Individualism and Guns

 

The gun debate and recent Supreme Court decisions concerning the 2^nd Amendment has opened a gaping hole in the very fabric of democracy and the historical metaphysics of individualism.

In Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in District of Columbia vs. Heller he states:

There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.” First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections. Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessary—an argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia. Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.¹

He further states:

Besides ignoring the historical reality that the Second Amendment was not intended to lay down a “novel principl[e]” but rather codified a right “inherited from our English ancestors,” petitioners’ interpretation does not even achieve the narrower purpose that prompted codification of the right. If, as they believe, the Second Amendment right is no more than the right to keep and use weapons as a member of an organized militia, that is, the organized militia is the sole institutional beneficiary of the Second Amendment ‘s guarantee—it does not assure the existence of a “citizens’ militia” as a safeguard against tyranny.

He appears to agree that 2^nd Amendment is more than the right to keep arms in an organized militia; it is a “safeguard against tyranny”

In 2012 a Rasmussen telephone survey found that 65% of American Adults think the purpose of the Second Amendment is to make sure that people are able to protect themselves from tyranny.²

The CEO of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, has stated to Congress, “Senator, I think without any doubt, if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny,”³

In Ancient Greece at the time of Aristotle there was much discussion on the ‘one’ and the ‘many’. Aristotle tells us in Politics,

Again, for the exercise of any faculty or art a previous training and habituation are required; clearly therefore for the practice of virtue. And since the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private- not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole.⁴

As human, our greatest liberal virtue as Aristotle calls it⁵ and evolutionary adaptation is not individualism but our ability to hunt and gather as a collectivity. There were many animals in our early history that were stronger and faster than the genus Homo. Only by banding together were we able to overcome enormous obstacles. Our language is the ultimate proof that we are not all isolated monads each with a private language. The very basis for what we call ‘reality’ is ‘thought’ and can only be ‘thought’ in terms of language.

The trend in the Austrian School of Frederick Hayek⁶ and taken up by the populist Ayn Rand has been to discount collectivism as the history of tyranny. Instead of the virtue Aristotle assigned to liberalism they have made liberalism into a vast history of collectivity which gave rise to every evil from Fascism to Communism. Their fictional account of individualism is then taken as everything collectivism was not and the greatest virtue that Aristotle missed completely.

The modern metaphysics about individualism makes the individual the sole determinate for truth, the diviner for goodness and the only antidote for liberalism. Democracy, born in the city-states of Athens⁷ and built into the U.S. Constitution from the ground up as representative democracy with checks and balances does not hold the individual as the sole determinate of freedom, it holds the union of free individuals as a higher standard than the war of all against all. Thus, the rule of law is not up to each individual capriciousness and whim but acceptance of a greater good than ‘me’. In the notion of guns as the ultimate arbiter of the good vis-à-vis the individual deterrent against tyranny the most obvious dilemma is what happens when two individuals disagree?

 

Individualism and the State of Exception

 

In a previous post I discussed Agamben⁸ and the state of exception. A state of exception is a ‘state’, a union, which can only exist when it allows itself to essentially undo itself to preserve itself. In other words, the union is determined outside itself in what it allows as exceptions to its union.

The state of exception is not a special juridical order (the law which regulates the state of war,) rather it is a suspension of the whole juridical order itself which marks it for the limits, the threshold of the juridical order. It is for that reason that in public law there is not such a thing as a theory for the ‘state of exception.’⁹

If the citizens militia and the right for individuals to keep and bear arms is an essential deterrent to tyranny then this is tantamount to saying that there is a legal and constitutional basis for the dissolution of our union, built into our union, for its own state of exception whereupon the individual, any individual, has the ‘right’ to throw out any or all of our union based on a personal decision, judgement or dictum. This exceptional state needs no basis outside of itself. It need not justify, defend or legitimize itself before a system of government. It may violently assert itself at any cost without any legal or Constitutional concerns or with its own private interpretation of the Constitution. This notion has been called terrorism in other circumstances.

