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.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I was moved by this story in the Times:
French philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle drowns saving children off St Tropez
A leading French philosopher who argued that taking risks is essential to life has drowned while trying to rescue two children off Saint-Tropez.
The government and the intellectual world paid tribute to Anne Dufourmantelle, 53, who was famous for decrying the caution imposed by a risk-averse society.
Ms Dufourmantelle was in the water about 50 yards from two children, one of them the ten-year-old son of a female friend, off Pampelonne beach in Ramatuelle when a strong wind worsened and lifeguards raised the red flag to indicate that swimmers ought to return to shore.
The children were saved by lifeguards but Ms Dufourmantelle was overcome while swimming against a strong swell driven by an east wind, the local newspaper, Var Matin, said. She suffered a cardiac arrest and the rescuers were unable to revive her. Françoise Nyssen, the culture minister, praised “the great philosopher who helped us to live and understand the world of today”. Raphaël Enthoven, the philosopher and former companion of Carla Bruni Sarkozy, tweeted his sorrow and shock over the death of the woman “who spoke so well of dreams”.
Ms Dufourmantelle, whose partner was the writer Frédéric Boyer, devoted much of her career to the relationship between fatality and freedom.
In 2015 she told Libération newspaper, for which she wrote a monthly column, that “zero risk” was a fantasy. “When there really is a danger that must be faced in order to survive . . . there is a strong incentive for action, dedication, and surpassing oneself,” she said. In 2011 Ms Dufourmantelle published Eloge du risque (In Praise of Risk), in which she said that “risking your life is one of the most beautiful expressions in our language”.
I am writing today to solicit your support in favor of the “And A Pony” Party, the only party that truly cares.
Other parties advocate minimum wage laws, but only the AAPP advocates raising the minimum wage to $175 per hour and giving all workers a pony. (We ask why our political opponents lack the courage to stand up for our working people.)
Other parties favor preserving old-age pensions, but only the AAPP proposes tripling all old-age pensions annually and giving every retiree a pony. Why do our opponents fail to support our position? It can only mean that they hate the elderly, don’t want them to live well in their golden years, and wish to deny them the companionship that only a pony can provide.
Other parties propose providing all citizens with health care paid for by someone other than themselves, but only the AAPP proposes giving all citizens free health care, weekly massage and spa treatments, and a pony. Our opponents clearly do not care sufficiently about the well-being of all our nation’s citizens, and refuse to join us in this call.
Other parties propose spending more money on education, but only the “And A Pony” Party is bold enough to insist upon reducing class size to one half (that is, two qualified and state licensed teachers per student) and providing a pony for every child in school. Surely every child will learn better if provided with two full time teachers, and what could be more important than educating our youth? We call on our political opponents, who do not seem to care about our children as much as we do, to stand aside in favor of those who truly are concerned for their future.
Other parties would like to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, but only the “And A Pony” Party proposes to provide every family, completely free of charge, with as much electricity as they could ever use, generated entirely by clean technologies, and a pony, too. Our opponents, who are in the pockets of big energy and the anti-pony lobby, would have us continue to enrich the fat cats forever, and would deny families vitally needed ponies.
Other parties believe the government should reduce unemployment, but only the AAPP proposes to give a good, high paying job to every worker who wants one no matter what their skill level or age, and a pony. Would our opponents give every worker a good, high paying job? They have been in power for decades, and yet they have not delivered for our people. It is time for a change!
Other parties pretend that they want to do something about the growing problem of hunger in our country, but only the AAPP promises to provide every creature with a functioning digestive tract within the bounds of our nation’s borders as much free, nutritious and well prepared food as they can possibly eat, as well as a pony. (The astute will note that we are therefore promising to give every pony a pony. This is correct. You will note that the other political parties do not promise to give every pony a pony, let alone provide free meals to all ponies, thus demonstrating that they are indifferent to the suffering of our nation’s noble equines. Indeed, it appears they do not care about the hungry at all!)
Other parties pretend to care about the plight of the homeless and advocate for more public housing, but only the “And A Pony” Party would give every citizen, living or dead, an eight bedroom mansion complete with a fully heated swimming pool, a tennis court, and a stable with a pony in it. Our heartless opponents pass the indigent begging for scraps on the street every day and cannot find even a trace of kindness in their hearts for their plight, let alone work, as we will, to assure that every citizen gets a mansion and a pony.
