refuses to be dogmatic – that has not changed. This is why, despite his saying those who do not believe in ideals have courage, Nietzsche says "I do not refute ideals, I merely draw on gloves in their presence . . ." Why gloves? He does not want to be soiled by the filth of "ideals." This, despite his acknowledgment that "ideals" had been "the real fatality in my life, the superfluous and stupid in it, something out of which there is no compensation, no counter-reckoning" (241, 25) – ideals have been difficult for Nietzsche himself to rid himself of – they are "the fundamental irrationality of my life" (242, 26). Looking back, Nietzsche realizes that it is difficult to shed ones life of the lies one is raised with. "We all fear truth" (246, 29), undoubtedly because we fear change – and we fear the world unmasked of truth. At best, ideals have been frozen by Nietzsche, if not truly refuted (284, 60). He hopes he has gotten us to see, as he has, that "all idealism is untruthfulness in the face of necessity" (258, 38), while acknowledging that most are not capable of seeing: "‘where you see ideal things, I see – human, alas all too human things!’" (281, 59). Truths remain mobile. There are "my truths" (259, 39), and Zarathustra "creates truth" (307, 76). And if truths can be created, they are impermanent, changeable, "a moving army of metaphors." While the "true in itself" comes "upon every image (metaphor)," while "words and wordchests of all existence spring open to you; all existence here wants to become words" (301, 73) because words, concepts, are more comforting than "truth in itself." Only when we realize that "Nothing that is can be subtracted, nothing is dispensable" will we be able to realize that "precisely by this measure of strength does one approach truth" (272, 50) – again, it is the particular that is the "true in itself," not words, not concepts, which require that something be subtracted in order to be conceptualized, in order to be given a sound tag – that is, a word to represent it. And the more conceptual – the further from reality – something is, while claiming to be truth (unlike art, which admits to being a lie), "Those things which mankind has hitherto pondered seriously are not even realities, merely imaginings, more strictly speaking lies from the bad instincts of the sick, in the profoundest sense injurious natures – all the concepts ‘God,’ ‘soul,’ ‘virtue,’ ‘sin,’ ‘the Beyond,’ ‘truth,’ ‘eternal life’" (256, 36). Why do we do this? "The concept of the "beyond," the "true world" [was] invented in order to devalue the only world there is – in order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality" (334, 103). In fact, "Twice, at precisely the moment when with tremendous courage and self-overcoming an honest, an unambiguous, a completely scientific mode of thinking had been attained, the Germans have known how to discover secret paths to the old ‘ideal’, reconciliations between truth and ‘ideal’, at bottom formulas to a right to reject science, for a right to lie" (320, 91). So now science, in addition to art, is a path toward the truth, since the "right to reject science" is seen here as the "right to lie." The "true in itself" now seen as achievable through both art and science, through the breaking apart of the old metaphors and the realization of the particularity of the world, that the world is first perceived, then conceived, and not vice versa. This is now Nietzsche "was the first to discover the truth by being the first to experience lies as lies" (326, 96). This is how Nietzsche can say " – the truth speaks out of me. – But my truth is terrible; for so far one has called lies truth" (326, 96), and he has shown us the lies we live by.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Unstable Stabilities and Stable Instabilities in Government and Economy
The only stable political or economic systems are unstable ones. Conversely, the most unstable political and economic systems are those designed to be most stable. A paradox? Only if we accept a view of the world wherein order begets order, and disorder begets disorder – a linear, rationalist, Newtonian world since disproved by chaos theory.
Chaos theory shows that growing systems are nonlinear systems that exist on the borderlands between order and disorder. Complete order – and complete disorder – both are definitions of being dead. A salt crystal is an example of complete order – a gas in a closed container at a constant temperature and pressure is an example of complete disorder. Living things exist on the edge of order and disorder, the realm of chaos, wherein lies the principle of growth. Living things are systems, and systems have order and disorder – the heart is a system (that makes up part of the circulatory system, which makes up part of the organismal system) that can have neither completely orderly beats, nor completely random beats, but must have beats that are mostly orderly, with some disorder, which means the beats are fractal. Cell membranes are orderly and disorderly – they are liquid crystals, fluid yet solid, as the proteins and phospholipids slip past each other. All living things live on the principle of growth, live in the realm of order and disorder, live lives far from equilibrium.
