Should we ever negotiate with terrorists?
My answer is, no.
Never.
Whether I am a member of our military services, or simply an American abroad, if I am kidnapped, held hostage, or threatened, I do not believe that our government should ever negotiate with the attempted kidnapper, hostage-taker or thug.
Signalling that hostage negotiations are possible is an abnegation of our historical stance and policy of never negotiating with our enemies. I was reminded of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, in his final moments. "Vi faccio vedere come muore un italiano."
Me too, bub.
But...
What is our current foreign policy on kidnapping, hostage-taking and/or thuggery? As an American, can you rely upon you country to track down these rhetorical miscreants? I don't think so.
We've lost more than common sense in three years. We've lost common decency.
Americans will never back down to threats; whatever and any type of threat. That's not what Americans do.
Ten Mile Island
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
What Do You Want?
When I teach, I attempt to teach simple things.
Give a look at the word, "want."
I like Saul Bellow. I like "Henderson, the Rain King."
It isn't hard to figure out why. Saul Bellow is a great writer, and "Henderson, Rain King" is a great book. At the time when I was studying the book, I had the great fortune of being in a writer's group that included a Nigerian prince. Or, Prince. A real Prince. (You know, they do exist.)
Henderson had a sense. And this sense was not among the listed senses, of taste, touch, smell, hearing and sight. Henderson had a sense that something was missing. He kept repeating, "I want."
What are the synonyms of want?
This word game is important, I think, because we tend to define our feelings in terms of what we either have, or lack. Words have greater meaning than we first suppose; words are chosen in order to define and to choose perfect or imperfect; present, future or past tenses. Speech is one of those curatives; when we speak, we commit to a thought. There are innumerable times when I've found myself speaking words that made no sense. Speaking, or writing, is a good thing.
To find oneself with an ineffable sense, what to do?
Taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight and ineffable. WTF?
Fortunately, Rene was there already. Thinking. "I think, therefore, I am." Is existence a sense? The little grey cells, do they observe, or impute? Let us think for a moment; what is the difference, gift, selectivity, perversity, blasphemy, heterodoxy of independent thought, or worse, outcomes that differ from other, accepted thoughts? Do we, as a race (Man) accept and defend diversity of opinion, or do we closer (more closely) adopt herd instincts? Is thought a herd instinct? Am I better off accepting the opinions of the herd, or better off discarding the views of popular opinion and instead, chart my own course?
You and I know, that for years the idea of a Sixth Sense has purported to be something akin to an Extra Sensory Perception. That always struck me as funny, since nothing about us is able to sense anything above and beyond our primary senses. Freud thought it this, and Jung thought it that. Sartre had a name for it, Kant called it Intellect. The point is, there is something there, there, that we choose to label as something else. Conscience, guilt, self-awareness, reason, internalization, doubt, no doubt there are other words that would work as synonyms. As we push forward, we are all trying to find ourselves within a formula, or focus, of whatever word we choose, to help us find a lens for viewing the people, friends, family, lovers, those we hate, who we know and don't know. We attempt to find a way of our dealing with certainty and uncertainty. We attempt to create bias and prejudices that can protect us, just as medicine men of years past assured us of their wisdom and protection, if only we adopted them as our medicine men. The Sixth Sense is, basically, outsourced to those who claim, and to those to whom we defer, as having a certain elegance in dealing with the holes in our perception and our understanding of what is going on around us. These holes, these wants, what we lack, what we want.
