The UN is the biggest threat now because under the guise of “foreign aid” they have a permanent bounty for destruction and tyranny on all parts of the world that are prone to transition.
I think it’s crystal clear based on its track record that the UN has no other purpose.
Clayton -
Clayton,
Sorry I got the reference wrong but the search function on my posts isn’t working well and I can’t find it. Can you remember which threads you started in arguing for a modified Epicurean position? If you can remember the title’s I’ll find my argument I posted. When I do that I’ll answer your question as to how we go beyond the individual as it’s all linked.
After applying my ninja Google skills, I think I have dug up the thread you were looking for.
Based on a quick scan of the thread to refresh my memory, it appears that you are referring to a transcendental argument for the existence of God when you say “go beyond the individual” - is that correct?
Clayton -
Essentially yes. Most of my extensive argument can be found here though:
https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/an-inconsistent-argument-in-human-action/16383
I just have to re-quote this whole thing. I intend to look into that book.
What is most interesting to me is that if size is all that matters, and if this is a simple evolutionary argument to make, then spreading libertarianism just got a whole lot easier. Merely getting people to see that our tribal instincts have not adapted to the scale of the modern state seems pretty easy. No need to muck about with anything else; just downsize it!
First few pages of the book: http://www.beyonddemocracy.net/beyond-democracy-first-chapter-2012-jan.pdf
Actually, there are quite a few defenses against this argument already out there.
“You’re right, and we have not adapted to the modern economy. That’s why we need to stop globalization and regulate multi-national corporations and stop the raping of the planet by ‘the free market.’”
“But what other alternative is there? Democracy may have its problems but it’s the best we have. Until we evolve an awareness of the scale of the global community, this is what we’re stuck with. The answer is not to throw away the best tool we have for preserving human rights: democracy. That’s suicide.”
“Malthus and Hobbes were right - we are not evolved to be able to handle the reality of massive populations. This is exactly why we need a technocratic class that specializes in the study and planning of society under these conditions. You don’t need a technocrat bureaucracy in the African savanna.”
“The libertarian ethic makes sense only in small communities with large amounts of natural resources where people aren’t constantly ‘bumping into’ each other. The American West was libertarian because you could shoot your rifle in any direction and you wouldn’t kill someone. But that ethic just doesn’t work in downtown NYC. Our ape brains can easily process the rules for small communities and wide-open spaces but we have trouble with high populations in dense cities.”
You get the idea.
I do think that we can benefit from folding in the observations of Evolutionary Psychology into existing anti-state arguments. But I don’t think it’s a magic cure as there are already lots of counter-arguments (however muddled) out there.
Clayton -
The tribal scale argument is not a magic cure, but it does seem to minimize the need to get entangled with most of the other arguments. As long as people are convinced states need to be much smaller, I don’t really care what their politics or economics are like - I can always move somewhere else.
Taking the point of the tribal scale argument seriously either eliminates this objection or converts it into the third one below.
Democracy (or whatever) at a tribal scale - sounds fine to me. This one also seems like it can be overcome simply by harping on the main point.
This is exactly where I’d like the debate to be. The proponents would then be at a fundamental disadvantage in that they would be arguing that we need to compensate for the tendency to simply scale tribalism upwards . . . by essentially creating a system that is an upward-scaled tribal model, a tribe writ large. The libertarian side then seems a very comfortable position to argue from.
Again, this is a very nice place for the argument to take place. Conceding this point just leaves us with small city-states, which would be a huge improvement.
All in all, focusing the statism vs. anti-statism argument on how to compensate for the evolutionarily discordant conditions of the modern world seems to vastly limit the argument space and cast a steady light on those ever-hidden tendencies that are fundamental to the insidious plausibility of statist thinking. Tribe size has grown by literally about a million times. Once the evolutionary position has been presented and understood, it seems extremely difficult to argue against the need to compensate for our innate tendency to look up to “tribal elders” at that scale by simply doing the obvious: stop respecting and enabling large tribe-like structures. Whatever else need be done to compensate is surely readily seen as pailing in comparison to this. No other factor is anywhere near as evolutionarily discordant as the sheer size of the tribes.
In fact, where I see this argument going is to the middle ground. Ancient-tribe-sized state structures of 150 people could be argued to be too small for various reasons, so we may conclude that the ideal size is a few thousand, a few tens of thousand, or whatever. In any case it just seems hard to arrive at anything other than a massive reduction in the size of states, perhaps by micro-secession if this evopsych meme propagates, when one takes seriously the tremendous disparity between the size of ancestral tribes and that of modern “tribes.” The enormity of the difference means that to simply raise the question and take it up for debate is to make the main compensating adjustment default to, “Whatever you do, make these tribes a whole hell of a lot smaller.”
