“I have observed that the closer one comes to the study of humans the shoddier the quality of the scientific evidence.”

Biologist Lynn Margulis at Pharyngula

Wittgenstein said much the same thing….

In the study of humans, the arts (poetry, stories, drama,  journalism, biography, cultural criticism, history, and philosophy) have much more to say, say it better and say it more memorably than most of the relevant academic disciplines. Margulis is  a proponent and co-developer of the modern version of the Gaia hypothesis (now regarded by some as a thesis) which can be said to view the Earth as a single organism. Arthur Conan Doyle, better known for his Sherlock Holmes stories, wrote a short story with that premise, When the World Screamed.

Obviously, its a thesis that environmentalists and communitarians will regard benevolently, and classical individualists at least somewhat suspiciously. But need it be so? After all, one man’s environmentalism is another man’s conservation; one man’s sustainability is another man’s thrift; one man’s cooperative is another man’s citizen republic…

I don’t mean to propose some kind of dishonest compromise between ideologies but just to rethink the confidence with which we assume that our actions cannot find a peaceable “way of going on” even when our ideologies cannot.

“Chaos always defeats order because it is better organized,” Terry Pratchett, via Butler Shaffer.

 “I feel entitled to be treated fairly.  I feel entitled to respect.  I feel entitled to warmth and maybe even love.  How childish is that?  I mean . . . really!  Is a lizard entitled to fairness?  A lion? …….Where is it written in the rules of the universe that we humans are special and can step on bugs and eat hamburgers, yet expect to be magically spared these indignities where our own precious lives are concerned?…”

Non Entity at Strike the Root.

Comment:

I sympathize with anyone impatient with the language of rights today. It often seems as if practically anything can become a right, if voiced with enough exuberance.

But we shouldn’t forget that there’s a reason for this development. “Rights talk,” as scholar Mary Ann Glendon called it, didn’t develop in response to ‘nature,’ as NonEntity implies here.  It grew up as a response to corporate power. And that’s a creation of the state and the law…

Correction: Glendon herself argues that this “rights” language comes out of the centrality of property rights to rights language in the US tradition – which makes the individual rights-holder more important than the “public good,” as envisaged in the rights language in Europe, which stems from Rousseau,

I think she blames it on John Locke – a move I don’t quite agree with… (more to come)…

Over at Independent Indian, my friend and Hayek protege Suby Roy tries to sum up US history in a hit parade:

When Johnny Comes Marching Home, Summertime, and I Got You, Babe make his list.

Personally, I think there’s one song there that sums up everything: It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

“The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense.
Take what you have gathered from coincidence.
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.
The sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue….”

If that doesn’t sum up our season of madness in the markets, I don’t know what does. With just a little tinkering, it makes perfect sense today:

“The empty handed banker from Wall Street

Is drawing crazy patterns on your balance sheets

Tarp 2 is folding under you….

etc. etc.

You get the picture.

Masters of War

Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
While the death count gets higher
Then you hide in your mansion
While the young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead
— Bob Dylan