Conference-Bound

I just received notice that my proposed paper "Interdisciplinarity and the Language of Emergent Phenomena" has been accepted by the Fund for Spontaneous Orders' conference "Orders and Borders" in new Hampshire. It's very exciting. Below is the abstract that got me in:

Interdisciplinarity and the Language of Emergent Phenomena

The discovery of emergent phenomena by and in various disciplines, from chemistry and physics to biology to psychology, sociology, and economics makes it clear that interdisciplinary scholars who are conversant in various fields, from the hard to the soft sciences and the humanities, are needed. How is the chemical reaction between a sodium and chlorine atom similar to economic interactions among people? What can animal social behaviors tell us about human social behaviors? Are there paradigms that can help us develop an interdisciplinary vocabulary to understand self-organizing emergent systems and their interactions in any discipline as well as across disciplines?

In my paper I will explore these issues with the goal of laying the groundwork to develop a common interdisciplinary language that will allow those studying self-organizing emergent systems in different disciplines to be able to communicate with each other. I will discuss the differences between bottom-up self-organization versus top-down design, selection versus contingency, complexification versus simplification, cybernetics versus control, rules versus laws, as well as information, feedback loops, dynamic tension, connections (as emphasized by sociology) , agents, and creativity. Further, I will show that the world consists of a series of nested and interacting emergent agents, which will help tie the disciplines together by showing their relations to each other. Finally, I will show that interdisciplinary studies is itself an emergent order with the disciplines as its instrumental organizations.

This may seem a great deal to cover; however, these issues are in fact so deeply interconnected that, if we are to understand emergent orders, they must not be too disentangled. Bottom-up self-organization results from information communication, which gives rise to rules and, thus, to internal cybernetic steering of the system through the world. Information becomes communicated in bipolar feedback loops as different entities in the system conflict and cooperate to create an increasingly complex system. All of these terms will be more fully defined and applied to the specific example of the relations among an emergent economic order, corporations, and individuals – whose power law distribution is conducive to self-organization.


Bibliography

Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. General System Theory. New York: George Braziller. 1968

Boulding, Kenneth E. The World as a Total System. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. 1985

Campbell, Jeremy. Grammatical Man. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1982

Casti, John. Complexification. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 1994

Fraser, J. T. Time, Conflict, and Human Values. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
1999

Fraser, J. T. Time: the Familiar Stranger. Redmond: Tempus Books of Microsoft Press. 1987

Holland, John. H. Hidden Order. New York: Helix Books. 1995

Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe. New York: Oxford University Press. 1995

Kauffman, Stuart. Investigations. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000

Kauffman, Stuart. The Origins of Order. New York: Oxford University Press. 1993
Kessler, M. A. and B. T. Werner. “Self-Organization of Sorted Patterned Ground” Science
17 January 2003

Prigogine, Ilya. The End of Certainty. New York: The Free Press. 1997

Prigogine, Ilya. From Being to Becoming. New York: W. H. Freeman and Co. 1980

Prigogine, Ilya & Isabelle Stengers. Order Out of Chaos. New York: Bantam Books. 1984

Sabelli, Héctor. Bios. New Jersey: World Scientific. 2005

Castro Pro-Free Trade?

Hold it, I thought that Cuba was a worker's paradise, where everyone was much better off, where everything anyone needed was free, and flowers bloomed out of Castro's ass. Why, then, is Fidel Castro saying that if Obama is elected and continues the embargo against Cuba, that it will result in starvation in Cuba? Could it be that Cuba needs access to free markets and needs to engage in free trade in order to feed it people? Could it be that Communism is a complete, miserable failure in Cuba, just as it has been everywhere else in the world?

Sounds to me like this is something I can agree with Fidel Castro on: free trade is good for the citizens of whatever country is engaging in free trade.

On a completely unrelated issue: Michael Moore is an idiot.

Bob Barr for President

Looks like the Libertarian Party has just selected Bob Barr to run on the LP ticket for President. It Bob Barr a perfect libertarian? No. Will he get the libertarian message out there and garner far more votes than anyone else who was trying to get the nomination would have? Absolutely. I would love it if a purist could do what Barr is going to do for libertarianism, but we have to be realistic. Ron Paul did phase one of getting out the libertarian message this year. Now it's up to Barr to get it out in phase two, this second half of the year.

Republicans: you brought this on yourselves by ceasing to act like Republicans and instead acting like Democrats. If Bob Barr take away enough votes to make McCain lose, then you got exactly what you deserved. The future of the GOP is libertarian, or it's nothing.

Trust

In the newest issue of Scientific American, there's an article on the molecular biology of trust. Research on trust seems to show that people are much more trustworthy when you trust them than they are when you don't trust them. When people think they are trusted, they produce oxytocin, which makes them feel warm toward the trusting person, and want to reward them by being trustworthy. In other words, if you do unto others as you would have them do unto you, they will reciprocate.

What this means is that one can get into a vicious circle, for if you have someone who does not trust people, they will typically not find themselves disappointed in that belief. A person who does not trust people creates untrustworthiness in others. If you expect people to screw you over, they will.

On the other hand, you can stop this vicious circle by trusting. These studies show that people are much more likely to act in a trustworthy manner if you show them that you trust them. Sure, you will sometimes be disappointed and have someone cheat you, but you will be cheated far less if you trust people than if you don't trust people.

Trust is important in another way. Studies also show that countries with citizens who show more trust toward others are generally wealthier than those countries where the citizens show little trust toward one another. It seems to me too that one way of breaking out of the vicious circle of racism is to show trust toward those who hate you. By doing so, you will trigger oxytocin production, and they will feel warmer toward you. Having feelings of distrust toward those who may be oppressive toward you perhaps only makes matters worse. It seems that, indeed, we should love our enemies.

Big Gay Animal Emporium

Well, it seems that, at the very least, homosexuality is natural since, as this article states, the behavior has been observed in several species now. How could such behavior be selected for? The question assumes that behaviors are one gene = one behavior, which is patently false, and it also assumes that sexuality is entirely black and white in nature, which it is not. We need more research on animal sexual behavior that is uncolored by such mutually exclusive labels as homo- and heterosexual.

Prayers for Ted Kennedy

Though I disagree with Ted Kennedy on practically everything political, my prayers nonetheless go out for him. I hope he is able to recover from the newly discovered brain tumor. Cancer transcends politics. I wish him good health.

On Literature and Health

My posting On Literature and Health can be found at The Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture's blog.

Solutions, Obama?

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said at a rally in Oregon.

1) And what, exactly does Obama propose to do about it? The only reason to bring up an issue or set of issues like this is if you have an idea for a solution. So what could be some solutions? Is he planning to ban SUV's? Tax them more? ANd what does he mean by we can't "eat as much as we want"? Does he expect us to cut back to near-starvation levels? Does he have a plan to ensure that we do? What is his plan to prevent us from eating "as much as we want"? If this is a real problem, then he must have a solution in mind. And what about keeping "our homes on 72 degrees at all times"? What is his solution there? To install regulators in our thermostats so the government can decide at what temperature we should have our houses at (don't laugh, it was proposed in California)? If these are problems, he must have a solution -- and his being a Leftist Democrats, I guarantee you that those solutions are government-oriented.

2) Despite what he thinks, I don't think other countries actually think all that much about what Americans are doing or how we conduct ourselves in our own homes. And even if they do, who cares? Should we modify our activities just because someone somewhere might disapprove? Just because someone disapproves of something, that does not make that thing wrong to do any more than just because someone approves of something, it is the right thing to do.

Holland's Hateful Anti-Hate Speech Law

In the Netherlands, a cartoonist was arrested for violating the Dutch hate speech laws. In the Netherlands, you cannot insult people on the basis of their race or beliefs. Let's deal with the latter first. If you can't insult people based on their beliefs, you cannot be a satirist, which this cartoonist was. Can't be a standup comedian, either. Insulting what people believe is the cornerstone of satire and standup. Further, it put a lid on any sort of ideological disagreement, as your disagreement can be interpreted as "insult." When you silence people for insulting belief, you have paved an excellent road to tyranny. As for insulting someone based on their race, that would, again, put many standup comedians out of work -- people like Chris Rock and Carlos Mencia. I think the world would be a much worse place if those two were silenced. And if someone insults someone based on their race or religious belief in such a way that it's clear that the person doing the insulting means it to be harmful, then it should be the audiences, including their employees, who refuse to have anything to do with them, and thus run them out of business, not the government. Never the government.

The Dutch need to beware. They are paving the road to tyranny. I find this especially heartbreaking considering their past.

RIP Robert Rauschenberg

Now that Rauschenberg has died, perhaps we can move beyond (be finished with) his kind of late Modernist/postmodern art. Some of his works were interesting. Some were clever. But if we judge him by his effect on art, I'm not sure how well he'll be judged. Naturally, everyone's throwing in their two cents' worth, from Left to Right. His iconoclasm will undoubtedly be praised -- but what is praiseworthy about attacking what is at the very center of art? In the end, praising one's iconoclasm is praising one's hatred for beauty.

Over on TCSDaily, there is an interview with Tom Wolfe who admitted that artists create for the same reason as God created: for their own glory. This is perhaps true enough. The artist does in a sense pull works out of "airy nothingness" (Shakespeare). More, artists seem compelled to create. And what are they creating but parts of themselves? An artist's art is a reflection of his or her soul, whatever else it may be. More, it is also an attempt to transform the world to reflect the artist him- or herself -- to approve of the things the artist approves of, to condemn the things the artist condemns, to see the world the way the artist sees it. That can be comic, tragic, or romantic, beautiful or ugly, serious or nonserious.

