We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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There has been a bit of a backlash against what might be called the “self-esteem” movement in psychology and education in the United States and elsewhere. Here is an item. It is certainly true that a lot of intellectually vapid rubbish has been written about this. For a lot of the time, it seems, “self-esteem” is nothing more than a desire to be freed from judgement, hard work and effort.
I think there is a danger that in the backlash, that the baby gets chucked out with the bathwather, however. If you think about it, self-esteem is about the idea that as human beings, we are both competent to live and worthy of achieving happiness on this earth. This has nothing to do with a vague, dope-induced “feel-good” sort of sentiment, but is something quite different. Achieving happiness and believing that one is deserving of that is often quite hard. In a culture soaked in guilt about material wealth, where people are constantly told to feel bad about prosperity and “selfish individualism”, it is actually quite gutsy for someone to stand against all this. If one thinks about it, self-esteem, properly understood, is a key component of the idea of human rights. If people are entitled to pursue happiness and the good life, then they need rights to protect and advance that.To believe in the idea of the sovereign individual, one has to believe that individuals are competent to decide their lives and also worthy of such. And a self-confident, happy and proud person is surely what a healthy, liberal civil society needs. I fear that a lot of the people now bashing the self-esteem movement are not just sensible skeptics about the latest fads to come out of academia, but also collectivists and authortarians who fear what might happen if people really do want to pursue happiness and self-fulfilment.
This classic on self-esteem is always worth a read, by Dr. Nathaniel Branden. And let’s not forget the important Victorian tradition of “self improvement”, starting with the great Samuel Smiles’ Self Help, which is much more than just getting seriously rich. There is a lot of chaff out there, but a lot of wheat as well.
The other night I had a look at the 18 Doughty Street internet-based public affairs TV programme. I quite like what Iain Dale and the others in that outfit are trying to do with internet TV: breaking into the arena now dominated by BBC, ITN and Channel 4, channels that are by and large infused with the meta-context of the liberal-left. 18 Doughty Street is unashamedly pro-liberty, pro-capitalism, pro-America and anti-Big Government in its thinking. My main doubt is whether it can keep going without being able to make hard cash. Anyway, it is also attracting guests from across the spectrum, and it is an appearance by a leftist blogger on the show the other night that got my attention.
Dale was interviewing three bloggers about events of the week, and one of the guests was Alex Hilton, the author of the blog Recess Monkey, a leftist site with a sense of humour that may or may not to be to one’s taste. He recently got into a bit of a pickle by posting the ‘news’ that Margaret Thatcher, whom Alex loathes, had died. She is, of course, very much alive. Iain Dale phoned up the BBC after seeing the ‘story’ and promptly Hilton had to retract and publish a rather grubby apology, albeit one with a fairly nasty sting in the tail. What a nob, I thought. Then I saw his appearance on 18 Doughty Street. Fairly boilerplate lefty, I thought, a bit cocky, not a bit ashamed of spreading an untrue story, in fact, denying that that the death of Mrs T. would be a ‘story’ at all (any newspaper editor would turn him down on the spot if he thinks that the death of a famous politician, however old, is not a story. I certainly would).
Anyway, the interview went on. I was interested in how Hilton described how he came to hold the views he did, which is always interesting, in my view. His family background is working class – printing and coal mining, two industries that succumbed to the crackdown on subsidy and the trade union closed shop thanks to the Thatcher years (I strongly support both such changes, naturally). Hilton is a reminder, however, that a lot of people experienced the hard side of those changes, necessary though they were. I was a bit disappointed that Dale did not ask the question, “So Alex, are you in favour of massive coal subsidies and the old print union methods, then?”, which was a pity. But at one stage we got a really interesting admission. Hilton was talking about leftist economics bloggers, and said it was a pleasure to come across such folk, because on the whole, “economics is an emotional issue for socialists”, or some such. I certainly remember the use of the word “emotional”. Bang. For a socialist to actually admit that their views on economics are driven, not by logic, factual evidence, by reason, but by “emotion” is a big admission. It is an admission of intellectual defeat if you do not say that you have reason as your main motivator. It is to run up a big, white flag in the battle of ideas. When Marx was writing about class and the rise of the proletariat, he did not present his arguments as “emotional” – though of course they were in many respects. He used the language of science a lot. The left used to talk about ‘scientific socialism’. Their posters had big pictures of factories, machines and aircraft on them, all waxing lyrical about technology and the power of reason. The left is now a very different, post-modernist beast. Reason is out. Emotion is in.