Sartre, for me, did express best the hidden sense. I don't share the nihilist impulse of a Sartre. But Sartre was fundamentally right in his expression of the Other. Just as Freud and Jung were stumbling around trying to find rational solutions to human psychology, Sartre, on the other hand, simply dismissed the errant metaphysics of a Kant, and simply created his own. To understand Sartre isn't an abdication of Western Thought. Sartre was, after all, a product of the West, just like you and me. Freud and Jung attempted to work within a framework of the senses and the intellect. How the brain functions. Sartre attempted, as I'm attempting here, to find where the Other was indicated, and how the Other works on our fundamental approaches to self-actualization. And, I will repeat again, metaphysics isn't a form of intellectual inquiry that will, or would have, gained us much of a needed perspective on human thought and action. Metaphysics apologizes for error. Epistemology explains error. Empiricism explores that which is knowable. The problem for Sartre lies in empiricism. We can, a priori, describe hypotheticals that question relationships between people, clouds, tire traction and hummingbirds to wheat. A priori knowledge is that which we can know before experiencing. A lot of what we know a priori has been discussed in the works and criticisms of Plato. This is epistemology. Empiricism is a posteriori. Sartre was involved in a discussion of that which we could observe. An empiricism that was forced by priors. Sartre's defect was, he attempted to discover relationships in advance of observations, and ended up becoming a metaphysicist. And of how understanding that simple explanation of the five senses didn't take us to an understanding of what we observe and how we act. The easy answers of Freud and Jung were generally accepted as explanations of an epistemology that didn't take into account the role intellect plays in determining what we derive as understanding. And Sartre, more importantly, attempted to define intellect as devoid of the religious. To Sartre, God was as much the Other as was Oneself. It was as alien to Sartre was his reason. (My contempt for Sartre.)
Who are you? ("Alice in Wonderland.")
Who are you?
Are you the product of your parents, your teachers, your community? Are you the product of any semblance of inquiry? Are you well-read, or do you watch someone called Snookie on television? When you ask others for those things that you want, are you asking for X-Boxes, or clean sheets, or food? Are you asking for books?
What do you want?
Do you want to know about yourself? Do you want to know what your expectations for yourself are? Let me ask, what do you expect of yourself? Are you able to take care of yourself? And, if you don't know how to take care of yourself, what are you doing to ingratiate yourself with someone who does know how to take care of himself? Are you getting closer to someone with merit, success, competence, or are you distancing yourself from these fellows?
Want, lack, need. What do you want? What do you lack? What do you need? You cannot simply rely upon your senses for the answer. And this is doubly true if you have a family. It's good enough to attempt to survive on your own sense of survivability. But added the weight of family, children, the Road Warrior intellect is unfavourable.
Miss. Without. Too rare. Absent. Determined insufficient.
What do you lack?
Do you lack a framework for decision? Then, pick one. Will you be an empiricist, a metaphysician, or an ontologist? Knowing you can be wrong on any and all questions, what system of thought will give you the chance of greatest benefit?
Give a look at the word, "want."
I like Saul Bellow. I like "Henderson, the Rain King."
It isn't hard to figure out why. Saul Bellow is a great writer, and "Henderson, Rain King" is a great book. At the time when I was studying the book, I had the great fortune of being in a writer's group that included a Nigerian prince. Or, Prince. A real Prince. (You know, they do exist.)
Henderson had a sense. And this sense was not among the listed senses, of taste, touch, smell, hearing and sight. Henderson had a sense that something was missing. He kept repeating, "I want."
What are the synonyms of want?
This word game is important, I think, because we tend to define our feelings in terms of what we either have, or lack. Words have greater meaning than we first suppose; words are chosen in order to define and to choose perfect or imperfect; present, future or past tenses. Speech is one of those curatives; when we speak, we commit to a thought. There are innumerable times when I've found myself speaking words that made no sense. Speaking, or writing, is a good thing.
To find oneself with an ineffable sense, what to do?
Taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight and ineffable. WTF?
Fortunately, Rene was there already. Thinking. "I think, therefore, I am." Is existence a sense? The little grey cells, do they observe, or impute? Let us think for a moment; what is the difference, gift, selectivity, perversity, blasphemy, heterodoxy of independent thought, or worse, outcomes that differ from other, accepted thoughts? Do we, as a race (Man) accept and defend diversity of opinion, or do we closer (more closely) adopt herd instincts? Is thought a herd instinct? Am I better off accepting the opinions of the herd, or better off discarding the views of popular opinion and instead, chart my own course?
You and I know, that for years the idea of a Sixth Sense has purported to be something akin to an Extra Sensory Perception. That always struck me as funny, since nothing about us is able to sense anything above and beyond our primary senses. Freud thought it this, and Jung thought it that. Sartre had a name for it, Kant called it Intellect. The point is, there is something there, there, that we choose to label as something else. Conscience, guilt, self-awareness, reason, internalization, doubt, no doubt there are other words that would work as synonyms. As we push forward, we are all trying to find ourselves within a formula, or focus, of whatever word we choose, to help us find a lens for viewing the people, friends, family, lovers, those we hate, who we know and don't know. We attempt to find a way of our dealing with certainty and uncertainty. We attempt to create bias and prejudices that can protect us, just as medicine men of years past assured us of their wisdom and protection, if only we adopted them as our medicine men. The Sixth Sense is, basically, outsourced to those who claim, and to those to whom we defer, as having a certain elegance in dealing with the holes in our perception and our understanding of what is going on around us. These holes, these wants, what we lack, what we want.
