Reading Exercises You

More about the value of reading to your ability to learn, your behaviors, and your morals.

A Walk in Midnight: A Novel

Everyone should check out Mohammad Sarwar's novel A Walk in Midnight.

The novel tells the story of Fakeer, who grows up in relative poverty in Pakistan but whose intelligence gets him into the best government schools and, eventually, a medical degree. He takes advantage of the U.S. doctor shortage in the 1960s to become one of the first in a wave of Pakistani doctors emigrating to the U.S. He finds success in the U.S.--even becoming a Yale professor for a while--but finally settles in to private practice in Texas. After his wife dies and he becomes wounded serving with Doctors Without Borders, Fakeer finds his way online, where he revels in alienating everyone he can. Eventually, he decides to retire to Pakistan, bringing his life full circle.

If you are interested in learning about life in Pakistan in the middle of the 20th century and the struggles of cultural assimilation--often told with great humor and wit--A Walk in Midnight is the novel for you. Because Sarwar is himself a radiologist (with a great many academic publications), the reader will get a great deal of verisimilitude in the portrayal of Fakeer. A combination of comedy and tragedy, science and mythology, poetry and prose, Sarwar's novel is full of complexity and depth.

As editor of Mohammad Sarwar's novel, I was able to read it many, many times. I honestly never got tired of it. I continued to find things in it with each reading as I worked with him on it. It was a great experience working with Dr. Sarwar, and I'm sure you'll have as great an experience reading his novel.

The Ruiners of Mankind

"all the means by which one has so far attempted to make mankind moral were through and through immoral." -- Nietzsche, TI

In The Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche warned us against the "improvers of mankind," that such people never in fact sought to improve a thing, but rather sought to weaken mankind. Why weaken mankind? Because, fundamentally, the "improvers of mankind" hate all of mankind. If they didn't why would they want to "improve" us?

The racists on the Right want to "improve" us through breeding. They imagine that it is their race which is the superior one which ought to be selected for, but if we are to be honest, this is really an argument for incest, ultimately. The Hapsburgs thought themselves too elite to marry outside their own family--the result being disfigurement and genetic disease. Purebred dogs are much more prone to health issues, while mutts are typically healthier and better-tempered. Those who would prefer one group of humans to another think mankind would be thus improved by breeding more of the preferred group over the unpreferred group(s)---if you think this in any way, shape, or form, you're a racist (whether you're on the Left or Right).

The postmodern multiculturalist Leftist version is the position that European culture is the bane of the world, and it needs to be completely destroyed in favor literally all other cultures. Of course, inverting the Right-wing racist position isn't any sort of actual improvement on anything, since it's really the same thing. Declaring one race superior to another, regardless of what race is considered inferior, is racist, just like declaring men superior to women or women superior to men is sexist.

Indeed, if you would "improve" women by making them more like men, you are sexist. And if you would "improve" men by making them more like women, you are sexist. Do you want to "improve" homosexuals by making them heterosexual? You're homophobic.

But do we then need people to "improve" the racists, sexists, and homophobes? Those improvers---those who would impose such improvement on everyone---are little better in their bigotry against people as they are. Does that mean we shouldn't try to improve mankind? Absolutely. Does that mean mankind cannot improve? Absolutely not. While those who tried to push acceptance of homosexuality primarily put homophobes on the defensive and retrenched their positions, T.V. shows like Ellen and Will & Grace actually caused people's minds to change and, as a result, the American culture to change. Attempts at shaming people failed and backfired, while artistic representations, fun and entertaining popular stories, succeeded.

We do not need improvers of mankind. We do not need socialists, we do not need fascists, we do not need racists, and we do not need sexists out there trying to improve us. They each and every one want to reform us, improve us, change us because they hate us---they hate human beings as such, qua human beings. They hate human beings for being human. Why should we listen to such people? Would you take advice from someone who hated you?

Sex Disparities, Left-Handedness, ASD, and the Workplace

Is it possible for men and women to have identical abilities and yet still show a difference in those abilities without there being some conspiracy of men to keep women down?

Consider a few facts.

Studies of math abilities between men and women showed no difference at all.

All psychological studies necessarily exclude anyone who is left-handed or who isn't neurotypical so as to ensure there is only a single factor at play.

Therefore, all studies of math skills in men and women only involve neurotypical right-handers.

However, although left-handers make up 10% of the population, about 12% of men are left-handed, while about 8% of women are. That means men are about 50% more likely to be left-handed than are women. Why does this matter? Well, 15% of the top math and language scores on the SAT were made by lefties. And about 20% of professional jobs are held by lefties.

Now, if we assume that skill distribution is equal between men and women lefties, we would still end up seeing a disparity. A small one, but a disparity nonetheless.

Next, let's consider the fact that 70% of coders are male and 30% are female. Let's also consider the fact that one of the major hotspots for children diagnosed with autism is Silicon Valley. These two facts are not unrelated. There is a very good chance that almost every computer programmer is somewhere on the spectrum, whether they have been diagnosed or not (I think there are many, many more on the spectrum than we realize--I'm on it and unless you know me like my brother and wife know me, and unless you understand Asperger's very well, you would never guess me to be diagnosed with Asperger's). With autism diagnoses being 20% female and 80% male, if even half the coders are on the spectrum, we've almost completely explained the disparity.

These are just two possible explanations for a massive disparity that neither claims women are inferior to men in any way nor demands a massive conspiracy of men trying to keep women out of coding and other fields.

The Google Memo and Reading Yourself into What You Read

Nietzsche once observed that people don't ever actually read what is written on the page, but rather read themselves into everything they read. That is, they see their own biases confirmed far more often than they actually learn anything, or read what is actually there.

If there is a document that proves that in spades, it's James Damore's Google memo on diversity at Google.I have encountered people who literally see the complete opposite of what I see him saying. They see him denying there is any discrimination against women at all, claiming that men are superior to women in math and engineering and that men have higher IQs than women, and overall seeing the work as full of sexism. I, on the other hand, see a piece arguing that there is in fact discrimination against women, that that discrimination comes about from the refusal to acknowledge there are personality differences between men and women (not differences in ability or IQ, but personality), and providing what he sees as sensible solutions to making Google more welcoming to not only women, but to everyone (he argues that Google is creating a hostile workplace with their trainings and meetings designed to shame everyone).

How can we see such different things in the same text?