Socialism just took another little step towards its coffin on that show. Nice one Alex. Keep up the great work. Just do not try to kill off Britain’s greatest post-war Prime Minister ever again.
Another episode of “The Trap’ has been shown… I gave it a pass given the low quality of scholarship and the high level of ‘argument by personal attack’ in the first one. It seems this low brow method was used against other targets in the latest episode, this time with the author of Public Choice Theory as one of the targets.
First a basic primer for the recent commenter to my earlier article. The personal life of a creative person has nothing to do with whether their creation is right or wrong. That decision is made in the marketplace of ideas and in the appropriate research journals. Anyone who thinks otherwise has something brown leaking out their ears.
If we judged ideas by the personal life of the creator, we would toss Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings in the bin. The man was a nutter who cut off his ear. Obviously his paintings must be garbage. Or maybe the whole basis of cybernetics is wrong! After all, Turing was gay! All those right wing conspiracy types must obviously think anything he created must be wrong! And Einstein? That wild haired fruitcake? Marx? A drunken womanizer!
Argument by ad hominem will get no one anywhere with anyone at Samizdata.
It also helps to have some knowledge of the subjects on which you expostulate, or to at least state your areas of ignorance out front. The idea that public workers do not work to make life better for their families just like anyone else is absurd: and that is what saying ‘Public Choice Theory is wrong’ means. Suggesting that markets will always ‘collapse to a point’ is absurd and counter-factual. It is not OFCOM that makes BBC ‘better’. It is competition with the high production values of programs from elsewhere that are indeed (more) free market than the UK in this respect. The rhetorical concept which is thus indirectly espoused by our commenter that “REGULATION is INDIVIDUALISM” is just plain silly.
I invite you all to read the comment on that previous article and disassemble the commenter’s argument into its weak component parts as I have not the time to do so at the moment.
Since one of our readers has broached the subject… I too have just watched The Trap (a polemical on BBC2). This is an attempt at a deconstruction of individualism which uses some of the most heavy handed propaganda tricks I have seen in a very long time.
I am sure some of our other writers will jump in with extensive articles so I will just set the stage. A presenter, recognizable by their voice… and I will leave the filling in of identity as an exercise to the listener, did interviews of assorted luminaries of the anti-statist fight. He then added voice overs along with music with a very threatening low frequency bass sound and interspersed ‘artistic’ troubling images to associate them in the minds of the audience with the ‘bad ideas’ of those nasty individualist anti-state persons.
He goes after Hayek, Laing and Buchanan among others; he demonizes game theory and the ‘Prisoners Dilemma’… without ever mentioning Dawkins and how individualistic co-operation falls out of the more realistic ‘Iterated Prisoners Dilemma’.
Have at it angry commentariat! There is much raw meat ready to be ground into hamburger and seared on the barbie!
I just picked up Tuesday’s Guardian to do my clippings (everything is behind), and found an article by George Monbiot, an attack on loony-toon ‘documentary’ Loose Change, almost all of which I agree with. Even when he says:
People believe Loose Change because it proposes a closed world: comprehensible, controllable, small. Despite the great evil that runs it, it is more companionable than the chaos that really governs our lives, a world without destination or purpose. This neat story draws campaigners away from real issues – global warming, the Iraq war, nuclear weapons, privatisation, inequality – while permanently wrecking their credibility. Bush did capitalise on the attacks, and he did follow a pre-existing agenda, spelt out, as Loose Change says, by the Project for the New American Century. But by drowning this truth in an ocean of nonsense, the conspiracists ensure that it can never again be taken seriously.