Sartre, for me, did express best the hidden sense. I don't share the nihilist impulse of a Sartre. But Sartre was fundamentally right in his expression of the Other. Just as Freud and Jung were stumbling around trying to find rational solutions to human psychology, Sartre, on the other hand, simply dismissed the errant metaphysics of a Kant, and simply created his own. To understand Sartre isn't an abdication of Western Thought. Sartre was, after all, a product of the West, just like you and me. Freud and Jung attempted to work within a framework of the senses and the intellect. How the brain functions. Sartre attempted, as I'm attempting here, to find where the Other was indicated, and how the Other works on our fundamental approaches to self-actualization. And, I will repeat again, metaphysics isn't a form of intellectual inquiry that will, or would have, gained us much of a needed perspective on human thought and action. Metaphysics apologizes for error. Epistemology explains error. Empiricism explores that which is knowable. The problem for Sartre lies in empiricism. We can, a priori, describe hypotheticals that question relationships between people, clouds, tire traction and hummingbirds to wheat. A priori knowledge is that which we can know before experiencing. A lot of what we know a priori has been discussed in the works and criticisms of Plato. This is epistemology. Empiricism is a posteriori. Sartre was involved in a discussion of that which we could observe. An empiricism that was forced by priors. Sartre's defect was, he attempted to discover relationships in advance of observations, and ended up becoming a metaphysicist. And of how understanding that simple explanation of the five senses didn't take us to an understanding of what we observe and how we act. The easy answers of Freud and Jung were generally accepted as explanations of an epistemology that didn't take into account the role intellect plays in determining what we derive as understanding. And Sartre, more importantly, attempted to define intellect as devoid of the religious. To Sartre, God was as much the Other as was Oneself. It was as alien to Sartre was his reason. (My contempt for Sartre.)
Who are you? ("Alice in Wonderland.")
Who are you?
Are you the product of your parents, your teachers, your community? Are you the product of any semblance of inquiry? Are you well-read, or do you watch someone called Snookie on television? When you ask others for those things that you want, are you asking for X-Boxes, or clean sheets, or food? Are you asking for books?
What do you want?
Do you want to know about yourself? Do you want to know what your expectations for yourself are? Let me ask, what do you expect of yourself? Are you able to take care of yourself? And, if you don't know how to take care of yourself, what are you doing to ingratiate yourself with someone who does know how to take care of himself? Are you getting closer to someone with merit, success, competence, or are you distancing yourself from these fellows?
Want, lack, need. What do you want? What do you lack? What do you need? You cannot simply rely upon your senses for the answer. And this is doubly true if you have a family. It's good enough to attempt to survive on your own sense of survivability. But added the weight of family, children, the Road Warrior intellect is unfavourable.
Miss. Without. Too rare. Absent. Determined insufficient.
What do you lack?
Do you lack a framework for decision? Then, pick one. Will you be an empiricist, a metaphysician, or an ontologist? Knowing you can be wrong on any and all questions, what system of thought will give you the chance of greatest benefit?
Monday, October 10, 2011
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
A year from now, the battle to re-capture America will be in its waning days. We have 13 months before the future of our country is either moved toward a new Socialist Dawn, or we attempt to pull-back, and halt the progress toward a political system that rewards those without merit, while punishing those of merit. Or, I should say, promise a political system that rewards those without merit. Because no system that rewards the undeserving has ever succeeded.
What we're facing, though, is a group of people with mass. The group is so disparate, that I don't think they know the mass they have, but folks smarter than I, believe. The counter-point to this mass is you and me. There are a lot of you, but just one of me. The mass has weight, that unless and until you attempt to confront this weight, you not have an appreciation of the sheer weight and velocity of the forces set against us. In our naivete, we've believed that rules of fair play, intellectual deduction, calm and reasoned debate, that we, Americans, could avoid the devolution of other countries, who have allowed themselves the downward spirals of populist parties who assure their followers that simple obedience will gain them wealth and happiness that they've never before experienced. And, "salting the mine," they've taken money from the affluent under the guise of helping those who cannot help themselves.
