The L&L interview was great. I can't stop hyping Liberty Fund (https://www.libertyfund.org/). It's a treasure. Looking forward to hearing your talk w/Kling.
I did start to read the transcript for your Law & Liberty podcast (with Helen Joyce & Maya Forstater), but I just could not finish it. Sorry. But I did discover what the phrase "snail in a bottle" meant. :-) .
And it was not the first L&L transcript I just did not get all the way through. I guess reading some of the better and shorter L&L essays (especially by John McGinnis), along with a lot of other internet surfing, has created an impatience that I did not have before. Getting older and have fewer years left also contributes to that attitude.
But the two ladies are to be commended for pursuing RINO: Reality Is Not Optional. [This adage is not original with me but taken from another commenter at another blog. I wish it had greater public presence than the version Republican In Name Only. More reality, less pretense!.]
Capturing my thoughts as I read through your Aporia Magazine piece:
1) "... a work of speculative fiction. It takes place in a Roman Empire that’s undergone an industrial revolution." This indirectly brought to mind the question about the relation between the presence of liberty and the generation of wider prosperity (or vice versa?) that I queried Lorenzo about, and where he responded with a link https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/downward-resilience, directing me to his last section on Mercantile Interest and Public Goods. My initial thoughts from reading that was perhaps liberty and prosperity come to the Oligarchy first, and then to the middle class? Even with the example from the CCP in China, it strikes me that real progress on prosperity also requires real liberty [perhaps growing in parallel?].
2) "My initial academic training was in classics..." Do you think that background has made you a better (and more qualified for the real world) lawyer than your colleagues without that background?
3) From your Cato quotation: "that Roman civilization was polytheistic and animist, while ours is monotheistic but leavened by the Enlightenment; that Roman society was very martial, while Christianity has gifted us a tradition of religious and political pacifism;..." Leavened by the Enlightenment -- I like that phrasing! And for those who are not already familiar with them, I would recommend Dominion by Tom Holland and Inventing the Individual by Larry Seidentop, addressing the "hidden" nature of Christiaan influence on our modern Western society.
4) "... they were morally different all the way down. [see my 3rd comment below (or above?)]
I gave my Romans modern science and technology..." [see my 1st comment]
5) "... did you not notice the authoritarianism?" [Hitler made the trains run on time?]
... " The society it depicts works. " [You asserted the same thing in regard to Australian governance :-) ]
6) "Because of these striking similarities, it’s easy to forget the extent to which Roman morality differed from ours. England, when it turned its hand to law-making, was a Christian civilisation. Rome very much was not." [Again, see my comment #3 on two very readable books supporting this view]
Some thoughts, related to this quote from your podcast:
“ it became clear to me, as both of you were talking, that one of the reasons why they tended not to survive was because this has produced conformity. It has produced an evolutionary tendency towards conformity. It’s not just not wanting to be cast out—it’s also going along to get along before the questions even come up—so we’ve got an evolved tendency to be conformist.”
It appears to me that in American politics we are seeing coalescence around two overarching worldviews.
On the one hand, you’ve the individualists, who imbibed the mythos of the birth of America and the frontier expansion, and very much believe that in visual merit matters most. This viewpoint underpins the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
On the other hand you’ve the collectivists, for whom the community is the source of all morality and central authority. In that worldview, the only virtue is conformity, and thus the only mortal sin is dissent.
If you look at the changes over time on recent color-coded electoral maps of the national elections, the coalescence of the collectivist viewpoint is clearly centered around metropolitan centers.
So you’ve this collectivist viewpoint, centered primarily in one political party, which holds to a notable belief that the community has rights that are superior to the rights of the individual, a viewpoint that is antithetical to the foundation of American law.
Do you see a similar pattern in Australia and the U.K.?
I saw the legions as Zahal and the Zealots as Daesh. It was all very West Bank on the Six O'clock News. Today's Judaisms followed from the Jews having the shouty stabby killed out of of them in the Neronian Revolt; the Trajanic Kitos War; and the Hadrianic Revolt/Bar Kochba War. All genocidal. Islam is unreconstructed Judaism(s) Redivivus writ large. I don't see much of the conflcts of British mandated Palestine. Your Rome is at zenith; we were at nadir and about to be/being bled to death by the USA. More the Seleukid Epiphanes being told to sling his hook from Egypt by a mid-level Roman military "advisor".
