"the ultimate endpoint of the Enlightenment - its own self destruction via nihilism." Interesting that I had never really considered that the Enlightenment would or should have an endpoint. Certainly for the Scottish Enlightenment, we would have hoped an emphasis on pursing truth would never die out or be corrup…
"the ultimate endpoint of the Enlightenment - its own self destruction via nihilism." Interesting that I had never really considered that the Enlightenment would or should have an endpoint. Certainly for the Scottish Enlightenment, we would have hoped an emphasis on pursing truth would never die out or be corrupted. For the French version, Denis Diderot's dictum to "strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest" has not yet come to pass (whether a wise aim or not). The American contribution via our Constitution and "explicitly designed government" has worked very well in a big picture, long term view, but of course we are now struggling with some of the social poisons and foibles of human nature that our Founders understood and that Lorenzo addresses so well. Plus, of course our Founders were well versed in the template of the failed Roman republic. If nihilism is our endpoint, why do I still so naively remain optimistic?
Not sure I've ever dropped this Franklin quote here, but I think it most applicable.
"I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well-administred; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administred for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
It is of course that last dozen or so words that are crucial.
I was generally aware of Franklin's remark at the Convention, but did not recall the more negative aspects at the end. Clearly, we recognize that the Founder/Framers were deep students of human nature. Which is why I am somewhat surprised they did not explicitly provide for fiscal responsibility via some balanced budget criterion. Much of our problem seems to arise from the promise of something for nothing. Even those of us who know better will tend to fall for it (before we stop ourselves?).
It is fairly clear that Madison studied the Serene Republic of Venice pretty closely, it being the longest lasting Republic. It also, along with Genoa, invented the public bond, so functional deficit financing. The Dutch Republic and Great Britain built themselves as imperial Great Powers with deficit financing. Parliamentary states seemed to be able to manage deficit financing, mainly because the bondholders were, essentially, the Parliamentary class. Autocracies, not so much.
Thanks for mentioning Venice republic, an area of history where I have large gaps. So, yes, RESPONSIBLE deficit spending allows an economy to grow as large and as fast as the corresponding supporting wealth can be created. When things are going well (1600's explorations, 1990's internet boom?) this is great. But the Austrian school says things will always overheat, and then collapse. Plus we now know better than ever before that the appraisal of that wealth value still remains a largely subjective and fluid assessment, not so hard and fast as we are often led to believe.
On the parliamentary class as the more "responsible" bondholders, that triggered the following thoughts:
1) perhaps bond ownership should be limited to "qualified investors", which I understand are those with $100K or mor available, supposedly a more knowledgeable or experienced level of investor. [This may be the practical case already?]
2) maybe we should make 50% of our Congressmen's [and Parliament's?] pay in bonds, so they would remain closely interested in the country's investment quality. [Per recent news article, the Congress, President, VP, & SCOTUS (plus maybe all confirmed "officers of the US"?) still get paid during govt. shutdowns since they are identified in the Constitution [not sure about Senate confirmed military officers - they may not legally be "officers of the US" even if of the military?].
3) all govt. DEFICIT spending should be done via private sector banks/ resources. Possibly with well defined leverage limits? Capital created out of thin air, but not the Treasury printing money. If the deficit amount is not available from the private banks, it does not get spent.
4) this still does not explain why Madison, et al., did not provide for more stringent financial guidance or controls -- were their potential fears assuaged with the example of GB?
5) (related to #4): is there an aspect of scale here, where the larger nations are more subject to taking excessive risks since it seems the tax payer base is still "so large" that errors can still be covered? I am reminded about a comment you made some time back (around the 2008 Great Recession?) on your Oz blog, that the Australian central bank had done the best job of responding responsibly, followed by Canada, (and maybe GB?), but much superior to US Fed.
There really hadn’t been a significant case of a Parliamentary state having a bond crisis that it could not handle. Yes, government securities were first developed c.1171 and yes even Venice had had the odd partial default but the history to the 1780s strongly suggested it was an autocracy problem, not a Parliamentary state problem.
Austrian economists are notorious for over-predicting hyperinflation. While I like their historical approach, they tend to be too in love with their framings. In particular, they under-estimate compensating mechanisms. Von Mises and Hayek were correct in their economic calculation point, but wildly incorrect in the rate of consequences thereof precisely because, however dysfunctionally, the command economies came up with compensating mechanisms.
