Crisis and Inertia (4) – Economic, Political, and Cultural Crises
(This is part 4 in the “Crisis and Inertia” series.) While climate change constitutes a major if not terminal crisis for civilization (and possibly even for mankind) and certain technologies may also become existential threats in the wrong hands, there are many other crises and threats that seem to be less severe. All economic, political, and cultural crises appear to fall in this “less severe” category, for example – at least, it doesn’t seem likely that another economic crisis or the gradual collapse of democracy will lead to the end of civilization. Nevertheless, they are crises in the sense adopted...
Economics as Malignant Make Believe
placeholder The original version of this post is currently not available. However, a pdf of the slightly revised version that was published as part of chapter 15 of A Buddha Land in This World can be downloaded here.
Crisis and Inertia (3) – Technological Threats and Crises
(This is part 3 in the “Crisis and Inertia” series.) Some advances of technology are feared by many. Some of those fears may be justified; others less so. Nuclear weapons are an obvious threat, but whether artificial intelligence (AI), for example, is likely to cause our demise is more controversial. This series isn’t about threats or fears, however, but about crises. The difference is that threats or fears may materialize, while crises are either already occurring or are unavoidable and thus will occur. Nuclear weapons are not a crisis, but their use would be, and as both the probability of...
Skepticism, Pragmatism, and Zebras
In 1970 Fred Dretske published a paper about a fairly technical issue in epistemology, In that paper he gave a “silly example” (his words) to illustrate some point about skepticism. Imagine that you take your kid to the zoo to see the zebras. Now, how do you know that the animals you are looking at are zebras? Dretske points out that most of us wouldn’t hesitate to say that those animals are zebras: We know what zebras look like, and, besides, this is the city zoo and the animals are in a pen clearly marked “Zebras.” Yet, something’s being a...
Crisis and Inertia (2) – Climate Change
(This is part 2 in the “Crisis and Inertia” series.) Surprisingly many people seem to be under the impression that climate change won’t really affect them. “Sure, it will get a little bit warmer, but that’s what air conditioners are for, and sea level rise doesn’t really affect me because I don’t live on the coast and it is slow anyway.” Something like that appears to be general idea. Unfortunately, that idea is wrong. Very wrong. Climate change will have much bigger effects than air conditioners and coastal protection can fix. The exact nature of those effects is uncertain, however,...
Armageddon and Utopia
Almost a decade ago two English writers, Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, published Uncivilisation: the Dark Mountain Manifesto, calling for a literary response to the “social, economic and ecological unravelling” of our time. Surrounded by a nearly deafening silence about the now nearly (?) unavoidable collapse of civilization, this dissident voice seemed a pleasant diversion, and the idea to use literature and art to change the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and our relation with the world around us is a very sympathetic idea as well. However, the Manifesto itself raised several red flags, and made it very clear...
Crisis and Inertia (1)
Physical objects resist any change in their position and state of motion. This is inertia, often defined as the physical principle that moving objects keep moving in a straight line with constant speed unless or until something stops them or changes their direction. Inertia doesn’t just apply to physical objects, however, but to social (and other kinds of) objects as well. Social structures and systems, or “institutions”, are as inert as physical objects. If an institution is moving in a certain direction, it will keep moving in that direction with more or less constant speed (which can be zero, of...
On “Populism”
A decade ago or so, a “populist” was someone who appealed to the supposed reactionary underbelly of the common folk to win votes and/or influence. “Populists” were usually found on the right of the political spectrum, often even the extreme right. But things have changed and nowadays so-called “populist” movements and parties are often better described as leftist than as right wing (or as mixtures of left-wing and right-wing views). “Populism” and “populist” are usually terms of abuse: they express disapproval and disdain. What provokes this disapproval and disdain is that the alleged populist(s) crosses the boundaries of acceptable political...
The (Self-) Corruption of Critique
This is a lightly edited excerpt from my book/pamphlet The Hegemony of Psychopathy. * * * Hegemony is the spread of ideas (such as values and beliefs) that support and maintain the socio-political status quo. Alternative sources of ideas can (at least in principle) undermine hegemony, but if hegemony is effective, then alternative ideas are often not taken seriously, or may even undermine themselves. If hegemony is effective, then the belief that there is no alternative becomes common sense, turning proposed alternatives (i.e. alternatives for common sense) into obvious non-sense. This is how hegemony undermines critique: by making it “irrational.”...
Economics and Psychopathy
This is a lightly edited excerpt from my book/pamphlet The Hegemony of Psychopathy. * * * The reorientation of political ambitions after the Second World War from power and territory to wealth changed the relation between economics and the ruling elite. The “science” of economics, which already had been more influential and prestigious than any of the other social sciences, now gained an effective monopoly as the official supplier of government plans and policies, putting it in the center of power, and changing its status and what was (and is) expected of it. For one thing, politics demand(ed) “closure” —...
The Hegemony of Psychopathy (Excerpt)
This is an edited collection of excerpts from my book/pamphlet The Hegemony of Psychopathy that was just published. (It can be purchased in paperback or downloaded for free in PDF format at the publisher’s website.) * * * The Holocaust has received surprisingly little attention from social and political philosophers. This is surprising because the scale and extent of the atrocities involved in the Holocaust should be impossible to ignore. If we humans can do that, then that makes a difference — or should make a difference — for our beliefs about the ideal society, for example. At the very...
On Free Trade Ideology
According to conventional “wisdom” free trade leads to prosperity. Usually the idea is based on a version of David Ricardo’s (1817) theory of “comparative advantage” which is taught in most high-school economics classes. There is, however, a fundamental problem with that theory, as was shown by Frank Graham in 1923, and unfortunately that problem tends to be ignored. In the following, I will briefly summarize Ricardo’s theory and Graham’s correction thereof, and discuss why the latter is ignored and the effects and implications of that neglect. A revised version of this article is part of chapter 15 of A Buddha...