Who, then, was Rauschenberg? And what kind of world was he trying so hard to create?

John Edwards: Prom Queen Wannabe

Is anyone really all that surprised that John Edwards endorsed Obama? Or that he did it when it was pretty safely clear that Obama had sewn up the nomination? He's a little slut that way: trying to find out who the popular kid is before he goes to bed with them. Trying to get another VP slot, seems to me.

Wearing Myself Thin

In case you're wondering why my postings have gotten shorter, it's because I've been spending a lot of time working on setting up The Emerson Institute. I also have to come up with something once a week for The Prometheus Institute. So I haven't really had a lot of time to formulate ways of making fun of Obama for saying there are 57 states.

Stealth Bomb Myanmar (with Aid)

I hate being right about things like the aid situation in Myanmar. We should stop begging those thugs running the country to take our help and start stealth bombing the country with aid. And we should put on the boxes, "This is what your government tried to keep away from you."

Not-So-Brave Art

Greg Gutfeld gets it exactly right in talking about the making of so-called brave movies. This applies equally to "brave" art. Next he'll be putting out a polemical film about how bad racism is -- well, duh! But what more can you expect from Oliver Stone's brand of mealymouthed Leftism.

The Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture

It is now official. The Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture, Inc. is now in (nonprofit) business. The web site is currently under construction, but the blog is up and running. Our goal at EIFC will be to work to transform the culture through the arts and humanities to make it more receptive to free market ideas. I believe in bottom-up self-organizing systems, and EIFC is designed to change the bottom to change the top.

3rd World Corruption -- Sponsored by the UN

The government of Myanmar has seized the aid the UN sent them -- to sell, no doubt -- while rejecting direct aid from the US. Now, what could be the difference between US and UN aid? Could it be that the US will send troops with the aid to make sure it gets to the people, while the UN will just stand aside and let people get away with murder and theft?

Perhaps the fact that every 3rd world country in the world has a government like Myanmar's is why they are 3rd world countries.

Democrats' Identity Politics

The Democrats' identity politics and insistence that we separate ourselves into our own little groups is coming back to haunt them. While Republicans have ideological unity, the Democrats have attempted to make a coalition of different groups, while trying to keep them different groups. The consequence is that they now have a situation where if Obama wins, the Democrats will likely lose a large number of white union and blue collar workers and Hispanics, while if Clinton wins, African-Americans and Marxist intellectuals will be lost (well, perhaps not the latter, who will still turn out to vote even if their candidate wins). Paul Begala rightly pointed out that the Democrats can't win with the people attracted to Obama: "eggheads and African Americans." Indeed. Clinton seems to be attracting the voters who have been known to vote Republican in the past, and if she doesn't win, there's a good chance they will go vote Republican -- at least in the Presidential race. But if she does win, African-American voters might just stay home -- and Democrats will lose not just the Presidency, but perhaps also the Congress.

On the other hand, the Democrats' divisive, racist identity politics has done a wonderful job of keeping two groups -- African-Americans and Hispanics -- who do not like each other and whose political ideologies are much closer to that of the Republicans (both are socially more conservative, and African-Americans show high support for things like school vouchers) than to the Democrats. Somehow, the Democrats have managed to use racist ideologies like identity politics to convince minority groups that it is the Republicans who are racist. But it is Democrats who typically judge people based on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.

Just Say "No"

Brattiness among children has gotten so bad, that Oprah has done a show about how saying "no" and disciplining your children is how you actually show them that you love them. Good for her. I hope this understanding spreads.

Postmodernism's Paranoia

Humans have a deep need to believe in something outside of them affecting (controlling) the world. This in part comes from the fact that humans are social mammals, and social mammals all have leaders. WIth our more powerful imaginations, we imagine that there are things which control the world, thus making us less responsible for what happens. We are a naturally paranoid species.

THis first came about in the belief in natural spirits. Sickness was demon possession. This later was transfered to the gods, who were oftentimes in opposition to each other, so it was hard to determine what side to choose (a problem Socrates points out in "Euthyphro"). Still, they were out there, and you had to choose, or face the consequences. Sometimes you faced the consequences precisely because you chose (consider Euripides' "Hippolytus"). This problem was solved with monotheism. There was one good God running everything, and one bad one trying to mess up his work. When people started becoming atheists, they didn't shed this deep-seated need for something out there to appear to control them. Thus, early atheists embraced statism, and turned the state into God. Postmodern atheists, who no longer have faith in the state as God have embraced the Panopticon (as Michel Foucault predicted they would in his work by the same title). Belief in the panopticon makes one paranoid and distrustful of practically every human achievement, believing such achievements were and are part of an oppressive power structure designed (by whom?) to keep people down -- particularly women and minorities (for what reason? -- Who knows?). This is what happens when you have nothing to believe in, find the world utterly meaningless, and embrace nihilism.

Of course all of these religious forms accept that there must be someone out there controlling things. We need to move beyond this belief and shed our paranoia. The world is not a simple system controlled from the top-down; it is rather a set of nested, bottom-up, self-organized complex cybernetic systems. We try to impose the first on the second in our forms of government, and even try to make God out to be a control freak. To do so will be to find ourselves more in tune with nature as a whole, freer by recognizing the emergent naturalness of freedom, and thus happier.

Myanmar Government Murders Its Citizens Through Neglect

Dear postmodern theorists,

Can you please explain to me how the government of Myanmar is in any way just as good as Western-style governments when they seem determined to do everything in their power to ensure that the maximum number of people die there after the cyclone? If you can justify that position, you are as morally corrupt as that government.

Postmodernism is over. Time to move on to reality.

Happiness

Apparently conservatives (in the American sense of the term) are happier than Leftist because they have a more factually accurate view of human nature. That's not quite how it was reported, of course, but that's what it boils down to. The Left does not understand that people are literally not equal -- some really are smarter than others, some really are more physically able than other, some really are harder workers than others, etc. People like me understand that people are not literally equal, but should get equal treatment under the law -- meaning all laws should apply to people equally. If it turns out that that is impossible, then the law likely should not exist. Everyone should receive equal benefit of the law. How many laws fit that criteria?

But to get back on topic, the Left are unhappy because the world does not and never will live up to their unrealistic expectations. As they learn that, they turn bitter and nihilistic and begin to attack all the best, most meaningful, more valuable things in the world. Let me let you in one something: that certainly won't make you happy. Time to grow up and learn how the real world actually works. Then you might actually find ways of making it better -- and be happy doing it.

Al Gore's Assault on Reason

I laughed when I first saw several months ago the title of Al Gore's new book: The Assault on Reason. Naturally, coming from Al Gore, I thought it was a how-to book. But then it seems that Gore was actually making an argument for reason, which he finds under assault (which is true). Somehow he fails to see that he is as guilty of this assault as anyone else. He uses fear and exaggerated claims to garner support for "doing something" about global warming, and has shown no interest in having any sort of discussion with anyone who disagrees with him. Of course, Gore is the kind of egomaniac who believes that anyone who doesn't agree with him cannot possibly be rational.

I would certainly welcome more rational, logical, fact-based discussions of issues. I suspect, however, that if such were to occur, Leftist policies would be the ones to suffer most, as they are not based on the facts of the world as we know them to be. Leftists think the world is a zero-sum game, a pie that must be divided up, with some getting more, others getting less. What they and too many others do not understand is that this is not at all how the world works. The world is not running down -- it's becoming more complex, more creative, and is growing. Like in an ecosystem, an economy is strongest when all its members are healthy. The world is a bottom-up self-organizing, growing, creative, cybernetic, emergent system. This is true of the universe at large, living things, the ecosystem, brains, societies, and economies. Malthus was wrong. All the evidence to date shows that, if we have a naturally emergent economic system rather than a centrally controlled economic system, Malthus' predictions are completely wrong. He is only right when we have a centrally-controlled socialist entropic system. If we were to have an actual, rational, logical, fact-based discussion of issues, most of what Al Gore believes would be proven false, illogical, and irrational.

A Few Thoughts on Poetry

We forget that poetry had its origin in song. The Iliad and The Odyssey were sung (can you imagine memorizing those songs?). The Greek tragedies too were sung. So rock music, blues, etc. are much more originary in their poetry than is what we now consider to be poetry.

Unless you understand what poetry is, nobody should take you seriously as a poet -- least of all yourself. In the same way that if you can't draw a picture of something someone could clearly and obviously recognize, you're not an artist no matter how much paint you fling around, if you can't write a sonnet or some Sapphic verse, you're not a poet. Artists have to know the history of their art if they're ever going to be worth anything. Even such Modern poets like Ezra Pound, who famously said, "make it new," understood that. So has any poet that has ever lasted. Walt Whitman didn't write free verse because he couldn't write a sonnet (which seems to be the case with most "poets" these days), but rather he wrote in free verse because, having mastered the forms, he wanted to push poetry into new territory. As an artist, if you don't know where you came from, you are lost. The fact that poetry has its origin in song is vital to understanding poetry at all and thus to making poetry worth reading. In the same way, it's important to understand that your egg came from a chicken if your plan is to make more chickens. But your scrambled egg analogy is apt: it doesn't matter what animal an egg comes from if you're going to mess it up, break it down, and chew it up -- the end result is crap. I prefer chickens.