I don't believe that welfare wasn't established to help the lazy, or the under-motivated.
Welfare was established in the Great Depression, with pictures of waifs nursing children with empty teats.
Welfare was created to help the least of us, in times when the best of us weren't able to do enough. Incremental contributions would be enough to help the bottom five percent. The truly needy. The infirm, halt, lame and mentally incapable.
Hollywood made pictures displaying the disparity of the poor and the wealthy. The rich would depend upon magic poor-people. Sure, the rich had the cash, but until, and unless, they gained the humanity of accepting the advice of smarter than they, but poor, folks, these affluent families would face the horror of profligate sons and daughters, air-headed wives, and hired help that despised them behind their backs. The moral? Unless,and until, you gave up riches, your were destined to a certain, unerring, unhappiness. The merely affluent, the middle- and lower-classes were but a step away from poverty.
Which was and is true.
The weight of wealth is not that it isn't better to jet around the world in a G-5, the weight of wealth is, given the choice to sit on ones wealth, or risk ones wealth, what is the best path to follow? Sit on it, or risk it? Risk it, and you can end up with nothing. Giving up riches is nothing. You, as I, were born with nothing. We hadn't learned a thing, nor earned a thing. There are advantages to finding yourself coddled in the lap of wealth, but that coddling doesn't reduce the risks of eventually becoming responsible for your situation. Knowing the rich, they aren't different than you or I, they simply have more money.
Like Mel Brooks said, "It's good to be the King."
No argument. I wasn't born rich. I grew up among the rich. I've worked for the rich. From the outside, being rich has certain advantages. Having rich friends has certain advantages. Gaining the trust of the rich has certain advantages. Working for the rich is better than working for the poor. But having nothing is a lot more liberating than having a lot. (Janice.) Intelligence, education, intuition, an ability to ken, trust in your own senses, these aren't hard-wired. If your pop was successful, it's easy to suggest that your likelihood of success is greater than if your dad was a failure. But it isn't necessarily true. If it isn't necessarily true, it at least, isn't sufficiently true. I have several families that I know of who have found themselves, in the past ten years, in the previously unknown condition of having to scrape a live together for themselves.
Rags to riches. The inverse is also true. The weight of poverty is a motivator, too, if allowed.
Which brings one to the issue of moral hazard.
Whether one has great wealth, or no wealth, the issue of moral hazard is raised whenever one makes a decision that affects the risks faced, versus potential rewards, due to ones judgements. The choices made that affect the ability one has to find the most meager of existences. Imagine you inherit, or win, a million dollars.
My thought is, take that million immediately to Vegas, and bet Red. If you hit, you can pay the taxes. If you lose, you don't have a tax liability.
You either double or you don't. Are you worse off?
If you didn't have anything, you are no worse off. But, let's suggest that there are enough bad gamblers out there, that they have a constituency in Congress. And actually, let me refine this risk a little more; imagine that there's a constituency out there that services the gamblers. The casinos of capital are held in our major banks. private and investment banks, and on the stock exchanges.
Moral hazard. What to do when shorts don't cover you? Or, you take the wrong position on an investment, and find yourself stuck, with either shorts or longs, when both disintegrate? In 1929, for some, the answer was the nearest window transom. And, I'm sure, that during the latest malady in the markets, others have found quiet in the nearest equivalent to the window transom. Perhaps, it's drugs. Maybe it's a OWS. We all have our own El Guapo.
Moral hazard. A life without moral hazard must seem like Heaven to a certain sector of the human populace. I can't help but recall some of Mr. Clemen's hazarded guesses about this type of Heaven: "It is easy to see that the inventor of the heaven did not originate the idea, but copied it from the show-ceremonies of some sorry little sovereign State up in the back settlements of the Orient somewhere;" "Singing hymns and waving palm branches through all eternity is pretty when you hear about it in the pulpit, but it's as poor a way to put in valuable time as a body could contrive;" "Let us swear while we may, for in Heaven it will not be allowed;" and, "There is no humor in heaven."