Diderot's presumption (and error) was that kings and priests don't resurrect under new guises. This is the point Lorenzo is laboring to make us see - it is deep, non-rational, social dynamics and it isn't necessarily about what is top-down, but emergent from us, collectively. Leaders can proclaim themselves as leaders - but absent followers, they are nothing.
Nietzsche toyed with the concept of the eternal recurrence. Huxley put it as "[s]o long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable". I've really come to seeing Huxley as being more on point about us today than Orwell was.
Then via the law of averages, we ought to also periodically see the rise of Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Churchills, but they seem few on the ground. Do Reagan and Thatcher qualify? Queen Elizabeth?
A parallel thought is why is this desire for such leaders so close to the surface? Some deep need for "father figures"? It would appear that a perception of least "relative" poverty or oppression is also involved. If most folks have some level of a decent (independent) income compared to their peers, they might still feel jealous or slightly aggrieved, but not enough to revolt (the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer concept?) But even such a farmer was not as divorced from the need for government as Jefferson hoped.
The exceptional doesn't arise out of the average (that's a definite causation error), and the exceptions over time will regress to the mean.
Socially, we are far more aware of how we stack up against peers (or even more so those ranked above us), then how much better off we are than we used to be (individually). The real measure of our wealth isn't relative, but all of our social status is relative. Wealth itself isn't zero-sum, status is. Western philosophy has been trying for over 2000 years to teach us to not focus our self esteem in others' views of us. It doesn't seem to be going so well.
Initially your 2nd paragraph struck me as "right on!" Solidly true. Concise and well stated. But after a little additional thought, I see some nuances might apply. There is still an absolute level of wealth (and income) that is needed before we can be sufficiently independent to tell the despot and the bureaucrat to get lost. But once those levels of reasonable self sufficiency are reached, I accept your point that it is the relative status levels where the Progressives/Leftists are trying to gain leverage, convincing people they are "oppressed" because they only have a 32" TV and not a 64" one, etc.
We surmise that the common animal between apes and hominids existed about 7 million years ago. They probably had status contests similar to what we see in ourselves and the apes today.
The despot and bureaucrat thrive on prosperity, not on poverty - the pickings are too slim in the latter. Nope, you need a nice fatted calf to properly sustain a priestly [read: parasitic] class.
And where else are you going to get the entrails with which to strangle the kings? :-)
I realize now that perhaps my zero sum situation was really that of hunter gatherers (or worse). Once there was enough food and related prosperity to begin semi-fixed settlements, then your fatted calf situation could come into being. That makes sense.
Provide enough bread and circus and you keep enough people from contemplating achieving wealth independence on their own - too much effort (and risk) required for liberty.
Once you get exchange (implicit or explicit) and/or scale, positive-sum games can be played. The only way to minimise the zero-sum nature of status is to have lots of different status games. Prestige allows that, dominance and propriety not so much.
And the crux of our dilemma is just why that is! As you are exploring with these essays. If we have a relatively common* genetic contribution to our moral views, then culture, religion, and successful economics for the wider populace all appear to play some role in influencing the different final levels of morality, virtue, character, etc.
Bringing us right back to your capacity vs. character discussion. :-)
*But perhaps this genetic element is also not as common in its nature as we might suppose. The success of evolution depends on having a variety of possible configurations among which to select for eventual survival. Why do we continue to exist as a species with about 4% psychopaths?
Father figures is one way to put it, another way to put it is that we need some sort of formal Authority. Mainly because the world is so inherently and incredibly complex that without a starting point or beginning frame, it is literally quite impossible to make sense of anything.
Even understanding the tiniest grain of sand at multiple levels of resolution is impossible. Trying to understand even one human being - the most complex thing to ever exist in the universe as far as we can tell - is a monumental task. And yet modern individualistic Enlightenment thinking acts as if people can be trusted to learn about and understand - in less than ~50 years - all of human society, billions of humans acting upon their environment and the environment acting back upon them in a massive feedback loop.
And that's just the human side. Trying to understand the complexity of the physical universe outside of human intervention is even more staggering. All this to say - we need some sort of Authority. The need for 'father figures' is not a shallow or immature urge, it is an absolute necessity.
Agree that we have evolved with fathers, and that those men are essential to protect us and our mothers, plus help guide us to maturity. And that they are assisted in hunter gatherer and larger societies by their fellows in creating a culture that works for most of the group most of the time.