So what is poetry? How can we identify it? Can we talk about its essence? You should at least have read a sufficient amount of what has been identified as poetry -- both past and present -- to have created some sort of concept, even if you can't create a scientifically acceptable definition of poetry. How else will you be able to tell the difference between poetry and prose? I've read poetic prose and read prose broken up into lines. If you can't sing it or dance to it, it's probably not poetry. A lot of prose has been mistakenly called poetry -- but if we call everything poetry, then poetry indeed has no meaning or definition.

The issue of definitions goes back to Socrates (and likely before). Remember that Socrates was always asking experts to define the thing they were expert in. Every time he would do so, he would find them giving him examples of, say, justice or piety or love, but they could never define the thing itself, which Plato developed into a theory that such Ideas or Forms were external to the world, which was just a poor set of shadows of the real. Nietzsche observed that we create ideas or concepts by looking at a set of unidentical similar objects and subtracting away the dissimilarities. Wittgenstein observed that this results in objects being able to be conceived and reconceived due to "family resemblances." A shoe is not a hammer, but it can be used as a hammer, so when you reconceive of a shoe as a hammer, you are saying it has a family resemblance to hammers.

All of this is to say that if we are trying to come up with the Platonic Form of poetry, we will never succeed, since such a form does not exist. However, we should be able to look at a sufficient number of poems and be able to work out their family resemblances. Along those lines, your definition is a good start. Can we add to it? Subtract from it? The use of tradition as a criteria (and I think one should have that as a criteria in the arts) suggests that we should put quite a bit of weight on past "verbal happenings." If we look at poetry around the world, such works have repeated structures (whether rhythm, rhymes, parallelism, etc.) and are broken up into lines that take optimally 3 seconds to speak -- not coincidentally, our short term memory works best in 3 second chunks. These are typical, but are they necessary?

Let's also return to the issue of song and poetry. There is no question that poetry began as song -- but there is equally no question that there was a bifurcation, resulting in the two traveling down somewhat different (though periodically intersecting) paths. Where does one draw the line? Many poems can be sung -- does that make them songs? I have sung my daughter's Dr. Seuss books to her (had to throw some variety in, since I read her the same books every single day), but I don't think Dr. Seuss intended his books to be sung. I suppose we could look at songs as "low art" vs. the "high art" of poetry -- especially modernist and postmodernist poetry, which is read (and sometimes enjoyed) almost exclusively by overeducated people like me -- but I don't like such distinctions, as it creates an unnecessary bifurcation in the art. A great work of art is one where anyone can enjoy it, but the more you know, the more you appreciate the work, one where repeated readings/viewings/listenings result in your coming to understand the work more and more. Perhaps by reconsidering song as poetry and consciously including it in the tradition, we will come to a better understanding of what poetry is, and become better poets ourselves.

Cybernetic America

In the latest Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria suggests that Pax Americana is over. Not because American power is falling, but because the rest of the world is beginning to rise up and make an economic, social, cultural, etc. impact. The U.S. continues to be politically and militarily dominant, but the rest of the world is beginning to catch up in everything else. Which is a good thing. Also, it could put the U.S. (if we're smart and wise) in the position not to be the leader of the world, per se, but in a more cybernetic position. The word "cybernetics" comes from the Greek word for "steersman." A steersman doesn't have complete control over something, but rather tries to guide the system he's in charge of as it moves through a current that is in no way under the control of the steersman. The world is increasingly out of our control (perhaps it was never really under our or anyone else's control -- it's just now become clear that it's not), but we can encourage and influence. And we can do so by providing the world with a positive model. This will mean that we will have to overcome many of the negative elements in our own country, which are oftentimes actively seeking to reduce our influence and attack Western civilization for being racist, sexist, homophobic, and oppressive (though the West has been the least of each of these of any other culture for a long time, and continues to be so). We should make ourselves to be the target which everyone aims at if they want to be successful. As Aristotle says, virtue aims as the beautiful -- thus, the U.S. should be as beautiful as possible, so the rest of the world has something worth aiming at. To do this, we will need to reverse direction on a lot of issues. We will have to go beyond the culture of nihilism which rules our arts and humanities works. We will have to strengthen our property rights protections and reverse programs which work to do little more than make life worse for our poorest people. We will need to radically reform education and get beyond the romanticism which rules or educational system. We will have to recognize all the good we have in fact accomplished, while continuing in our grand tradition of self-criticism (a tradition which has helped to make us great, though you have to be careful that you don't move from constructive criticism, which works to make you better, to destructive criticism, which is only intended to tear you down and keep you down). We need to a culture that makes works of art, literature, and philosophy that is valuable, meaningful, and beautiful. By acting as a lighthouse, we can work to steer the rest of the world toward greater peace, prosperity, and love of virtue, value, meaning, and beauty.

99 Luft Balloons Go Bye

It's nice to know that the Puritan spirit is alive an well in California, where they plan to ban mylar balloons. Why do I accuse them of having the Puritan spirit? Because, as the old joke goes, "A puritan is a person who is haunted by the fear that someone somewhere is having fun."

Sooreh Hera

The situation surrounding the display of the work of Iranian photographer Sooreh Hera in a Dutch museum raise several questions regarding art, religion, and freedom of speech. First, let me make some comments on the work itself, which can be seen here. Then I will talk about the religious issues. Finally, I will talk about freedom of speech and Western culture.

To be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of photography as art. You have to really do something spectacular for me to even agree that a photograph is art. Any idiot can take a picture, and with a sufficient number of photographs, any idiot can take a great photograph. The same cannot be said of painting, sculpting, acting, writing poetry, or any of the other traditional arts. However, that having been said, there are a few ways one can push a photograph over the top: 1) through effects that can only be accomplished through the use of a camera and/or photograph development, or 2) through arrangement, in which case the arrangement itself is the art, while the photograph works to record the work. Take a picture of a mountain or some trees, and as far as I'm concerned, it's not art. That's an example of something anyone can do -- and you don't have to have any special talents to do it. With these criteria, Hera's work fits into the second category of photography as art, and it is precisely the subject and arrangement which is causing all the problems.

Personally, I find Hera's work to be boring. She's trying too hard to be shocking, and when someone tries to be shocking, most of the time the only thing they manage to do is create something that isn't all that interesting after the first time. I do find this photograph to be quite interesting simply because of the split tan. The backwards tie also reminds me a bit of several of Magritte's paintings, where emphasis is directed toward the head (or lack thereof). But the last set of pictures, where she uses backward-worn masks, itself an interesting idea, is where the problem lies. I like the idea of the backward-worn masks, but the use of Muhammad and Ali makes it clear that she was more interested in the shock element rather than the artistic one. Which is a shame, because she takes away from what she is doing artistically.

Now, as a propaganda piece, she has done exactly what she wanted: shocked people and challenged their beliefs. I have no problem with that, but let's call it what it is: propaganda. When the message is the point, we have propaganda, not art (no matter how artistic that propaganda may be). We can also have propagandistic art, where the point is the art, with the message secondary to and submissive to the artistic elements, but I don't think that's the case with Hera's work. Not that this can't be debated, of course. But her explanation of what she did and why suggests it was intended as propaganda first, art second.

So certainly Muslims have as much a right to be offended by this piece as Christians have to be offended by Piss Christ. The difference seems to be that Christians in the 21st century are much less likely to kill you over offensive work which insults the religion than are Muslims. However, if you consider the fact that Islam is currently in a Medieval mindset, all we have to do is look to the way the Catholic church reacted to such works to understand why they react the way they do. Not that this excuses murder or even threat of murder, but it does help us understand what we are facing, and why we in the West both do not react this way and are flabbergasted when others do.

That being said, Hera is working and showing in a Western country. Should she go out of her way to offend someone's religious beliefs? It depends on whether or not you think she's being brave or just being a jerk. Should she be able to offend someone's religious beliefs without facing a real threat of being murdered? Definitely. We have to defend her right to say what we may nonetheless find offensive. Those who are offended may feel free to engage in any activity against her that does not involve either force or the threat of force, such as picketing or boycotting the places where she shows, and we should support those people's right to freedom of speech as well.

When we say something is offensive, it is we who are taking offense. The person is just doing what they are doing. It is our interpretation of what they are doing that result in our taking offense or not. Thus, you are the one responsible for being offended at something, not the one whose work you are offended at. So offense is something that shouldn't even be actionable, let alone something that gets you killed.

Global Cooling Over Next Decade

In a news article in the upcoming issue of Science, Richard Kerr reports that Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, and colleagues discovered that it is likely the globe will experience cooling over the next decade or so as changes in ocean currents affect the climate, but that they expect anthropgenic warming to continue afterwards. The part of this article that really caught my eye, though, was the Keenlyside et al actually used initial conditions of the oceans to make their predictions while, as the author pointed out, long-term forecasters don't bother with initial conditions. Don't bother? How can the field that discovered the importance of initial conditions and laid the initial groundwork for chaos theory not take initial conditions into consideration? We know that even the tiniest variation will result in wildly different outcomes -- especially over the long term. In light of what Edward Lorenz (who recently died, may he RIP) discovered, how can anyone who expects to be taken seriously when making forecasts of climate not take initial conditions into consideration? Worse, how can anyone take them seriously?

My guess too is that they ignore plenty of relevant factors, like sunspot activity, which is at the lowest levels in 400 years -- since what was called "The Little Ice Age."

All Souls Are the Same

In light of Rev. Wright's racist "Christianity," I thought we should take a look at a poem by William Blake on the issue of the nature of the soul and race:

The Black Boy

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began to say:

"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

"For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice',"

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.