The religious have always offered us ways to avoid the moral hazard of life. Innocence has always been a form of affirmative defense against crimes of sloth, carelessness, indifference and ignorance. Here, in America, we have as close to as is possible, a society where we can simply pick the fruit off the three.
What occurs when you legislate an outcome that favours both the diminished, and the advantaged? When you remove moral hazard from the middle-class? What society is it, that creates a solution where nobody is responsible for their individual actions? It isn't my fault that we've created a political system that rewards everyone, no matter their failings. It is as if we're awarding "participation ribbons" to banks, to Wall Street funds, to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for simply being there. Good ideas. Didn't work out.
Solyndra. Wind mills for electrical generation. Green technology. Green buildings. Electric vehicles.None of which works, or works efficiently. It's not our fault. If we don't keep sending billions of bucks to stupid technologies, how are we going to create new technologies?
There will be no "revolution." We can allow our government to take billions of dollars from us to give to our connected friends and neighbors, but no new technologies will be developed. The new technologies will come from places we never knew existed. That is the nature of innovation. It cannot be planned. It will be discovered, in ways we never anticipated. The revolution will not be televised. It can be smothered, though, like a child under a heavy pillow.
And then, we will, begin again.
And it will not be televised.
What we're facing, though, is a group of people with mass. The group is so disparate, that I don't think they know the mass they have, but folks smarter than I, believe. The counter-point to this mass is you and me. There are a lot of you, but just one of me. The mass has weight, that unless and until you attempt to confront this weight, you not have an appreciation of the sheer weight and velocity of the forces set against us. In our naivete, we've believed that rules of fair play, intellectual deduction, calm and reasoned debate, that we, Americans, could avoid the devolution of other countries, who have allowed themselves the downward spirals of populist parties who assure their followers that simple obedience will gain them wealth and happiness that they've never before experienced. And, "salting the mine," they've taken money from the affluent under the guise of helping those who cannot help themselves.
I don't believe that welfare wasn't established to help the lazy, or the under-motivated.
Welfare was established in the Great Depression, with pictures of waifs nursing children with empty teats.
Welfare was created to help the least of us, in times when the best of us weren't able to do enough. Incremental contributions would be enough to help the bottom five percent. The truly needy. The infirm, halt, lame and mentally incapable.
Hollywood made pictures displaying the disparity of the poor and the wealthy. The rich would depend upon magic poor-people. Sure, the rich had the cash, but until, and unless, they gained the humanity of accepting the advice of smarter than they, but poor, folks, these affluent families would face the horror of profligate sons and daughters, air-headed wives, and hired help that despised them behind their backs. The moral? Unless,and until, you gave up riches, your were destined to a certain, unerring, unhappiness. The merely affluent, the middle- and lower-classes were but a step away from poverty.
Which was and is true.
The weight of wealth is not that it isn't better to jet around the world in a G-5, the weight of wealth is, given the choice to sit on ones wealth, or risk ones wealth, what is the best path to follow? Sit on it, or risk it? Risk it, and you can end up with nothing. Giving up riches is nothing. You, as I, were born with nothing. We hadn't learned a thing, nor earned a thing. There are advantages to finding yourself coddled in the lap of wealth, but that coddling doesn't reduce the risks of eventually becoming responsible for your situation. Knowing the rich, they aren't different than you or I, they simply have more money.
Like Mel Brooks said, "It's good to be the King."
No argument. I wasn't born rich. I grew up among the rich. I've worked for the rich. From the outside, being rich has certain advantages. Having rich friends has certain advantages. Gaining the trust of the rich has certain advantages. Working for the rich is better than working for the poor. But having nothing is a lot more liberating than having a lot. (Janice.) Intelligence, education, intuition, an ability to ken, trust in your own senses, these aren't hard-wired. If your pop was successful, it's easy to suggest that your likelihood of success is greater than if your dad was a failure. But it isn't necessarily true. If it isn't necessarily true, it at least, isn't sufficiently true. I have several families that I know of who have found themselves, in the past ten years, in the previously unknown condition of having to scrape a live together for themselves.
Rags to riches. The inverse is also true. The weight of poverty is a motivator, too, if allowed.
Which brings one to the issue of moral hazard.