That kind of experience has shown hierarchy seems to work well in organizing and executing many complex activities, from hunting mammoth to hunting the genome.
The core issue for us is whether that authority is granted via consent of the governed or not, thereby presumably achieving some level of accountability for results. Many have observed that even tyrants cannot survive if they "lose the mandate of heaven", a la Ceausescu or Julius Caesar. On the cultural generation of consent in selecting leaders, the earliest example I read of was the monastics selecting their abbot during the "Dark Ages", but I suspect there are many earlier examples.
What we are facing now (at least in the US) is the fear that the election/ selection process has been corrupted (mostly via mail in ballots and the counting thereof) and that our desired accountability has been or will be lost. Congress delegating rule making to the admin state has further eroded keeping authority accountable.
The problem is exactly what you point out - the social dynamics of 10,000+ years ago are not scalable to our social existence today. It isn't a question of reverting back - we haven't escaped that gravitational well and we must, unless we are to regress.
The flaw in the Enlightenment is the presumption that rationality reigns supreme (with or without God), rather than being a limited tool for a random species of hairless ape in a chaotic universe.
I'm not suggesting we revert back, but I don't think we can get around the idea of having an ultimate Authority giving us a ground truth to operate off of. How else would we make sense of anything?
Agreed that the flaw in the enlightenment is essentially the worship of intellect or rationality.
What would you propose as a way to move forward? Are you saying we jettison old belief systems?
I'm generally more in favor of trying to reinterpret or re-examine them to see their wisdom and virtues through a modern lens.
The problem of ultimate Authority is, we (as a species) always have more than one. I would agree that it tends to work, locally. But as soon as multiple groups (each with their own Authority) begin to interact, it isn't feasible to have only one. It is a zero-sum contest.
The reason we crave that Authority is it staves off the terrifying prospect of chaos. When Lorenzo speaks to our capacity for self-deception, this may be the ultimate source. If we exist in a chaotic universe, then the presumption of Authority (i.e. God) is in fact a widespread self-deception. It may well be that it sort of works, for a time and for a place; and that might even be fairly lengthy (in terms of human history). But if ultimately it is a self-deception, then eventually reality is going to have a say about it.
Another meaty comment. :-)
"the ultimate endpoint of the Enlightenment - its own self destruction via nihilism." Interesting that I had never really considered that the Enlightenment would or should have an endpoint. Certainly for the Scottish Enlightenment, we would have hoped an emphasis on pursing truth would never die out or be corrupted. For the French version, Denis Diderot's dictum to "strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest" has not yet come to pass (whether a wise aim or not). The American contribution via our Constitution and "explicitly designed government" has worked very well in a big picture, long term view, but of course we are now struggling with some of the social poisons and foibles of human nature that our Founders understood and that Lorenzo addresses so well. Plus, of course our Founders were well versed in the template of the failed Roman republic. If nihilism is our endpoint, why do I still so naively remain optimistic?
Not sure I've ever dropped this Franklin quote here, but I think it most applicable.
"I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well-administred; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administred for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
It is of course that last dozen or so words that are crucial.
I was generally aware of Franklin's remark at the Convention, but did not recall the more negative aspects at the end. Clearly, we recognize that the Founder/Framers were deep students of human nature. Which is why I am somewhat surprised they did not explicitly provide for fiscal responsibility via some balanced budget criterion. Much of our problem seems to arise from the promise of something for nothing. Even those of us who know better will tend to fall for it (before we stop ourselves?).
It is fairly clear that Madison studied the Serene Republic of Venice pretty closely, it being the longest lasting Republic. It also, along with Genoa, invented the public bond, so functional deficit financing. The Dutch Republic and Great Britain built themselves as imperial Great Powers with deficit financing. Parliamentary states seemed to be able to manage deficit financing, mainly because the bondholders were, essentially, the Parliamentary class. Autocracies, not so much.
Thanks for mentioning Venice republic, an area of history where I have large gaps. So, yes, RESPONSIBLE deficit spending allows an economy to grow as large and as fast as the corresponding supporting wealth can be created. When things are going well (1600's explorations, 1990's internet boom?) this is great. But the Austrian school says things will always overheat, and then collapse. Plus we now know better than ever before that the appraisal of that wealth value still remains a largely subjective and fluid assessment, not so hard and fast as we are often led to believe.