If the principle of growth and stability for life is in the nonlinear, far-from-equilibrium realm between order and disorder, this would also be the principle of growth and stability for systems of living things as well, including superorganismal systems such as ecosystems, economies, and governments. Indeed, studies of ecosystems show they are not stable – at some sort of equilibrium – but are in fact always in flux, always changing, in time. And the way they change follow power laws – with many small changes, a few medium-sized changes, and very few large changes, as we see in avalanches of sand when we pile sand up one grain at a time. They are systems that are far-from-equilibrium, always growing, in a state of orderly disorder – disorderly order. If something were to happen to make any given ecosystem stop changing – which is to say, stop growing – that ecosystem would die off. Ecosystems are stable only so long as they are constantly in flux, constantly changing. Thus, they cease being the ecosystem they are within the next moment, forever changing – deserts move in and recede, forests expand and recede, grasslands too expand and recede. Meandering rivers cut off oxbow lakes where new kinds of fish evolve – to be introduced to the river when the meandering river merges again with the oxbow lake. There the new fish compete with the other fish in the river, pushing some to evolve, others to go extinct, others into other habitats. They change as the river changes, flowing into new species with the flow of time and the flow of the very river in which they live.
A stable government is thus an unstable government. Any government that constantly changes – every two or four or six years, in towns, counties, states, and nations – is a government that is stabilized by this instability. Who is in charge in such a government as that found in the United States? The President, who is there four or eight years at most? The Congress, made up of two Houses in conflict with each other, whose members could be there only two or six years, but who may be there any number of years from two years to two decades? The Court system, which can overturn even what these two branches of government pass? Or how about the states, which are given (according to the Constitution, even if this is not true in practice anymore) all the power not explicitly given to the federal government? Or is it the people, who elect and defeat people who run for office at the town/city, county, state, and federal levels? All of them, and none. The system is kept destabilized by the very process of election – stabilized by varying degrees of continuity (two and four and six or more years, as the case may be). There are power laws of continuity that prevent power from existing in one set of hands for long, if at all. The most stable political systems are indeed those based on the principles f power laws – many people have most of the power and have the most cumulative effect, middle-sized entities have less power and less cumulative effect, and the federal government has the least power of all, and the least effect on us. Do you not like what the President does? He is gone in four years (if he is too bad, in less, with impeachment). Do you like him too much? Too bad – we cannot reelect him more than once. We have prevented ourselves from electing our own dictators. And if the President tries to take on too much, to take too much power, the Congress will block him, refuse to pass what he wants. And if the Congress tries to take on too much, to take too much power, the President will veto them. And if they both agree to too much, the Supreme Court can refuse to let it remain law. We have them fight each other, trying to take power from each other, so they cannot harm the people, who prosper and grow. But the people only prosper and grow so long as the government is in a state of stable instability – as is found in republican (not democratic, where the power is placed in the hands of one group – and we get the tyranny of the majority) governments. Stable governments are based on power law distributions of power.
Stable governments create instability – dictators create instability in their own countries, among their own people, let alone among the peoples in other countries. Often this is done precisely to create the stability inherently missing in dictatorial governments. Whether the dictator is ideological or nonideological, the results are the same – they try to prevent change (change means a change from their rule, after all), which stagnates, creating equilibrium – which is to say, death. We have seen the cultures of death, the governments of death, in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, in the series of dictators in the Soviet Union, in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, in Pinochet’s Chile (though there is something to recommend in his economic policies), in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, in the dictatorship of minority rule in South Africa during Apartheid, and in and with the various kings and queens throughout history. They attempt to override and overcome natural power laws through the use of force – many large avalanches are created through the use of a smashing fist. The democratic republics of the West and increasingly throughout the rest of the world have not always had the cleanest of hands – but those hands were only spotted with blood compared to other times and other countries where dictatorships (no matter what the name) ruled, when rulers’ hands dripped with blood. While France, for example, has not had the best of reputations in the twentieth century in its former colonies, especially as they pulled out of them, at least the French people have been safe from the French government – something that was not the case under their kings, the government of the Terror, or under Napoleon. Only as France has become more and more politically destabilized in their having now a representative government – and are even more destabilized by becoming part of the European Union – has France become safe for the French people. Thus has France become increasingly stable.