I see several things taking place. One, the left still believe in the blank slate. To them, any claim of genetic predispositions immediately makes one a racist and sexist, regardless of the actual words you use. And two, most people think that when you use the word "different," you really mean "better" and/or "worse." Damore says that women are different from men, and most people interpret that as "women are inferior to men." But Damore himself takes pains to clarify he means nothing of the sort. Those who see him as saying "women are inferior to men" are themselves projecting their own beliefs on Damore, and getting offended. But they are offended at their own beliefs, not the beliefs of Damore per se.

There are those who claim that Damore's claims are unscientific. But those people refuse to address the fact that four scientists who actually study such things say the memo is mostly scientifically accurate. Naturally, that means it's time to attack evolutionary psychology itself. Not surprisingly, the article writer gets everything in the memo completely wrong, so it's not surprising she doesn't understand the arguments of evolutionary psychologists, either. Her bias blinds her to such a degree that, like a fundamentalist Baptist, she denies the overwhelming scientific evidence and even goes so far as to distort it to support her creationist beliefs.

As Damore pointed out in a footnote, it was the Left who once upon a time supported genetic explanations--and, often, make eugenecist arguments on that basis. The shame of that history is perhaps why they are blank-slaters now, project blame for eugenics on the right rather than on the progressives who actually supported eugenics, and equate genetics explanations with racism and sexism (since that's historically how progressives used it). Ironically, the Right, which are typically religious and often creationists, are now favoring more genetics-based arguments.

The problem is that genetics alone explains nothing. Genes don't act in a vacuum. Genes are expressed in cells and are regulated, those regulations are influenced by the environment, and the behaviors of the organism contribute to the creation of that environment. That is, genes regulated by the environment create the environment that affects their regulation.

Our social environments came from somewhere, and that somewhere is an evolved environment founded on hundreds of millions of years of social evolution in conjunction with genetic evolution. Before there were social humans, there were social apes, and before there were social apes, there were social mammals, and before there were social mammals, there were social reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Our genes evolved in a social environment as much as a natural environment, and those genes co-evolved the social environment.

A good example of this is incest avoidance. There are laws against incest in every culture. This prompted Freud's idea of the Oedipus complex, which is based on an unnatural imposition of incest avoidance by society. But the Westermarck effect--a genetic predisposition to avoiding incest--is what actually resulted in the laws, not the other way around. The laws only reinforced the genetically-based disposition to avoid incest. The presence of differences in those rules/laws against incest doesn't mean the underlying disposition doesn't exist. Variations are what are expected based on various degrees of understanding of the connection between inbreeding and unhealthy offspring and other cultural differences.

It's not impossible, then, that if we see universal cultural differences in the ways men and women are treated (and we do), that this is based on genetic differences getting reinforced by culture. Of course, we have also, in many cultures, developed an attitude that we should minimize those differences. Cultures can certainly evolve in that direction as well. But if, as E.O. Wilson suggests, all culture/society is on a genetic leash, we can likely only go so far. If there are in fact personality differences that affect men and women in the workplace, doesn't it make more sense to understand and acknowledge them in order to make the workplace more open to true diversity of that kind? Wouldn't that make for a better workplace environment for both men and women, and allow for rules adjustments that wouldn't punish either group for their tendencies and wouldn't discriminate against anyone?

Inteview of Troy Camplin on Diaphysics and Hear the Screams of the Butte...

Talk on Diaphysics and Hear the Screams of the Butterfly

Some Statistical Analyses of Hear the Screams of the Butterfly

I am currently reading Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve by Ben Blatt, which analyzes literature using statistics. It's actually a pretty fun book, pointing out the linguistic DNA of each individual writer, and the linguistic differences between men and women, among other things.

I thought, for fun, I would do a few analyses on my own book, Hear the Screams of the Butterfly, and see what happens.

A great example is "he" vs. "she." Men use "He" much more often than they use "she," while women balance the two, with a slight bias toward "she" over "he." How, then, do I stack up?

He = 611
She = 273
That makes a 69% "he" imbalance.

However, when I do "him/himself" vs. "her/herself":

Him/Himself = 75
Her/Herself = 306
That makes for a very clear 18% "him/himself," meaning a striking imbalance in favor of "her/herself."

Since Blatt only analyzes him vs. her, this might suggest either a flaw in his methods, or an idiosyncrasy in my own writing. If we combine the two analyses above, we get:

He/Him/Himself =  686
She/Her/Herself =579
That brings us to a 54% "he/him/himself," meaning an almost perfect balance between the two.

In case you're wondering, 54% puts me on par with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and O Pioneers!, if we accept that my he/him/himself is identical to Blatt's he-only listing. If not, my he-only percentage of 69 makes me more on par with The Great Gatsby, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and A Passage to India.

Another thing Blatt analyzed was the use of -ly adverbs. I discovered that I used a total of 225 -ly adverbs in my novel of about 27,000 words. That gives us about 83 -ly adverbs per 10,000 words (the ratio Blatt uses), meaning I'm on par with Mark Twain (81) and Hemingway (80), between For Whom the Bell Tolls (75) and The Old Man and the Sea (92). Still, we all three get our butts kicked by Faulkner at his best: As I Lay Dying (31) and The Sound and the Fury (42). All in all, though, I think I'm in pretty good company when it comes to adverb use.

Many of the other analyses are too complex for me to do to my novella. And there was an interesting set of words where men and women differed in the uses of those words depending on whether they were describing women or men that I ended up not using at all, or only using once or twice. In a novella ostensibly about love, the word "kissed," for example, comes up exactly once. But then, my novella is about unrequited love, so that may in fact preclude much kissing.

So from the perspective of the use of gender pronouns, my novella is actually close to gender-neutral. And the lack of -ly adverbs suggests I did a pretty good job of going over and over and over the novella before it was published. As I read more in Blatt's book, I'll do further analyses of my novella. Should be fun.

After Postmodernism: Epistemological Ecosystems

The economy is an epistemological ecosystem. It is not the only one, but the kind of knowledge created through the unimpeded price system makes it a very efficient and effective one. Some epistemological ecosystems--such as art, literature, philanthropy, philosophy, and others--suffer from the ambiguities inherent in reputation as the primary medium of value-exchange. Science works better than these with its peer review, but is still not quite as efficient and effective as is money-mediated trade. Technological innovation participates in the economy precisely because its winners and losers are chosen through the price mechanism. That fact also makes technological innovation effective, efficient, and wealth-producing.

All of these are knowledge-producing activities. To refuse to trade therefore means one is purposefully trying to remain ignorant, and to make sure that others too remain ignorant. Reducing trade--whether through trade barriers, wage and/or price controls, taxes, and so on--increases ignorance. We cannot know what would be the best use of raw materials, capital, capital goods, or human capital any time prices are distorted. Price distortions not only include the list above, but also include subsidies, regulations, and monetary inflation/deflation (real inflation/deflation, on the other hand, communicated information more accurately).