Some Thoughts on the Nature of the Universe, Emergence, Time, and Complexity

It seems to me that one could posit both reductionism and emergence simultaneously, depending on what level of reality -- what perspective -- you are talking about. Let's take the example of biochemistry and the cell. Suppose you were a conscious amino acid. The material world consists, for you, of fellow biochemicals, and you know too that you are made up of atoms, and that those atoms are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons. You go about your business, acting as an individual amino acid, sometimes joining into larger groups (proteins), and then separating out from them. You wander around your society of biochemicals, imagining that this is all there is. And then one day, a nucleic acid comes to you and tells you that you are part of this larger entity, that your mind is not entirely your own, but that there is this thing out there, this "cell" of which you are a part, that comes in and influences your actions. All that you thought were your choices or merely random events is in fact run by this higher intelligence known as the "cell." It is not that you don't have choices -- you can be in this or that part of the cell, you may attach yourself to a tRNA, to a protein, to a short polypeptide, etc. -- but you are now informed that there is a greater purpose involved, that you are part of this larger cell, and that your actions help to keep this cell alive. Now, from the point of view of the amino acid, the cell will seem, in relation to you, "immaterial." It will make no sense from your material point of view. It will seem very strange indeed. You may believe in the cell, or not (and be an atheist). There will be discussions among your fellow biochemicals regarding the nature of the cell. Is it material? That is, if it even exists. The "cell" theory does seem to make a lot of things make more sense -- but it is nonetheless troubling. If it is not material in the same sense as a biochemical, is it really material? From our more complex, emergent human perspective, the cell seems to be just as material as as its constituent biochemicals. While, on the other hand, our "mind" appears to be just as immaterial as the cell is to the biochemical. The ideal seems, then, to be emergent from the real. The amino acids might get together and come up with all sorts of theories about the nature of the cell that seems to transcend them. They may get it more or less correct, but how would they know for certain, as what is above them is so much more complex than they are? Let me tell a short story of emergence. In the beginning was pure information, or pure energy. Information is inform, yet gives form. It is the foundation of all things. (In the beginning (archae) was the word (logos).) As the universe expanded and cooled, that pure energy crystalized out into quantum particle-waves. It became more material. Some of those quantum particle-waves combined to form emergent atoms with greater complexity. These atoms were more material than their constituent particle-waves. Some of those atoms combined to form chemicals (more material than atoms) --- and some of those chemicals were able to interact in complex cycles to give rise to cells with emergent complexity. These cells were more material than their constituent chemicals. Some cells were able to develop complex interactions such that multicellular organisms were able to emerge, giving rise to greater complexity and more complex interactions. These multicellular organisms were even more material than their constituent cells. One species of animal evolved a highly complex brain with an emergent intelligence. This brain resulted in more complex social behaviors, the evolution of language, and the emergence of complex culture and religion. It was so complex that it was able to contemplate itself and the universe (thus, the universe became complex enough to become self-aware, to be able to contemplate itself). It seems that there will soon be 10 billion members of that species, with brains so complex that the minding function of that brain has given rise to the appearance of permanence (the same way that while each of the lower levels that constitute it are in fact always in flux, always in time, they nonetheless gain more appearance of permanency). This species has more time and more time experience, more material being, than do all the levels below it that constitute it (there is a nested hierarchy -- a new Great Chain of Being). And that mind is much more material than the brain that gave rise to it. If we were at a level more complex than the mind, we would look at it as we currently look at the cell, or at chemicals vs. quantum particles, and wonder at something as insubstantial the brain gave rise to something as substantial as the mind.

Perhaps we should think instead of levels of reality, since different levels of reality in fact act quite differently from each other, though there are some similar traits that keep repeating themselves at each level, though with variations (information is one of those things -- all information is similar in form, but also differs considerably, if you consider quantum information vs. the information needed by an animal to survive, for example). I fear that if we look for "reality-in-itself," all we are doing is trying to reduce everything down to just one of these realities -- as though quantum physics, for example, is real reality. Emergent properties are just as real and have real results.

Nothing. Unstable nothing gave rise to the singularity. Energy burst forth, the Universe was born in space-time. Energy rolled back and forth across space-time, in solitons that pushed space-time out, causing the universe to expand. These solitons, waves, pushed out and interacted with each other, creating more complex patterns of waves. Waves interacting with waves to create more complex patterns of waves, trillions of wavelets that interacted with each other in simple systems to create the first particle-waves of matter-energy. Matter came about through the folding of space-time, and the interactions of those folds to create the first, simple, complex systems. And when these folded back onto themselves, creating folded folds, the first atoms emerged. And these new folded realities folded again, and chemistry was born, and this folded once again, and living things were born into the world. Complexity emerged with ever more folds, and as living things enfolded themselves, more complex organisms, including vertebrates, were born. And more complex vertebrates emerged from more enfolding, and more complex nervous systems emerged with more neural enfolding, creating more complex behaviors, driving even deeper, more complex neural folding. And human intelligence emerged, in deeply folded neurons, in a deeply folded brain. And then...? What, indeed, is the next, and then...? But what have I in fact just said? I have said, first, that all existence is in fact nothing more than folded space-time. It is ever-enfolded and enfolding space-time. Any entity is not in space-time, but is space-time. It constitutes and is constituted of space-time. If gravity is curved space-time, then the curving is caused by the pull created by the folds – by the external folds, those folds that are “external” on the system. In a less densely folded object, there is in fact more externality to the system, since the folds are farther apart. A sun is both heavier, and less dense than the planet Earth – it thus has less dense folds, though many more, though simple, objects in it. This is what bends space-time. The earth is denser in that it has more complex, and thus more densely folded, atoms in it – and this is what causes it to have the gravitational pull it has, despite its relatively small size. One may suppose, then, that if this model is correct, then molecules should have greater density than atoms, and thus must weigh more. Obviously this is incorrect. But one thing we have failed to take into account to this point is the fractal geometry of the folding. When we have a fractal object, we have an object that has a finite area surrounded by an infinite border. With a real-world fractal, we have a finite area that can be surrounded by an increasingly long border. The addition of more folds creates more border, but the amount of space occupied remains the same. This is what allows for a relatively moderately-sized bipedal ape like ourselves to nonetheless have very complex brains – the folding in fact encompasses a similar area. Certainly, brain size increased as humans evolved, and this helped with the creation of even more complexity – the same way that a uranium atom is both more complex and larger than a hydrogen atom – but we can compare the human brain to a similarly sized-brained animal, and the human is still more intelligent, and has a more complex brain. So the fractal model still holds. The human brain in fact has many more folds in it than does the brain of any other mammal with a brain of similar size, and yet takes up the same area. More, human brains take up much less area than does an elephant brain, or a blue whale’s brain, and yet humans are much more intelligent, due precisely to the deeper folds. But if greater complexity is caused by more folds in space-time, and all folds in space-time are in fact energy waves, doesn’t this mean that there is in fact more matter in a more complex entity? After all, we all know that E=mc2. Well, in a sense, there is in fact more mass in more complex entities – just not in the same way as exists in relatively simple objects like atoms. Another thing to consider is that when we split an atom, we are reducing the atom, which is one of the lowest levels of folding, to the less folded pure space-time. It is a violent reaction, but it is in fact a low-level one. Higher levels of folding must first unfold into lower levels, and go down level by level. The human can be reduced to the animal, an animal reduced to chemicals, and chemicals reduced to isolated atoms. Thus does the energy level of an entity decrease, level by level, the way that high-energy electrons drop down electron shell by electron shell. In this way, the matter of more complex entities increase, while the matter stays, in one sense, the same. What we will need will be new ways of measuring “mass” and “matter” in order to understand how deeper folds of space-time give rise to more complex entities. One way of looking at things is to see space-time itself as the real, and emergence into new levels of complexity as new levels of quasi-reality. Thus, it is space-time that is the real, while particle-waves are quasi-real, atoms are quasi-quasi-real, chemicals are quasi-quasi-quasi-real, etc. through biology and humans. Thus, in a sense, each emergence is more “ideal,” and the philosophies of “realism” and “idealism” are allowed to co-exist along a continuum. But another way of looking at things is to see that each time more space-time is folded and enfolded, more space-time comes into contact with more space-time. Thus, there is an emergence into ever greater levels of reality. More space-time is experienced by a complex entity, and thus it becomes more real. With this latter view, we are able to see how nothing can give rise to something, and not only that, the way in which that something grows, and grows more complex.

In my unpublished-manuscript-looking-for-a-publisher "Diaphysics" I argue that there are in fact a set of rules which go through each of the emergent levels of reality, but which can get expressed in different ways at different levels. Information is one such rule. The information at quantum levels is also necessarily used at higher levels, (like livings things), though other forms of information can also emerge at higher levels -- entire chemicals, sound waves, etc. So too do the rules underlying self-organization. And symmetry-breaking. The rules underlying emergence itself seem to change (and yet continue to resemble each other) at each level, as the emergent properties of an atom are certainly different than of a mind from the brain. So I would argue that these new emergent systems do in fact develop new ways of doing the same old things -- that what we see is new variations on the same old processes. Further, it seems that as systems evolve, when a system develops similar processes as resulted in the previous level of emergence, that is when we get the next level of emergence. A living cell, for example, more resembles an atom in behavior and structure than does a salt crystal. I would argue that it is more the living cell than the crystal which has qualities not predictable from the constituent atoms. Is anyone really surprised that NaCl results in a square crystal? But if you start with the constituent chemicals, the living cell is quite a surprise.