Economies too work on the same principle as ecosystems and government – the connection between economy and ecosystem should be readily apparent in the common root of the two words. Economies that are designed to be stable – the planned economies of socialist and communist governments, and even the over-regulated economies under interventionism and Keynesianism – are themselves highly unstable. Socialist countries around the world had and have high levels of unemployment. Communist countries starved their citizens because they could not produce enough food, or properly distribute it – during the 1980's the Soviet Union had to spend 25% of its GDP on the military to keep up with the Unites States spending only 2% of its GDP on the military. Welfare states slow economic growth in order to support the unemployed – those made unemployed by the slow growth created by the welfare state. Subsidies keep unprofitable businesses around at the expense of the profitable businesses – Britain famously subsidized looms when the textile industry became automated, keeping unprofitable looms around at the expense of the textile industries, which could have caused the economy to boom even more than it did, absorbing all of those temporarily displaced by the economic changes (and those who are displaced by change are always only temporarily displaced, for the growing economy rapidly takes them in). Every instance of a government anywhere trying to control the country’s economy has resulted in at best slow growth, at worst starvation and complete economic collapse. Any attempt to make an economy remain at equilibrium has had the same result – death.
The principles of a growing economy are the same as the principles of growth of ecosystems, organisms, and everything else in the universe – the economy must be on the edge of order and disorder, in the far-from-equilibrium state where growth occurs. Growth must be based on power law distributions. The economy must be allowed to be unstable so that it may be stable – stable enough to grow and adapt and change over time. It must have the rules of voluntary cooperation for it to have life (the imposition of force – which is what governments do – brings entropy-as-equilibrium to the system, making it act no longer as a system), for it to grow and to produce and reproduce, to create, recreate, and procreate – for these are the elements of growth. Economies, like ecosystems and organisms, must be heterarchies – both hierarchical and decentralized, full of nonlinear feedback loops. No one can control an economy any more than any one cell controls an organism (and, when one cell tries to take over an organism, it is called cancer – which results in the death of the organism). Even the brain dies without a working heart or liver. Yet, there is a hierarchy at work to create a living organism. The same is true too of economies – which are constituted not only of individuals, but, in a power law distribution, of families making decisions together, and each church making decisions as a church, communities making decisions as communities, companies and corporations making decisions as companies and corporations, and even governments making decisions as governments (though it is best when their decisions are to remain out of the economy as much as possible, since they are more apt to try to control it than participate in it – the only possible exceptions being doing things like building roads, which are more difficult to do privately, though one should note how, in a power law distribution, it is local governments that build and maintain more roads than do state governments, which build and maintain more roads than does the federal government, and which should all be done using only the "user fee" known as gasoline taxes, which I would argue should also only be used for roads). In such an economy, it is not the individual, the family, or the various groups and entities that are in charge of the economy – in fact, no one is in charge, or even for the most part has much of an effect on the economy as a whole, any more than does any individual member of Congress. Yet each individual and entity is necessary – and an individual or entity can have a large influence on the economy, with the introduction of a new technology, etc. Two bicycle mechanics had a massive influence on the world’s economy when they invented the airplane – yet think too of all the other bicycle mechanics who simply repaired bicycles, making tiny contributions to the economy that were, as part of the accumulation of economic activity, important, but only minimally important. But such innovations by bicycle mechanics could not be planned or directed by central command – they arose because they were part of a system that, because it existed at a far-from-equilibrium state, could be influenced by butterfly effects. Only in such an economy could a pair of butterflies like the Wright brothers truly take flight.
If we want to truly have stable governments, societies, and economies, we have to have governments, societies, and economies that are inherently unstable, far-from-equilibrium, on the edge of order and disorder, wherein lies the principle of growth. For it is growth – and growth itself is imbedded in time, and changes and evolves – that is the source of stability in the world. A growing organism is most stable, healthiest, most adaptable. The same is true of ecosystems, economies, and societies. When an organism, an ecosystem, an economy, or a society stops growing, it becomes unstable, unhealthy, and may even die. We know what the principle of growth now is – a growing system is a far-from-equilibrium system on the borderlands of order and disorder – meaning, we now know what we must do to have a growing economy and a stable government wherein the people are safe from that government, other governments, and even those citizens which wish to do others harm. Only to the extent than an economy and a government are both hierarchical and decentralized, and constantly changing in such a way that stability is created (by good rules, not by either ironclad laws or anarchy), can they lead to safe and prosperous societies and citizens.
Chaos theory shows that growing systems are nonlinear systems that exist on the borderlands between order and disorder. Complete order – and complete disorder – both are definitions of being dead. A salt crystal is an example of complete order – a gas in a closed container at a constant temperature and pressure is an example of complete disorder. Living things exist on the edge of order and disorder, the realm of chaos, wherein lies the principle of growth. Living things are systems, and systems have order and disorder – the heart is a system (that makes up part of the circulatory system, which makes up part of the organismal system) that can have neither completely orderly beats, nor completely random beats, but must have beats that are mostly orderly, with some disorder, which means the beats are fractal. Cell membranes are orderly and disorderly – they are liquid crystals, fluid yet solid, as the proteins and phospholipids slip past each other. All living things live on the principle of growth, live in the realm of order and disorder, live lives far from equilibrium.