Insofar as postmodernism is a kind of radically skeptical epistemology, denying the existence of an objective reality (or at least an objective social reality), insisting that all knowledge is merely constructed and can therefore be deconstructed, denying any sort of human nature, and therefore that knowledge itself is impossible, we can see that postmodernism is an active denial of the very existence of epistemological ecosystems. It is not that it's not true that there is an element of knowledge-production (or else how could one even have an epistemological ecosystem), but rather that for there to be an ecosystem of any sort, there has to be foundational organisms to interact with each other and co-evolve. The ecological equivalent would be for postmodernists to deny the existence of organisms or species because there is evolution.

If knowledge-production is in one sense impossible, and in another sense nothing but imposition of power/power-relations (another postmodern claim), then any sort of structure is as valid as any other sort of structure. What matters, if knowledge is nothing more than the imposition of the powerful on the non-powerful, is who has power. We can begin to understand pretty much every postmodernist position from that perspective.

If free markets are simply ways business people create power relations that benefit themselves at the expense of others, and business people are bad (for some reason or other that seems to involve "greed"--never mind that postmodernists are also supposed to be radically skeptical of moral "facts" as well, meaning we could just say "greed is good" and accept that for just as much or little reason as anything else), then we need a system that benefits some other group of people instead. The most popular are the victim classes--which seems to somehow include something like 90% of the world's population--as those who somehow properly deserve the reins of power. It all thus becomes a bunch of arbitrary choices being made by self-appointed secular saints who are all somehow right-thinking, even though if they were consistent with their own postmodern epistemology, there could not be any such thing as right-thinking.

If knowledge truly were power, I'd be President now and not Donald Trump. Those who hold power in our governments around the world are the surest falsification of postmodern epistemology possible. But postmodernism means never having to say you're wrong.

The understanding that there are in fact epistemological ecosystems helps us retain the insights of postmodernism while evolving well beyond their nihilistic conclusions. It's not a choice between structuralism and poststructualism, but both simultaneously. It's not a choice between The Truth and radical skepticism, but rather truth as a strange attractor, with truth statements coming closer or moving a bit away, but always circling, circling--and often generating more truth attractors. This is how all ecosystems--natural or epistemological--exist over space and time. Yes, we create knowledge, but that doesn't mean the knowledge we create isn't true. Yes, there is socially constructed knowledge--which makes that knowledge useful rather than denying its existence--but that doesn't mean that there aren't facts in the world which we must live with, by, in, and through.

What comes after postmodernism? It's already been around for a while. Epistemological ecosystems is what comes after postmodernism. Given that people like Hayek and Michael Polanyi developed this idea, it's a bit ironic that the postmodernists were already behind the times when they came up with their ideas, since their replacement was already being developed before they even came on the scene.

Know Thyself

Neuro-atypicality and Creativity

I have written before about copiers vs. innovators, and I have argued that autistics are in the innovator class. But I don't want people to misunderstand me. If, as I have argued, innovators make up about 20% of the population, that's going to be many more kinds of people than autistics.

No, it's not just autistics, but those with ADD/ADHD, bipolars, schizophrenics, dyslexics, depressives, and those with chronic anxiety. That's 20% of the population. That's the primary creative pool.

The secondary creative pool are those who come up with a good idea or two.

The sociopaths are the primary destroyers in society--from legislatures to boardrooms. Some of the worst-performing-yet-most-sought-after CEOs are sociopaths. They charm their way out of their destructiveness. So do politicians.

Fortunately, we are talking 1-2% destroyers against 20% creators. Many of those creators are taken out of commission by their own issues, by the prejudices of others, and by various regulations acting as barriers to their innovations.

The problem is that the sociopaths are charmers, and the majority population is both conservative in the sense of hating innovations and prone to being charmed. We creators aren't really all that charming. We're socially awkward, arrogant, and generally pretty damn annoying. With that kind of PR it's a testimony to the value of what we do that it can overcome our personalities.

Are You In Control?

Ethics: Natural Law vs. Voluntarism

In Beauty in the Word, Stratford Caldecott argues that there are two main branches of ethics, the natural law tradition and the voluntarist tradition. The natural law tradition, which one could also call virtue ethics, was promoted by realists like Aristotle and Aquinas. The voluntarist tradition comes out ot the nomialists, such as Ockham, and involves an emphasis on commandments.

The natural law tradition is interested in what it is good to be and "freedom for," while the voluntarist tradition is interested in what it is good to do and "freedom from." Caldecott argues that

The second tradition leads in the modern period to a split between 'deontological' ethics (ethics of duty, as in Immanuel Kant's philosophy) and 'teleological' or consequentialist ethics (ethics of goal, as in Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill), which supposes that we choose either on the basis of obligations and rules that determine what is right and wrong, or on the basis of what will bring about the greatest happiness of the greatest number. (152)

There is further an "ethics of authenticity developed in reaction to them by Nietzsche, the Existentialists, and analytic philosophers" (152) that is quite important for many people today.

Each of these results in a different kind of freedom. Under the natural law tradition, there is "freedom for excellence," while for the voluntarist tradition, there is the "freedom of indifference."

It is quite interesting that nominalism gave rise to voluntarism, which split into Kant's "it doesn't matter what the outcome, so long as you had good intentions," and the utilitarian "it doesn't matter what way you get there, so long as the goal is reached." We see both of these at play today, in people who argue that what matters is their good intentions, not the fact that everything went to hell, and in people who think that it's perfectly find to use force (of government) to achieve your goals, so long as those goals are noble. What is perhaps most notable is that these people are almost inevitable the same people.

One of the problems with the volunarist tradition is that it sort of leaves the question of who is coming up with the rules, and why, and what makes them inherently good (how would you know?), in the first case, and how do you know that your goals are good in the latter. The latter argues for "the most happiness," but whose happiness? There was a time in the U.S. when most people would have been made much happier if there weren't any gays around. There are societies today in which that is the case. These goals shift and change over time and from culture to culture. We are rightly appalled at many things considered perfectly normal in the past, but which if realized at the time would have made many people happy.

There is also a bit of a contradiction in the idea of "freedom of indifference" and having goals. Why would you try to reach a goal about which you are indifferent? Should we be indifferent to happiness? To the rules? Doesn't indifference to the rules undermine duty?