Is there, built into our constitution, a legal exception for terrorism, for violent overthrow with arms for any ‘citizens militia’? Are guns the ‘state of exception’ for the U.S. Government? Wouldn’t we call every individual’s war of all against all tribalism? Why would we assume that the individuals overthrowing tyranny are not equally capable of tyranny? Is it just because they are ‘individuals’? From a purely and simply logical point of view, on what basis could the Supreme Court deny its own purpose for existence, the judicator of the Constitution, to uphold the dissolution of itself in an individual’s right for a state of exception? Is there any kind of legal basis for an individual to violently determine the correct interpretation of the U.S. Constitution? Why would we need a Supreme Court if this is to be maintained? Do we need the Supreme Court to validate the absoluteness of the individual? Do we need a tyranny to make individualism real? There is a glaring contradiction in having a ‘union’ and denying that union in favor of the individual. It is symbiotic and the reckoning of insanity as before and above all reason. Haven’t we really just pseudo-legally recognized anarchy as essence in denial of how we have survived to this point as a species? If we allow every one with an assault weapon to determine what tyranny is and isn’t we are only left with a war of all against all and face the logical and necessary consequence of our own extinction. The judgement of the people should be made with consensus, voting and law not lead accelerated at high velocities!

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¹ SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, et al., PETITIONERS v.

DICK ANTHONY HELLER

² 65% See Gun Rights As Protection Against Tyranny

³ Some Gun Control Opponents Cite Fear Of Government Tyranny

⁴ Politics [8.1], By Aristotle, Written 350 B.C.E

⁵ And politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them; and we see even the most highly esteemed of capacities to fall under this, e.g. strategy, economics, rhetoric; now, since politics uses the rest of the sciences, and since, again, it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from, the end of this science must include those of the others, so that this end must be the good for man. For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states. These, then, are the ends at which our inquiry aims, since it is political science, in one sense of that term. Nicomachean Ethics [1.2], By Aristotle, Written 350 B.C.E

⁶ Fredrick Hayek

⁷ Ancient Political Philosophy

⁸ Hegel and the State of Exception

⁹ State of Exception

 

Part 1 – Amnesia and Radicalism of the Other

 

Can you say the words, “Radical Christian Extremism”? If not, you are either woefully ignorant of the extremists currently at work in Christianity and the Trump-led Republican Party¹ or you are already a part of this violent ideology. If you want to fight an ideology you cannot use lethal weapons to do it. You may as well try to fix your smart phone with a hammer. You fight an ideology with logic, rationality and education. An idea-ology is by definition a system of thought. If you fight ideas with guns you may as well call yourself “Big Brother”, Stalin or Hitler. They are the ones that advocate squelching ideas with death. The implicit reasoning goes something like this: if you kill everyone who believes an idea you disagree with, there will be no one left to think the thought; therefore, the idea will vanish. Aside from pure logical ignorance, history has shown us that if you throw this kind of gas on a thought based fire you will spread the ideology, both pro and con, much faster than it would have spread on its own. Hitler, Mussolini and Emperor Hirohito’s insistence on nationalism and fascist ideology has made fascism the most despicable of terms. Yet Nationalism lives on popularly in the Republican Party². George W. Bush and company made the spread of terrorist thugs and tribal warfare in foreign countries into a global recruitment tool for the Islamic Caliphate and the state enforcement of shari’a law³. In this kind of state, religious education of the Quran and Sunnah is mandatory and relentless. Similarly, the radical Christian extremists in our country would get rid of the separation of Church and State (some of them deny it ever existed in our system of government⁴). They would impose religious training that would deny evolution and climate change. They would not only ban abortions but punish those who get abortions⁵. They would put abortion health providers to death. They would have the state kill homosexuals by law⁶. Currently, they publish the names and addresses abortion health providers, murder them and murder innocent people in abortion clinics calling themselves “warriors for the babies”.

When this violent Christian extremism happens in our country we want to call the perpetrators deranged and crazy. When violent Islamic extremism happens we call it ideological. Notice the hypocritical difference: Christianity is never blamed for its extremists but Islam is blamed for its extremists. Now I know, because my wife tells me this quite often, that logical consistency is not held in high regard by most folks but isn’t there some kind of imperative built into our anatomy, essential to language, for order and consistency? Does each of us make up our own private language? Do we only imagine we can communicate? Are we really fine with having reality comprised of word salad? If words and ideas have any meaning whatsoever, isn’t meaning itself dependent on making sense? Even if we deny logic and rationality, don’t we have to do it based on logic and rationality? How would one make an argument otherwise? Sorry, but if we give up on logic, rationality and consistency and opt for pure ideological narcissism we cannot even claim to be mammalian, animal, plant or mater⁷.