If the principle of growth and stability for life is in the nonlinear, far-from-equilibrium realm between order and disorder, this would also be the principle of growth and stability for systems of living things as well, including superorganismal systems such as ecosystems, economies, and governments. Indeed, studies of ecosystems show they are not stable – at some sort of equilibrium – but are in fact always in flux, always changing, in time. And the way they change follow power laws – with many small changes, a few medium-sized changes, and very few large changes, as we see in avalanches of sand when we pile sand up one grain at a time. They are systems that are far-from-equilibrium, always growing, in a state of orderly disorder – disorderly order. If something were to happen to make any given ecosystem stop changing – which is to say, stop growing – that ecosystem would die off. Ecosystems are stable only so long as they are constantly in flux, constantly changing. Thus, they cease being the ecosystem they are within the next moment, forever changing – deserts move in and recede, forests expand and recede, grasslands too expand and recede. Meandering rivers cut off oxbow lakes where new kinds of fish evolve – to be introduced to the river when the meandering river merges again with the oxbow lake. There the new fish compete with the other fish in the river, pushing some to evolve, others to go extinct, others into other habitats. They change as the river changes, flowing into new species with the flow of time and the flow of the very river in which they live.
A stable government is thus an unstable government. Any government that constantly changes – every two or four or six years, in towns, counties, states, and nations – is a government that is stabilized by this instability. Who is in charge in such a government as that found in the United States? The President, who is there four or eight years at most? The Congress, made up of two Houses in conflict with each other, whose members could be there only two or six years, but who may be there any number of years from two years to two decades? The Court system, which can overturn even what these two branches of government pass? Or how about the states, which are given (according to the Constitution, even if this is not true in practice anymore) all the power not explicitly given to the federal government? Or is it the people, who elect and defeat people who run for office at the town/city, county, state, and federal levels? All of them, and none. The system is kept destabilized by the very process of election – stabilized by varying degrees of continuity (two and four and six or more years, as the case may be). There are power laws of continuity that prevent power from existing in one set of hands for long, if at all. The most stable political systems are indeed those based on the principles f power laws – many people have most of the power and have the most cumulative effect, middle-sized entities have less power and less cumulative effect, and the federal government has the least power of all, and the least effect on us. Do you not like what the President does? He is gone in four years (if he is too bad, in less, with impeachment). Do you like him too much? Too bad – we cannot reelect him more than once. We have prevented ourselves from electing our own dictators. And if the President tries to take on too much, to take too much power, the Congress will block him, refuse to pass what he wants. And if the Congress tries to take on too much, to take too much power, the President will veto them. And if they both agree to too much, the Supreme Court can refuse to let it remain law. We have them fight each other, trying to take power from each other, so they cannot harm the people, who prosper and grow. But the people only prosper and grow so long as the government is in a state of stable instability – as is found in republican (not democratic, where the power is placed in the hands of one group – and we get the tyranny of the majority) governments. Stable governments are based on power law distributions of power.
Stable governments create instability – dictators create instability in their own countries, among their own people, let alone among the peoples in other countries. Often this is done precisely to create the stability inherently missing in dictatorial governments. Whether the dictator is ideological or nonideological, the results are the same – they try to prevent change (change means a change from their rule, after all), which stagnates, creating equilibrium – which is to say, death. We have seen the cultures of death, the governments of death, in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, in the series of dictators in the Soviet Union, in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, in Pinochet’s Chile (though there is something to recommend in his economic policies), in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, in the dictatorship of minority rule in South Africa during Apartheid, and in and with the various kings and queens throughout history. They attempt to override and overcome natural power laws through the use of force – many large avalanches are created through the use of a smashing fist. The democratic republics of the West and increasingly throughout the rest of the world have not always had the cleanest of hands – but those hands were only spotted with blood compared to other times and other countries where dictatorships (no matter what the name) ruled, when rulers’ hands dripped with blood. While France, for example, has not had the best of reputations in the twentieth century in its former colonies, especially as they pulled out of them, at least the French people have been safe from the French government – something that was not the case under their kings, the government of the Terror, or under Napoleon. Only as France has become more and more politically destabilized in their having now a representative government – and are even more destabilized by becoming part of the European Union – has France become safe for the French people. Thus has France become increasingly stable.
