Taking and selling of freedom

The need for individuals to pull together for both the common good and their longer term individual good means that cheats and freeloaders must be punished. This is an urgent need which lies at the foundation of a healthy society and provides a powerful argument for a measure of coercion in political life. The question is who should do the coercing?

Western societies are commonly described as democracies but in practice the extent to which the people rule is very limited. Instead of rule by the people the deal is that the people let a politcal class rule and manage the economy and society in return for the freedom to live within a framework of consumer goods and private freedoms. Those who have, have the goods and those who have not are brought into the political consensus of passivity by welfare benefits. In return for these benefits those who could if they wished take an active part in political life and make society into a true democracy allow the political class to rule.

In a time of peace and plenty this is not such a bad deal but don't call it democracy.

Political theorists have assumed that democratic freedoms grow with a middle class which can hold the state to account but with the growth see an alternative model in which the freedom to make and spend money is granted in exchange for obedience.

There are many ways the consensus of passivity could end. For example, external threats of the usual kind eg war. External threats of a new kind eg global warming. Internal threats of social division through immigration. Or systemic threats, such as widespread abuse of the welfare system.

The consensus of passivity like every other system will break. The question is how.

Selfish genes and selfish people

The conflict between good and evil, charity and selfishness is an eternal theme in the story of life.

Richard Dawkins has written about the concept of "selfish" genes. But selfish genes don’t mean selfish individuals since one gene on its own will not win the battle for life. The collective of selfish genes in the genome need therefore to work together so that each of them can realise the aim of their selfishness by pulling together so each of them can have a chance of surviving and reproducing.

Working for the common good of the organism means working for the survival of other genes in the hope that they will do the same. There is therefore an obvious incentive to cheat.

It is the same with human societies. It is one of the marks of a healthy society that it, on the hand, encourages co-operation and, on the other, discourages cheats who take advantage of others. If a group or a society is able to suppress "selfishness" that is, actions which encourage others to act in a way which is apparently advantageous to the individual but disadvantageous overall then it will be strong and easily able to overcome "selfish" groups and societies.

It is absolutely vital that the law, the state and public opinion condemn and punish "selfishness".

Compassion post 1950

No previous civilization has accepted the obligation to help human beings whoever they may be. Help was given to narrowly defined groups; the family, the clan, neighbours etc but its scope was narrow. I believe that this was the product of the poverty of all ages before our own.

But now the capitalist cornucopia is overflowing with the good things of life. I have noted elsewhere that the growth of wealth has had pernicious effects. But in this case the growth of discretionary income when combined with the psychological need to avoid pain and feel that one is really a good person at heart has made it possible for people either to give away just a little of their own money or through governments to give away rather larger amounts of other peoples' money. It may not be from pure motives but there is a degree of willingness to help strangers that has never before been present in any society.

But often they are not completely strangers to us. They are not abstract concepts on the other side of the world or on the wrong side of town. We see them on TV and their suffering is brought into our homes. Of course we generally turn away but maudlin emotional appeals touch many of us. The more spectacular the event, the more emotive the images, the more the money rolls in even if there are often more pressing needs elsewhere.

Morality the easy way

One of the most curious developments in social life in the past few years has been the emergence of the 'ethical consumer'. The ethical consumer thinks he can do his bit to change the world by changing what he buys. He thinks that he can "do his bit" to make the world a better place by careful choices about what he buys. But is this more about making him feel good about himself?

Take for example organic food. There is no evidence that organic food is any healthier than the ordinary kind but buying it produces the warm and fuzzy feeling one can’t get from the non-organic variety. Buying organic says you are a good person. It says that you are sensitive and caring about the world around you.

Ethical consumerism makes a mockery of ethics. It is a fashion statement. It is an act of aggression which says “I am a good person and you are a savage”.

