Have you noticed that the vast majority of so-called love songs are really nothing of the kind but are, in fact, sex songs? The funniest example is probably Sinatra’s “When I Was Seventeen.” I mean, here’s a guy who is at the end of his life bragging to everybody how much sex he’d has during his life. As far as he is concerned, he was God’s gift to women. His sex life is what he is most proud of in his life. Goodness gracious!
“Love Songs”
May 2nd, 2009Poetry Is Easy
May 1st, 2009Here’s a poem to my fictional wife I made up yesterday in about 10 minutes while falling asleep.
We’ll be together
Through heat and cold
Regardless of weather
And jealousy’s hold
We’ll be in love still
At least until
Our anniversary gold.
Ah? Good? Bad?
La Petite Mort, Part II
May 1st, 2009I am not suggesting that having children is a bad thing, only that it is a highly unselfish act. The parents, as James Chastek might say, are martyrs; they sacrifice themselves for a greater good.
Don’t Buy Cars from the Red AmeriComs
April 28th, 2009The federal government is going into the car business. Note how ridiculous this remark sounds: “This administration has no desire to run an auto company on a day-to-day basis.” Of course, it will have to keep tight control over the management, since the managers will have little incentive to generate profit, because any loss will be covered by taxes.
This is still more evidence that we are living in an interesting time when the USA is on the decline. I don’t believe the decline will be stopped.
Cats!
April 27th, 2009Notice the dynamics between Demeter and Macavity. Now both Demeter and Bombalurina seem to like bad boys, which is obvious given that they introduce Macavity in a very flirtatious manner, and Macavity is as bad as they come. And it is plausible to suppose that they had some past with him. But Demeter is now mates with Munkustrap, and Munkustrap is the narrator of the show and leader of the tribe. So, Demeter is enjoying her high status, but she’s afraid her past will come to haunt her. And that’s why she is so sensitive to Macavity, e.g., she unmasks the false Old Deuteronomy.
Update. Another question is why Grizabella is so unwelcome in the tribe. The most plausible supposition, I think, is that when she left to “haunt many a low resort,” she made it abundantly clear that she was too good for the rest of the cats. Or, possibly, she was a kind of prostitute or someone similarly disreputable, such that even Bombalurina, arguably the sexiest cat in the tribe, is disgusted with her.
Update 2. Every performer in Cats has in a manner of speaking two natures: the cat nature and the human nature with a single personality which is the human one. But playing a cat allows them to experience life to some extent from the point of view of a cat. So, Jesus, too, had his two natures, such that his human nature provided him with a stream of experiences that his divine nature alone could not have supplied. Each performer can at the same time think as a human and as a cat: he can lower himself into the world of cats. So, Jesus, too, could interact with us on our level.
The Shadow Does Not Know Jack
April 20th, 2009In the days of Bill Clinton, when the freerepublic.com people were still sane, somebody mentioned the “shadow government.” This brought about a contest of hilarious pictures depicting whatever the shadow government seemed to mean. Here are some of them.
Rhymes
April 18th, 2009Consider the following rhymes, off the top of my head:
try and hide – cyanide
religion – pigeon
mind – try and
water – slaughter
along – strong – song
queen – seventeen
funeral – sooner-or-l… ater
society – impiety – propriety – variety
abdo’men – roman
church – perch
hears – grenadiers
Don’t you think these are, well, interesting? Have I been in the ivory tower so long that I stopped realizing that the masses find rhymes like be-me and you-too perfectly adequate for top-ranking songs? And for heaven’s sake, “come” does not rhyme with “home,” nor “time,” with “wine.”
Understanding Women, Part II
April 8th, 2009“… many men believe that promiscuity does not suit women. They believe that a woman who has had many partners cannot bind emotionally with a husband. She is never his.” Article by Paul Craig Roberts.
