Egoism
Individualism
Sovereignty
Splendor

(These ideas are explicated in this sloppy manifesto)

 
SplendorQuest: Raising Cain...

Harkening back to this, I had said:

Kyle [Bennett] gets the ontology of [individualism] wrong and it leads him badly astray; if I get time, I'd like to address that.

Kyle replied to me by email, and this is a version of the mail I wrote back to him:

For now, at least, see me at Curing the incuriosity of the East.

It is wrong to speak of any human behavior as being natural, since all purposive human behavior is an artifact. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to argue that collectivism--Abel--is the ground state for human cultures and individualism--Cain--the radical exception.

There's more: In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand gave Ellsworth Toohey a wonderful speech in justification of his attempts to destroy Howard Roark:

He got up, walked over to her, and stood looking at the lights of the city below them, at the angular shapes of buildings, at the dark walls made translucent by the glow of the windows, as if the walls were only a checkered veil of thin black gauze over a solid mass of radiance. And Ellsworth Toohey said softly:

"Look at it. A sublime achievement, isn't it? A heroic achievement. Think of the thousands who worked to create this and of the millions who profit by it. And it is said that but for the spirit of a dozen men, here and there down the ages, but for a dozen men -- less, perhaps -- none of this would have been possible. And that might be true. If so, there are -- again -- two possible attitudes to take. We can say that these twelve were great benefactors, that we are all fed by the overflow of the magnificent wealth of their spirit, and that we are glad to accept it in gratitude and brotherhood. Or we can say that by the splendor of their achievement which we can neither equal nor keep, these twelve have shown us what we are, that we do not want the free gifts of their grandeur, that a cave by an oozing swamp and a fire of sticks rubbed together are preferable to skyscrapers and neon lights -- if the cave and the sticks are the limit of your own creative capacities. Of the two attitudes, Dominique, which would you call the truly humanitarian one? Because, you see, I'm a humanitarian."

Some one brilliant man had the individualist idea. He treasured it and propagated it well enough that other unknown geniuses were able to improve upon it. Some of those who learned it valued it enough that they protected it and preserved it through dark ages. There are other ideas that Rand was talking about, as well, but the idea of individualism is the fountainhead of all ideas.

The man who abstracted that idea--we can call him Cain because we don't know his name--that man is the greatest benefactor in all of human history. Without him, none of the rest might ever have happened.

The wheel was invented once, copied thereafter. The impeller, Archimedes' screw, was invented once, copied thereafter. There are around 250 known human cultures on the earth and all of them, save this one, are the kind of bad imitations of animal behavior I discuss in Curing the Incuriosity of the East. Might the flame of individualism have sparked in another, later mind, had it ever been fully extinguished? It's possible. But the odds from experience are 250 to 1 against...

Kyle replied back to me at length, but this is the portion of his reply of greatest interest to me here:

Your 250-1 argument is compelling on its face, but I wonder if it is not itself flawed. You cite the fact that 249 of these cultures exhibit what is basically purely collectivist ideologies. It is not surprising that when you examine something in a collective context ("culture") that its collective aspects will appear predominant. But what about when you look at the individuals that make up that collective? Are they universally collectivist in their ideology? What about in their actual day-to-day behavior? Are they all pure and free of the sin of Cain? Why is it that we see the individualistic elements within our own culture, and not others? Could it be that it is the only one that we are close enough to see it at all at that level?

Basically, I think our disagreement boils down to that you see individualism as an invention made once and once lost, lost forever in a sea of default collectivism. I see individualism as a natural conclusion from the facts of reality, independently arrived at over and over again, but unable to rise through the invented glass ceiling of collectivism.

In fact, the anthropology on this is very clear: Innovation occurs in the West, broadly defined, and in no other human cultures. In normative terms, the very idea of having a new idea is a radical deviation, a dangerous aberration, an insufferable insult to the gods themselves.

This is the way real homo sapiens really behave in cultures other than our own. We are not talking about any place connected to the West by a hard-line. Those cultures are Westernized even if they are not yet truly of the West. In an actual non-Western culture, innovation will only occur in the midst of an extreme emergency, and then only enough innovation will be suffered for the group to survive the emergency. If conditions return to status quo ante, the innovation will be forgotten and its inventor shunned. This is all but universal in anthropology, with the children of Cain being the only exception.

Growing up as a child of Cain, it can be difficult to envision any condition contrary to constant, radical innovation. It's not a matter of, "How could they not look for better ways of living?" Raised the way they are, the question is, "How could they, ever?"

I think Toohey's argument--not his interpretation of it--is completely correct. It is specious to say that, "We stand on the shoulders of giants." The truth is, were it not for the shoulders of these giants we lounge upon--without so much as a word of thanks--we would all still be crawling in the mud, never daring to think of any alternative to crawling in the mud, never thinking of any anything but the mud. Never really thinking at all...

We were lucky to be raised the way we were, but we were raised the way we were because one man raised himself. We are nothing without him.
posted by Greg Swann at 10:53 AM

 
Hydrogen-powered hype...