We demand that Muslims publicly denounce and refuse those that call themselves followers of Muhammad and kill in his name. Trump has recently stated that Muslims are intentionally hiding extremists and that he would crack down on them. Yet, when people kill in the name of Jesus, Christianity or “the babies” we want to call them crazy and deranged. We do not allow ourselves to think the thought that Christians should just as publicly and vehemently oppose violent extremism in Christianity as much as Muslims should oppose it in Islam. Do we equally demand that an anti-abortion zealot turn in dangerous Christian extremists? Are we willing to prosecute and deport any or all of them for their silence?

If we completely expunge Christian ideology by making their extremists simply ‘crazy’ and we insist at the same time that Islam is a religion which condones violence aren’t we being just as crazy, from a rational point of view, as the terrorists? Perhaps, the vengeful and jealous God which demands eternal Hell as justice for mortal sin should be rethought from a “warrior for the babies” perspective. Is it possible for the extreme condemnation and judgement of God to be taken as a blessing by God to kill those sinners who ‘murder babies’ and deny the ‘true’ God. If you thought defending God violently would keep you from going to eternal Hell, could it be thought as perhaps the dark side of thinking 70 virgins are waiting for you in Heaven when you kill in the name of God. Have Christians really forgotten the Dark Ages, Crusades and witch burnings? If you make the claim Islam is inherently violent, how could you in the same breath and of a sound mind not make the same claim of Christianity?

Well, it is easy, you simply think that your God is the ‘true’ God and theirs is not. They worship false gods and you know the ‘true’ God. You know this because ‘the Bible tells you so” and the ‘Holy Spirit” confirms it. No shadow of doubt can enter your mind because that would be the devil and you might be seduced into eternal torment with such thinking. Every religion and secular political ideology has its de-legitimizing stepping off points for extremism. We are all responsible for recognizing and reacting to attempts to hide or justify ideological weaknesses in our own backyard first. Sure there are ‘Crazies’ but as Foucault tells us in “Madness and Civilization” there is an uncanny, symbiotic relationship between insanity and rationality. Is it essential to rationality as Foucault claims? It makes for an interesting philosophical question. In any case, the treacherous territory between nut-cases and ideological enticements demand alertness and the most sober reflection if we want to avoid the apparent blindness of one’s own insanity and responsibility for our collective mental health. It is way too easy to make the devil ‘Other’ and ourselves the ‘not-Devil’. This is what is at the basis of Trump’s xenophobia. It is the easy way out to blame the ‘other’ and at the same time justify ourselves. The only problem is this sociological behavior perpetuates and exacerbates our own extremism and will never resolve it. The adamant insistence to turn a blind eye to ourselves is the mechanism that perpetuates radical extremism no matter what side of the ideological spectrum you adhere to.

For too many decades far right Republicans and fundamentalist Christians have been sowing to the worst in human behavior: negativity, condemnation, anger, distrust, suspicion, violence and war. Now they are reaping Trump. Why did they turn a blind eye to their own tactics? Because, in the short term, it got them votes. I would also suggest that the relative increases in human comfort and health sciences, especially in the U.S., kept the old line conservatives more attuned to human tragedy and weakness. They were less able to deny their own fallibility and dependence. They realized complaining and negativity did not change anything and only perpetuated their own misery. In any case, the lack of a positive message for those outside ‘the fold’ ultimately condemned Republicans to a narrow demographic range of the population. They were never able to convince many outside Kansas that aspirations unrealized are worth having. They promised them the ‘free market’ without government interference would give them their hearts desire. When it did not, they told the disenfranchised people they did not try hard enough, it was their fault. For the last several decades, they told them the Federal Government stole their dream and robbed the market of what they could have had. The found a demon, a terrorist to account for their constituents misery. If it was not their fault it must be the Government’s fault, the terrorists fault, the abortion providers fault, the homosexuals fault, the blacks fault, the Mexicans fault, the Muslims fault, on and on. In the end, all they gave their folks were empty promises and negative reasons for their misery.