The same is true of recycling. Recycling is often uneconomic and can even be damaging to the environment but it is morally good for the same reason that buying organic is good. that it is expensive, wasteful and possibly damaging to the environment is not relevant to why it is done. The point is to be seen to be “doing your bit” to make the world a better place and to make that point as publicly as possible.

Environmentalism has filled the gap by declining ideologies and religions. Like a Bible thumping hypocrites of old it is all about two things. Firstly, self deception and convincing oneself that you are really a good person despite the guilt of being rich in a world of poverty. And secondly, the aggression of being holier than your neighbour.

It is one of the products of growing wealth. In earlier eras few people had the option of being selective about the goods they bought. The little they had went on the essentials of food and shelter. It had to be spent carefully and thrift and economy were what mattered. It is only with the growth of discretionary income in the 20th century that it became possible to conspicuously waste money on organic food.

Imagine a world of drug induced bliss

A drug induced bliss would be empty. We don’t want to be placid, tender, compassionate idiots. If given the option few would choose and those who did; if they still had the possibility of choice in their chosen utopia would want to escape.

We want to experience life but a life that is both fuller and happier.

If we are to be in the universe we must have the possibility of misery. That is the way it is. There is no victory, no sense of achievement without the possibility of defeat – and there can be no happiness without its opposite. And, perhaps unjustly, some will be happier and more successful in finding true happiness and living the good life than others

Remember Nature’s power

Our civilisation is not for ever. The black earth will creep in over the streets. Brambles and nettles will hide the rusting wrecks and rivers will flood our fine streets and at last the last star goes dark.

Stoics and Immortality

Show me a man who though sick is happy, though in danger is happy, though dying is happy, though condemned to exile is happy, though in disrepute is happy. Show him! By the gods, I would fain see a Stoic. — Epictetus

The lesson from looking at the history of the human race and the long, long story of blood-stained evolution is that we must just make the best of our time in the universe. There may be no such thing as a full grown Stoic but at least we can try our best to meet our fate with a positive, strong spirit. Just making the best of it. Not weeping more than we can avoid. And helping our fellow travellers through the valley of the shadow of death.

The journey does not take long. Think of the hundreds of millions of years of life so far on Earth. The forgotten lives of humans and dinosaurs. Your 70 years or 370 years are nothing. Don't worry too much! It will soon be over.

But let us try to remember and give a little bit of immortality to those lives which have returned to dust and live with the awareness of eternity and those who were here before us.

Heraclitus

Heraclitus said; “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man”. Is Britain today the same country as it was last year, the same as it was in 1950, 1450 or in 650. The observer also is not the man he was yesterday or 30 years ago. If the people living in a country or observing it are in constant flux why should anyone worry about change?

Why should the Hawaiians of 1850 or the English of 1850 if they could look back from the present object to the differing deaths by change of their countries? Has anything been lost by the fact that they no longer exist? Do their countries perhaps still exist in the eye of eternity?

The Britain of 1950 mutated into something different day by day without the change being detectable. But still there is continuity in Britain just as there would be with an individual born in 1950. The continuity is memory and history of what was once and will not be so again. The timeline is like a cable tying the years together like beads on a necklace.