How does complexity emerge? “The theory of quantum mechanics gives rise to large-scale structure because of its intrinsically probablistic nature. Counterintuitive as it may seem, quantum mechanics produces detail and structure because it is inherently uncertain” (Lloyd, 49). In other words, chances are that a number of waves will become particles in a small region, which, because particles have mass, will gravitationally bend space there, making it more likely that more particles will accumulate there. The probablistic distribution of particle-waves resulted in tiny variations amplified through butterfly effects into large-scale structure (49-50). So, since quantum mechanics supplies random quantum fluctuations, “From a single initial state, obeying simple physical laws, the universe has systematically processed and amplified the bits of information embodied in those quantum fluctuations. The result of this information processing is the diverse, information-packed universe we see around us: programmed by quanta, physics gave rise first to chemistry and then to life” (61). Since “gravity responds to the presence of energy, where the energy density is higher, the fabric of space-time begins to curve a little more” (195). This “gravitational clumping supplied the raw material necessary for generating complexity. As matter clumps together, the energy that matter contains becomes available for use” (199). Further, the same interactions that increase entropy “make quantum objects behave in a more classical way” (108), so entropy resulted in the production of order in the universe through decoherence and gravitation. In other words, “information tells space how to curve; and space tells information where to go” (174). As a result of these random inputs from quantum fluctuations in combination with the laws of quantum mechanics, we get “a universe with a mix of order and randomness, in which complex systems arise naturally from simple origins” (185). Emergence is emergence into new levels of greater complexity. The word “complex” means “folded” – thus the universe, as it becomes more complex, becomes more folded. Space-time becomes more folded as it becomes more complex – thus, it becomes increasingly fractal in its geometry. As space-time becomes more folded, more space-time comes into more contact with more space-time. This will affect the way space and time act and interact. As this happens, they way space-time acts and interacts will change. For one, interactions will speed up. This idea is complementary with the previous idea that we are coming to know the nature of space-time more accurately with emergence into each new level, as each new level also has to come to know itself, and is as much a part of space-time as lower levels. Each new level is just a more folded version of space-time. With emergence into each new level, those new levels are able to use more and different kinds of information and energy not available to the levels below them – much of which is only available once that level has evolved (we can process and use language – which was only available to process once language emerged). Thus, it is illegitimate to say that just because one level does something, that it is relevant to all other levels. Einstein’s discoveries about relativity are useless in the realm of ethics, which is a different hierarchical level of reality. At the same time, each higher level is made of the levels below it – and there is a common thread, a diaphysics, that seems to unite them. Humans are a nested hierarchy of self-similar complex systems. We contain the biological, which contains the chemical, which contains the quantum, which contains energy. And each level transmits up certain aspects of its reality. There is a randomness to quantum physics’s probablistic experience. And chaos theory expresses both randomness and probability in a deterministic fashion – as we see in fractals. And each of these are expressed in organisms. The purposeful behavior of organisms is found too in humans, though we supplement it with symbolic and concrete goals. This feed-forward of each level’s reality seems to be strongest precisely in those systems that have emerged into higher systems. Rocks have less complex fractal geometry than cells, precisely because a rock is a systems dead-end. Consider this: Is it “the mind” or “the minding function of the brain” (as Fraser would have it)? Let us put it another way: is it the organism, or the organism-ing of the cells? Is it the cell, or the cell-ing of organic chemistry? Is it chemistry, or the chemistry-ing of atoms? Is it atoms, or the atom-ing of particle-waves? And is it particle-waves, or the particle-waving of strings? The answer, in a sense, is “yes”. The danger of nouns is that people make the mistake of thinking of these things as having some sort of permanent “being.” The danger of verbs is that people make the mistake of thinking that something always changing does not have any kind of form or order (dissipative structures belies this belief – but most people are not yet thinking this way). Each noun-form is the emergent structure of the action of its constituent parts – the verb-form of those elements. A photon of wavelength 700nm reflects off an object and is picked up by a color receptor in the eye. The configuration change in the receptor causes an electric signal to be transmitted to the brain, which maps the signal onto a pattern associated with the pattern associated with the pattern for the word “red.” Even adjectives are actions.

Life is a Cabaret

My wife and I have been watching the AFI top 100 movies, and every once in a while we will come across a film that is surprising.

If you haven't seen "Cabaret" staring Liza Minnelli and directed by Bob Fosse, the great choreographer, then you probably think what we did about the film: that it was going to be a cute song-and-dance number. I mean, it has the song, "Life is a cabaret, old chum . . . life is a cabaret!" Turns out that this final song of the film is meant to be ironic.

This is an incredible film. At turns funny, haunting, sad, creepy, and disturbing, we get a good overview of Germany right as the Nazis are rising to power. But we are also getting a powerful symbol of America in Liza Minnelli's character (a representation still apt in my opinion -- which is one reason why this is still such a great film, and one everyone should watch), and also a symbol of Britain's position and situation in Michael York's character. We see the struggles of a young Jewish man who is hiding the fact that he is a Jew so he can succeed -- but then falls in love with a Jewess and has to decide if he will continue with the charade or not. There is also a brilliant handling of sexuality in this film, used to great effect when a very effeminate-looking young man who begins singing turns out to be a Nazi. Every song in the film is symbolic, but doesn't beat you over the head with the symbolism. And, while they were at it, they threw in the issue of abortion.

There is so much going on in this film, it's amazing. It would be worth it just to see the German cabaret scenes, which show how strange German culture could be at times -- but with everything else going on in the film as well, and how well it is done, this film truly is a masterpiece.

Jeremiah Wright's Soul

The racist bigot Jeremiah Wright is now complaining that the complaints against his racist rantings are attacks on the black church. This is race baiting at its worst. I attend a church that has a majority African-American membership. We have several pastors who alternate, and one is an African-American, and I have never heard him say anything like Wright has said. The church I attend, though, is filled with African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, and European-Americans and various mixtures, so it's not a black church -- it's a church. The only kind of church there should be: a human church. Souls have no color, Mr. Wright. But I do believe those souls who preach hatred are souls which are damned. You can attend or preach at all the black churches would want, but any real Christian doesn't attend a black church -- real Christians simply attend church.

I Hate Indiana Nazis, Part II

I'm glad to learn that there are two other Republicans running for the Republican nomination in the Indiana 2nd District: Joe Roush and Luke Puckett. As a supporter of free markets and someone having been born in South Bend, I hope either one of these men gets the nomination and then wins the election. As a decent person, I hope Tony Zirkle loses. He should go join a party more in line with his fundamental beliefs. There is no room for him in the GOP.

In a side note, my last comments on this idiot Zirkle got the attention of the leader of the group Zirkle spoke to. Bill White is a good example of why evil ideas like those of Karl Marx should be kept out of the hands of 13 year olds.

Public Intellectuals

Go vote for your pick of the top 100 public intellectuals at Foreign Policy.

Obama Insensitive to the Plight of the Poor

Looks like McCain has found something to justly criticize Obama on: his insensitivity to the poor. Of course, that happens to be true of most Democrats, whose policies have made the poor worse off and destroyed their families. They claim good intentions, but after a while, when it becomes clear to any rational person that your policies are having the opposite effect of the stated intentions, and no changes are being bade but, rather, more of the same is proposed, shouldn't we begin to question those intentions? Walter Williams once commented that the Klan could not have developed a better system for destroying the lives dna families of African-Americans than has the Democratic party. Indeed. The Republicans need to start pointing this sort of thing out -- and I'm glad McCain is doing so (even if it's more subtle than WIlliams -- or I -- am).

I Hate Indiana Nazis

This is why some people associate conservatives in general and Republicans in particular with racism. What idiot would give a talk to a neo-Nazi group on Hitler's birthday? A racist, fascist idiot, that's who. I hope the Republicans have someone -- anyone -- running against him in the primary. And if not, I hope the Democrat wins. The Democrats' policies may have the same end result as an out-and-out racists' policies would, but at least they think they are doing the right thing. On the other hand, there's something to be said about evil being open and honest about itself -- you can at least see it coming. This national socialist clown needs to go join some other party that actually does advocate socialism and leave the GOP to those of us who are trying to mae it more libertarian -- meaning, anti-nationalist, anti-socialist, anti-racist, and pro-freedom.

Good For Jay Wheeler

Insensitive? No, Florida school board member Jay Wheeler is right on in telling parents that the reason they can't afford school uniforms for their children is because they are wasting too much on cable TV, alcohol, and cigarettes. And people do -- for which they should be ashamed. It's about time someone told them so.

The Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture -- Mission Statement

My wife, Anna, and I will be setting up a nonprofit organization we are tentatively calling "The Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture" -- a think tank to promote the creation of a naturally classical culture. Below is our mission statement. I would appreciate any feedback, recommendations, etc. on it.

The Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture

Mission Statement

The Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture is working to change the culture by promoting progressive natural classicism in the arts and humanities.

Censors of every ideology know the power of the arts and humanities. Culture emerges from the people, who are influenced by the culture. Politicians follow the people; the laws they pass are shaped by their perception of what the people want. Thus, if any long-term support for free markets and personal liberty is to occur, the changes must be made in the culture rather than with the politicians. If we have a culture which promotes freedom, truth, beauty, meaning, value, and virtue, we will have people who will support freedom, truth, beauty, meaning, value, and virtue in their lives as a whole, including in their politics. The top will be changed by changes at the bottom.