At the same time, there is certainly something to be said for the freedom of indifference. It is probably because of this freedom of indifference toward women, gays, and minorities that led to the various liberation movements for those groups. It's not that people were indifferent to their plight, but rather that they realized that if they had the same rights and were equal under the law, that it didn't really affect them one way or another. If women being able to vote or minorities being able to eat or sit where they wanted to didn't harm you, why oppose those things?

For classical liberals and libertarians, this is an attractive proposal. It boils down to "I don't care what you do, so long as it doesn't harm me." Combine it with an ethics of authenticity, and you have pretty much an understanding of identity politics and the liberation movements.

However, none of these branches of ethics are even remotely useful for education. If the point of education is to learn, and the point of learning is to achieve excellence, then it seems that virtue ethics rather than voluntarist ethics are in order.

Consider Caldecott's example:

There is a certain freedom in being able to bash at random on a piano, but a higher freedom that comes from submitting to the discipline that yields the ability to play music---similarly with the discipline that enables us to use language meaningfully and be understood by others, and something similar applies in the moral realm to the virtues. (153)

Who has more freedom, the person who doesn't know the rules of playing the piano (which can only be gained through guided practice), or the person who does? The person who does, who knows the rules of playing the piano, has the freedom to produce many more sets of sounds from it than is the person who doesn't know the rules. The latter's efforts will mostly all sound exactly the same.

The same is true of poets and painters. Not knowing the full set of techniques means you have very little freedom as a painter or a poet. The free verse poet who only ever wrote in free verse and only ever was taught free verse is far more restricted than is the person who knows how to compose a sonnet, a madrigal, and a roundelay. Indeed, the latter will be able to compose far superior free verse poems as well.

The key to excellence in these things, including moral excellence, is achieving Aristotle's golden mean between the two extremes in vice. Just as courage is the golden mean between cowardice and rashness, a great painter composes in a golden mean between throwing paints randomly at a canvas and paint-by-number.  (Coincidentally, those who think Jackson Pollock was an example of the former is completely ignorant of his actual methods of composition.)

Education, qua education, absolutely requires virtue ethics as a foundation. Teachers cannot be indifferent to their students, and students cannot be indifferent to what they need to learn. Good intentions are hardly enough (though that seems to be what underlies all education in the U.S. today), and an education based on the idea of student authenticity is laughable (what if they are "authentically" lazy, ignorant, and illiterate?). An education designed to meet certain goals (other than the goal of creating free minds) will fail students precisely because the world is changing so quickly that whatever they are taught will be out of date by the time they try to get a job.

This isn't to say that there aren't times when one approach to ethics isn't better than another. Sometimes the best you can do is have good intentions (but you ought to learn and not make that mistake over and over and over, because then I have to question those good intentions). Sometimes you have to be true to yourself (but that self will necessarily change over time, and most particularly if you become more educated). And a system that brings about the greatest happiness for the greatest number most of the time is probably the better system to have, in general (meaning, a pluralist system founded in freedom, where everyone is free to pursue their own happiness). But let's face it, if you fully embrace virtue ethics, then you will be better able to align intentions with goals and you will learn to become who you are, as you continue to grow and become a better version of who you are.

For my money, education ought to be founded in teaching virtue ethics. Without that foundation, there can be no excellence in outcomes. Each person, privately, ought to embrace virtue ethics and individually behave based on those virtues. But socially, we shouldn't impose on others, meaning we ought to basically treat them "indifferently," meaning to live and let live, so long as I and others aren't harmed. Personally virtuous people who publicly leave people alone, who find the freedom to be while also enjoying the freedom from the forced imposition of others, will create the most virtuous society overall.

Beauty in the Word -- Poesis and Education

"All human beings desire to know the truth, to know reality. There are many who wish to deceive others, but few who want to be deceived (and therefore enslaved)" (8-9).

"Attention is desire; it is the desire for light, for truth, for understanding, for possession" (30).

"we learn because we love" (31).

"In Greek mythology, the goddess 'Memory' (Mnemosyne) is the offspring of the primordial Mother and Father; that is, Earth (Gaia) and Sky (Uranus). She is responsible for the naming of things, and is the mother by Zeus of the nine Muses, who inspire literature and all the arts, from poetry to astronomy. Memory, then, is the mother both of language and of civilization. This is what gives us our link between Remembering and language" (36).

"the earliest stage of education is not simply the learning of words, of names, of vocabulary, but the learning of how to name. This is the art that the poet re-learns, and so it can best be taught by teaching the power of poetry, and of poesis in general---both by learning and by doing" (43).

"The power of naming is related to the power of seeing; of seeing into the realities, the essences of things, and invoking those essences by an act of will---and therefore of interpretation" (43).

"The formal study of the history of words and their meanings is called etymology (from etymon or etymos, 'true sense' and logos, 'word' or 'speech'). The student of language is called a 'philologist,' a lover of the logos. Etymology is important, if we want to find the springs and furnaces where words are forged, and understand why they are so important to our humanity. We must travel this path as lovers ('amateurs') of the Word and of words, because all things reveal themselves more truly to the eyes of love" (44-45)

"Whenever we return home we are remembering. There is no home without memory to make it so; there is only a place like any other. Even an orphan raised on the streets remembers a face, a shelter, which represents whee he comes from. My 'home' may have been brutal, the memories of it may make me cringe with fear, but it cannot ever be fully left behind, unless I can replace it with something other and better. All through life we are seeking a place where we can be at home, where we can truly belong. If we cannot remember that experience of belonging, then we are forced to remember something that defines it by contrast. Either way, it is memory that defines our journey.

"It is not just as individuals that we need a home. The collective memory of the society to which we belong has the name 'tradition.' We cannot be truly 'at home' without one. The word derives from trans- 'over' and dare 'to give.' In every society or civilization, a process takes place that can be called a 'handing over' of the stories, the knowledge, the accumulated wisdom of one generation to the next. It is the process that makes each new generation into a source of wisdom for the one that follows---and it takes place generally within the family. What is handed over is a 'gift.' It is not simply a bundle of property whose title deed is being transferred to the next generation. Rather, it carries within it something of the giver. Its transmission is an act of love. Thus the gift of tradition involves and transforms the interiority of both the giver and the recipient" (45).

"The 'spirit of tradition' is an essential element of education. It is the spirit in which the transmission of culture takes place" (46).