I'm glad your Jesus was peripherlal: I didn't have to get very,VERY angry about an obvious literary fiction being treated as though he were real. I dropped JC with Father Xmas and the Tooth Fairy! :-). Two questions: the real Pilate was an equestrian prefect; but you have senatorial things in the mix and in reality never the twain shall meet. His career had already maxed out in Judea; no one in their right mind would have even contemplated him as Prefect of Egypt! Is this fallout of your Stoic "Revolution" rather than Sullan "New Republic"? Musonius Rufus was born around this time (Fuck the Christ; if you want a moral and ethical ideal to follow, Gaius is your man!). What of him in this history?
"You are from the father of the Devil. He was a murderer, and his father before him and the desires of your father you desire to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and has not stood in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks from his own character, because he is a liar and so is his father" G. Jn 8: 44. The Fourth Gospel is replete with this sort of thing from beginning to end. G. Mk makes the same point with "The Lord said to my lord... etc" at 12: 34 that The Christ is not the Jewish Messiah. Gnosticism chased out? Orthodoxy canonised it in the Big Book of Bullshit!
There isn't a Rizla between Orthodoxy and Gnosticism. The Roman Church has always had a defective grasp of Greek; but it still comes out in the better English translations of the New Testament even so. Acts 5: 1 - 11 is straight up Communist Thieving with Atrocity. 'Sola Scriptura' was no sooner the thing than Munster went full-on whack-a-loon. "New Jerusalem" saith the Labourite and it is Santa Clause Four all the way, baby! ;-)
Here endeth the lesson. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti: pax vobiscum. Amen.
7) “basically, they had Peter Singer laws.” I always have to stop and remember that Peter Singer is not Steven Pinker. I have not read either man in depth but am generally aware of their weird and reasonably decent contributions, respectively.
8) "I use the Roman state and private sector’s exploitation of genetic technology as background radiation." Isn't the state providing "guidance" to, but not ownership, of the private sector part of the definition of Fascism?
9) "Christianity came to Europe via Judaism, a foreign, Middle Eastern import. The Continent’s stock religions were closer to historic Vedic religion." A somewhat jarring, but intriguing statement. Even religious nonbelievers are basically "cocooned" within the Christian moral and social impact. The Jewish promotion of a monotheistic view is perhaps a logical development from many to fewer gods, even in such a pre-scientific timeframe. But that G-d was still very anthropomorphic in nature. Even more so than the god Amun Ra as proselytized by Akhenaten (several centuries?) previously.
Still, many scholars report that the OT was derived from even older narratives, while the NT was following many elements from the OT in its turn. There are only so many plotlines available to provide humanity guidance on life and living.
10) "People ... often fail to grasp that different societies (and individuals) can hold different but coherent ethical frameworks because they prioritise different values. Maybe they even have different conceptions of those values. " Makes you wonder why all of those interfaith initiatives focus on their similarities rather than exploring the reasons and rationale for their differences. I guess no one really wants to consider the possibility that someone else's system may have some elements superior to theirs. A clear side by side juxtaposition and comparison is probably a lot of work, and would show up deficiencies as well as comparative advantages. Apparently even the Golden Rule is really only golden as it applies to your particular in-group, not everyone else.
11) And this relates to your last sentence, "There is no necessary connection between law and morality" in that both law and morality really need to maintain as few proscriptions as possible. Many religious scriptures seem to be long enough and involved enough that almost any position can be supported by suitable language if you know where to look. And I am confident that James Madison was not the first to promote the idea that laws should be relatively few, clearly understood, not changing too frequently, etc., to aid in the people understanding them, agreeing to them, and actually following them.
Great to spend part (much) of a Sunday morning in the "church of Helen Dale" reviewing her essay on Aporia. At least as ensouling as spending an hour in the pew of an Evangelical institution.
Is the proper Substack etiquette to post about Aporia over there, rather than here? Even if directed to there from here? Since I still have to read the comments over there, I will add any more comments over there, instead of continuing here.
Look forward to updates on your travels.