He is right. Those are the real issues. He is on the wrong side of them mostly, but they are worth arguing about. When he suggests that the delusional state of politics is caused insufficient democracy, he is wrong about that too as there is actually too much, the principal form of governance in the English-speaking world being imbecility howlback. But at least he has identified the problem.
Shock of recognition: Monbiot and I are brothers under the skin. We belong to recognisably the same impersonal, evolving, rationalist civilization in which there are real contentions, even though we have extremely different takes on it. The screw-Loose-Changers, bin-Laden-ists, the creationists, all live in a personified universe where humans are ants: someone is permanently in charge of everything, and anyone who disagrees is not just wrong but marked for destruction.
Who is speaking? Where? When? And of what political philiosophy is this an epiphany?
It is anticipated that recording an alternative address will be of benefit to the individual, enabling him or her to prove legitimate residence at that address.
Only the last question is really hard, but Googling the answer to the rest is cheating. More marks will be earned by creative guesses.
A while back I had not read my email for a day or so and found several waiting in my ‘IN’ box. Two were from Perry. Oh no. What have I done now? In the halls of debate, I am not very house broken. Fearing a ‘please cease and desist’ is in store, I open one. To my startled surprise, Perry is offering me a byline and contributing privileges! Startled is an understatement. Apparently I am doing something that Perry actually wants to continue. But what?
I have one all encompassing principle. ‘Reality.’ This is a more complicated choice than it may first seem, but still an easy one..
There are very few guidelines for contributors to Samizdata. Basically, the content guidelines are simple. The key position statement is “liberty – good, big government – bad”. Surprisingly, this is the one I will need to be careful with. For it is possible within my principles, to hold a collectivist position that is both philosophically consistent and morally sound. But while I am acknowledging that a collectivist can be morally sound and philosophically consistent, I am also mustering my defences and preparing for a ‘debate’ that can only be resolved by physical contest. I have made my choice and there is no middle ground. → Continue reading: How did I get to this page?
Taylor Dinerman is a professional journalist and one of our long time readers. He has an ability to spur a lively dinner time discussion amongst visitors to North by Northwest in the upper west of Manhattan where he is often to be found. As you read on you will soon discover why!
For many years now I have subscribed to First Things, a monthly magazine put out by Institute for religion and Public Life whose purpose is to ‘advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society’. Obviously not a very libertarian endeavour, but the magazine does, on occasion support limited or small government ideas and stands firmly against the totalitarian monsters of our age. The editor Father John Neuhaus is a Catholic, but a very American one and the magazine is full of great stuff that for a non Catholic and Non Christian like myself (I am a not very pious Reform Jew.) is a window into a culture that is an important part of the world around me.
For readers of Samizdata the December 2006 issue has an article on ‘The Witness of Dietrich von Hildebrand’ by John Crosby, that they may find interesting. Hildebrand, a philosopher and theologian, was an early and unyielding opponent of Hitler’s who did ‘battle with the Nazi ideology at the level of philosophical and theological first principals.’
He said ‘the signature of the age’ was a certain anti-personalism. One expression of this anti-personalism was collectivism, the philosophy that takes human beings as mere parts in some collectivity. Hildebrand held that each human being as a person called by God and answerable to God is always more than a part in a social whole; as a person each exists before God as his own whole and thus refuses to be completely contained in any social whole. Each is a person at a far deeper level of himself than he is a member of the German State or of the English people, to say nothing of some political party.
There is a lot more like this and despite it being densely argued it tends to enlighten some of our current dilemmas. With a German theologian and philosopher as Pope these kinds of arguments and ideas may get more and more circulation. The Regensburg speech which pissed off the Muslims so much is another example of these kinds of ideas.
Libertarians and small government conservatives may find that on some issues they have a fellow traveler in the Vatican. Of course, the Pope is always going to be Pope first , any comfort he may give to us free market types will always be secondary to that role, but if he moves the Church away from the statist and collectivist doctrines that have occasionally been promoted by the Church over the last couple of centuries or more it will be a monumental change.
If it is done it will be done in language that will be difficult for laymen or non theologians to follow. The good effects (if any) may take years or decades to trickle down, but we all should be aware of the possibilities. This may be overly optimistic, but who knows ‘God’?
