Pendulums

For most of the 20th century, disciplines like sociology and anthropology emphasized culture as the main shaper of human behavior and were skeptical of suggestions of biological or genetic influences on human social life.

They had some reason on their side. Anyone who thinks human nature is fixed by heredity has a lot explaining to do about our species' variability across time and space. Also, many previous attempts to bridge the gap between biology and society were suspect on many grounds.

So-called Social Darwinists misused Darwin's ideas to justify cut-throat unregulated capitalism in the Victorian era. Eugenics was the rage on both the right and left up until the mid 20th century. Racists and imperialists misused "science" to reinforce their bias and social positions. The Nazi movement imagined a struggle for existence between races. No wonder people wanted to focus on culture.

Lately, with growing knowledge in the fields of biology and genetics, things have begun to change. Biological determinism is still out as a catch-all explanation for social life, but there seems to be a greater willingness to consider the genetic bases of at least some behavior at the group and individual level.

More on this to come.

STATING THE OBVIOUS is a good thing these days. Here's another op-ed on the need for more action to create jobs. Krugman throws in his two cents here.

INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT. Massey executives went deep into the Upper Big Branch mine shortly after the disaster, which raises lots of questions.

FRAME THIS. Here's George Lakoff on politics, morality and messaging.

TAX THIS. Here are some reasons why raising taxes on the wealthiest makes sense.

PLATO, POP CULTURE AND VIDEO GAMES here.

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Trail mix

El Cabrero is still on the road but in lieu of trail mix, here are some quotes from Confucius:

Those who go wrong by holding back are few.

Hear the Way in the morning and it won't matter if you die that evening.

...shall I teach you what it means to know something? When you know, to know you don't know. When you don't know, to know you don't know. That's what knowing is.

What you do not want others to do to you, do not do to others.

Zigong asked, Is there a single word that can guide a person's conduct throughout life? The Master said, That would be reciprocity, wouldn't it?

NOTE: I'm still on the road so there ain't no links. Back soon

The confidence of the people

El Cabrero is on the road these days, but the blog is still rolling. The current theme is the philosophy of the ancient Chinese sage known in the West as Confucius, whose ideas are still influential in many parts of the world and merit a serious look.

While "Confucianism" has sometimes been classified as a religion, that is a label that doesn't fit too well. He was above all concerned with earthly things and political life.

While ancient Chinese philosophers like Confucius did not directly espouse democracy, they did call for good government that served the interests of the people. Some people have argued that the ancient Chinese idea of the "Mandate of Heaven" is similar to later Western ideas of the social contract. The basic idea is that a government is legitimate and enjoys the Mandate as long as it serves the people but loses legitimacy and the Mandate when it does not.

Here's a passage from The Analects:

Tzu-kung asked about government. Confucius said, "Sufficient food, sufficient armament, and sufficient confidence of the people. Tzu-kung said, "Forced to give up one of this, which would you abandon first?" Confucius said, "I would abandon the armament." Tzu-kung said, "Forced to give up one of the remaining two, which would you abandon first?" Confucius said, "I would abandon food. There have been deaths from time immemorial, but no state can exist without the confidence of the people.

That's something lots of tyrants have found out the hard way.

NOTE: I'm still on the road so there are no links. This post will not reflect any breaking news. Let's hope it's all quiet on the Western Front.

A respectful distance

Western thinkers were slow to recognize and appreciate Chinese thought. But when that finally did start to happen, Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire were great admirers of Confucius, whose ideas were quite free of the religious dogmatism and fanaticism they were fighting against. While respectful of spiritual things, his focus was very much on this world.

This attitude can be seen in several passages in The Analects, where he advised

Devote yourself earnestly to the duties due to men, and respect spiritual beings but keep them at a distance. This may be called wisdom.

In another passage, it is said that

Confucius never discussed strange phenomena, physical exploits, disorder, or spiritual beings.

His attitude is perhaps best expressed in this passage:

Chi-lu asked about serving the spiritual beings. Confucius said, "If we are not yet able to serve man, how can we serve spiritual beings?" [Chi-lu asked] "I venture to ask about death." Confucius said, "If we do not yet know about life, how can we know about death?

Those are pretty advanced views for someone who lived around 500 years before the birth of Jesus. Far be it from El Cabrero to knock religion (some days), but some folks could do with a dose of Confucianism.