Design in Nature

• All knowledge comes from experience and so we can never know what is outside the Universe, if we define the Universe as what can in principle be experienced. To know something one must first have contact with it and we can only have contact with what is in the same Universe as us.
• Since the Creator came before the Universe It is outside its bounds and only knowable through Its actions but all around us in the Universe we see law in action through a chain of causation from the first cause to the last event; let us call this first cause God if we will but the Creator God is not a person but a “something” we cannot know directly.
• My philosophy is deistic but it is a tradition which although it has failed so far because it did not inspire or warm our hearts does seem true. Perhaps the surest source of warmth in deism is the anger that God made the world so bloody awful. It is reasonable to ask whether he might not have done better. It is also reasonable to ask whether it would have been better for God to refuse to create the Universe rather than create so much pain. It is quite reasonable but completely pointless to be angry with the Creator. Perhaps the universe as it is now is the best that God could have created. Perhaps God is growing. Perhaps God is not good. Perhaps God is a bad craftsman.
• But as well as evil, there is good in the Universe and it is possible that human actions could make the world a better place. Perhaps we could choose the path of good? The human race could grow to fulfilment and there is a chance that some time in the future Man or his descendants will create a Garden of Eden. But why does God not take away today’s pain?
• By studying Nature we will hopefully come to understand the Creator better. It is amazing what a primate on one small planet has achieved already - what might we achieve one day. But for now i belive we know some things for sure. 1 The Universe is governed by law. 2 These laws display design. 3 We are part of the Creator's design, whatever that may. 4 We can understand Creation, at least in part. 4 In some respect we are like the Creator since we can understand the law which govern it. 5 Our actions make a diference for good or evil.
• Let us be warmed and inspired by seeing our place in the Universe and let us use the warmth of understanding something of our place in eternity to inspire our actions. In the everyday world of here and now it is the task of politics and every human being to live well do what can be done to ease today's pain.

Experience

It seems to be clear that we can know nothing which has not entered into us, or our ancestors, by way of experience. Anything which does not appear to relate to Nature as it presents itself to us right now must be built on the basis of direct experience, even if that was at many degrees removed.
It is therefore necessary to relate each stage in our thinking back to Nature as the sole test of the accuracy of thoughts. We must get back to tangible reality. An abstract proposition may be right or wrong, but unless it can be translated into the concrete how do we even know we are talking about the same concept?
Empiricism and scepticism must be the guiding principles of all politicians. We must not trust the truth of any proposition or assertion until it has been tested by experiment.

But in life and in politics we must act. It is not possible to adopt some form of political precautionary principle and be frozen into passivity. We must do the best we can with the limited undrstanding we have from experience, human instinct and Nature. In so far as our understanding is based on stored experience it may speak the truth but how to be sure. And how can we know that a political action will not have unforesen and adverse consequences. of course we cannot know.
Life is too short to test every action for every consequence. It is too short to test the final consequences of even one action. We must follow a set of rules derived from experience, the rules which have worked best. The guide of experience is therefore conservative. In changing the rules we must always act with restraint - we may be wrong.

In praise of concrete

Political theory through the centuries, in all its many forms, shares one essential feature. Every theory gets lost in fluffy metaphysical clouds.
Whatever the principle be it liberalism, utilitarianism, communism - they are all false because none can capture the complexity of human society with anything like the degree of accuracy which is adequate to predict the outcome of the change.
When making political choices stick as far as you can to what can be experienced, to what can be weighed or to what can be measured. Avoid the abstract!
For example. Do not look at humanity - look at the indidual men, women and children. Do not think about society - think of the flesh and blood. Slavery, for example, is not evil because it infringes human rights. slavery is evil because of what it does to the individual human being syanding in front of you.

Tradition

Tradition; It is obvious, one would think, that human knowledge has its limitations but looking back over the history of great reformers and revolutionaries one would never guess.
There is no object in the known universe more complicated than the human brain except human societies but both the great genius and the radical and not so reformers plunge on with their ideas.
Society is so intricate it is impossible to predict the outcome of social engineering. In any reform we must tread carefully. Tradition at least works. The first lesson in politics should be "Do no harm, Go cautiously, Take everything a Step at a Time and Allow Room to Retreat".

