Dutch landscape by Moonlight by Heinrich Petersen Angeln, (1850 - 1906)

Dutch landscape by Moonlight by Heinrich Petersen Angeln, (1850 - 1906)

Click to enlarge.

The froward chaos of futurity

From The Prelude by William Wordsworth.

These mighty workmen of our later age

Who with a broad highway have overbridged

The froward chaos of futurity,

Tamed to their bidding—they who have the art

To manage books, and things, and make them work 

Gently on infant minds as does the sun

Upon a flower—the tutors of our youth,

The guides, the wardens of our faculties

And stewards of our labour, watchful men

And skilful in the usury of time, 

Sages, who in their prescience would controul

All accidents, and to the very road

Which they have fashioned would confine us down

Like engines—when will they be taught

That in the unreasoning progress of the world 

A wiser spirit is at work for us,

A better eye than theirs, most prodigal

Of blessings, and most studious of our good,

Even in what seem our most unfruitful hours?

History

Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger (who most will probably know for his famous thought experiment involving a cat being both dead and alive) as an Austro-Hungarian artillery officer on the Italian Front in 1915. pic.twitter.com/eB2fmjbRZj

— A Beautiful Culture (@ABeautifulCult1) January 29, 2022

 

Authoritarian statists are slouching towards suppression

After a drought of real news out of Canada, and great uncertainty over those reports that were coming out, there has been an avalanche of thoughtful analysis this morning.

It is still unclear to me the extent to which the Trucker Convoy was or was not supported by Canadians in general.  It is likewise unclear to me the extent to which they posed anything more than a nuisance to Ottawans.  I see it as conceivable that the road blockages and noise might have been graduating towards a public safety risk but I have not seen any real evidentiary basis for that argument.  It is simply unclear.

But with Trudeau's seizure of Emergency Powers and the deployment of financial incapacitation in an un-targeted fashion against un-indicted citizens, the situation has taken a disturbingly different turn.

What was an unclear civil and peaceful protest is now seen as an authoritarian over-response by a threatened political elite.  It brings to a head and exemplifies many of the concerns that have been roiling in the US for the past few years.  Concerns that seemed absurdly conspiratorial until they were manifested so clearly in Canada.

Using the term 'the State' as a stand-in for the toxic mix of establishment politicians, academics, mainstream media and government bureaucrats, there have been multiple concerns.  Beyond the simple "Don't Tread on Me" kind of concerns, there are several strands which have been credible but not especially broadly or distinctly articulated here in the US.  At least not in the mainstream.  Lots of passionate followers around each issue though.

There have been concerns about both the increasing volume of information at the disposal of the State and the centralization of that data.  There have been increasing concerns about the State's reliance on and use of corporations, especially Finance and Technology companies, as proxies to restrict freedom of speech and to exact commercial punishment on those philosophically but peacefully opposed to the undemocratic whims of the State.  

There have been the increasing efforts by the State to conflate peaceful opposition with violent terrorism as exemplified by the Department of Justice's designation of school board critics (parents) as domestic terrorists.  There has been increasing concern about the State's desire to implement something akin to the Chinese Communist Party's Social Credit System to the detriment of citizen rights.  

There has been the undisguised incompetence and authoritarianism of the State's response to Covid-19 in which human rights have been repeatedly subordinated to arbitrary State policies and effectively steamrolled.  There has been the repeated effort by the State to turn every unexpected event into an existential crisis be it Inequality, Racism, Global Warming, Covid-19, boundary disputes in Ukraine, etc.  And again, the tendency to convert a faux existential threat into a justification for abandoning rule of law, equality before the law, consent of the governed, due process, trial by jury, innocent before proven guilt, etc.  

The following are part of this morning's cascade of Classical Liberal/Conservative alarms about what we see happening in Canada as a possible harbinger of what we already see foreshadowed in the US.  Within each piece there are dozens of hot links to more substance lending credence to their respective arguments.

That which was once conspiracy theory territory is slouching towards reality.  Beginning with our polite and civil northern neighbors.  

1/ There are no other constitutional rights in substance without freedom to transact by 6529 (@punk6529) a fifty-five tweet thread with great substance packed into tight succinctness.  

Convoy Crackdown by Zvi Mowshowitz.  Subheading We no longer got us one. We still got big trouble.

When Boring People Turn Dangerous: Canada's Insane Power Grab by Matt Taibbi.  Subheading The Canadian government's decision to freeze bank accounts in the trucker protests is a mad leap toward bureaucratic dystopia.

The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West by Glenn Greenwald.  Subheading Those who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists continue to embrace and wield the defining weapons of despotism.

A Social Credit System Arrives in Canada by David Sacks.  Subheading Justin Trudeau just created a caste of economic untouchables. Can we stop this dystopian policy from taking hold in America?

Governments are about to come for cryptocurrency in a big way by El Gato Malo.  Subheading Control of money and banking is the cornerstone of control of a society

Paper Is True by Zvi Mowshowitz.  Subheading No one knows what scissors is.

An Insight

"To rebuke magnificently is one of the duties of a great polemical writer."
—C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the 16th Century (p. 175)

— Steven F. Hayward (@stevenfhayward) August 8, 2019

 

I see wonderful things

Rural church in Wales.
Church of the Holy Cross, Mwnt, Ceredigion pic.twitter.com/jElTgSSQfh

— A Beautiful Culture (@ABeautifulCult1) January 31, 2022

 

Offbeat Humor

The problem with the world today is that due to the growth of the shark population, shark-jumping has become epidemic.

— Steven F. Hayward (@stevenfhayward) January 16, 2022

 

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic.

From How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

Logic and empiricism goes a certain ways towards an agreed reality but ultimately you have to go beyond facts and evidence to the goals, motivations, biases, prejudices, assumptions, and live experiences of others.  You can ignore it as ignoble but you then materially limit you capacity to reach agreement.  You are imposing your own normative view (decisions based only on facts and evidence) on others actual preferred mode of decision making (heuristics, assumptions, probability estimations under uncertainty, etc.)  Both approaches are potentially flawed but being cognizant and respectful of others always ends up being the better approach in the aggregated long term.

The Mandarin Class shows a disposition to asymmetric empiricism (sharing only some facts) and towards centralized authoritarianism which always ends up being destructive.

Egregor

Egregore.  From Wikipedia.

Egregore (also spelled egregor; from French égrégore, from Ancient Greek ἐγρήγορος, egrēgoros 'wakeful') is an occult concept representing a distinct non-physical entity that arises from a collective group of people. Historically, the concept referred to angelic beings, or watchers, and the specific rituals and practices associated with them, namely within Enochian traditions.

More contemporarily, the concept has referred to a psychic manifestation, or thoughtform, occurring when any group shares a common motivation—being made up of, and influencing, the thoughts of the group. The symbiotic relationship between an egregore and its group has been compared to the more recent, non-occult concepts of the corporation (as a juridical person or legal entity) and the meme.

I am seeing it used somewhat in the context of ideology, i.e. a person is captured by the egregore of wokeism (or Social Justice Theory or Postmodernism or Critical Race Theory or Intersectional Theory).

Data Talks

Very interesting international survey of philosophers (half from the US) give their view on thought experiments.
- The trolley problem: 63% switch, only 22% push
- Nozick’s experience machine: 77% refuse
- Newcombe’s paradox: 38% take 2 boxes, 31% 1 boxhttps://t.co/e3vif3Q95F pic.twitter.com/FD8WlHnTsy

— Lionel Page (@page_eco) February 5, 2022