The L&L interview was great. I can't stop hyping Liberty Fund (https://www.libertyfund.org/). It's a treasure. Looking forward to hearing your talk w/Kling.
I did start to read the transcript for your Law & Liberty podcast (with Helen Joyce & Maya Forstater), but I just could not finish it. Sorry. But I did discover what the phrase "snail in a bottle" meant. :-) .
And it was not the first L&L transcript I just did not get all the way through. I guess reading some of the better and shorter L&L essays (especially by John McGinnis), along with a lot of other internet surfing, has created an impatience that I did not have before. Getting older and have fewer years left also contributes to that attitude.
But the two ladies are to be commended for pursuing RINO: Reality Is Not Optional. [This adage is not original with me but taken from another commenter at another blog. I wish it had greater public presence than the version Republican In Name Only. More reality, less pretense!.]
Capturing my thoughts as I read through your Aporia Magazine piece:
1) "... a work of speculative fiction. It takes place in a Roman Empire that’s undergone an industrial revolution." This indirectly brought to mind the question about the relation between the presence of liberty and the generation of wider prosperity (or vice versa?) that I queried Lorenzo about, and where he responded with a link https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/downward-resilience, directing me to his last section on Mercantile Interest and Public Goods. My initial thoughts from reading that was perhaps liberty and prosperity come to the Oligarchy first, and then to the middle class? Even with the example from the CCP in China, it strikes me that real progress on prosperity also requires real liberty [perhaps growing in parallel?].
2) "My initial academic training was in classics..." Do you think that background has made you a better (and more qualified for the real world) lawyer than your colleagues without that background?
3) From your Cato quotation: "that Roman civilization was polytheistic and animist, while ours is monotheistic but leavened by the Enlightenment; that Roman society was very martial, while Christianity has gifted us a tradition of religious and political pacifism;..." Leavened by the Enlightenment -- I like that phrasing! And for those who are not already familiar with them, I would recommend Dominion by Tom Holland and Inventing the Individual by Larry Seidentop, addressing the "hidden" nature of Christiaan influence on our modern Western society.
More via subsequent postings.
Continuing Aporia related comments:
4) "... they were morally different all the way down. [see my 3rd comment below (or above?)]
I gave my Romans modern science and technology..." [see my 1st comment]
5) "... did you not notice the authoritarianism?" [Hitler made the trains run on time?]
... " The society it depicts works. " [You asserted the same thing in regard to Australian governance :-) ]
6) "Because of these striking similarities, it’s easy to forget the extent to which Roman morality differed from ours. England, when it turned its hand to law-making, was a Christian civilisation. Rome very much was not." [Again, see my comment #3 on two very readable books supporting this view]
Some thoughts, related to this quote from your podcast:
“ it became clear to me, as both of you were talking, that one of the reasons why they tended not to survive was because this has produced conformity. It has produced an evolutionary tendency towards conformity. It’s not just not wanting to be cast out—it’s also going along to get along before the questions even come up—so we’ve got an evolved tendency to be conformist.”
It appears to me that in American politics we are seeing coalescence around two overarching worldviews.
On the one hand, you’ve the individualists, who imbibed the mythos of the birth of America and the frontier expansion, and very much believe that in visual merit matters most. This viewpoint underpins the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
On the other hand you’ve the collectivists, for whom the community is the source of all morality and central authority. In that worldview, the only virtue is conformity, and thus the only mortal sin is dissent.
If you look at the changes over time on recent color-coded electoral maps of the national elections, the coalescence of the collectivist viewpoint is clearly centered around metropolitan centers.
So you’ve this collectivist viewpoint, centered primarily in one political party, which holds to a notable belief that the community has rights that are superior to the rights of the individual, a viewpoint that is antithetical to the foundation of American law.
Do you see a similar pattern in Australia and the U.K.?
I saw the legions as Zahal and the Zealots as Daesh. It was all very West Bank on the Six O'clock News. Today's Judaisms followed from the Jews having the shouty stabby killed out of of them in the Neronian Revolt; the Trajanic Kitos War; and the Hadrianic Revolt/Bar Kochba War. All genocidal. Islam is unreconstructed Judaism(s) Redivivus writ large. I don't see much of the conflcts of British mandated Palestine. Your Rome is at zenith; we were at nadir and about to be/being bled to death by the USA. More the Seleukid Epiphanes being told to sling his hook from Egypt by a mid-level Roman military "advisor".