Economies too work on the same principle as ecosystems and government – the connection between economy and ecosystem should be readily apparent in the common root of the two words. Economies that are designed to be stable – the planned economies of socialist and communist governments, and even the over-regulated economies under interventionism and Keynesianism – are themselves highly unstable. Socialist countries around the world had and have high levels of unemployment. Communist countries starved their citizens because they could not produce enough food, or properly distribute it – during the 1980's the Soviet Union had to spend 25% of its GDP on the military to keep up with the Unites States spending only 2% of its GDP on the military. Welfare states slow economic growth in order to support the unemployed – those made unemployed by the slow growth created by the welfare state. Subsidies keep unprofitable businesses around at the expense of the profitable businesses – Britain famously subsidized looms when the textile industry became automated, keeping unprofitable looms around at the expense of the textile industries, which could have caused the economy to boom even more than it did, absorbing all of those temporarily displaced by the economic changes (and those who are displaced by change are always only temporarily displaced, for the growing economy rapidly takes them in). Every instance of a government anywhere trying to control the country’s economy has resulted in at best slow growth, at worst starvation and complete economic collapse. Any attempt to make an economy remain at equilibrium has had the same result – death.
The principles of a growing economy are the same as the principles of growth of ecosystems, organisms, and everything else in the universe – the economy must be on the edge of order and disorder, in the far-from-equilibrium state where growth occurs. Growth must be based on power law distributions. The economy must be allowed to be unstable so that it may be stable – stable enough to grow and adapt and change over time. It must have the rules of voluntary cooperation for it to have life (the imposition of force – which is what governments do – brings entropy-as-equilibrium to the system, making it act no longer as a system), for it to grow and to produce and reproduce, to create, recreate, and procreate – for these are the elements of growth. Economies, like ecosystems and organisms, must be heterarchies – both hierarchical and decentralized, full of nonlinear feedback loops. No one can control an economy any more than any one cell controls an organism (and, when one cell tries to take over an organism, it is called cancer – which results in the death of the organism). Even the brain dies without a working heart or liver. Yet, there is a hierarchy at work to create a living organism. The same is true too of economies – which are constituted not only of individuals, but, in a power law distribution, of families making decisions together, and each church making decisions as a church, communities making decisions as communities, companies and corporations making decisions as companies and corporations, and even governments making decisions as governments (though it is best when their decisions are to remain out of the economy as much as possible, since they are more apt to try to control it than participate in it – the only possible exceptions being doing things like building roads, which are more difficult to do privately, though one should note how, in a power law distribution, it is local governments that build and maintain more roads than do state governments, which build and maintain more roads than does the federal government, and which should all be done using only the "user fee" known as gasoline taxes, which I would argue should also only be used for roads). In such an economy, it is not the individual, the family, or the various groups and entities that are in charge of the economy – in fact, no one is in charge, or even for the most part has much of an effect on the economy as a whole, any more than does any individual member of Congress. Yet each individual and entity is necessary – and an individual or entity can have a large influence on the economy, with the introduction of a new technology, etc. Two bicycle mechanics had a massive influence on the world’s economy when they invented the airplane – yet think too of all the other bicycle mechanics who simply repaired bicycles, making tiny contributions to the economy that were, as part of the accumulation of economic activity, important, but only minimally important. But such innovations by bicycle mechanics could not be planned or directed by central command – they arose because they were part of a system that, because it existed at a far-from-equilibrium state, could be influenced by butterfly effects. Only in such an economy could a pair of butterflies like the Wright brothers truly take flight.
If we want to truly have stable governments, societies, and economies, we have to have governments, societies, and economies that are inherently unstable, far-from-equilibrium, on the edge of order and disorder, wherein lies the principle of growth. For it is growth – and growth itself is imbedded in time, and changes and evolves – that is the source of stability in the world. A growing organism is most stable, healthiest, most adaptable. The same is true of ecosystems, economies, and societies. When an organism, an ecosystem, an economy, or a society stops growing, it becomes unstable, unhealthy, and may even die. We know what the principle of growth now is – a growing system is a far-from-equilibrium system on the borderlands of order and disorder – meaning, we now know what we must do to have a growing economy and a stable government wherein the people are safe from that government, other governments, and even those citizens which wish to do others harm. Only to the extent than an economy and a government are both hierarchical and decentralized, and constantly changing in such a way that stability is created (by good rules, not by either ironclad laws or anarchy), can they lead to safe and prosperous societies and citizens.
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