Whether one has great wealth, or no wealth, the issue of moral hazard is raised whenever one makes a decision that affects the risks faced, versus potential rewards, due to ones judgements. The choices made that affect the ability one has to find the most meager of existences. Imagine you inherit, or win, a million dollars.
My thought is, take that million immediately to Vegas, and bet Red. If you hit, you can pay the taxes. If you lose, you don't have a tax liability.
You either double or you don't. Are you worse off?
If you didn't have anything, you are no worse off. But, let's suggest that there are enough bad gamblers out there, that they have a constituency in Congress. And actually, let me refine this risk a little more; imagine that there's a constituency out there that services the gamblers. The casinos of capital are held in our major banks. private and investment banks, and on the stock exchanges.
Moral hazard. What to do when shorts don't cover you? Or, you take the wrong position on an investment, and find yourself stuck, with either shorts or longs, when both disintegrate? In 1929, for some, the answer was the nearest window transom. And, I'm sure, that during the latest malady in the markets, others have found quiet in the nearest equivalent to the window transom. Perhaps, it's drugs. Maybe it's a OWS. We all have our own El Guapo.
Moral hazard. A life without moral hazard must seem like Heaven to a certain sector of the human populace. I can't help but recall some of Mr. Clemen's hazarded guesses about this type of Heaven: "It is easy to see that the inventor of the heaven did not originate the idea, but copied it from the show-ceremonies of some sorry little sovereign State up in the back settlements of the Orient somewhere;" "Singing hymns and waving palm branches through all eternity is pretty when you hear about it in the pulpit, but it's as poor a way to put in valuable time as a body could contrive;" "Let us swear while we may, for in Heaven it will not be allowed;" and, "There is no humor in heaven."
The religious have always offered us ways to avoid the moral hazard of life. Innocence has always been a form of affirmative defense against crimes of sloth, carelessness, indifference and ignorance. Here, in America, we have as close to as is possible, a society where we can simply pick the fruit off the three.
What occurs when you legislate an outcome that favours both the diminished, and the advantaged? When you remove moral hazard from the middle-class? What society is it, that creates a solution where nobody is responsible for their individual actions? It isn't my fault that we've created a political system that rewards everyone, no matter their failings. It is as if we're awarding "participation ribbons" to banks, to Wall Street funds, to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for simply being there. Good ideas. Didn't work out.
Solyndra. Wind mills for electrical generation. Green technology. Green buildings. Electric vehicles.None of which works, or works efficiently. It's not our fault. If we don't keep sending billions of bucks to stupid technologies, how are we going to create new technologies?
There will be no "revolution." We can allow our government to take billions of dollars from us to give to our connected friends and neighbors, but no new technologies will be developed. The new technologies will come from places we never knew existed. That is the nature of innovation. It cannot be planned. It will be discovered, in ways we never anticipated. The revolution will not be televised. It can be smothered, though, like a child under a heavy pillow.
And then, we will, begin again.
And it will not be televised.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Columbus Day
Imagine Christopher Columbus. Who would you compare him to? Steve Jobs? Galileo? Rousseau, Descartes, Hume, Locke, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Plato, Smith, Burke, Fermat, Aristotle, da Vinci, Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell, Salk, Curie, De Soto, William Penn, Archimedes, Leibnitz, Marcus Aurelius?
Who decides what constitutes legitimate authority?
The question comes up, since guys like Natan Scharansky asked it of the former Soviet Union. What is true?
For you and I, the answer is simple; I decide what is true. I have beliefs, based upon a rational belief system, and I have knowledge, based upon my God given senses. My senses don't lie, my mind is the forge where my beliefs are forged. And, in myself, I remain skeptical of that which I observe, unwilling to become a victim of my own prejudices. One of the first questions asked, in my Theory of Knowledge course, was, is it raining outside? I look to my window, I see droplets. Is it true, that it is raining outside? Not necessarily. What if, a man was standing on the roof with a water hose, spraying water over the side of the building? Was that rain?
No.
My experience tells me it is raining outside. The truth is, there's a man on the roof spraying water. How do we know what is true? It isn't necessarily a "cappuccino moment."
Claims are one thing. Settled science is another. There exist a number of unproven postulates that are being taught. I have no beef with this. There is a certain utility with theorems that allow us to understand, even though, we do so with a certain codicil. Things can change.