""by speaking of Memory or Remembering we are really speaking of the foundations of attention, of the integration of the personality, and of the road to contemplation. We are also speaking of 'conscience.' Remembering is the gathering together of the self in the light of consciousness" (51)

 "As we move from individual words to the construction of sentences we have begun the making of narrative, of stories; and stories, like names, reveal the meaning and relationship of things to ourselves. The anamnesis of culture and tradition is largely dependent on our ability to remember and build upon stories that come down to us. These stories are the vehicles of meaning" (52).

"To be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality" (53)

"Our experience of the world is full of meaning from the moment we begin to connect our experiences with each other by remembering and comparing and imagining. Words are the tokens of images, and it is as such that they mediate human interpretation and thought. We unveil the meaning of the world to ourselves by comparing one thing with another, by getting the 'measure' (logos) of it, by seeing one ting as 'like' or 'unlike' another, and so by learning to dwell in the mysterious space that is formed between them. The human soul, we might say, is this intermediate reality, this 'interworld' of meanings and connections" (57).

It is in the Imagination that language and the Muses are born from Memory in the house of tradition. The first lesson of our revised 'Trivium' is therefore the vital importance of crafts, drama and dance, poetry and storytelling, as a foundation for independent and critical thought.Though doing and making, through poesis, the house of the soul is built. The grammar of language, however, rests on a deeper foundation still. It rests on music. Music is the wordless language on which poetry---the purest and most concentrated form of speech----is built. Poetry is made of images, similes, metaphors, analogies; but what holds these elements together and makes them live is fundamentally musical in nature" (57-8).

Music...is a play of mathematics, coherent patterns of number and shape in time and space, expressed in rhythm and timbre, tone and pitch. It is the closest most of us get to seeing and feeling the beauty of mathematics" (58).

"the restoration of Grammar as one of the three elements of a restored Trivium must include not only the revival of memory and the discipline of learning by heart (enlarging the heart in the process), but the cultivation of imagination and a poetic or musical vision of the interconnectedness of all things. It is a harmony that cries out to be discovered and appreciated, repaying with joy the effort to reveal and understand it, and making us 'beautiful within'" (59).

one of the tasks of the teacher "is to ground Thinking in Remembering, or Logic in Grammar, and to overcome the false Nominalism of our age with the spirit of contemplation" (80).

"thinking is dialogical before it is logical" (80)

"because thinking is dialogical, the best way to encourage it is by dialogue, debate, conversation. This is where the dialectical method, beginning with the Socratic elenchus in the early Platonic writings---a conversation designed to expose error---comes into its own. Plato's dialogues may seem at times to be rather artificial and unconvincing; nevertheless, it can be a wonderful exercise to adapt them for performance with children as a way of stimulating them imaginatively to search for truth. Truth is not a quarry that can easily be pursued without the help of others, because our own thoughts have a tendency to run in circles" (81).

"learning, which is the expansion of the self, takes place in community. I am not referring only to the refinement of logical thought, which despite its importance is only a special case of thought in general, rendered more precise and coherent by the Principle of Contradiction, the Principle of Identity and Difference, and the Principle of the Excluded Middle, the details of which can be pursued elsewhere. The development of thinking also involves the refinement of imagination and feeling" (81).

"The expansion of the self, we might say, requires the development of empathy and courtesy---empathy in order to be able to see another's point of view, and courtesy to act as though one were not the center of the world" (81).

"To know the truth we must first attend to reality. We must interpret reality. We must have names for things. We must 'remember Being.' And in fact Being itself is the first 'community' to which we belong: 'being' is itself a form of communion. That community comprises past, present, and future, to which  we have access through memory, consciousness, and imagination. Initiation into a cultural and social tradition through education is the way in which we participate to the fullest in this community of being" (83-4).

"education is about the communication of values, or meaningful information, and of wisdom and of tradition, between persons and across generations" (84)

"real human communication is only possible in the context of love, without which the self can neither be given in an act of speech (we describe someone as 'not meaning a word of it'), nor received in an act of sympathetic hearing (we accuse someone of 'not listening to what I was saying'). In fact every person has an interior life that cannot be divulged except by deliberately 'opening up' the heart, and allowing the life that is within it to flow through words and gestures into the other person" (85).

"Human speech flows from within, but if it is to serve the truth it cannot simply express what is within, and nothing else. Thought is an attempt to know; that is, a marriage of the self with reality; while speech is an attempt to bring about a meeting of selves, a communion in that marriage. Human speech and thought need to correspond with the order of the cosmos, the order of love" (85).

"You cannot communicate a truth that has not changed you" (86).

"Ethics concerns what we should do or not do, and how we should behave" (86).

"What I am is decided by my actions. What I do with my body not only reveals but determines who I am; it creates my destiny" (87)

"the best way to communicate morality is not through endless dry lists of what should and should not be done, but . . . through the imagination---through stories, drama, and living examples capable of engaging the will and the emotions and thus inspiring us to be better people. A morality, an ethos, must be embodied; it must be lived by a human being, before it can be understood or communicated. It is expressed in the virtues that are the powers by which we build character, and with the fruits of those virtues" (87)

"an ethics of virtue--of acting not just in order to bring about certain results, but of acting in order to correspond to the Good, which is not at all the same thing. In fact we can go further, and say, I am what I do to others. This connects us with the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (89).

Rhetoric "is not a set of techniques to impress (oratory, eloquence), nor a means of manipulating the will and emotions of others (sophistry, advertising), but rather a way of liberating the freedom of others by showing them the truth in a form they can understand" (92).

"the most intense experience of language" involves "music, imagery, and connotation" (93)

"Rhythm or meter is a mathematical structure, a structure of repetition and variation. It creates a shape in time, a dynamic flowing movement that carries the mind along with it. If prose lacks rhythm, it leaves us behind. Our attention is too easily diverted from the direction in which the author intends us to move. Something similar is true of all art, from music through to architecture and even painting, which, though seemingly static, requires us to move our attention through time in order to absorb it. (A painting that can be appreciated entirely at a single glance, without leaving something further to explore, is probably not a very good painting.)" (94)

Rhetoric is "related to poetry, dance, and song. We might even conclude that the best way to teach it is in close connection with these. In other words, an ability to communicate in words will grow with a sense of rhythm, timing, melody, and physical grace. But why should we ever have thought otherwise? Communication in the fullest sense must involve the whole person, that is body, soul, and spirit, with imagination and intellect in harmony. Rhetoric cannot be kept entirely separate from any other subject, least of all those which cultivate our sense of beaut. The interconnectedness of things---their mutual indwelling and transparency--is the condition of communication" (95).

Education should involve storytelling, music, exploration, painting and drawing, and dance, drama, and sport (113).

"The education of the imagination is the education of the heart" (114).