In the next election, you face an important choice. If you truly care about the future of your nation — if you truly want to see our people live the lives of prosperity, happiness and pony ownership that they deserve — there is only one possible party you can vote for: the “And A Pony” Party. I sincerely hope, for the sake of our country, that you support us in our quest to help our children, the homeless, the hungry, the sick, the old, and the poor.
Socialism is tribal economics.
– Guy Herbert
(These four words suddenly clarified something I’ve been trying to explain for years with mixed success.)
So spake a brave and wise Czech man to a Soviet Army Zampolit (Political Officer) in an angry exchange after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, per the wonderful, semi-biographical novel The Liberators by Soviet defector Viktor Suvorov. (BTW did the young (or old) Mr Corbyn ever condemn that particular Soviet invasion?).
But I digress. It turns out that scientists have now (perhaps inadvertently) tested a sort of socialism (we all know that the paradise of communism was always just around the corner under socialism) on dogs, and it turns out that they don’t like it.
Dogs have their own innate sense of fairness and did not learn this from humans as previously believed, a new study has concluded.
You might wonder what tree they were barking up, so let’s have a look:
In tests, wolves and dogs would both refuse to take part if they received no reward for pressing a buzzer while a partner animal got one for doing so. The same was true if they received a lower quality prize.
It was thought that dogs had learned the importance of equality – seen as a sophisticated trait found in humans and some primates – during the domestication process, but the study found the wolves displayed a greater reluctance to take part once they realised what was going on.
See how the piece smuggles in an unscientific value judgment?
So dogs don’t like being ripped off? Who does? I once met a falconer who told me that an eagle he knew remembered a ‘breach of contract’ when the owner’s son didn’t give him his due piece of meat, contrary to established custom and practice. He told me that when the son came back from University, the eagle still showed him great hostility, which lasted for years afterwards.
So it appears that dogs don’t like doing the work and others getting the rewards. The dogs are quite lucky, as they haven’t been slaughtered for opposing socialism, or just not being ‘in’, unlike 100,000,000 humans.
Some of the findings might appear to corroborate old folk tales…
the dogs in the study had been “highly socialised with humans in their first weeks of life” but did not have a pet-owner relationship.
“Nevertheless, they were still more eager to please the human experimenter than were the wolves,” the researchers wrote.
But is this science? Where, I ask myself, are the controls? I had a thought, why not use as a ‘control’ not just a wolf, but a dog raised in North Korea, where it will have only known socialism. But then again, I understand that they have already eaten the dogs there, during a famine caused by socialism…
“Taxing wealth reverses the relationship between citizen and state: rather than it being in charge of protecting our life, liberty, and property, we now work for it. There are no more proud freeholders; citizens become meek leaseholders with the government in charge. Our property becomes a temporary privilege, to be used until accumulated taxes return to the ultimate owner, the state.”
– Allister Heath, Daily Telegraph, 1 June. (Behind a paywall.)
Inculcating guilt as a tool of power and control. This is a time-honored tactic of manipulative mothers, of many religions, and of political ideologies, like socialism, progressivism, and environmentalism. It works because self-respect is one of our most basic psychological needs: We all need to feel that we are basically good, right, valuable, worthy of esteem. So if you can make someone ashamed of themselves and defensively wallowing in remorse, you can get them to do pretty much anything you want, because they’ll be desperate to make amends and redeem their self-esteem. And you can also cash in on their guilt-driven quest for redemption, as they surrender to you their money and control over their lives.
Call it the Guilt Racket.
As written by Robert Bidinotto on his Facebook page. He links to this item about the current nonsense around “white privilege” – another of those daffy ideas which seem designed to fill the pockets of shakedown artists of various types.
The true mark of the civilized society is not that it defends the rights of people who are loved by the bulk of the population, for those people need no defense. No one, after all, will arrest a popular person for saying or doing popular things. The true mark of the civilized society is that it defends the rights even of those who are universally reviled.
Indeed, in a truly civilized society, there would be no question but that you would defend the rights of people who disgust you provided they do no violence to others.
Our society is not civilized.
One can not get an “ought” from an “is” said Mr David Hume, and he also said “reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions”.
So Mr Hume denies what we, in fact, do every day – for example when we say to ourselves or others “this is wrong, so I ought not to do it” (an “ought” from an “is” – it is IS wrong so I OUGHT not to do it), and then he does this himself “reason IS, and OUGHT to be, the slave of the passions”.