 

Part 2 – Amnesia and the Magical Disappearance of Power

 

The real reason the Republican dream turned into a nightmare was instead of assigning fault and failing on ‘free market’ promises they fundamentally depended on people’s innate tendency for passivity and fantasy to keep them in office. They became the nanny state for excuses. They promised action but delivered empty and negative rhetoric. Reflection takes work on the part of an individual. Understanding one’s complicity in ones problems is the first step to overcoming one’s problems. The next step is action. When we deny our dependence on others and essential connection to each other we deny the most useful adaptation we have as humans, our intelligence. Intelligence, as is language, is not an individual will-to-power. It is fundamentally different from narcissism and individual mastery. If we help each other we help ourselves. If all of us only help ourselves we all end up in a miry bog.

The government is not antithetical to help, it is the tool for help. As individuals it is our job to make it work for us and not against us. If it is inefficient, it is our job to make it efficient not by killing it but by electing politicians the fix problems. Killing the government will not magically solve our problems, blaming the government will not solve any problems neither will bloating it with corporate politicians. Making the government a scapegoat for our problems will not solve them. Leaving us to manage on our own is really only a way for the vultures of capitalism to pick our bones dry. When we help each other we thrive. When we tear each other down and the organizations we have historically made, to realistically address problems we cannot change as individuals, we are left to the Darwinian marketplace which tells us in advance that we are all on our own against the power grubbers of capitalism (get your degree at Trump University).

I am not suggesting capitalism is inheritably bad, only that it has no external checks and balances to prevent market monopolies and vast over-reaches by its own pools of powerful interests. It must rely solely on its own inner dynamics and self-regulation to allegedly keep the ‘haves’ in check and promote the well-being of the ‘have-nots’. Therefore, the system is completely intrinsic to itself. In contradistinction, our system of government has, if you will, ‘state-planned’ checks and balances in the form of a constitution. Intervention is planned by the foresight of the Founders by three distinct branches of government. External intervention is a necessary and essential structural element of our Constitution. While the Austrian Economists may conveniently ignore the political basis of our own state planning in the U.S. Constitution as non-relevant to their extremist critique of state-planned economies there is an apparent contradiction between our form of government and their admonitions about a ‘free market’. The Founders would not tell us that the structure of our government rests on selfishness. They had a vision they coded into law that rests on a structural fairness for all based on protected divisions of power. They assumed happiness was not left to the wind of the market and vehemently rejected European Mercantilism. To the contrary of the Austrian Economists, they did not see liberalism as the (re-written and revised) historical basis rampant in Mercantilism but as the excesses of Aristocracy and power of the few.

Capitalism as Adam Smith tells us is firmly rooted in selfishness⁸. He does not take selfishness to be negative but a positive incentive for mastery and acquisition. As a note, he did however root out making money on money (interest) as an unacceptable selfishness⁹. The Austrians put no such constraints on the market. There is a bit of a magic trick, now you see it now you don’t, in raising an artificial distinction between “state-planned” control and interests of the powerful “market-planned” economy. Selfishness, left to its own devices, unmediated by anything other than individual will has historically not resulted in a balanced and prosperous state but an autocracy, an oligarchy, a mercantilism; the haves and the have-nots as we currently say. It has never had a history of mediating itself in some sort of stable and efficient distribution of goods and services despite what the Austrian Economists¹⁰ would have us believe.

While the Austrians are quick to criticize state planning as liberalism in which they mean socialism and fascism, they are quite silent when market manipulation, collusion and ‘corporate planning’ are brought to the fore from within the market. Their main basis for dealing with this is telling us that intervention by the state causes these deformities; bubbles and bursts in the market. The trick here is to change the terms from externality, what is plainly and historically visible in the consolation of power, to an internal (shall we dare suggest Hegelian) confluence of hypotheticals. If we can adequately maintain a new and improved history of the world which does not implicate unfettered commerce and economy but always attributes the deformities of power, not to the ones that have the real power in terms of, shall we say, dollars and cents but to the ones they try to keep on their payroll, we implicate the worker bees not the queen bee. The queen disappears in the hive while all the workers are left to fight it out amongst themselves for the crumbs of the existence. This well-financed illusion creates a synthesis for market failures based on a superimposed and critically differentiated other, the government. The result is that the market, unhinged and unaltered by government intervention is whole (hole), complete unto itself. The market can now will itself as self-determined. What gets lost is even the remote possibility that distortions in the market can come about not just from the super-imposed, state-controlled hubris of the government but from any other form of market control and manipulation from within the market.