"Through the choice of stories the children can be introduced to history as well as traditional fairy tales, myths, and classic tales, as well as being encouraged to develop narrative skills of their own and to develop the confidence to speak in a group. Stories can be illustrated or acted out, creating links with the other areas of the curriculum. This is also the best way to draw children into the learning of language, and indeed languages" (114).

"the theme of Music can be connected to Story or Exploration or Dance, and it can be taught historically or with reference to religion. Sounds and patterns of sounds can be analyzed into simple numbers and shapes, thus introducing the children to mathematics by the back door. By exploring the relationship between music and lyrics in popular songs, a range of literary skills can be developed" (114)

"explore the local neighborhood or the geography of the wider world, outer space using actual telescopes or the images available from Hubble and NASA, different cultures using story and music, the world of the very small through microscopes and magnifying glasses, abstract patterns through the construction of simple geometric figures, or the worlds of the past" (114) -- that is, all of these can be framed as exploring.

"everything is connected to everything else, and so we should not be afraid of the particular interests or obsessions of the children---follow one interest, however narrow it appears, and it will open up one subject after another, making each in turn appear 'interesting' for the first time" (115).

"Arts and crafts provide an obvious opportunity to explore, express, and interiorize what is being  learnt each day, to develop particular skills based on the coordination of hand and eye, and to refine the ability to observe the world around" (115).

"symbols, metaphors, and analogies help to connect everything together" (115).

education should not neglect movement--dance, drama, sports, the martial arts--"Here music and storytelling, as well as the arts and crafts, and social skills such as a capacity for teamwork, all have an important part to play" (116)

"The links between music, dance, sport, and acting are obvious."

"Dramatic productions developed in class are an opportunity to bring together the whole range of educational elements in a single activity involving teamwork" (116).

"The keys to meaning are form, gestalt, beauty, interiority, relationship, radiance, and purpose. An education for meaning begins with the perception of form. Education should open our eyes to the meaning and beauty of the cosmos. In the search for beauty as well as truth, the arts and sciences can be reunited in the common enterprise of civilization" (117).

"A metaphorical word or phrase carried us from something to something else by suggesting a likeness or analogy. All of poetry and most of language is based upon this power of suggestion. It is the key to the discovery of meaning" and to the interconnectedness of things (121).

"It is the imagination that interprets, that gives meaning to the world, by 'joining the dots,' discovering the otherwise invisible connections between things, events, and qualities. Its ancient Greek patron is Hermes, or Mercury, the messenger of the gods and inventor of fire. Thus to discover meaning is to connect, to travel from one thing to another, or to go on a journey. But to go on a hike without landmarks or direction, or on a sea voyage without said, sextant, compass, or map, is the same as being lost, or wandering aimlessly, a victim to every wind that blows" (122).

Great stories each reveal "an aspect of what it is to be truly human, not in a moralistic way by spelling out the rules and regulations of right behavior, but in a way that educates the imagination of the reader to see patterns linking characters, decisions, and events in the real world. It is a way not just of communicating the rules, but showing how the rules work and perhaps even why they work. However fantastic and unreal the landscapes in which these stories unfold, however untrue to life they may be in a factual sense, they are true in the deeper meaning of the word, in that they reflect the way things really are. They open our eyes to look not merely at the surface of things, but at their form" (123).

"it make sense to regard reading stories aloud to one's children the archetypal act of the Trivium. One is simultaneously remembering a tradition, revealing the Logos, and (by voice, inflection, and gesture) dramatizing a story to communicate that meaning 'heart to heart'" (123).

"We desire the truth because it is beautiful, it draws us towards it. In fact, to be drawn towards something, to desire it, is part of what we mean by calling it 'beautiful.'
"Here is the paradox. We may be drawn to truth by beauty, but truth is beautiful to us because it's true. The beauty of anything lies in its truth. I don't mean, of course, that every truth we discover must be beautiful in the superficial sense of being pretty. There are plenty of ugly truths" (133). But those truths have to be taken in the wider, more complex, contexts.

"Arithmetic requires us to pursue order through time, since numbers accumulate successively when we perform the operation of counting. Music involves appreciation of these temporal patterns and the relationships between them.It depends on our ability to perceive a mathematical form that is spread out through time (the time it takes for a symphony or a song to unfold). Geometry involves the perception of forms that are spread through space as well as time, hence its foundational relationship to Astronomy, which concerns the geometrical relationships of the heavenly bodies---the world of 'light.' Music is the study of ratios and proportions, and Astronomy of shapes in motion" (141).

"The good is that which is, at any given moment, appropriate, sitting, and right in relation to the objective situation. Consciousness is the ability to recognize what is good and translate it into action. But conscience is the ability to recognize what is fixed and ready-made; it has to grow and develop as we open ourselves to life and allow ourselves to be taught" (142).

"Dialectic needs Grammar, and Logic needs Analogy, which is at the foundation of poetry, theology, and science. Things are never unrelated or completely unlike other things---the world is analogous through and through" (151).

"Our experience of beauty liberates or expands us beyond the boundaries of the self. The encounter with it arouses the desire to unite ourselves with it in order to become 'more' than we are. At the same time, it may strike us as 'more than we deserve' or more than we have a right to expect" (156).

"The memory of being, the pursuit of truth, the eloquence of the heart, and the musical mathematics of the cosmos and the soul, are the essence of the seven liberal arts" (159).

"It is beauty that moves us to love the one, the true, and the good, not for her sake but for theirs" (159-160).


*from Caldecott, Stratford. 2012. Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education. Tacoma, WA: Angelico Press

Meaningful Words in a Text Proven to Have Fractal Distribution

In my dissertation, Evolutionary Aesthetics, I had a chapter titled "Introduction to the Fractal Distribution of Words in a Text." Because of my lack of technical skill and institutional support, I didn't pursue that line of research (I instead pursued spontaneous order theory, where I was getting positive feedback on my research), but the idea is always in my mind.

Today I found a paper proving my thesis: "The Fractal Patterns of Words in a Text: A Method for Automatic Keyword Extraction." In it they describe a method for finding keywords based on their fractal pattern. However, they do this in nonfiction works, while I did mine in a work of fiction. But both of us were searching for meaningful words in each text. And indeed it seems that meaningful words do have a fractal distribution within a text, while "filler" words are randomly distributed.

The Fractal Patterns of Words in a Text: A Method for Automatic Keyword Extraction

The Social Individual and the Self

Here is some research which I will definitely be following, because it has everything to do with my own developing ideas on human socially-derived individuality. Roy Baumeister has a theory that humans are unique in having true selves, which in turn allowed us to develop highly complex social structures.