True dat. Perhaps this would make a good scholarly research area for some up-and-coming Mises University student. I’ve felt for some time that Austrian social science can benefit enormously from Evolutionary Psychology. EP provides us a way to actually fill in the particular contents of human nature in a way that is more scientifically rigorous than the armchair approach used by the natural-law theorists. It turns out that - like Nature herself - human nature is immensely intricate, subtle and in some ways f’d up. But above all, it is beautiful and I think we need a revival of the Renaissance values regarding human beauty, not only the exterior beauty of the human form, but also the internal beauty of the human soul. EP give us a microscope with which to do just that.
Clayton -
Then it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to a size of one.
What I especially liked about “Beyond Democracy” is how it unassumingly introduces the big guns through the back door, so to speak. The tone and language is so approachable. I’ve seen people who have never imagined a society without democracy come out almost fully converted after reading it (?!) asking for more material along the same lines. The strongest-punching 100+ pages I’ve ever seen.
That is an incredible endorsement. I would like to read it myself, but more than that I would like to try giving it out to random people and see what the conversion rate actually is. I always believe there is a shortcut to this type of massive changing of minds, particularly something that cuts through all the little details and small-fry debate fodder.
AJ, the Kindle reader app (for any device) is free to download. The book is $0.99.
I think it’s the freshness of the book – talking about current events – that’s making it so effective. Unfortunately, some/most people have hard time extracting universally valid concepts from texts written 50-100 years ago: “Yes that may have made sense then, but how is that relevant for our modern society/economy now?”
Some interesting thoughts on the subject of the role that culture plays in shaping individual morality. I think that the Deweyian approach that the author discusses at the end of the article is precisely the kind of thing I’m not interested in attempting. I think the Deweyian strategy cannot be implemented without the aid of an institution with virtually unlimited resources, such as the State, that is, it cannot be done without resorting to immoral means which moots the original purpose (cf the real-world outcome of the Deweyian experiment in our culture).
However, I think that we can look to the Catholic Church in the medieval era or the Charismatic churches in the modern era (just two out of many examples) as models of a more small-scale, less ambitious approach than the Deweyian model… remedial moral instruction combined with cultural refuge or cultural oasis. The goal is not to “get 'em while they’re young” but, rather, to help the broken, the lost, the helpless, the people that have reached a point of despair and are looking for “salvation”, that is, a life-change. The enduring success of religious institutions that cater to these sorts of people should be ample evidence of the effectiveness of this strategy. While you’re not going to “change the world”, you may be able to build a community of people who share a common belief that the wider culture is unhealthy for individual well-being and moral character and that it is in the individual’s own interest to seek out a sub-culture where right-living is a more central concern than it is in the predatory culture of the Elites, the avaricious, ambitious culture of the bourgeois/commercial class or the hedonistic, layabout culture of the underclass.
I think one of the missing puzzle pieces is some kind of ritual. I am fascinated by Hindu religions. In many of them, there is no obligation to attend temple, though of course the most devout are those who attend regularly. Rather, the head-of-household is to have a private room in his house or area within the house (if he is not wealthy enough to have a separate room) where an image of the chief deity is set up, perhaps surrounded by supporting deities, and a daily ritual is observed involving some prayers and offering of incense, etc. On major holidays, a “puja” (feast/celebration) can he held in the home or, optionally, you might go to the temple. The details of the rituals are not interesting to me so much as the fact of the ritual and the “laissez-faire” nature of participation in temple ritual as well as the “privatized” and “individualized” nature of one’s ritual obligations to god within the home.
What this tells me is that ritual need not be collective ritual to confer the benefits of ritual. If we are to have a ritual, a non-collectivist ritual seems to me the natural starting point. On its face, any ritual is inherently arbitrary but I think we can look to the example of religious traditions to identify key attributes that a personal ritual should have. It should involve quiet contemplation, it should have a separate physical space, it should occur regularly, perhaps with distinct daily, weekly, monthly and annual rituals, and it should involve performance of some kind of mental and physical action that occupies some meaningful duration, whether it be holding a pose, chanting, lighting candles, etc.