“Ah but Paul – Mr Hume puts the word “and” in there so that makes it O.K.”
Fine so I should use my reason to bring Mr Hume back to life, as I have a “passion” to torture him. Perhaps Mr Hume led a sheltered life and did not understand what sort of Hell-on-Earth people create if they let their moral reason became the slave of their passions, rather than have their moral reason control their passions. David Hume inverted the moral tradition for amusement (“look how clever I am – I am going to reverse the traditional answer that moral reason should control the passions” is what he is really saying), but the results are not good.
“But he does not mean this – he really means that you can not get the first “is”.
Please no one play that game – Davy Hume knew what he was doing (behind the gentle language and the endless pages of “philosophical argument”), he was playing the “shock the suffered shirts” game, but it is not funny when it is now treated as “great philosophy”.
The British Whig tradition, and the Tory tradition also (Dr Johnson and all that), starts from the principle of moral personhood – the ability of human beings, with effort, to tell moral right from wrong and, again with effort, to choose to overcome our evil passions and do what it is morally right. To choose do other than we do. As Ayn Rand reminded us in the 20th century – one can be an atheist (and hold that the soul, the human person. dies with the body) and still hold to these principles.
Typical Whig thinkers including Thomas Reid and the Scots “Common Sense” School of Philosophy who dominated the Scottish Enlightenment (the modern association of the Scottish Enlightenment with David Hume is bizarre, considering he was the arch critic of it), but the Whig tradition and (in this) the Tory tradition also, reached back to Ralph Cudworth (he enemy of the determinist and political absolutist Thomas Hobbes) and in law to Chief Justice Sir John Holt and Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke (the enemy of Sir Francis Bacon – whose servant Thomas Hobbes was). For law is based on the “metaphysical” assumption that people can choose NOT to commit crimes – if they can not choose to do other than they do, then punishment is unjust. And, of course, to the Christian (and Jewish) understanding of man – seen, for example, in the work of the Anglican theologian Richard Hooker (and Joseph Butler much later) and the Christian Talmudist and Common Law thinker John Selden.
This view of what a human is (a human being) goes back, at least, to the Arisototelian Alexander of Aphrodisias – see his “On Fate”. As for “compatibilism” – determinists (those who deny the existence of the soul, in the Aristotelian not just religious sense, and hold humans to be flesh robots) should at least state their doctrine openly, rather than hide it. The words of Immanuel Kant and William James (whatever their other faults) are just on this matter – it is a contemptible subterfuge leading to a wretched quagmire. Of course Dr Johnson would not even waste words on the doctrine – and when he heard that his “fellow Tory” (the quote marks are because Johnson did not really recognise Hume as a Tory) it just confirmed his low opinion of the man. But at least David Hume did not claim to be a Whig – unlike some of his more recent followers. In America the determinist Johnathan Edwards was less influential than the libertarian (libertarian = believer in Free Will, sometimes I suspect people do not remember even this) Samuel Johnson (not to be confused with the British Dr Johnson, although their opinions were similar on this matter). It is a sign of our evil and degenerate times that Edwards is remembered as a “great philosopher” and people who were more influential among the American Founders (most importantly Thomas Reid) are almost forgotten.
→ Continue reading: The British Whig tradition and Mr John Stuart Mill
There has been much huffing and puffing recently about gender neutral pronouns. In principle, I rather like the idea. The fact that I dislike some of the other people who like the idea ought not to affect that. Not, I hasten to add, that I feel any animus against anyone purely on the grounds that they prefer to be referred to by one sound rather than another, or that their gender is difficult to specify externally, or that they feel that neither “he” nor “she” describes them, or that they advocate for lexical change. While it is true that the set of people currently talking loudest about gender-neutral pronouns would, if displayed on a Venn diagram, have considerable overlap with the set of people who wish to get others arrested for using the wrong word, that is a symptom of the addiction of our society to the use of force rather than persuasion, not a logical necessity.
The cause of the gender-neutral pronoun is ill-served by many of its current advocates. But in itself, it would be handy. That’s “it” as in “having a third person singular pronoun available to use to describe human beings without specifying gender”, not “it” as in “it”. It (as in the situation, not a person) tends to get an itty-bit hairy when one person refers to another (by which I mean another person, not another situation) as “it”. Thus, if I may reiterate, using “it” (as in “‘it'”) as a gender-neutral pronoun to refer to a person would put the user in a bad situation, even if they (here used in the singular) were not a singularly bad person. Wouldn’t it?