Note: I'm on the road so there are no links for the next few days. This post has been scheduled in advance and won't reflect breaking news (in fact, I'm OK if there aren't any big stories for the next little stretch).

The old, the new

Whatever my political leanings may be, I have a really strong conservative streak--in the old sense of the word conservative, as in respecting the traditions of the past. I tend to value old things that have withstood the tests of time to new innovations.

I suspect more wisdom can be found in places like Greek tragedy, myths and old philosophies than in just about anything on the bestseller list. Science would be the major exception.

I think that's one reason why I like Confucius, whose approach to philosophy has been called (by whom I can't recall) "innovation through transmission."

A saying of his from the Analects that has influenced me is this one:

One who studies the old so as to find the new is worthy to teach others.

This doesn't imply a mindless repetition of old traditions but rather a critical evaluation of them in search of insights that apply to the current situation, a kind of dialogue between past and present. I've always suspected that the best innovators are not people who make up things out of new cloth but rather those who piece together old insights in new ways.

IF ALL GOES ACCORDING TO PLAN, WV Governor Joe Manchin will name the person who will fill the late Robert Byrd's US Senate seat (if not his shoes) today. As soon as that person is sworn in, we can probably expect yet another vote on extending unemployment benefits to the approximately 2 million people who have lost them. Lots of us hope that WV's vote will be the tipping point.

Here are three related items:

FOX NEWS TRASHES UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS. I know that's a shock, but read more about it, including debunking, here.

A DOUBLE IMPACT. To clear the palate, this issue brief from the Economic Policy Institute shows that UI benefits don't just keep jobless workers going but also help create and preserve jobs:

The reasoning is simple. Those who are unemployed are experiencing a major challenge to maintain anything close to their regular standard of living, so any assistance they receive will be spent on necessities, not saved. The spending that results as the unemployed pay their rent, buy groceries, and so on saves and creates jobs throughout the economy.

ASSESSING ARRA. Here's congressional testimony on the Recovery Act and what remains to be done to deal with the impact of the Great Recession.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE CORPORATE SUITES, the Washington Post notes that:

Corporate America is hoarding a massive pile of cash. It just doesn't want to spend it hiring anyone.

Read more here.

CHICKEN HAWKS. The loudest voices on the deficit are opposed to allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire.

ONE FOR THE ROAD. Here's the Washington Post on the passage of landmark financial reform legislation.

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Time and chance

Venus the goat is pretty random.

In his book Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche argued that a person's view of the world is more a matter of biography than of logic and conscious reasoning. He wrote

It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir...

Today, some people might go even farther in arguing that worldview is shaped by temperament which itself is to a significant degree the result of genes.

Sorting through that question is beyond El Cabrero at the moment, but for whatever reason I've always tended to see the world as a place ruled in large part by chance, luck and randomness. There is a part of me that is kind of surprised that the same math problems yield the same results on different days. As far as the "laws" of nature are concerned, I tend to view these more as habits or recurring patterns.

Of course, this leads to all kinds of disagreements with my deterministically-inclined friends who tend to follow Einstein in saying that God doesn't play dice with the world. For me, cosmic dice playing might be another name for God.

At any rate, I'm with the author of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, who said

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

SPEAKING OF A CHANGE OF FORTUNE, the economic crisis has many people rethinking Reaganomics. Here's a similar item from Newsweek as well.

THE MORTGAGE MESS and how to fix it is the subject of this item.

SPEAKING OF MESSES, here's a book review discussing the cost of the Iraq war.

YOU MUST CHECK OUT THIS PICTURE of the world's longest insect. We're talking over one foot.

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PUSH THE ROCK

Welcome to Albert Camus Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

In his work "The Myth of Sisyphus," Camus asserted that

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whet er life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

(The reader has apparently answered the question in the affirmative at the moment anyway...)

For Camus, the question of the value of life was related to his idea of the absurd, that is human life as characterized by mortality, contingency, and the lack of an inherent meaning in a universe without God. As he put it,

in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger.

His image for the human condition was derived from the mythological figure of Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to perpetually roll a heavy stone up the hill only to have it roll down again.

Come to think of it, a lot of life is kinda like that. Still, Camus wound up affirming life.

Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable...."I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted...It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.

All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing...

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. The universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

CHIP VOTE. The House passed legislation preserving and expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program 265 to 159 yesterday, not enough to override a Bush veto if it happens.