There is a link if anyone is interested.
If you cannot state a proposition clearly and unambiguously, you do not understand it.
– Milton Friedman
I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.
This is a quotation attributed to the Duke of Wellington, referring to the red-coated soldiers he led in the Peninsular campaign in the early 19th Century and later, in the Battle of Waterloo, in what is now Belgium. He would often remark in scathing terms about his own men while also praising their steadiness under fire and general courage.
I kind of feel the same way about a bunch of men – it seems to be male thing – called the New Atheists in this interesting article over at Wired magazine. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and others are no doubt fearless in fighting against what they see is wilful superstition. You want to admire and like what they are doing and in general, I do. I recall reading Dawkins’ book, the Selfish Gene many years ago and was greatly impressed. I felt the same way about Dennett’s books. And yet and yet… Dawkins is so dismissive of there being any value to religion whatsoever that you almost end up feeling rather sorry for religious people – at least the ones that are not fundamentalists. For all that I have problems with religion and un-reason, I cannot overlook the benign side of religion or the contributions that the Judeo-Christian tradition has played in the West, for instance. It is arguable, for example, that notions of individualism, free will and dignity of the person have been greatly driven by that tradition, as well as other schools of thought. But Dawkins will have none of it. He is just as harsh on moderates as he is on the fundamentalists. He thinks the state should ban parents from trying to pass their views to their children (quite how this would be enforced is not made clear in the Wired article). I am not sure if he is going to persuade any existing religious people out of their views although he might, by his sheer boldness, encourage a lot of secret atheists to “come out of the closet”.
Anyway, it is an interesting article and the associated comments, or at least most of them, are pretty good as these things go.
Nature seems rather inventive in the creation of parasites. Virtually every species on the planet has several and they can be specialized to the point where a single species is almost an eco-system unto itself.
Life requires energy and there are quite a number of ways to get it. There are primary producers that take solar or chemical energy and use it to create biomass; there are species which eat the primary producers and others which in turn eat them. The most common terms for these are plants, herbivores and carnivores. There are animals which feed on dead plants or animals and there are animals which have discovered the trick of extracting energy from their host without quite killing it.
Parasitism has a number of advantages to a species. The host does all the work. Since the parasite does not kill the host like a carnivore it can continue feeding for so long as the host lives. It is clear the host would be better off without the parasite in the vast majority of cases, but since all of its neighbors are also hosts, it has no particular relative disadvantage to them.
As in any other biological niche, there will be competition. If a parasite extracts too little from its host, another which takes more will produce more offspring and take over. On the other hand, if it extracts too much, the host will weaken and a competitor who takes just a little bit less will again be able to extract more energy and produce more offspring.
In economics we call this the Laffer curve.
Have you ever had trouble explaining to someone why libertarians are neither a funny sub-species of conservatives nor an odd sort of neo-liberal? People are so stuck in the Left/Right paradigm you can hardly get through to them about a different direction, one that is not left or right but…. up. [Apologies to Flatland!]
I have tried pointing out issues on which any libertarian will disagree with a conservative; and then of like issues on the other side. I have tried showing my “World’s Smallest Political Quiz” card with the Nolan chart on it. That helps a little, but you still rarely see the light of real understanding.
A week ago, in conversation with a very liberal friend in New York, I found a parable that rewarded me with a look of sudden comprehension. I again tried it with someone on the airplane back to Belfast and was similarly rewarded. It was a parable-ized form of something which happened to me about twenty years ago in the Skibo Hall student union building at CMU:
If you put a Democrat, a Republican, and a Libertarian alone in a room together, the Republican and Democrat will eventually team up against the Libertarian. This is because both of them believe the power of government could be used for enormous good… if only they were the one controlling it.
The libertarian wants to destroy the machine.
I think this makes it clear why, in the end, both Democrats and Republicans are our ‘enemies’. They like the machine, they believe in the machine… and they both will defend it to the death. Make no mistake: if we become powerful enough to be a real political threat, they will both turn on us.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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