How to Think Like an Economist: “Change Happens on the Margin”
April 7th, 2009Suppose a newspaper editor is thinking whether to include a new and funny comic strip in the newspaper. If he does, there will arise three classes of people. First, there will be people who will not read the newspaper even if it has the new comic; third, there will be people who will read the newspaper even if it does not have the comic. But there will also be, perhaps small, a second group of people for whom this comic makes a difference between reading and not reading the newspaper. They would not read without the comic but would read with the comic. These are the people the editor is concerned about.
We can go further. Of the people who merely read the newspaper (e.g., abandoned papers in the coffee shop) — who will now include the “second group” above — some will actually buy it. Of those some will buy it even without the comic; others will not buy it even with the comic, yet there will also likely be individuals “on the margin” who will change their stance from being freeloaders to paying for their papers. Again, that’s the group the editor has in mind in making the decision of whether to include the comic into the newspaper.
The same analysis can continue. Of the people who buy, some will actually subscribe. The comic will make a difference for the marginal group of people who will decide to become new subscribers solely because of the comic. They “really like” the newspaper already, and the comic makes the paper so good that the comic acts as the “final straw that breaks the camel’s back”; it pushes them “over the edge”; that is, it impels these marginal buyers to subscribe.
How to Think Like an Economist: “I Love Fags”
April 7th, 2009They don’t compete with me for pussy.
La Petite Mort
April 7th, 2009It means “little death” in French and refers to an orgasm. It’s not, I think, because the intense pleasure of an orgasm may, for a few seconds, dull reason. Why then? Well, suppose a man begets a child. What does it mean for the man that he is the father? Well, it means that the child is bound to replace him. The “old man” will, in time, become literally old, weak, senile, and then die at the very time when his sons are entering the prime of their lives. An orgasm is a sign of one’s mortality, a memento mori, in that its purpose is to create beings whose destiny it is to supplant you and rule the world as they see fit, possibly ignoring everything you have learned or done beforehand.
Some animals, like salmon and some spiders, die as a result of procreation. The urge to reproduce overpowers even the natural repugnance of dying.
On the other hand, celibacy coupled with a speculative life suggests transcendence and preservation of the soul after the death of the body. (Not that this is a life for everybody; I mean, sex is pretty sweet, and families blessed with children are usually very happy.)
Thomas Morris on Belief Conservation
April 7th, 2009In the first philosophy book I ever read, Philosophy for Dummies by Thomas Morris (which is a brilliant introduction to numerous philosophical ideas), Morris articulates the “principle of belief conservation.” First he argues that some of our beliefs are rational, or else the term “rational belief” would have neither referent nor meaning. The usefulness of this term comes from being able to separate rational beliefs from ir- or non-rational ones. It follows that our belief acquisition faculties are at least sometimes reliable.
Here’s the principle. For any proposition, P: If
- Taking a certain cognitive stance toward P (for example, believing it, rejecting it, or withholding judgment) would require rejecting or doubting a vast number of your current beliefs.
- You have no independent positive reason to reject or doubt all those other beliefs, and
- You have no compelling reason to take up that cognitive stance towards P,
then it is more rational for you not to take that cognitive stance toward P.
“Your current beliefs,” Morris goes on, “are like a raft or boat on which you are floating, sailing across the seas of life. You need to make repairs and additions during your voyage. But it can never be rational to destroy the boat totally while out on an open sea, hoping somehow to be able to rebuild it from scratch, or else to swim without it.” (72ff)
The principle passes its own test and is elevated into a basic belief.
I think this opinion is similar to what Victor Reppert has proposed, namely that one should keep believing what one already believes, unless one encounters a good reason to believe otherwise.