Cultures, economies, and free societies are all complex systems. Complex systems have bottom-up self-organization, evolve, are polycentric hierarchies, and involve nonlinear feedback loops. Such systems are generative of growth, freedom, value, meaning, and virtue. Thus, we seek to help create this kind of natural culture, one that is a complex, nonlinear, self-organizing, flexible hierarchy that will allow for greater freedom and creative innovation, limit power, and reduce coercion in favor of mutually beneficial exchange and assent. We also seek to oppose all attempts to create a simple, linear, coercive, rigid, egalitarian culture that makes people weak, passive, irresponsible, lacking in self-control, easily led, incapable of independent thought, nihilistic, and prone to engage in crime and self-destructive behavior – all of which makes a society conducive to the acceptance of totalitarianism.

Any real and lasting societal change must start in the culture – in the arts and humanities. If the people are to believe in freedom, truth, beauty, meaning, value, and virtue, then our arts and humanities must create or reconstruct freedom, truth, beauty, meaning, value and virtue in works which address themselves to the average person and not just to the specialist. In other words, we must support works that provide a counterpoint to those postmodern works which promote a simplistic, irrational, unbeautiful, nihilistic worldview that undermines rather than reinforces the creative freedom inherent in the world. Through journals and newsletters, articles and books, scholarly panels, media appearances, and special projects, EIFC strives to reflect the reality of the world as a self-organizing, nonlinear, creative, hierarchical, complex, emergentist system conducive to freedom.

Charles Jencks

Charles Jencks is one of the coolest sculptor-architects I have ever seen. His work is influenced by fractals, DNA, etc. Great stuff! If I could have a dream set-up, I'd have him design an outdoor theater and perform plays in it.

Joy vs. Happiness

There's a lot of talk on the blogs I typically read regarding happiness. As far as I'm concerned, happiness is merely life satisfaction. That can make happiness a problem, because if you're satisfied, you don't want to change anything. It also seems a poor replacement for joy, something which many people seem to try to avoid. The problem with joy is that it's overwhelming and hopeful and beautiful, while happiness seems closer to kitsch (Milan Kundera said kitsch portrays a world without shit; this is to be compared to postmodern art, which portrays the world as nothing but shit). Strict moralists want a world of kitschy happiness; postmodernists want a world of shit. Beauty is the recognition that the world is both simultaneously. When you can witness such beauty, that is what brings you joy.

Synopsis and Characters of “REFLECTIONS”

Here's a synopsis and character list for my new play "Reflections." What do you think? Sound like anything you might want to see? I would love to get together with a musician and choreographer to add music and specific dance elements to this play and make it more like opera and ballet.

SYNOPSIS OF “REFLECTIONS”

“Reflections” is a verse romance in five acts. The first act introduces Adam, the protagonist, who is in love with his friend Lily, and the mirror world they enter. In the second and third act, Adam descends through the mirror world. In the fourth and fifth act, Adam ascends through the mirror world and back into the real world, where he emerges as a poet.

In Act I, Adam is making dinner for Lily. She is admiring an antique mirror he bought. As she is looking through it, her mirror image drags her through the mirror. Adam follows her through to rescue her. On the other side he meets three women called the Norns, who tell him in riddles why he is there.

In Act II, Adam meets a series of creatures that represent stages within Adam himself. First he meets the Fairies, who introduce him to Peter, his occasional guide. Peter takes him to the Gnome, who bought Lily and sold her to a Troll as a slave. They pay the Gnome to take them to the Troll, but along the way they meet The Lamed Wufnik, a holy man, three Angels, and three Knights. The Lamed Wufnik tells Adam he’s destined to be a prophet, then gives Adam a sword. The Angels give him a shield and the Knights accompany Adam to confront the Troll. They find Lily locked up in a cage, and have to fight several Trolls to free her. When they leave, they enter into a spirit forest. The spirits there inform Adam that he’s the one who was promised..

In Act III, Adam and Lily, alone, encounter a group of Satyrs. They try to seduce Lily and, in trying to do so, inform Adam of her long list of sex partners. Adam’s illusions of Lily are shattered, and this is the beginning of the end of their friendship. When Adam and Lily encounter their Doubles, Lily leaves Adam for Adam’s Double, leaving Adam alone. He gets on a boat and rows away. On the sea he encounters Sea Nymphs, who try to seduce him into the sea to drown. He then lands on an island, where he has to fight a Basilisk and, when they become flesh again, the men the monster had turned to stone. Adam finally encounters a Dragon, who purifies him with painful torture.

In Act IV, the Dragon sends Adam off. Adam lands on an island ruled by a demon lord, and he is further tortured by him and his Salamanders to rid him of his arrogance. Set to sea again, Adam is tempted by Air Nymphs. He lands to encounter the Satyrs again, who first cower from him, but then turn friendly when Adam thanks them for exposing Lily for who she really was. They celebrate and the Satyrs introduce him to Eva, who becomes his companion. They leave the Satyrs and encounter a group of Corybantes, who make them dance in celebration of life. The Norns come on and introduce Adam to Marie, who is to become his best friend.

In Act V, Adam, Eva, and Marie enter the spirit forest, where they celebrate Adam’s return. Peter rejoins Adam. Next the foursome enter the Trolls’ country, where they have to fight some Trolls. One kills Marie, and Adam sacrifices himself to bring Marie back to life. The Trolls, impressed, let them leave. They bring Adam to the Borak who, accompanied by the three Angels and the three Knights, bring Adam back to life. They divest Adam of his sword and shield and send him on to see the Gnome, who has a gift for Adam. After visiting the Gnome, they continue on to see the Fairies, who also have a gift for Adam. Leaving everyone behind, Adam finds himself alone with the Norns, who tell him he is finished with his transformation and must now go back to the real world, transformed into a poet. In the final scene, we see Adam talking about poetry with a contemporary poet, where it becomes clear his work is really just starting. Finally, Marie comes in to introduce Adam to her new boyfriend. Adam is left alone to prepare for his new struggles as an artist.

“Reflections” is a play about Adam who, due to his unrequited love for his friend Lily, undergoes a radical transformation tat turns him into a poet. This transformation is reflected in his entering into a mirror world from which he must successfully rescue Lily. He slowly discovers that he is on a more important quest: one that will help him get over Lily, discover who he is, change who he is, and cause him to emerge as a poet. He descends first through psychological stages, then through levels of reality, then ascends again. Those he meets are actually reflections of himself. When he returns from the mirror world, he returns an artist – where he now has to face new challenges that are only just beginning for him as a formalist poet.

CHARACTERS

Bard – iambic hexameter – introduces each act and concludes the play

Adam – style changes – a young man in love with Lily. Adam follows Lily into a parallel world representing his descent into and ascent from the underworld

Lily – prose, then iambic tetrameter – Adam’s friend, who does not love Adam as he loves her

Harpy/Lily’s Dbl– silent – kidnaps Lily though the mirror in Adam’s apartment

Norns – iambic tetrameter – the Fates and Time incarnate. These wise women are Past, Present, and Future and provide guidance to Adam

Todd – rubliw – a Fox, acting as gadfly to Adam

Fairies – prose – a collective of ultraindividualists sympathetic to Adam

Peter – blank verse – Proteus, a shape-shifter who acts as Adam’s guide and teacher

Gnome – iambic – a mine owner/businessman who buys Lily from the Harpies who captured her and sells her to a Troll. He helps Adam find Lily to free her.

Dwarves – iambic – a cook and some miners employed by the Gnome

Lamed Wufnik – ghazal – a holy man who justifies man to God. He gives Adam a sword as defense in the mirror world

Angels (3) – sonnets – give Adam a shield as protection

Knights (3) – heroic couplets – go with Adam to protect him as he rescues Lily

Trolls – alcaics – territorial and militant. One buys Lily from the Gnome. They are impressed by heroic sacrifice

Dryad – ballade – king of the nature spirits

Rock Sprites – rime royal – spirits of the rocks

Tree Sprites – rime couee – spirits of the trees

Satyrs – dithyrambs – half-man, half-goat; lusty, cowardly drunks

Animals – choriambics – Deer, Cougar, Wolf, Bison all representing Adam’s animal nature

Adam’s Double – Adam’s style – the mirror image of Adam

Lily’s Double – iambic tetrameter – the mirror image of Lily

Sea Nymphs – anapestic – spirits of the sea

Basilisk – u/uu//uu/u – giant reptile that turns living things to stone with its glance

Stone Men – blank verse – turned back to flesh and blood when the Basilisk is turned to stone. They attack Adam, and he has to kill each one

Earth Nymphs – headless iambic – clear their island of the dead

Dragon – elegic couplet – purifies Adam at his lowest point and sends Adam back up into life as a poet

Keteh Meriri – headless iambic – demon lord of hot summers and midday. He further purifies Adam

Salamanders – limerick – fire elementals and followers of Keteh Meriri

Sylphs – headless anapestic – air nymphs who try to seduce Adam to stay with them

Eva – dithyrambs – Adam’s lover on his ascent

Women – dithyrambs – Adam’s lovers on his ascent

Corybantes – hendecasyllabics – half demon, half divine dancing attendants to the Mother of God(s)

Marie – Sapphic verse – Adam’s identical opposite; his spiritual soul mate and best friend

Borak – Ruba’i – winged horse with the head of a man and the tail of a peacock who took Muhammad to heaven. He brings Adam back to life

Roland – prose – a contemporary, anti-formalist poet

Why, If It Weren't For My Family, My Life Would Suck

Believing in evolution outside of a biology or other hard science department makes for a lonely life. Religious conservatives reject evolution outright, mistakenly believing that accepting evolution means one must reject God, so I get no support from them. The Left presents they believe in evolution, but the truth is that when you present them with any sort of details, especially regarding behavior, they reject all evolutionary explanations. The blank slate model of the mind is the only one they accept -- if people aren't completely malleable, then most Leftists beliefs fall apart pretty quickly.