The purpose of having an individual ritual is to establish a sense of peace and gravity, to remind oneself that all is well with the world no matter what other circumstances may be unfolding outside of the ritual space. This provides a “psychological foothold” or foundation on which to ground all other actions throughout the day. It’s nice to have a lot of theories about how one should live one’s life and what sorts of decisions an individual should make but once you go out into the real world, that all goes out the window once someone ruffles your feathers or blindsides you with an unexpected development.
The idea here is that the organization provides guidance, role-modeling and reference information that allows the individual to begin reconstructing his own environment in a way that is more conducive to his own spiritual* health. A core part of this is not just “information” but detailed, specific behavioral recommendations** - including such things as establishing a personal ritual - that will help the individual begin rebuilding his life on a sounder footing than whatever he had before that led to the life crisis that impelled him through the front doors in the first place.
One of the competitive disadvantages of such an organization vis-a-vis established religions is that it is “young” and, therefore, untested. However, I think we can re-frame the matter not in terms of organization but in terms of ideas. The moral ideas of Epicurus (and, I’m learning, Aristippus), Aristotle, Buddha and others are extremely ancient - far more ancient than Christian teachings and at least as ancient as the written records of purportedly Jewish teachings.
I have also thought about funding. How do you pay the light bill and earn an income if this is your profession? Well, I have thought of simply charging a price because this is the most straightforward way to calculate costs and profitability and to allow customers to judge the benefits versus the cost to themselves but the more I read about alternative religions, the more convinced I am that donations really are the only way to go. The problem is that there is an inherent conflict-of-interest in having a personal, counseling, moral-instruction relationship with an individual and also having a commercial relationship with that individual. It’s like how pscyhologists are forbidden to have sexual relations with their clients. It’s just too easy to prey on an emotionally vulnerable person. And an organization that does not enforce a wall between the personal and the commercial will find itself fraught with conflicts-of-interest and pump-and-dump behavior. Not only does this undermine the purpose of such an organization, it would actually doom the organization to market extinction.
I don’t think that funding will be lacking on a donational basis. Many churches do little if anything to help individuals and some even bring spiritual harm to them, yet people fund these churches on the delusion that they are being helped. How much easier to obtain voluntary funding from individuals who are actually being helped!
Clayton -
*The word “spiritual” is here used guardedly - I simply mean “all of those aspects of human well-being which escape the grasp of medical science to measure”
**I want to emphasize that these must be recommendations in order to carry real moral credence - some religious organizations - such as the one that starts with “Scien” and rhymes with “tology” - use emotional, social, financial, legal and other forms of manipulation to induce conformity; these are bully tactics that render the moral legitimacy of such an organization null and void
I was doing some brainstorming today on how to get started. It costs quite a bit of money to rent even a small commercial space suitable for public meetings but you could probably get rent on the cheap from a liberal/ecumenical church (ELCA, Episcopal, Unitarian, etc.) This space would be suitable for lectures and other, participatory activities (singing, constructive activities, and so on).
Ideally, you would eventually get some dedicated space for meeting. One of the first things you’d want is a good library filled with the valuable books of ancient and more modern teaching on the basics of philosophy - particularly, sound moral philosophy - and some kind of reading space where people can sit and read quietly.
I think what is also needed is some kind of introductory text and an accompanying reader. The introductory text is simply an overview of the basic ideas motivating the organization and the key differences between these ideas and mainstream ideas - basically a brief introduction to Epicurean moral philosophy combined with buttressing metaphysical and social philosophical ideas (including economics). I’m currently working on a text along these lines and I hope to strike a comfortable, pedagogical tone.
The reader should contain relevant selections from the above-mentioned thinkers - Epicurus, Aristotle, etc. - that basically center around the idea of moral philosophy as the art of right living, where right living is judged by one’s own satisfaction (nirvana, ataraxia).
The idea of the introductory text/reader is not to try to attenuate the reader’s philosophical reading or to say that these are the truly important philosophical readings but, rather, to communicate these ideas to the individual in the most concise - yet persuasive and authoritative - manner. The introductory text should have a primarily pedagogical tone and should be accessible to, say, a 10th grader in bite-size chunks that don’t require him or her to learn more than 2 or 3 new words in a single section. The accompanying reader should act as a kind of “first readings in the literature” - I’m thinking of excerpts from the first chapters of Human Action, whatever survives of Epicurus’ writings, excerpts from the Nicomachean Ethics, perhaps some excerpts from Bastiat, Etienne de la Boetie, Hazlitt, Stirner, maybe even some Nietchze (Beyond Good and Evil), etc. Suggestions welcome.