I'm glad your Jesus was peripherlal: I didn't have to get very,VERY angry about an obvious literary fiction being treated as though he were real. I dropped JC with Father Xmas and the Tooth Fairy! :-). Two questions: the real Pilate was an equestrian prefect; but you have senatorial things in the mix and in reality never the twain shall meet. His career had already maxed out in Judea; no one in their right mind would have even contemplated him as Prefect of Egypt! Is this fallout of your Stoic "Revolution" rather than Sullan "New Republic"? Musonius Rufus was born around this time (Fuck the Christ; if you want a moral and ethical ideal to follow, Gaius is your man!). What of him in this history?
"You are from the father of the Devil. He was a murderer, and his father before him and the desires of your father you desire to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and has not stood in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks from his own character, because he is a liar and so is his father" G. Jn 8: 44. The Fourth Gospel is replete with this sort of thing from beginning to end. G. Mk makes the same point with "The Lord said to my lord... etc" at 12: 34 that The Christ is not the Jewish Messiah. Gnosticism chased out? Orthodoxy canonised it in the Big Book of Bullshit!
There isn't a Rizla between Orthodoxy and Gnosticism. The Roman Church has always had a defective grasp of Greek; but it still comes out in the better English translations of the New Testament even so. Acts 5: 1 - 11 is straight up Communist Thieving with Atrocity. 'Sola Scriptura' was no sooner the thing than Munster went full-on whack-a-loon. "New Jerusalem" saith the Labourite and it is Santa Clause Four all the way, baby! ;-)
Here endeth the lesson. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti: pax vobiscum. Amen.
7) “basically, they had Peter Singer laws.” I always have to stop and remember that Peter Singer is not Steven Pinker. I have not read either man in depth but am generally aware of their weird and reasonably decent contributions, respectively.
8) "I use the Roman state and private sector’s exploitation of genetic technology as background radiation." Isn't the state providing "guidance" to, but not ownership, of the private sector part of the definition of Fascism?
9) "Christianity came to Europe via Judaism, a foreign, Middle Eastern import. The Continent’s stock religions were closer to historic Vedic religion." A somewhat jarring, but intriguing statement. Even religious nonbelievers are basically "cocooned" within the Christian moral and social impact. The Jewish promotion of a monotheistic view is perhaps a logical development from many to fewer gods, even in such a pre-scientific timeframe. But that G-d was still very anthropomorphic in nature. Even more so than the god Amun Ra as proselytized by Akhenaten (several centuries?) previously.
Still, many scholars report that the OT was derived from even older narratives, while the NT was following many elements from the OT in its turn. There are only so many plotlines available to provide humanity guidance on life and living.
Returning to Aporia after some distractions:
10) "People ... often fail to grasp that different societies (and individuals) can hold different but coherent ethical frameworks because they prioritise different values. Maybe they even have different conceptions of those values. " Makes you wonder why all of those interfaith initiatives focus on their similarities rather than exploring the reasons and rationale for their differences. I guess no one really wants to consider the possibility that someone else's system may have some elements superior to theirs. A clear side by side juxtaposition and comparison is probably a lot of work, and would show up deficiencies as well as comparative advantages. Apparently even the Golden Rule is really only golden as it applies to your particular in-group, not everyone else.
11) And this relates to your last sentence, "There is no necessary connection between law and morality" in that both law and morality really need to maintain as few proscriptions as possible. Many religious scriptures seem to be long enough and involved enough that almost any position can be supported by suitable language if you know where to look. And I am confident that James Madison was not the first to promote the idea that laws should be relatively few, clearly understood, not changing too frequently, etc., to aid in the people understanding them, agreeing to them, and actually following them.
Great to spend part (much) of a Sunday morning in the "church of Helen Dale" reviewing her essay on Aporia. At least as ensouling as spending an hour in the pew of an Evangelical institution.
Is the proper Substack etiquette to post about Aporia over there, rather than here? Even if directed to there from here? Since I still have to read the comments over there, I will add any more comments over there, instead of continuing here.
I submit that "Helen Elsewhere" would make for a great punk rock stage name.