We can choose to believe anything we wish to believe.The point is, what we choose to believe doesn't grant our belief the status of knowledge. Just as we looked out the window and "saw rain," we granted our perceptions a role that our minds wouldn't allow, when looked at critically. Here's another example of our seeing things that aren't true.
I've attempted to share, with friends, family and my employees, the value of expectations. Different people have different expectations. Why not? We are all different, aren't we? That is the plausible reason for people to adopt something we know of as, today, diversity, isn't it?
Let's go back to Columbus.
Chris Columbo decided that he had some kinda brilliant idea. Every person of reasonable intellect had decided that the World was Flat. It was, the Scientific Consensus of the day. It was the view of the intelligentsia, of scholars, or the body politic. It was the accepted truth.
One could make hay with this example, if one were willing to draw attention to the current discourse involving something called CO².
But I have no stake in the game of whether or not a naturally occurring gas is killing us, or the planet. My interest is in Chris Columbo, and his mad dash to the West.
It was mad. It ran counter to every consensus belief of "science" at the time. But, he had an understanding of how things worked, even if no one had ever tested that understanding before. (Remember Richard Feynman's advice.) But Columbus had one great idea, greater than the idea of his navigation; finding a venture capitalist.
The success of Columbus' adventure rang not from the bells tolled of community service, it rang from the risk a woman was willing to take, in order to find new sources of riches. The riches of the East were proven. Finding a path to the East that would require less time? Priceless. (We're going to, someday, give up credit card commercial analogies.)
The proven routes to the East required years of passage. The costs of trade were immense. And yet, given the time and cost of the investments of trade, that trade still occurred. Why? Because the benefits of trade were captured in the costs of the items being traded. Load up sixteen tons of silk, and your investment in cheap Chinese goods will be multiplied as the result of the demand for those products. Who benefits from these trades? The guys who are able to sell, in bulk, a product they can manufacture cheaply, to a market is willing to pay dear for the benefit of receiving those products. Columbus was not a man given to wild ideas about social justice. He was a guy who came to Isabella with a prospectus that offered a way to decrease the costs of trade to the benefit of the investor. He is, in a way, our first Entrepreneur. And Queen Isabella was the First Capitalist.
Imagine the trade routes that were discovered after his sailings.
What would have occurred, if, rather than an entrepreneur and a capitalist getting together to finance Chris' first voyage, it had been a team of government innovators?
It's obvious, that we would need to have this voyage as a part of an innovation plan. Legislation would be necessary to allow for the voyage. For the thousands of sailors and ships' owners that were crossing from Seville to the East, Chris' plan would destroy them. An entire price/cost structure would have to be re-defined. We would need to protect the wages earned by seafaring men in the face of increased productivity, and decreased demand for seamen. The unions, which had been propping up increasingly unpopular administrations, would be advocating for limits on Columbus, in order to protect the workers on Columbus's ships, as well as to protect all workers from exploitation. Health effects of exploration would become a consideration, since we have no metric with which to judge the harm the voyage would impact the undiscovered oceans Columbus was declaring he would exploit, or on the workers who would find themselves in strange new oceans, with untold hazards that couldn't be demonstrated as having no negative impact on the workers themselves, or upon the environment that they were imposing upon. The potential impact on the sardine fishery would have to be investigated. What if the circumnavigation of the World resulted in a decreased sardine fishery? We need to know these things, in advance of our approving the activity. Or, any activity.
Furthermore, in order to protect the planet from the effects of human beings living on the planet, we are going to institute rules of voyage, in order to direct the investments put up by the entrepreneur Columbus, and his capital partner, Isabella.
In order to have the innovation necessary to approve this venture, we are going to direct all activities in finding this Green Technology Route to India, in the following ways.