The next step as the right has continually reminded us is to make the government so small we can drown it in a bathtub. The natural consequence of this is what we would call anarchy. By the term ‘anarchy’, referring specifically to no government, can we assume that the ‘free market’ would also magically take care of or have no need for this type of human organization? Can we then dump the U.S. Constitution so apparently and vehemently revered by the right to make way for the pure internal-ism of the market? When the System is complete by virtue of its own internal dynamics why would we need a government anymore. Why couldn’t the object of such disdain, disorder, and human misery simply be done away with so the beauty of the market could finally have its day? Surely, the market would correct itself and ensure that an equal playing field would be had by all. You can now wake up on the count of three.

 

Part 3- The Consummation of ALL in Trump

 

The narcissism of Trump is a creation of this utopic myth where the lion and the lamb lay down in perfect harmony…albeit, in a members only (white, straight, Mayberry reality but forget the details). This protectionist strategy leaves out some important details about who goes in the ark before the flood but never-mind that. Trump tells us to trust him. Everything will be fine. He will make us great again. He will win. He is very intelligent. The siren song continues, pay no attention to that masked billionaire behind the curtain. He is Trump, the Great and Powerful (swish, swish, boom, boom, fart, fart). Here again we have bumped into a learned tactic from the Austrians…the sleight of hand where the rich and powerful disappear in a puff of smoke and all is well in Pleasantville. Have we all found ourselves in “The Truman Show” where the right has convinced us of the infallibility of the ‘free market’? The rich are not really rich, they do not pull any strings or exercise any power OR if they do it is only because the government is bought and paid for (by the ones the market movers created and require for their own existence in the first place). All our problems are due to the evil other, the immigrant, the homosexual, the blacks, the government, ad nausea. The market is blameless in itself. It can do no wrong. Liberalism is synonymous with totalitarianism. The market is synonymous with freedom and individualism. We have been feed a steady diet for decades of ‘focus on the watch while we pick your pocket and sell you your own watch’. In this cocoon, all aspirations will be met if you only work hard and have faith in The Donald. The word ‘slavery’ has been done away with, we now call it interest on credit…Adam Smith’s vehement exception to the virtue of selfishness. When workers are paid slave wages and credit is offered we blame the worker when the payments are not met. Surely, the market could not be guilty of usury. People like Trump are not the problem, just listen to him, he will tell you who the real problem is. Corporations are people too. They do not squeeze the blood out of people. People do not have to borrow money. Surely they can live on $7.25 an hour. If they can’t, they should get another job but don’t let the undocumented worker take their jobs at an even lower hourly rate.

How many wacky theories about the ‘free market’ will we have to endure before people finally realize that the market will run over people if it is not intelligently regulated by something other than itself? It is possible for humans to govern themselves wisely without giving free reign to survival of the fittest in market economy. Is it possible for external checks and balances to work in government? It is not all or nothing, us or them, good versus evil. The evil is in the excesses that hides between our eyes in the fanciful illusions created by an invisible hand which separate us from one another, from wisdom and intelligence, in our shared languages; desires, logic and reason. When ‘we’ becomes irrelevant and ‘me’ is all that matters these words which we commonly understand fall into an abyss, Alice in Wonderland, where up is down and down is up and sense can be held at the mercy of the highest bidder.

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¹ Trump Selects a White Nationalist Leader as a Delegate in California

Trump retweets another apparent white supremacist

DONALD TRUMP’S SOCIAL MEDIA TIES TO WHITE SUPREMACISTS

² An Exhausted Democracy: Donald Trump and the New American Nationalism

³ The rate of terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the average fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, which accounts for fully half of the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks in the post-Iraq War period. But even excluding Iraq, the average yearly number of jihadist terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities still rose sharply around the world by 265 percent and 58 percent respectively.

The Iraq Effect: War Has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide

Also, if you have not read or seen this website, it is certainly worth reading. It puts the cost of war and the cost of peace in economic terms and the results are quite interesting…

The Economic Cost of Violence Containment

⁴ The Myth of the Separation of Church and State

⁵ Kevin Swanson Agrees With Trump: Abortion ‘Ought To Be A Criminal Action’

Donald Trump’s ‘Punishment’ Talk Exposes Abortion Foes’ True Face

US Domestic Terrorism

GROUP ATTACKING PLANNED PARENTHOOD LINKED TO EXTREMISTS

HATE IN THE MAINSTREAM

Here is a Press Release by Operation Rescue on the execution of an abortionist murderer. Troy Newman is the President of Operation Rescue. He is another “warrior for the babies”.