Heaven help you even more if you're like me and have a degree in the humanities AND believe in evolution AND support free markets (AND believe in God -- might as well throw in that politically incorrect belief too while we're at it). That's a combination which will guarantee to keep you out of a job. Combine that with a belief in truth, beauty, and excellence, and you might as well give up ever getting a job in the humanities.

Where is one like me -- an interdisciplinary humanities scholar and poet -- to find a job? In places where I should be able to be hired, my being "interdisciplinary" makes people think I'm unfocused, when what it really means is I see problems in their full complexity. I've had an English department tell me I'm overqualified, though the job required a Ph.D. and my dissertation was about literary analysis. I've quit an interdisciplinary studies department because such departments are being treated as places where students failing in every other discipline can go to stay in college and I think that universities should be aiming for excellence and not for mediocrity -- or less. I cannot find a humanities department that is interested in hiring someone who is pro-science -- and if I were hired, there's little chance I'd get tenure due to my support of free markets. I'm not a Leftist, so work is closed off to me to such an extent that you'd think this was the Soviet Union.

So what are my choices? Go back to hotel work? Deny my education so I can get an $8/hr job? What have I done to myself by following my passions? Aren't we told that's the path to success? Then why do I keep failing? Why am I rejected by everyone? -- well, not everyone, I suppose, just everyone who could pay me for what I can do. Why am I barred in this culture from making a living?

Maybe it's time I just gave up on all this stuff and got a job in a mail room somewhere so I could work my way up the corporate ladder. All it would take would be for me to cease being who I am, doing what I love, and supporting what I believe in while rejecting my education. Is that really what it takes to get and keep a job? Do I really have to work to make the world a worse place by supporting positions that I know will make the world worse off so I can provide for my family? Are there any other options? If so, I'm completely unfamiliar with them. I'm at a complete loss.

Libertarian Culture, Libertarian World

I"m reading a book on art by the critic Danto titled "The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art," in which he observes that philosophy has treated art as "superstructure" rather than a "base" activity. Marxism took this idea up, declaring economics to be the base activity, with art remaining superstructure. I bring this up because I just has these two terms brought up again by Mickey Kaus, in context of Obama's elitist comments.

Danto challenges this placement of art in the superstructure, pointing out that if Marxists (or anyone) really believed this, then there would be no censorship, since art is merely a reflection of the problems at the base, meaning we need to change the base. If art is a reflection of the world, and can change nothing about the world, why be upset by it? Isn't it because we actually believe art can and does change the world?

Of course all of this assumes that economics is primary, and that everything goes back to it. No one can have actual belief -- it will be overshadowed by their economic situation. If this were true, then explain away the fact that the leadership of al Qaida are all wealthy and educated. If people only cling to their guns because of lack of jobs, explain those people who quit their jobs every hunting season -- especially deer season. Economics is A factor, but it's not THE factor in everyone's lives. For many, it's not even the main factor, once the basic needs are met. And with some religious practices, basic needs are even shunned. What is the materialist to make of those who abstain from food or sex as part of their devotion to God? Or who are homeless and impoverished for that reason? The Cynics of ancient Greece famously lived homeless as a reflection of their philosophical beliefs. Of course, one could put philosophy at the base -- but if you do, then how can you classify yourself as a materialist anymore? And why exclude art from the base?

Danto suggests that Plato and the other philosophers want to exclude art because art, like rhetoric (which Plato also has issues with), is designed to move people rather than convince them using logic and reason. But what if art becomes more like philosophy, or vice versa? What if philosophy becomes increasingly rhetorical -- as the postmodernists have indeed made it? What if art becomes increasingly philosophical -- as writers like Milan Kundera have made it? What if the history of Western philosophy is just plain wrong, and art is a base activity? In other words, what if in addition to being Rational Man, we are also Emotional Man? What if we are Integrated Man?

Larger questions now emerge. Is it rational for those of us who support free markets and are of a more libertarian stripe to ignore the culture, especially the arts? The Left certainly doesn't. We need to move beyond a culture where the Left supports the arts and the Right attacks what is done in the arts. Further, how much progress can be made in our struggle to change political economy if the culture at large is Left-leaning? Won't those efforts be undermined long term?

The word "pattern" comes from the word "patron." If we want the culture to pattern itself after a libertarian world view, we need to patronize the arts. We need to support the arts and encourage the creation of great works of art that reflect the realities of the world -- and not just Leftist fantasies. We need an active group or think tank to provide the support -- both theoretical and financial -- needed to create a libertarian culture. If I am right that once the basic needs (and sometimes not even those) are met, and that they are met more often than not, that people need culture to be fully human, then we need to work on affecting the culture if we want to have a freer world. If culture is at the base, then we need to work at changing the culture just as much as we need to work at changing the economy and the government. Especially if we are serious about long-term change.

Camille Paglia on Hillary Clinton II

Even though she's a bit more Left-leaning than I would like (and hasn't fully embraced her latent libertarianism), you've got to love Camile Paglia. She's right about everything she says about Hillary Clinton. If she wins, women lose; if she loses, women lose. Hillary Clinton is the kind of woman who make women-haters across the country say, "See, that's just what I said would happen if you let a women have that kind of power." Never mind all the great women the world over -- one shrill, man-hating, shrewish "victim" makes the climb steeper and higher for other women to follow. Especially with the predictable whining we can expect to hear from the cowardly NOW crowd, who would rather protest nonexistent problems in this country than stand up for real violations of women's rights around the world, especially in too many Islamic countries.

The Left's backwards Thinking

Obama's infamous comments are quite revealing of his (and the Left's) misunderstanding of human nature. Let's revisit those comments. He says that people in small towns "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Obama shows here that he has the Rousseauean belief that men are born good and are made bad by society. He thus shows that he is ignorant of the fact -- understood by religions around the world, and increasingly shown by evolutionary psychology -- that the natural state of people is poverty, a desire to have weapons for hunting and defense of their own, and xenophobia (which explains the last three listed). This is not to say that we should not do something to overcome these natural tendencies, but we have to recognize that these are the originary state of humans. Wealth is what is unusual and recent. Opposition to racism is what is unusual and recent. Thank goodness for both, but we have to recognize that we develop these, that they are not the original state of man. This confused understanding of human nature and the evolution of human behavior is what causes the Left to come up with completely backwards ideas of what we should do, what government should do, and what its role should be.

Clinton White House Continues to Dis Hillary

Now Robert Reich has come out in favor of Obama. Is there anyone from the Clinton White House in favor of Hillary Clinton? Shouldn't this tell us SOMETHING?!

Obama's Elitism III

Obama's "clarification" at the debate last night of his elitist remarks only shows that he's completely out of touch with the average American. He said that rural voters are concerned with gun legislation rather than economic rule from a central command (well, that's my interpretation of his Marxist approach to economics) because rural voters are sitting around concerned about the government not doing anything to help them. Bull. I never met anyone not on generational welfare who was sitting around worried about what the government was or was not going to do in regards to the economy or their jobs. Most people have enough sense to know the government can't do a thing for them except get in the way of their own prosperity. They are concerned about issues like guns and religion precisely because they see Democrats doing everything in their power to make sure only government thugs own guns and to eliminate Christianity from every aspect of life.

Obama for Creeping Infringement of Rights

In the debate tonight with HIllary Clinton, Barack Obama said that just because we have rights, that doesn't mean that the government can't put restrictions on those rights. His example? THough we have property rights, we regulate what people can do with their property. Nice to know that Obama's notion of rights is essentially fascist in nature: sure, we'll let you technically have the right -- but in name only, not in actuality. But then, why should I be surprised at this? The Left's idea of "free speech" includes politically correct restrictions. Pay attention, people. Obama just outed himself as an enemy of rights. He will take them away from you bit by bit, until they're gone -- and you'll have never noticed what happened until it happened.

Obama's Elitism II

Obama is now claiming that he could not possibly be an elitist because of his poor upbringing. Now, if we understand an elitist as someone who thinks (s)he is somehow superior to most other people, then I think there is little question that Obama is an elitist. He is certainly convinced that he's smarter than everyone else and has a better idea of what should be done with everyone else's money.

But if we take him at his word that he doesn't think he's a elitist precisely for the reasons given, what does that mean? Well, it means that Obama sees elitism as something related to class structures. In a class-structured society, the classes are rigid. One cannot enter into a class one was not born into, excepting ritualistic entry, of course. Classes have nothing to do with money, either. Or with education. In England, one can be a poor, uneducated noble -- but you are still a noble, meaning you think of yourself as better than those who are not. Marx of course saw the middle class arising between the noble and working classes, with the middle class overthrowing the noble class, and the working class eventually overthrowing the middle class. And this is clearly how Obama sees the world, if he thinks it is literally impossible for him to be an elitist just because of his impoverished upbringing. However, the United States is a classless society. There has never been a nobility, and the U.S. was founded on the very idea of there being no classes. With 401k programs, the workers are the owners of production, even when they don't directly own their own businesses. Thus such things as snobbery and elitism become connected more with how you think of yourself in relation to others, due to your perception of yourself in relation to those others. Obama is an elitist due to his education and where he got educated (the same could be said of Hillary Clinton as well, who has no business calling Obama an elitist). If Obama were not an elitist, he wouldn't be a politician, let alone running for the Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. The fact that he thinks he can run your life better than you can demonstrates clearly he is an elitist. I knew that long before he exposed himself with his comments.