First, since we all know that using traditional trade routes, that the direction of India is to the East, all movements by Columbus must be to the West. Secondly, since asking someone to do something he doesn't feel he wants to do is a form of imposition upon the diversity rights of that person, we need to make sure that any participant of the fleet described by Columbus is unionised, and has the right to call a work stoppage whenever a majority of labour feels necessary. Thirdly, since Columbus is an entrepreneur, it is unjust that he conduct his business as he feels is right and necessary. At any time that Columbus tries or attempts to exert his views upon others, he shall be found to have violated the rights of those persons, and shall be fined, and or prosecuted, for attempt to intimidate, or intimidation,
After great deliberation, it is determined, that after leaving Seville, the wheels of the Pinta, Nina and Santa Maria will be roped, in order to effect the innovative plans of the Progressives that have anointed this Green Investment. Likewise, since Progressives have staked out guarantees of human rights, living wages and diversity, sails will also be set in such as fashion as to forbid changes in their set. Now, these three vessels, set upon their paths by the rigours of Progressivism, will proceed to their destinations. And they will be successful, since, by Legislative Authority, we have determined the best course for our investments to take. The workers will determine the outcome of the venture, since, under the Labour Theory of Value, nothing has value without the contribution of the Worker.
The Eventual and Inevitable Rape of the West, as described by modern Progressives, imputes these values. "If only Columbus hadn't invaded the pre-Columbian World!" (Followed by feinting.)
If Progressives had ruled the World in the 15th Century, we'd still all be living in Europe. I have no idea what would have progressed in the Western Hemisphere, it would be all conjecture. If only we had held onto Settled Science five hundred years ago. Under the Progressive rules promulgated above, Columbus would have never found the New World. After a few years, a few decades, exploration of the West would have discontinued. Except for those renegades in the North. (You decadent Finns and Norwegians!) Anyway, let it be said, that Progressives did rule the European continent in the 15th century. Progressive is just another way of saying, "let me tell you what to do."
The miracle of Western Civilization isn't in the constraints imposed by modern, secular governments. The miracle of Western Civilization lies in those who weren't content to follow the established science, and were, instead, motivated by personal observations that disproved the theories and beliefs that had been established previously. The entire Enlightenment and the following period of empiricism was due to a break in what had been considered accepted science.
Had Columbus been constrained as we are, in energy exploration, science and technology, we would have never discovered the New World.
Look at the map.
Before Columbus' trip, we had no idea about the forces he would face, as he attempted his oceanic voyage. Left to himself, he was able to make changes in the trajectory of his voyage, just as modern entrepreneurs should be allowed to make changes and shifts in their voyage in discovering new sources of energy. Had union rules existed on the three ships, they would have turned about. No man who sailed aboard these ships had any question as to who who make decisions affecting their lives; whether they would live or die. Minimum wages didn't exist. Yet, not only did Columbus exploit his men, he exploited himself. Few know of how Columbus died.
And the World benefited from Columbus.
Just as they benefited from men and women like Rousseau, Descartes, Hume, Locke, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Plato, Smith, Burke, Fermat, Aristotle, da Vinci, Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell, Salk, Curie, De Soto, William Penn, Archimedes, Leibnitz, Marcus Aurelius.
Why is Columbus Day such an important day for Americans? It's not the Italian thing. It's about a man, facing uncertainty, doing what in his heart was important. And it leads to riches.
If we can kill the importance of Columbus Day for Americans, we can kill the American dream.
One man, facing an ocean of obstacles, succeeding.
No room for collectivism.
Happy Columbus Day!
Friday, October 7, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Herman Cain On Affirmative Action
"Some of my opponents in the race for the U.S. Senate seem to like to ask me if I am in favor of affirmative action. I'm sick and tired of people trying to divide us on race. So let me make my answer as plain as day, so that even a congressman can understand it. If by affirmative action you mean quotas - then no. But if you mean, do I favor giving all people equal opportunity? You bet. I don't understand how my opponents could not agree with the idea of removing all barriers for people to have equal opportunity.
"When my father left a dirt farm at age 18 to pursue his American dream, he knew it would not be easy. He worked three jobs as a barber, chauffeur and janitor. My father struggled but never wavered in his three basic beliefs: his belief in God, his belief in himself and his belief that if he wanted to achieve something in this country, he could. He taught me that you get what you earn. I took that lesson to heart. After 20 years of hard work, I became a vice-president of the same company where dad worked as a janitor."
The rest here.
"When my father left a dirt farm at age 18 to pursue his American dream, he knew it would not be easy. He worked three jobs as a barber, chauffeur and janitor. My father struggled but never wavered in his three basic beliefs: his belief in God, his belief in himself and his belief that if he wanted to achieve something in this country, he could. He taught me that you get what you earn. I took that lesson to heart. After 20 years of hard work, I became a vice-president of the same company where dad worked as a janitor."
The rest here.
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