His line of research suggests a resolution of the seeming contradiction that social science research shows that groups are good and that groups are bad. In other words,

combining two ongoing lines of research on group dynamics: that groups are bad, since they bring out conformity, social loafing, and the mob mentality; and that groups are good, encouraging cooperation, division of labor, and the wisdom of crowds. To Baumeister and his colleagues, it’s the role of the self that drives groups in either direction, for good or for ill. The group suffers when when the self is subsumed into it, and responsibility — for morality or performance — gets diffused. But if the self retains its individuality, then all sorts of benefits follow.

 This suggests that culture---of a society or of a business---matters a great deal, because it is through the culture that ideas of self and its relation to the group emerge.

For too many, the choice seems to be radical individualism or collectivism. But the fact of the matter is that humans are neither, and do not do well as either. Humans, as thinkers like Adam Smith, David Hume, and F. A. Hayek understood and argued, are both simultaneously, meaning we are social individuals.

It’s a marrying of collectivist and individualist impulses, and the parallels abound. Contemporary thinking about how the brain optimally functions contends that the brain is at its best when all regions are differentiated from one another as well as integrated into a whole, like a city where neighborhoods develop their local flavor while still being connected to the rest of them.

 It should not be surprising that things like the human brain and human macrostructures like cities follow this pattern of unity in variety and variety in unity. Another great thinker, Francis Hutcheson (teacher of Adam Smith) argued that that was the definition of beauty. Beautiful brains, beautiful humans, and beautiful cities. None of this is surprising to me, anyway.

All the Cosmos Is a Stage

All learning should be interconnected because everything in the cosmos is, ultimately interconnected. In Beauty in the Word, Stratford Caldecott makes the same argument, but then he goes on to argue that we can understand this interconnection as a drama:

A drama is a story that unfolds in a given context between several characters---each human life can be viewed as such a story, as can the history of mankind as a whole. Cosmology, astronomy, and geography give us the stage and the set and the props, while history and psychology and religion give us the plot and the action. Everything makes sense, everything connects, through the person whose character, actions, and destiny are the subject of the story. (101)

Not just cosmology, astronomy, and geography give us the stage and the set and the props, but so to do all of the physical sciences. And while history, psychology, and religion certainly give us the plot and the action, so too do the humanities, sociology, anthropology, and economics. More, each actor (you, the student) has to understand the motivation of the character they are playing (them now, them in the future), meaning an understanding of psychology (including neurobiology), sociology, economics, and the humanities is necessary.

In my own experience, the more I have come to learn about how my brain works and learns, the more freedom I have gained. I have learned to see many of the unconscious things I have been doing, and by bringing them to consciousness, I am now freer in my choices. It is the freedom of the author well-educated in grammar, logic and rhetoric: I can now better edit myself to make a better story of my life.

Seeing each of these aspects as part of a great drama allows us to see how they are interconnected, and how and why they relate to us at all. The actors on a stage don't get to pretend that the stage and set and props and lighting and so on aren't there or that they have no effect on what they do, for if they do, they will run into the set, misuse or fail to use the props, and speak from the shadows---not to mention potentially fall off the stage! If you don't understand the plot, how can you act well? If you don't know the character, how can you act well? You'll just be stiffly going through the motions, doing a poor job of acting---indeed, being a bad actor.

This is why a liberal education is vital. And not just a multidisciplinary education, where nothing is connected, but an interdisciplinary education, wherein all the links are clearly made. This is what makes for a truly liberal education.

The Foundations Needed for an Education in Rhetoric

Aristotle argued that strong rhetoric requires you to demonstrate logos, ethos, and pathos.

What this implies, and what I haven't really seen anyone discuss in regards to Aristotle's rhetoric (it may be out there, but I haven't seen it discussed) is that if you are going to teach rhetoric, you have to teach students to not only be logical/rational, but also to be ethical and to have empathy.

This means that a liberal education, rooted in teaching grammar, logic, and rhetoric, requires an education in ethics and empathy.

Now ethics and empathy are hardly the same thing, as I discuss here in relation to both of their relationship to beauty and the sublime. And we know now that literature increases empathy in adults and in children in part by improving theory of mind. Indeed, as Aristotle pointed out, fiction/myth is more philosophical/ethical than nonfiction/history precisely because the latter only tell us how things are, while the former tell us how things could and ought to be. And as I suggest here when nonfiction storytellers try to moralize, it actually backfires--or, more accurately, it emphasizes the negative aspects of empathy.

And yes, empathy does have a few negative aspects. For one, it can reduce utilitarian judgment. For another, strong empathy for your in-group means increased hatred for the out-group. Empathy feeds tribalism, while ethics and justice undermine it. Thus, an education in ethics undermines the negative aspects of empathy, and an education in literature increases the positive aspects of empathy, extending it to the Other (thus making us more moral). One can argue that empathy is a part of the moral order, but it's a mixed bag portion that has to be balanced out by other moral considerations. But both empathy and morality are important to develop in no small part because they help us live with others, and they help to moderate other social orders.

Of course, pathos is more than just empathy. It also involves emotions. Meaning, a liberal education needs to educate people in their emotions as well. This is where an education in music and poetry comes in. Indeed, music is one of the liberal arts, though found in the Quadrivium rather than the Trivium. But here we can see where the overlap and reinforce each other. And poetry contributes further by bridging music and the literary arts.

We can see then how deeply interconnected these aspects of a liberal education is. A moral education, gained through moral teachings and the arts, is a necessary aspect of getting a liberal education simply for the fact that it's necessary to most properly learn rhetoric. The same is equally true of gaining an emotional education through music and poetry and the other arts, to be able to develop the pathos needed to better learn rhetoric.

And all of this is just to master rhetoric!

The Standard of Justice

Individualism is the standard of justice.

Do you think a person is guilty just because they are African-American?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are a woman?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are man?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Hispanic?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are gay?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Christian
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are poor?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Chinese?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are rich?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are a business owner?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Muslim?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are of European descent?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are a scientist?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Southern?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Easterners?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Jew?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Leftists?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Rightists?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are liberals?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are conservatives?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Buddhist?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are an artist?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are transgendered?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are uneducated?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are college educated?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are Hindu?
Do you think a person is guilty just because they are a laborer?

If you don't, meaning you judge a person's guilt or innocence on what that particular individual did, then you act being just.