OK, I got drunk on words there. Sobering up, I am not seeking perfect “representation” for every one of Facebook’s 71 gender options. They can represent themselves. I just think it would be nice to have one more option, and to settle on one. That way those prone to being easily offended, and the subset of them that resort to bullying, could be kept from unhappiness and the occasion of sin.
I do think that the traditional use of “he” and “man” to include the female is a little, y’know, presumptuous. I am not one to go through old documents cutting out every offending “he-including-she” with a razor, but I would just as soon have some more inclusive style in new documents. It is tedious have to write “he or she” every time.
Singular “they” sounds all right when the subject is indefinite (e.g. “If anyone wants more details, give them a brochure”) but sounds wrong if the gender is known. At this point someone usually pipes up to say that Shakespeare used it in their plays. Only they don’t say their plays, they say his plays, unless they (gender unspecified here: no problem) are making some sort of claim that Shakespeare was a collective, a Borg or a woman.
The distinction between singular and plural third person is useful. We feel its lack in the second person. The singular/plural distinction keeps trying to creep back in with “youse” and “y’all”. In some dialects spoken in Northern England, “thou” never went away, merely faded a little into “tha”. If making no difference between singular and plural is sometimes confusing when talking to people, it is a swamp when talking about people. Imagine an action scene in a novel where all the characters including the protagonist were referred to as “they”.
This link takes you to a piece called “The Need for a Gender-neutral Pronoun” which lists some of the leading contenders for a new pronoun. By clicking on the suggested pronoun itself (or the title of the set in the case of the Spivak pronouns named after their creator), you can read an extract from Alice in Wonderland using that set of pronouns. The author also rates the proposed words by ease of pronunciation, distinctiveness, and how truly neutral they are. The author prefers the set of pronouns based on “ne” in the nominative case. If you agree that a gender neutral pronoun would be desirable, which option would you like to take hold in the language? If you object to the whole idea, what would you like to see become dominant – strict use of “he” (or “she”), or “they”, or “s/he” and variants?
The thing is, I will not be the first in my circle of acquaintance to start writing “xe” or “ne” in any other context but science fiction for the same reason that I will not be first in my circle to start taking a daily stroll in the nude.
I would if you would, but I know and you know, neither of us will.
The essay by Mr Palmer is entitled “A New, Old Challenge: Global Anti-Libertarianism”.
The article examines three broad threats, which are serious, to classical liberalism: radical Islamism, the post-Gramsci Far Left, and what is called the “Alt Right”:
Unfortunately, the best argument that the defenders of civil society typically offer in response to those challenges is that the complex of personal liberty, the rule of law, and free markets creates more prosperity and a more commodious life than the alternatives. That’s true, but it’s not enough to deflect the damaging blows of the illiberal triumvirate of identity politics, authoritarian populism, and radical Islamism. The moral goodness of liberty needs to be upheld, not only in head-to-head encounters with adversaries, but as a means of stiffening the resistance of classical liberals, lest they continue retreating. Freedom is not an illusion, but a great and noble goal. A life of freedom is better in every respect than a life of submission to others. Violence and antagonism are not the foundation of culture, but their negation. Now is the time to defend the liberty that makes possible a global civilization that enables friendship, family, cooperation, trade, mutual benefit, science, wisdom — in a word, life — and to challenge the modern anti-libertarian triumvirate and reveal the emptiness at its heart.
The story of the demise of slavery I take to have great significance for our evaluation of capitalism. The system is not to be judged purely by its material consequences. Relative or temporary happiness brought about by productive efficiency or growth cannot be the last word. Absent liberty and self-government, the situation would be inexcusable. We now can see that capitalism has as its essence individual freedom-rights. Without respect for these rights the system is in danger of turning into a monstrosity, as it would have in an unchecked antebellum South. It did so in Wilhelmine Germany and could do so still in crypto-communist China. Again, as in the case of the developing regions of today, liberty-rights are of the essence of capitalism as an improving force for humanity. If we do not see this we run the danger of suffering from the same tunnel vision of colonel Nicholson at the River Kwai.
– Pedro Schwartz
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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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