Taxes are Theft Even If Called Dues

In an editorial in the New York TImes, Richard Conniff suggests we should change "taxes" to "dues" to make it easier for liberals to argue that the government should steal more money from us. Well, that was the gist of his argument, anyway.

What makes him think that our money is due to the government? Last I heard, if you didn't pay your dues at places where you pay dues, you just didn't get to join the club -- the club didn't threaten to imprison or murder you if you didn't pay. There is nothing voluntary about living under a government -- so "dues" will never be voluntary, as club dues are. All the name change will do is give "dues" a bad name.

I do love how Conniff stole this idea from George Lakoff without attribution. I find that to be quite appropriate in an article that advocates theft and the changing of the term for that form of theft from taxes to another term. When will liberals learn that, contra their Nazi philosopher mentor Heidegger's views on the matter, that language doesn't change reality. Theft is theft, whether the gang is the Crips, the Bloods, the government of the State of Texas, or the government of the United States of America.

A toilet, commode, loo, and crapper are all the same entity with the same function.

Hmm, Should We Pick Clinton or Obama as Savior?

Considering the fact that Obama accidentally let slip his real attitude toward those who have religious faith, perhaps he was telling the truth when he said he hadn't heard Rev. Wright say the things he said in church. After all, you do have to be in church to hear what the preacher has to say. It should be abundantly clear by now to anyone with half a brain that Obama joined his church as a political calculation.

Incidentally, you should go read the letter on this at Tammy Bruce's blog. It's hilarious.

BTW, did anyone notice how uncomfortable Hillary Clinton was at the "Compassion Forum" (what a name!) when the issue of God came up. She looked like she wanted to crawl right out of her own skin.

I would be willing to bet that, deep down, both Clinton and Obama are atheists. That's why they have erected government in His place. You can usually tell who the atheists are because most often than not (with some rare exceptions) they replace God with the State and think that it should be made all-powerful. And, naturally, since they can't think of any being greater than themselves, Clinton and Obama both think they and they alone should be the one in charge.

Texas Schools Are Corrupt!!!

If there is any one indication that standardized testing in our schools to determine how well our students are doing is a miserable failure (other than the problems of massive numbers of student dropping out of urban high schools, teachers teaching to the test -- which means the teachers teach students strategies to pass the test rather than content, contra claims of test supporters) is the high level of cheating which occurs. In Dallas the assistant principal at Skyline school was caught changing grades and throwing away scores by a teacher. The result? The teacher was fired and the assistant principal still has his job. Such an incident should result in a few things: 1) the principal should be investigated, as an accomplice to fraud, 2) the board should be investigated to learn why they are protecting this assistant principal, who 3) should have been fired on the spot. The fact is that this kind of fraud is no uncommon in Dallas schools or, quite frankly, anywhere else in the country. Why isn't this level of corruption being rooted out? Why aren't principals, assistant principals, and teachers who do this being fired? Why aren't school boards who refuse to fire such people -- let alone allow those who expose fraud to be fired -- themselves investigated. These people need to be in prison. Certainly they have no business being involved in the education of our children.

In the meantime, another teacher in the La Joya school system in Texas may not have her contract renewed for next year because she "stole" tangerine peels from the school lunch room trash for use in a citrus contest. Apparently taking trash that will be thrown away is a fireable offense in our schools, but making test scores trash doesn't. So after forcing a resignation, the school district retracted the resignation and has (pretty obviously) made up a bunch of other charges to justify firing her. And her best defender said that what she did was "wrong." How on earth can you say that what she did was wrong? It is neither wrong nor should it be illegal -- let alone a fireable offense.

If you want to be appalled about something, I recommend you look into the laws surrounding school food. There's some pretty bizarre stuff there. And this is no doubt part of that bizarre set of laws. Still, law or no law, this is a clear example of someone exercising power for the sake of exercising power. Such people should not be allowed to have any. I'm not going to hold by breath that this board will face anything but reelection, though.

I guess the common rule in our schools is to make up whatever you want to get rid of people who aren't doing anything wrong -- and in fact are doing what is right and just and good.

World Bank Proposes to Continue Food SHortages in Developing Countries

High food prices are causing unrest in developing countries. Naturally, the first thing people jump to is a call for more food aid. Never mind that most food aid ends up being stolen by the cleptocratic governments in charge of most "developing" countries (why put "developing" in scare quotes? There's no development going on, for the reasons to be soon stated). So more food aid will only result in the governments of the countries the food is sent to stealing it and selling it to the people at the same inflated prices. What these countries need are market reforms -- private property rights protections and independent court systems to eliminate corruption. Of course, if that happened, these countries would in fact turn into developing -- and then, developed -- countries. And if that happened, we wouldn't need such entities as the World Bank. And we certainly can't have that, now can we? That would result in the unemployment of a handful of clueless elites and the wasteful bureaucrats who work for them, and we certainly can't have that, now can we?

Liberating the Cubans?

People getting the deeds to their homes and the removal of salary caps -- in Cuba? Do I detect an economic boom coming 90 miles south of Florida?

Obama's Elitism

I don't know why anyone's surprised by Obama saying this about people who live in small towns in the U.S. I do find Hillary's hypocrisy hilarious, though -- she's no less elitist than he or any other Leftist Democrat is. That's one of the very hallmarks of the Left: their elitism and condescending attitude.

Some Thoughts on "The Nurture Assumption" Ch. 1

I'm afraid it just took me chapter 1 of Judith Rich Harris' "The Nurture Assumption" to see where the argument is going and where the flaw in reasoning occurs. It especially occurs in the first two of her three observations that bothered her (10) -- the third being a complaint about Freudianism that is mostly justified.

The first observation was that the children of immigrants speak and dress "like ordinary American kids." The second observation was that upper-class British males, though raised away from their fathers, ended up behaving like them. She uses these to debunk the "nurture assumption" but fails to notice a pattern underlying both situations: expectations.

My wife is Mexican-American and a teacher, and she has observed that in homes where parents expect their children to learn perfect English, they do; but in homes where there is no such expectation, they children typically speak both bad English and bad Spanish. The recent trend in schools not expecting children to assimilate has made this problem worse. Those homes which expect their children to learn good English and good Spanish produce children who can indeed do both. Now certainly in a home where only Spanish is spoken, or English is spoken but poorly, the children will have to get the better English elsewhere, but it is the parents' expectation which results in the English spoken being good or bad, with or without an accent, or being present at all.

I can also use a personal example of this. My mother was from South Bend, Indiana and spoke with a neutral midwestern accent. My father was from Kentucky and, when I was four, our family moved from Indiana to Kentucky. When I came home from Kindergarten one day, I said that I'd seen a "dawg." My mother's response: "You know how to say 'dog' properly." Her expectation was that my brother and I would speak without an accent and, despite the fact that everyone around us spoke with a Southern accent, we met her expectation. Harris cannot possibly explain this with her theory. I tin fact refutes it soundly.

We can see this too in the examples Harris gives. THe Russian parents emigrated to the U.S. to assimilate into American culture. Thus, they expect their children to assimilate -- and they do. Parents who don't expect their children to assimilate have children who don't -- at least, not completely. If the parents expect their children to retain certain Russian holidays or customs, those children will more often than not retain them. And if we take the example of the British upper class, everyone's expectation -- from the nanny to the school teachers -- is that the boys will all grow up to act like a gentleman. And the boys typically don't disappoint.

Naturally, not all expectations can be met. You can't get a child with a 100 IQ to become a quantum physicist simply through your expectation of him to become one. That is too specific an expectation. Rarely do children meet our narrow expectations, but they do at least try to meet our broad expectations. My parents expected me to go to college, and I did. There was also the expectation that I would become a doctor or a lawyer. I have a Ph.D. in the humanities. Sometimes a child faces conflicting expectations -- sometimes from those who are raising them. My wife was raised by her grandparents, who expected her to start working right out of high school and to not attend college. But they also let her attend a magnet high school that was designed to prepare her for college. She managed to meet their unstated expectations rather than their stated expectations -- actions speak louder than words. Children rarely disappoint us in meeting unstated expectations.

Harris does touch on this in chapter 1, but uses it to disprove "socialization," where we tell children not to act like adults. Again, she fails to see the larger pattern in the specifics given. Everything we teach a child to do or not to do has later applications as a basic principle. As a child becomes older and more responsible, the specific rules change, though the general rule never does. My 16 month old toddler will walk down the aisle of a store and not grab a thing, even though she has seen her mother and I shop. It's because I taught her not to touch anything not hers. This will get expanded to "without someone's permission" as she gets older, so she will be able to play well with others and not be rude to others -- we still retain this if we see something we like at someone's house and ask, "Do you mind if I look at this?" It thus teaches respect for other people's things, meaning as adults they don't take things without permission, etc. Children not taught not to touch things grow up to be adults who take things without permission and show a general disrespect for people's things. So a specific rule for a child is shown to develop into a broader rule for adults, contra Harris' thesis. She's so concerned abut the specifics of each tree, she fails to see the forest.

The rest of the book should be interesting.