El Cabrero and his amigos held a press conference yesterday in support of the program for which we actually had press, which is a plus. High five! Great success!

CHIP AND IRAQ. The CHIP expansion mentioned above costs less than six weeks of the war in Iraq.

UNLEASHING WHATEVER UPDATE. A marriage made in heaven?

A TENTATIVE AGREEMENT between GM and the UAW has been reached. Here's hoping they got a good deal.

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FOLLOWING AND LEADING

The guiding thread on this week's Goat Rope is a series of reflections on the ancient Chinese classic the Tao Te Ching, a work attributed to Lao Tzu. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier posts.

This book has some interesting things to say about the art of dealing with people and about leadership that are worth considering.

I noticed as early as junior high school that there were some teachers and authority figures that I felt obliged to resist, while others earned my respect without even asking for it. This was not a matter of size or intimidation; those who tried the hardest to intimidate aroused my greater resistance.

The ones I respected gave people space. They didn't flaunt their authority or try to push others around. When they used their authority, they did so for an obvious reason. Since they didn't push unnecessarily, I didn't feel obliged to push back.

As Lao Tzu put it,

A good soldier is not violent.
A good fighter is not angry.
A good winner is not vengeful.
A good employer is humble.
This is known as the Virtue of not striving.
This is known as ability to deal with people.
This since ancient times has been known
as the ultimate unity with heaven. (68)

Some people seem to understand this; others don't. Those who do are able to accomplish much more with less energy wasted. For those who don't even the most routine interactions can become battles. Understanding this may be the most effective kind of personal and social self defense: it can enable one to avoid conflict and defuse violence before it happens.

Lao Tzu's ideas on effective leadership probably seems counter-intuitive to many people but we need more of it:

Why is the sea king of a hundred streams?
Because it lies below them.
Therefore it is the king of a hundred streams.

If the sage would guide the people, he must serve with humility.
If he would lead them, he must follow behind.
In this way when the sage rules, the people will not feel oppressed;
When he stands before them, they will not be harmed.
The whole world will support him and will not tire of him.

Because he does not compete,
He does not meet competition. (66)

and...

The very highest [type of leader] is barely known by men.
Then comes that which they know and love,
Then that which is feared,
Then that which is despised.

He who does not trust enough will not be trusted.

When actions are performed
Without unnecessary speech,
People say, "We did it!" (17)

He doesn't say anything about swaggering beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner, but I think that would be a Taoist no-no.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's some data on public opinion on Iraq now and then from the Center for American Progress.

COSTS OF WAR. Here's an item by Dean Baker on the long term costs of war to economic growth. He links the issue to current discussions about dealing with the costs of addressing global warming.

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OH THE WATER

Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
The weak can overcome the strong;
The supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven, everyone knows this,
Yet no one puts it into practice. Tao Te Ching, 78

The geologic history of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia
as I understand it is the story of water versus rock, with the water winning every time.

Simple observations like this are at the root of the Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese classic (see yesterday's post).

You can probably think of other ones...trees that are brittle break during heavy snows or high winds, while the flexible ones don't. People when healthy are pliable and flexible, but become rigid when they are dead. Extremes of wind or rain don't last long. People can't run at top speed for very long. It's hard to scream at the top of your lungs all day (even if you feel like it).

Better stop short than fill to the brim.
Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt.
Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it.
Claim wealth and titles, and disaster will follow.
Retire when the work is done.
This is the way of heaven. (9)

Recognizing these obvious truths and acting in accordance with them are the basic elements of living according to the Tao or way of things, according to Lao Tzu, legendary author of these words.

Unfortunately, people aren't very good at doing things the easy way and often force their intentions on nature or other people in unskillful ways and with undesirable consequences. The Tao Te Ching has a very sophisticated critique of force and aggression, about which more next time.

SPEAKING OF CRITIQUES OF AGGRESSION, here is Senator Byrd on the Bush administration's "foolish consistency."

SUPERSIZE ME. Here are some interesting factoids gleaned from Dean Baker's book The United States Since 1980: average daily calorie consumption in the US rose by 22 percent between 1980 and 2002, with average daily fat consumption rising by 14 percent in the same period. In 2002, only 17.4 percent of people with college degrees were classified as obese, compared with 29.7 percent without.

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