The Serpent vs. Promethius
April 7th, 2009Is there any parallel between the serpent in Genesis and Prometheus in the Greek mythology? The former tempts Eve and Adam with wisdom (practical or speculative?); the latter brings to men fire and technology. “Had Prometheus not provoked Zeus’ wrath,” says Wikipedia, then, according to Hesiod, “you would easily do work enough in a day to supply you for a full year even without working”; unfortunately, “soon would you put away your rudder over the smoke, and the fields worked by ox and sturdy mule would run to waste.” But had Eve remained steadfast, the first family would also have stayed in God’s graces; but as things actually transpired, “cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” etc. Is this an instance of myth becoming an allegorical fact? But then why is Prometheus honored yet the serpent is identified with the devil?
I’m Changing My Faith
April 1st, 2009Guys, I’m becoming a Rastafarian. Christianity is a great religion, but, having conducted the Outsider Test, I am now convinced that Rastafari is the one true faith. I’m eager to discuss the merits of our religions in the future.
Lew on Academic Freedom
March 31st, 2009Here is this beautiful article. “Universities, like cathedrals, were sanctuaries from wars, political machinations, revolutions, and kingly belligerence… ‘even under the Russian czars the police were forbidden to enter the university’.”
A Conversation in Heaven
March 31st, 2009Imagine the following conversation between God and a creature:
Creature: Why am I like that?
God: Because I made you so.
Creature: Can I be something else?
God: Yes. What would you like to be?
Creature: How can I know until I see the choices and their consequences?
God: Would you like an opportunity to make yourself into whatever you please?
Creature: What do I need to do?
God: Be born.
Thus, God makes us unfinished and orders us to build the rest of ourselves by developing our inborn potentialities. He then accepts or rejects what we have done almost as an art critic would.
This is a combination of the refined “soul factory” and the “evil is necessary” theodicies.
Utilitarianism: A Lexicographical Priority
March 31st, 2009The following is based upon my Utilitarianism by Means of Egoism?, Part III. The demands of utilitarianism are in a certain sense hierarchical. At the base lies the prescription to make a society (or the world as a whole) as efficient as possible. Under unhampered free market capitalism “there are no able-bodied paupers,” says Mises.
The second tier is private charity, voluntarily discharged duties to help the poor, the widows and orphans, the church, and suchlike. The reason why there is a lexicographical priority is that it is worse than useless to throw charitable donations into a society that cannot but remain poor because of its abhorrence of capitalism. First the citizens must learn economics and cooperate according to its teachings. Only then, with respect to abandoned infants, the incapacitated, and so on, will charity play its indispensable role. One must first teach the vast majority to fish, and give fish only to those who cannot produce.
A reply to Unger’s Living High and Letting Die then is that unless poor countries put themselves together and eliminate poverty for the general population, flooding them with foreign aid or charitable donations is futile. If we want to help, we should send them economics teachers who will explain to them what’s what. Only once laissez-faire capitalism is accepted and implemented, and the standard of living is rising rapidly, will it make sense to care for the sick, the dying, and so on. When the masses are dying from hunger or live on the brink of starvation or barely subsisting, there can be no talk about helping the few deserving poor, because everyone is poor. Again, what they need is not charity but a solid grounding in economics and libertarianism.
It is also clear that failure to be charitable is not a crime like theft but merely a vice, and vices are not crimes. Just because Scrooge is a bad and stingy person does not mean that it’s OK to steal from him or tax him. That would be a crime, whereas Scrooge’s behavior is merely a vice and “does not rise to the level” of a crime. A breach of a moral duty is not necessarily a breach of a legal duty.
The third tier is paternalism. If everything fails, and a person’s powers incline to evil or failure, then those powers must be temporarily taken away until such time when he will learn to use them responsibly or successfully.