The library should contain all the books exceprted as well as those which comprise a real, healthy intellectual’s bookshelf, even those which may be antagonistic to libertarian ideas so long as they are based on truly sound thinking and rigorous intellectual debate (the writings of someone like Bryan Caplan, for example). Basically, I’m thinking of a bookshelf where the interested individual could put himself through his own classical education if he wanted to - in other words, it should include Euclid’s Elements, Newton’s Principia, the Greeks, the Scholastics, the Austrians, Descartes, Leibniz etc. etc. etc. Number theory and astronomy are the queens of mathematics and science, respectively and should be placed in the highest position of intellectual honor. Ideally, you would have star-charts on the walls and geometric proofs of the main theorems of number theory inscribed in the tables.
Lecture topics could be based on any of the literature but should tend to stick to the core of Epicurean moral philosophy over time. I’m thinking that special topics could include things like introductions to geometric constructions and proofs in order to teach rigorous, formal thinking. It could include lessons on logic, grammar and rhetoric. These would be “survey lectures” intended to give the audience a taste of the respective subjects, not actual courses. Specialists in these subjects (though somewhat rare these days) could be consulted or a sufficient degree of facility in the subjects to deliver a survey lecture could be taught within the organization itself.
Guest speakers on revisionist history - particularly local history (Native American history, the history of oppression and resistance, etc.) - the arts, life sciences, etc. could be invited in once you have a critical mass where such speakers would be interested in having a willing audience. Think “TED for local folks”. It would be decisively less big-budget but just as healthy in terms of spurring critical thinking and healthy debate and discussion outside the prefabricated confines of the Establishment’s narratives.
So, this would provide a big chunk of the “what to talk about” and “what to do”. The next remaining thing is how to help people. After all, this would be the true purpose of the organization - help people learn how to help themselves and break their morphine-drip dependency on “the System.” The very act of helping others and providing a forum through which people can help each other will be cathartic. This would involve really sitting down and talking to people about the specific problems in their lives and learning how to apply sound moral philosophy to solving those problems.
Finally, all this must be done with the acknowledged caveat that we are operating nearly in a cultural vacuum. One of the reasons I’ve been reading about culture and morality is that I believe that the culture - all those little things in your day-to-day life that condition your expectations from other people and the world generally - is the primary repository of knowledge regarding right-living. But when the culture itself is corrupted, you are left having to reinvent the wheel for yourself at every step of the way. There is no longer any division-of-labor in the accumulation of knowledge on right living. There’s only what you figure out for yourself. This would be one of the key points of the introductory reader and would provide an impetus to create a sub-culture where there is active, non-judgmental sharing of notes on ways to live life to the fullest.
Clayton -
I’m right with you Clayton, I’ve been thinking about the same sort of things for a while now. Another thing could be the fostering of techne, specific skills of daily life that seem to have been swept aside by the inanity of a youth of compulsory indoctrination in propaganda. They would be presented as ways to better one’s life in small ways through self-reliance, and from them could develop further and more specialised skills for employment and entrepreneurship. This is a step in reviving the family and community education that has been replaced with state-subsidised, useless schooling and college degrees - essentially deceptive welfare for the youth that leaves them without any rudder in life (except, perhaps, for ‘employment’ by the state).
This description calls to mind the school of Booker T. Washington. Are you familiar with his work?
Also, your discussion of the fostering of the spirit and ritual element reminds me of Altucher’s Daily Exercise: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/02/how-to-be-the-luckiest-guy-on-the-planet-in-4-easy-steps/
I suppose the moral and spiritual side of the Free Community (the ‘Knights of Liberty’, perhaps!) is a revival of Epicurus’ Garden.
@Aristippus: Great suggestion on the “trade school” idea. My Dad attended a trade school here in Portland, OR as his high school - a school founded by one of the great entrepreneurs of the late-19th, early-20th centuries (Simon Benson) - and he has built a lifelong career on the skills he learned there, no college education required. He is “blue collar” but has done just fine for himself. I think you’re right that there’s definitely a market demand for more serious-minded education aimed at preparing high-school kids for something other than filling out community college entrance exams or flipping burgers.
I’ve heard of Booker T. Washington but don’t know much about him. I’ll look into it.
I saw that Altucher daily sometime back and it really stuck in my head. I’ll relate a personal story on this point that I feel illuminates something about human nature, at least, gives anecdotal evidence of it. I was raised devoutly religious… we attended church every time the doors were open (at least 3x a week) and memorized copious amounts of Scripture and Protestant catechism, etc.