On the parliamentary class as the more "responsible" bondholders, that triggered the following thoughts:
1) perhaps bond ownership should be limited to "qualified investors", which I understand are those with $100K or mor available, supposedly a more knowledgeable or experienced level of investor. [This may be the practical case already?]
2) maybe we should make 50% of our Congressmen's [and Parliament's?] pay in bonds, so they would remain closely interested in the country's investment quality. [Per recent news article, the Congress, President, VP, & SCOTUS (plus maybe all confirmed "officers of the US"?) still get paid during govt. shutdowns since they are identified in the Constitution [not sure about Senate confirmed military officers - they may not legally be "officers of the US" even if of the military?].
[see below]
3) all govt. DEFICIT spending should be done via private sector banks/ resources. Possibly with well defined leverage limits? Capital created out of thin air, but not the Treasury printing money. If the deficit amount is not available from the private banks, it does not get spent.
4) this still does not explain why Madison, et al., did not provide for more stringent financial guidance or controls -- were their potential fears assuaged with the example of GB?
5) (related to #4): is there an aspect of scale here, where the larger nations are more subject to taking excessive risks since it seems the tax payer base is still "so large" that errors can still be covered? I am reminded about a comment you made some time back (around the 2008 Great Recession?) on your Oz blog, that the Australian central bank had done the best job of responding responsibly, followed by Canada, (and maybe GB?), but much superior to US Fed.
There really hadn’t been a significant case of a Parliamentary state having a bond crisis that it could not handle. Yes, government securities were first developed c.1171 and yes even Venice had had the odd partial default but the history to the 1780s strongly suggested it was an autocracy problem, not a Parliamentary state problem.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/689769991
Austrian economists are notorious for over-predicting hyperinflation. While I like their historical approach, they tend to be too in love with their framings. In particular, they under-estimate compensating mechanisms. Von Mises and Hayek were correct in their economic calculation point, but wildly incorrect in the rate of consequences thereof precisely because, however dysfunctionally, the command economies came up with compensating mechanisms.
Diderot's presumption (and error) was that kings and priests don't resurrect under new guises. This is the point Lorenzo is laboring to make us see - it is deep, non-rational, social dynamics and it isn't necessarily about what is top-down, but emergent from us, collectively. Leaders can proclaim themselves as leaders - but absent followers, they are nothing.
Nietzsche toyed with the concept of the eternal recurrence. Huxley put it as "[s]o long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable". I've really come to seeing Huxley as being more on point about us today than Orwell was.
Then via the law of averages, we ought to also periodically see the rise of Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Churchills, but they seem few on the ground. Do Reagan and Thatcher qualify? Queen Elizabeth?
A parallel thought is why is this desire for such leaders so close to the surface? Some deep need for "father figures"? It would appear that a perception of least "relative" poverty or oppression is also involved. If most folks have some level of a decent (independent) income compared to their peers, they might still feel jealous or slightly aggrieved, but not enough to revolt (the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer concept?) But even such a farmer was not as divorced from the need for government as Jefferson hoped.
The exceptional doesn't arise out of the average (that's a definite causation error), and the exceptions over time will regress to the mean.
Socially, we are far more aware of how we stack up against peers (or even more so those ranked above us), then how much better off we are than we used to be (individually). The real measure of our wealth isn't relative, but all of our social status is relative. Wealth itself isn't zero-sum, status is. Western philosophy has been trying for over 2000 years to teach us to not focus our self esteem in others' views of us. It doesn't seem to be going so well.
Initially your 2nd paragraph struck me as "right on!" Solidly true. Concise and well stated. But after a little additional thought, I see some nuances might apply. There is still an absolute level of wealth (and income) that is needed before we can be sufficiently independent to tell the despot and the bureaucrat to get lost. But once those levels of reasonable self sufficiency are reached, I accept your point that it is the relative status levels where the Progressives/Leftists are trying to gain leverage, convincing people they are "oppressed" because they only have a 32" TV and not a 64" one, etc.
We surmise that the common animal between apes and hominids existed about 7 million years ago. They probably had status contests similar to what we see in ourselves and the apes today.
The despot and bureaucrat thrive on prosperity, not on poverty - the pickings are too slim in the latter. Nope, you need a nice fatted calf to properly sustain a priestly [read: parasitic] class.