Why history matters

When we reach the know-all teenage years we think we have the answer to everything but with a little bit of good luck and growing experience of life will bring us to a more balanced view of our abilities. However all too often history shows us intellectuals who do not grow into adult wisdom. Instead they keep the child’s sense of play and the teenager’s arrogance based on ignorance.
The intellectual like the teenager is sure the ways of his elders are the ways of silly old fools and that his strong vision is so much more powerful and far sighted than the blinkered, weak and dim vision of his elders.
He is sure that traditions and customs should die soon like the old fools who stand in the way of change. Intellectuals trust in their reasoning powers and are sure they have found the answers to the big questions. It seems so evident to them that those who disagree are not just wrong but both stupid and evil in wanting to keep power in the hands of old men and minds locked in a prison of tradition. Intellectuals aiming for change therefore refuse to debate since they can feel only contempt for those who are neither as intelligent nor as virtuous as they think themselves to be.
From their self-image they see the customs, beliefs, tastes and patriotism of ordinary people as the views of the stupid who are in need of the intellectuals’ leadership and enlightenment.
Institutions and traditions are the product of error prone human beings, worked out in an often hit and miss way, and there is nothing in that for the confident reason-trained intellectual to respect. The progressive intellectuals are therefore blinded by scorn and fail to see that healthy institutions and traditions are the result of generations of human beings who have worked out a way of living together by balancing out the aspirations and interests in the practical laboratory of life.
The progressive intellectual does not see that through the collective actions of generations a solution has been found to the practical tasks of people living together through a process of mutation and evolution. The evolved solution is not necessarily perfect and indeed is almost certainly not but it has evolved for one reason only – because it works.
We have lost something very valuable to helping us live together when we ask ourselves “why on earth should I have to do this?” With the help of the intellectuals’ barrister-like verbal dexterity, sharpened by his decades-long competitive climb up the career and exam ladder, it is a simple matter to find reasons why we should not. A barrister can always construct a plausible argument that is why he is who he is and what he is. So, if the intellectual, and the barrister don’t feel like doing something they can easily find a plausible reason why they are morally right in doing just what their urges tell them to do and that is normally instant gratification of their needs and desires.
Everyone in a society guided by the rootless intellectual and legalist is left floating freely on a sea of doubt bobbing up and down low in the water trying to find a way to reach land. Everyone left without traditions and customs must invent his own morality through his own powers of reason. And the reason is usually from first principles founded on utilitarianism and hedonism. The new sea-grown morality invented by each and every individual cannot by definition be shared instead it is all about the individual feeling good about himself, his, personal fulfilment, shopping and sex. The intellectuals and legalists have left both themselves, and us, free and adrift.
Nothing matters but the present moment because everything is permitted.
There is however a case to be made for the intellectuals in the knowledge that the evolved solution is unlikely to be perfect just as the bodies of living organisms are imperfect, although wonderfully designed and organised. The old ways were not always good in the past and as time moves along circumstances change and produce an additional pressure for reform.
The task of the historian and the political conservatives is to move forward by being aware of the past. They must respect the collective wisdom of the past and where tradition is weak or circumstances have changed then traditions and institutions must change, but cautiously. It is much more likely that an unconsidered change will damage what has been inherited than improve it. Just as the vast majority of mutations in a living organism will be damaging.
(By way of digression and I do like digressions the modern intellectual has come to his position of eminence by climbing a decades-high examination ladder. If climbing a ladder and passing exams in a select range of subjects is the only valid performance measure of intelligence then intelligent they are.)

Purpose of this blog

I would see history as not only letting us understand where we come from and who we are; that is questions set in the past or present tense. I would also like history to be a guide to the way we should move into the future as individuals and collectively.
I don't think that we will be able to find a science of history. I do not believe that there is an undiscovered theory of history somewhere "out there" but in a wider, yet more tentative sense, a deep sense of historic origins can help us form a way forward.
Indeed without a historic sense we are helpless as well as rootlesss in forming our plans.

My first blog

History is all about us. It is what comes before us - what comes after us - it begins with the beginning of time and will, perhaps, end with the end of time.

History is the story of how we came to be and what will become of us. it is the most personal of subjects but in its true sense vast. By following the train of cause and effect we go back to the origins of the universe. History therefore draws on what we learn from physics, biology, geology and every event which has caused us to exist and be the people we are.

If anyone finds his or her way to this blog please give me your views.