The Real Social Contract
March 31st, 2009Mises believed that private property is useful only insofar as it serves human ends:
Private property is a human device. It is not sacred. It came into existence in early ages of history, when people with their own power and by their own authority appropriated to themselves what had previously not been anybody’s property. Again and again proprietors were robbed of their property by expropriation. …
Ownership in the market economy is no longer linked up with the remote origin of private property. Those events in a far-distant past, hidden in the darkness of primitive mankind’s history, are no longer of any concern for our day. For in an unhampered market society the consumers daily decide anew who should own and how much he should own. The consumers allot control of the means of production to those who know how to use them best for the satisfaction of the most urgent wants of the consumers. …
The meaning of private property in the market society is radically different from what it is under a system of each household’s autarky. Where each household is economically self-sufficient, the privately owned means of production exclusively serve the proprietor. He alone reaps all the benefits derived from their employment. In the market society the proprietors of capital and land can enjoy their property only by employing it for the satisfaction of other people’s wants. They must serve the consumers in order to have any advantage from what is their own. The very fact that they own means of production forces them to submit to the wishes of the public. Ownership is an asset only for those who know how to employ it in the best possible way for the benefit of the consumers. It is a social function. (HA, 683ff)
For Mises society is not just a spontaneous order but a deliberate construction based on an explicit ideology. It is part of the liberal ideology that private property (in the factors of production) is a means to greatest happiness for the greatest number. In this sense it could be considered a “social contract” entered into by all people with the purpose of making social cooperation both possible (as contrasted with socialism) and most efficient (as contrasted with interventionism).
This is precisely the social contract that I would insist on making behind the veil of ignorance.
The Faerie Queene
March 31st, 2009I was searching for that on Google and also came up with the lyrics of the song Faerie Queen (lyrics; song) by Blackmore’s Night. Turns out they’ve got some beautiful songs in their repertoire, such as: Loreley (lyrics; song). Oh, and here’s another poem about a fairy, though this time an evil one: Las Belle Dame sans Merci.
Re: The Outsider Test for Faith, Part II
March 26th, 2009Rothbard posed the question: who are the greater villains with respect to liberty, the unwashed masses or the power elite? His answer was:
First, even granting for a moment that the masses are the worst possible, that they are perpetually Hell-bent on lynching anyone down the block, the mass of people simply don’t have the time for politics or political shenanigans. The average person must spend most of his time on the daily business of life, being with his family, seeing his friends, etc. He can only get interested in politics or engage in it sporadically.
The only people who have time for politics are the professionals: the bureaucrats, politicians, and special interest groups dependent on political rule. They make money out of politics, and so they are intensely interested, and lobby and are active twenty-four hours a day. Therefore, these special interest groups will tend to win out over the uninterested masses. This is the basic insight of the Public Choice school of economics.
There is a similar piece of wisdom awaiting us in the evaluation of the outsider test. The truth is, natural theology, philosophy of religion, proper interpretation of the Bible, the field of comparative religion are far beyond what the masses can do and judge for themselves. They are not professional philosophers and theologians with their noses in books and heads in the clouds. They are too busy living real lives.
Consequently, if this vast majority were to abandon their Christian faith, then they would no better be able to justify their atheism or deism than they had previously been able to justify their Christianity. They would be as helpless as newly minted atheists against a sophisticated defender of the Christian faith like Aquinas or William Lane Craig as they are now against a sophisticated defender of atheism like Loftus. So, what our author demands from people is unrealistic and futile. As a clarion call to some elite group of NTs to get to work, it’s fine. Otherwise, it’s of little consequence.
Another subtle point is that the Christian faith, at least according to St. Thomas, is an infused virtue. It’s created by grace as much as by natural study. It may be impossible to doubt the faith without losing it altogether. In other words, becoming genuinely skeptical of your faith is a dangerous project, because you’ll be defying the influence of grace.
Therefore, it may be advisable for a Christian to adopt the motto “faith seeking understanding.” If Islam and Judaism and so on have notions of grace, the same attitude is recommended. Then it may happen upon a thorough investigation that one eventually converts from one faith to another. Moreover, if trying to “understand” can move you from Christianity to Islam, then it can also move you from Christianity to, say, deism. But this won’t be a violent destructive transition, as Loftus’s radical skepticism must needs entail, but a much more gradual and smooth one.
So, even Loftus’s method is flawed.