And where else are you going to get the entrails with which to strangle the kings? :-)
I realize now that perhaps my zero sum situation was really that of hunter gatherers (or worse). Once there was enough food and related prosperity to begin semi-fixed settlements, then your fatted calf situation could come into being. That makes sense.
Provide enough bread and circus and you keep enough people from contemplating achieving wealth independence on their own - too much effort (and risk) required for liberty.
Once you get exchange (implicit or explicit) and/or scale, positive-sum games can be played. The only way to minimise the zero-sum nature of status is to have lots of different status games. Prestige allows that, dominance and propriety not so much.
The quality of elites generated at different times and places clearly varies enormously. Contrast Anglo-America with Latin America, for instance.
And the crux of our dilemma is just why that is! As you are exploring with these essays. If we have a relatively common* genetic contribution to our moral views, then culture, religion, and successful economics for the wider populace all appear to play some role in influencing the different final levels of morality, virtue, character, etc.
Bringing us right back to your capacity vs. character discussion. :-)
*But perhaps this genetic element is also not as common in its nature as we might suppose. The success of evolution depends on having a variety of possible configurations among which to select for eventual survival. Why do we continue to exist as a species with about 4% psychopaths?
Father figures is one way to put it, another way to put it is that we need some sort of formal Authority. Mainly because the world is so inherently and incredibly complex that without a starting point or beginning frame, it is literally quite impossible to make sense of anything.
Even understanding the tiniest grain of sand at multiple levels of resolution is impossible. Trying to understand even one human being - the most complex thing to ever exist in the universe as far as we can tell - is a monumental task. And yet modern individualistic Enlightenment thinking acts as if people can be trusted to learn about and understand - in less than ~50 years - all of human society, billions of humans acting upon their environment and the environment acting back upon them in a massive feedback loop.
And that's just the human side. Trying to understand the complexity of the physical universe outside of human intervention is even more staggering. All this to say - we need some sort of Authority. The need for 'father figures' is not a shallow or immature urge, it is an absolute necessity.
Agree that we have evolved with fathers, and that those men are essential to protect us and our mothers, plus help guide us to maturity. And that they are assisted in hunter gatherer and larger societies by their fellows in creating a culture that works for most of the group most of the time.
That kind of experience has shown hierarchy seems to work well in organizing and executing many complex activities, from hunting mammoth to hunting the genome.
The core issue for us is whether that authority is granted via consent of the governed or not, thereby presumably achieving some level of accountability for results. Many have observed that even tyrants cannot survive if they "lose the mandate of heaven", a la Ceausescu or Julius Caesar. On the cultural generation of consent in selecting leaders, the earliest example I read of was the monastics selecting their abbot during the "Dark Ages", but I suspect there are many earlier examples.
What we are facing now (at least in the US) is the fear that the election/ selection process has been corrupted (mostly via mail in ballots and the counting thereof) and that our desired accountability has been or will be lost. Congress delegating rule making to the admin state has further eroded keeping authority accountable.
The problem is exactly what you point out - the social dynamics of 10,000+ years ago are not scalable to our social existence today. It isn't a question of reverting back - we haven't escaped that gravitational well and we must, unless we are to regress.
The flaw in the Enlightenment is the presumption that rationality reigns supreme (with or without God), rather than being a limited tool for a random species of hairless ape in a chaotic universe.
I'm not suggesting we revert back, but I don't think we can get around the idea of having an ultimate Authority giving us a ground truth to operate off of. How else would we make sense of anything?
Agreed that the flaw in the enlightenment is essentially the worship of intellect or rationality.
What would you propose as a way to move forward? Are you saying we jettison old belief systems?
I'm generally more in favor of trying to reinterpret or re-examine them to see their wisdom and virtues through a modern lens.
The problem of ultimate Authority is, we (as a species) always have more than one. I would agree that it tends to work, locally. But as soon as multiple groups (each with their own Authority) begin to interact, it isn't feasible to have only one. It is a zero-sum contest.
The reason we crave that Authority is it staves off the terrifying prospect of chaos. When Lorenzo speaks to our capacity for self-deception, this may be the ultimate source. If we exist in a chaotic universe, then the presumption of Authority (i.e. God) is in fact a widespread self-deception. It may well be that it sort of works, for a time and for a place; and that might even be fairly lengthy (in terms of human history). But if ultimately it is a self-deception, then eventually reality is going to have a say about it.