This past Easter, I was at home with my kids (I no longer attend church) and they asked me what Easter is. So, I figured I might as well read the relevant section from the Bible. So, I read to them from the end of the book of John about the resurrection of Christ and explained to them that Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. Due to personal circumstances, I’ve been under tremendous stress for quite some time and I usually fall asleep hard. That night, I laid down to sleep and had this enveloping sense of peace and well-being - a feeling of being deeply happy and at ease that I haven’t felt in probably three years. I went to sleep easily. On reflection, I believe that it was the fact that I read from to my children from the Bible.
I mentioned my devoutly religious background because I don’t believe at all that the feeling of peace I had was from God, at least, not from the God described in the Bible. I suspect that it had to do with the fact that, when I was young, a strong sense of ritual had been cultivated in me and when I read from the Bible (one of those childhood rituals), it satisfied some deep-seated psychological need. But the fact that a sense of ritual could be so powerfully cultivated at all suggests to me that there must be some already-existing pscyhological “hooks” in every human’s brain that are receptive to and benefit from engaging in ritual behavior.
And the Garden of Epicurus just sounds so amazing to me. I literally have this Edenic vision in my mind… you walk in under a stone arch and the Garden is surrounded by a stone wall - not too high like a castle wall, but not low enough to step over, either - and there are vines creeping on the walls and grape-vines and olive trees growing inside. In the center of the garden, there are stone or wooden tables arranged on the smooth stone floor of a spacious gazebo that is of very modest architecture and does not distract the viewer or impose on the garden. On the tables, there is always some kind of modest snack - bread, olive oil, almonds, dates - wine and a copper pitcher of water with a towel for washing your hands. The roof is open to allow the stars to be seen at night but plenty of trees and shrubs surround so that there is shade from the Sun during the day. Cots or benches suitable for outdoor napping or sleeping during warm nights are nearby. Footpaths meander through the garden which is not unkempt but is tended practically… kept free of weeds and planted with some desirable plants and flowers that are kept in serviceable condition but not obsessively trimmed for show like an English or Japanese garden. Of course, there are always people around to talk to, sleep next to, read alongside, or tend the garden with.
Clayton -
On second-reading, I think this deserves highlighting - you’re very right on this one, everything from how to cook yourself breakfast, to how to change a flat tire, to how balance a checkbook to how to iron a dress shirt. Ironically, my life recently (post-divorce) has been a school of hard knocks on a lot of these very subjects. I will note that the patriarchal culture of Christian conservatives can create the same kind of ineptitude on basic life skills among young men that the public schools engender by other means.
Clayton -
Yeah, I think you’re right about the importance of ritual. I was mildly religious growing up (but an atheist by age 12), and I still sort of have a soft spot for it all - I could never be one of those fashionable lefty militant atheists. I think because I was enamoured with religion when I was very young, I have retained a reverence for it; I don’t really make jokes about religion even though they are in vogue and despite the fact that I think the basis of all religions is absolute fantasy. I think a place like the Garden would be apt as an environment for this, and your description of it is much how I imagined it.
The first step is perhaps putting together a short collection of excerpts and quotations from various sages, perhaps no more than a couple pages long each. I’m thinking of authors like:
Aesop
Socrates (in Plato)
Aristotle
Epicurus (in Lucretius, Diogenes Laertius, Philodemus, Vatican Manuscript, Diogenes of Oenoanda)
Stoics (in Seneca the Younger, Epictetus, Aurelius, Diogenes Laertius)
Confucians (especially the Great Learning)
Lao Tsu
Cicero
Montaigne
Benjamin Franklin - http://www.school-for-champions.com/character/franklin_virtues.htm
Modern authors such as Harry Browne, How I found Freedom in an Unfree World
What do you think about that? Perhaps it could be about 50 pages altogether, split between short excerpts and quotes.
On the topic of teaching basic skills, I see their purpose as threefold:
- Being able to achieve basic functions in life that enable you to live more happily and less stressed
- Encouraging a spirit of self-reliance rather than one that imposes one’s desires on others
- Possibly being the beginning of more developed, marketable skills. By being exposed to a wide variety of technai, individuals might find themselves particularly interested or skillful in certain ones. They are missing this development of marketable skills in compulsory schooling and due to the monopolisation of the labour force which is particularly detrimental to newcomers and the young.