If you go through this list and agree with some and disagree with others, then you don't believe in justice at all. And you know it.  Because even if you disagree with some of the group distinctions in this list, you know for a fact that deciding guilt or innocence based on that group membership is unjust. How do you know that? Because you know that it would be unjust for you to have your guilt or innocence determined by your group membership.

Liberal Education and the Three Illiberal Educations

A liberal education must be rooted in grammar, logic, and rhetoric. (Not just these, but I'm only going to discuss these three). If any are neglected, you do not and cannot have a liberal education.

Education today is postmodern, meaning exclusively rhetorical, meaning illiberal. Almost all of our problems with education, from the general lack of knowledge to the rise of the social justice warriors, can be traced to this fact. Grammar and logic are both actively neglected, indeed outright discouraged. I have taught composition classes, and I know. I have been told explicitly not to spend more than a week on either grammar or logic, and most of the composition classes I have taught have even been titled "Rhetoric."

Grammar is of course more than just grammar in the narrow sense of the term, though is most certainly must include that as well. Stratford Caldecott in Beauty in the Word argues that grammar also includes mythos and memory as well. Indeed, ht points out that the ancient Greeks understood the arts as being products of the memory. We have to have an education founded in memory, in stories, in understanding the deep relations among things. With grammar, we see that each and every sentence is really a little story, and thus we understand the narrative structure of our thinking itself, insofar as that thinking is rooted in language. More, what are we remembering but tradition? Thus tradition is tied in with grammar.

Caldecott points out that a grammar education (and grammatical world view) is what dominated in the pre-Enlightenment era. With the Renaissance and the rise of the Enlightenment, we moved toward a more logic-reason based education and world view. Logic, thinking, and knowledge are what came to dominate, with the resultant rise in science. Logic is unconnected with tradition, and an over-emphasis of logic can result in a rejection of tradition. Naturally, we need an education in logic, broadly understood, as it helps us better understand what is true (and to reject what in tradition is not true), but its over-emphasis unbalanced us and resulted in a backlash.

Rhetoric emphasizes persuasion and it is deeply connected to community. What will persuade people? What will foster community? While Aristotle argues you need logos, ethos, and pathos, if rhetoric becomes overly dominant, it is typically logos which suffers (especially if it is logic which is specifically what people are reacting against). And while stories are typically used to persuade and create pathos, those stories are inevitably unconnected to tradition (or outright reject tradition). Ethos becomes emphasized over everything, which gets expressed in the postmodern world as 'I am good because I oppose racism and sexism and homophobia, so you should listen to me and do as I say.' While the first may be true (I think it is, anyway), the latter doesn't necessarily follow. More, it gets reversed such that people think that 'Because I am good, I am right,' meaning that if they are right then you are wrong, and if you are wrong then you are not good, and if you are not good you are racist, sexist, and homophobic. More, that ethos is based almost entirely on pathos, meaning how the person feels about something is what matters. This is where the social justice warriors come from.

The danger is that we react against rhetoric in the same way and return to either a pure grammar or a pure logic. Indeed, there are some indications that we are returning to a more grammatical way of viewing the world with complex systems theory. The good news is that complex systems theory is also a logic based on that grammar, and it is a recognition of the necessary fact of community in all things as well. A recognition of deep structures fostering ecological rationality in the creation and maintenance of community at all levels of reality is precisely what systems theory, or spontaneous orders theory, is all about.

To understand the world this way means we necessarily must start receiving a liberal education. A liberal education prepares us to understand the world as deeply complex, interactive, and interrelated. Each of the parts of liberal education contribute, but when they are individually emphasized at the expense of each other, education becomes deeply illiberal. Which is why education (and our societies) seem to swing between liberalism and various illiberalisms. Rarely do the three liberal language arts come together to reinforce each other, but when they do, we get a renaissance. Our current illiberal society is dominated by rhetoric. We need to reunite it with grammar and logic (and of course the other liberal arts) to rebuild our educational systems and renew our world.

Three Poems Published in The Dial

There's a new literary magazine out there called The Dial: A Magazine for Poetry, Philosophy and Religion, in which I have three poems. The editor tried to place the poems in thematic conjunction, meaning you should really read it from cover to cover.

My poems in the collection are:

The Culture of Children

Ends and Means

Divine Knowledge

The editor is interested in publishing libertarian authors, though as you can see from the collection that the magazine itself doesn't have an overwhelmingly oppressive ideology upon which it insists. It's much more interesting than that. 

Constructal Law, Rights, Morals, Justice

Does the constructal law prove the existence of natural rights? Is the constructal law the bridge between is and ought we've been looking for?

While I do think there is much to recommend in the linked approach, the author seems to neglect our evolved social behaviors, which do provide us with a certain degree of duration if not eternity.

Of course, these network processes producing these structures are found at the physical, biological, psychological, and social (including economic) levels, so we shouldn't be surprised if life itself doesn't create rights through following these rules of flow, and we also shouldn't be surprised if these rights find varying expressions in social-level flows.

On Coalitions

John Tooby argues that humans do not live in groups; rather, we live in coalitions.

Coalitions are sets of individuals interpreted by their members and/or by others as sharing a common abstract identity (including propensities to act as a unit, to defend joint interests, and to have shared mental states and other properties of a single human agent, such as status and prerogatives). 

A coalition is something you can " form, maintain, join, support, recognize, defend, defect from, factionalize, exploit, resist, subordinate, distrust, dislike, oppose, and attack." Unlike a group, which is sort of the human equivalent of a pile, a coalition has structure, identity, and emergent properties. Societies are made up of a variety of coalitions, but it would probably be best to identify a society as an interactive set of coalitions than of a group of people. That is, a society would be a degree of complexity greater than a coalition, and a coalition a degree of complexity greater than its human constituents. 

It may be the case that the stronger coalitions are, the weaker the society, and vice versa. That is, the Hayekian Great Society requires relatively weak coalitions to ensure a high degree of social cohesion at the level of a given society. That society may or may not be limited to a given nation's borders, as the fact that one can go to Europe and, for the most part, fit in and get along without a great deal of trouble proves. That is, there is a degree of "society" that transcends national borders, and is increasingly encompassing the globe. 

We need to better understand coalitions and their roles in our lives if we are going to better understand our social psychologies. These coalitions in part overlap many of our organizations, but may include many such organizations, or none. These coalitions in part extend out into greater society, but at the same time weaken as they extend. Of course, that weakening is both a problem (we may feel something missing in our lives) and a solution (the weaker they are, the better we can get along with others). This is clearly something we need to better understand to develop better ideas of what it means for us to have a healthy classically liberal society and what it means for the idea of individualism, and what individualism itself means.