Operation Rescue West
California Life Coalition
Joint Press Release
For Immediate Release
September 3, 2003
Contact: Troy Newman, Director, Operation Rescue West (316) 841-1700
Cheryl Sullenger, Director, California Life Coalition (619) 277-0725
Execution of Paul Hill Nothing Less than Murder
Paul Jennings Hill is scheduled to die by lethal injection today in the state of Florida for the murder of a Pensacola abortionist and his security guard in 1994. The following is a joint statement released by Operation Rescue West and the California Life Coalition regarding today’s execution:
“Today’s scheduled execution of Paul Hill is not justice, but is another example of the judicial tyranny that is gripping our nation. A Florida judge denied Rev. Hill his right to present a defense that claimed that the killing of the abortionist was necessary to save the lives of the pre-born babies that were scheduled to be killed by abortion that day. Our system of justice is based upon ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ but in Rev. Hill’s case, there was no justice because the court prevented him from presenting the legal defense that his conduct was justifiable defensive action.
“There are many examples where taking the life in defense of innocent human beings is legally justified and permissible under the law. Paul Hill should have been given the opportunity to defend himself with the defense of his choosing in a court of law. Because he was denied this right, the full truth and motivations behind Hill’s actions were kept hidden from the jury. If Paul Hill’s life can be taken by the state without the full advantage of the protections afforded him by due process simply because of the unpopularity of his views, then we have to wonder who is next? No one is safe from being denied a defense by an out-of-control and biased judicial system. Execution under these circumstances is nothing less than murder of a political prisoner.
“We pray for Paul Hill today, for his wife and children, and for our nation that sees no value in the lives of the innocent victims of abortion that Hill endeavored to rescue, but instead protects and defends their killers. Today, it is justice that has been aborted. May God have mercy on us!”

⁶ If you have not seen this clip of Rachel Maddow exposing the Republican candidate’s support of the “kill the gays” pastor, it is well worth watching

⁷ Animals are consistent. They have adaptations and ritualistic behaviors that enable them to survive. They breed, give birth, and in some form or another, biologically and/or behaviorally, help their young adapt to their environment. If they do not, their species will eventually go extinct. Physics is not purely random. Electrons want to satisfy conditions set in motion by protons and neutrons. Sub-atomic particles have flavors: up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom; color, spins, quarks, quirks, massless, etc. They are not purely chaotic. There is a situational sense of them which is the ‘glue’ of existence. Yet, all of this phenomena has its mal-adaptations and randomness. To the extent that these destructive behaviors are successfully repressed is to the same extent that species and matter can exist. To the extent that they are expressed the consequence of extinction and entropy are introduced. Violence may have short term advantages in nature but it seems that nature prefers avoidance, cooperation, breeding and other more successful tools for conflict resolution.

The early Greeks thought of all this as phusis from which we get our modern word ‘physics’. The point being, rationality, logic, consistency, predictability are all essential conditions of existence. They can certainly be denied but only by affirming them. Nihilism and pure destruction is not an answer to them, only a narcissistic refusal to think or acknowledge the other. Consistency demonstrates order but is not necessarily rationality and logic. It could be argued that rationality and logic recognize order as such; that it is not merely determined by order and the corresponding behavioral response of consistency. However, the appeal to reflection does not result in some sort of freedom from order only an awareness of it. In any case, if language is the determinate factor for rationality and logic it may not be as far as we think from audible, visual and behavioral communication we see in animals and plants and the constraints and interrelations we see in matter. Since we are the only ones that can insist on an essential difference there is always the anthropomorphic exception to the argument for an essential difference in order and consistency and rationality and logic.

⁸ The Free Market: Capitalism and Socialism – Part 1

The Free Market: Capitalism and Socialism – Part 2

⁹ In Adam Smith’s most famous work, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” he devotes over 100 pages to banking regulations. Of those who live “by profit” he states:

His employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit, which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society. The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two. 1.11.264

¹⁰ Fundamentalism in Market Economy: The Austrian School and Regulation

Fundamentalism in Market Economy: The Austrian School

Fundamentalism in Market Economy: The Austrian School and the Problem of Suffering

Theoria and Austrian Economics [from what I can see]