A nice article from Car and Driver taking on the math of hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles:

Anthrop goes on to estimate the fuel-cell power needed for the 2.526 billion miles driven in the U.S. in 2000. According to Southern California Edison, the electricity needed per mile for passenger cars is at least 0.46 kilowatt-hour. For the whole U.S. vehicle fleet, that works out to 1.16 trillion kilowatt-hours. You'll need 32 quads of coal, which is twice the energy actually consumed in 2000 with gasoline.

As for global-warming implications, the use of hydrogen from coal instead of gasoline would produce a 2.7-fold increase in carbon emissions.

Of course, all of today's electricity doesn't come from coal. But even with the current mix of sources, including natural gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind, that much hydrogen would raise our carbon output to about twice the 2000 level.

The enviros like to talk about renewable energy. Anthrop has done those calculations as well. Hydro power is our largest source of green electricity, but it would take 15 times the current amount for an all-hydrogen vehicle fleet. Given the pressure to remove existing dams, it's unlikely we'll have any additional hydroelectricity.

Photovoltaic cells? Anthrop says it takes about eight years of cell output to make back the electrical power originally consumed in manufacturing the cell.

Wind power? It defies calculation, in part because wind blows only intermittently.

Virtually all the hydrogen produced today, about 50 million tons worldwide, comes from natural gas. The process, called "steam reforming," is only about 30 percent efficient, much less, he says, "than if the natural gas were simply burned" in the generating plant.

Producing enough hydrogen to replace gasoline by reforming natural gas would increase our gas consumption by 66 percent over 2002's usage. And don't forget the carbon emissions.

That leaves the unspeakableÑnukes.

posted by Greg Swann at 4:40 PM

 
It's all over now, Baby Blue

by Bob Dylan

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out the saints are comin' through
And 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.
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.
Your empty-handed armies, they're are all going home.
Your lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor.
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.
posted by Greg Swann at 1:46 PM

 
BetterVegas: A newer, better New Orleans...

Wouldn't it be a great idea to get the cars off the Strip in Las Vegas and open the whole street up to pedestrian traffic? That point of view has a few more advocates this morning. From the Las Vegas Review Journal:

A car jumped a curb and plowed into a group of pedestrians on the Strip Tuesday, killing one and injuring 13 in what Las Vegas police said was an intentional act.

For reasons unknown, the Federal Government intends to piss away a fifth of a trillion dollars rebuilding New Orleans, which, from news reports, was evidently a vast slum with a half-carat gem of a tourist trap right in the middle.

Las Vegas Boulevard, minus the cars, is everything everyone could want from New Orleans, without the slums and without the soggy heat of Bourbon Street. Toss in another billion--entrepreneurial money, not tax dollars--and you've got a huge gumbo emporium to stage all the big-band jazz anyone can stand.

Two grand initiatives, no taxes: Leave New Orleans to sink into the mud and build a newer, better New Orleans on a carless Las Vegas Boulevard, where it belongs. It's Mardi Gras unending, and it hardly ever rains...
posted by Greg Swann at 7:20 AM

 
Work hard. Make money. Live in Splendor--now, not later...

Sunni Maravillosa, whom I have known net.wise for a long, long time, is hosting this week's Carnival of Liberty. Her topic is Personal Liberty, and I am taking the time to write about it because I've been thinking about it for the last few years. (I laugh at myself when I say things like that, but it's true: I can think about one idea for years on end.)

Anyway, it happens that I'm really, really busy right now. I have a huge number of eggs in the air, and juggling them is taking up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week. But that's the point.

I myself am fairly consistently frustrated with what I think of as hysterical libertarian rhetoric. The sky can only fall so many times in any given day. At the same time, I have always thought that Personal Liberty, freedom from the inside out, is the only kind that matters. It were well to be free of taxes and insane barriers to action, but it is better still to be the kind of person who can rejoice in life as it is, rather than constantly whining about all the peas under the mattresses. I am ripe with fable, and it is a fact that this general theme is the subject of the final Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie story--which I've also been thinking about for years and which may turn out to be a Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie novel by the time I'm done with it. We have but one life. To the extent that we sacrifice it to misery about what might be, but isn't, to that extent we are self-enslaved.

But the other end of this is that Personal Liberty is liberty of action. I wrote at length about what it feels like to live inside my mind--and inside my work, a co-terminus space. I think the most important task for a human being, as opposed to various sorts of faux-animal facsimiles, is to find whatever it is that he is burning to do and then do it as much as possible. This is easy for me, because I am consumed by whatever I happen to be doing. I've written about this, too, of course: Except in the extreme circumstance, human misery has almost nothing to do with external factors. That's just the excuse we use to rationalize our habituated inaction. Human joy is caused by achievement--and by nothing else.

But if Personal Liberty is liberty of action, we need more than just achievement. We need to get paid for it, too. This is not essential. Most of my best work has paid me nothing at all--and may never pay me anything. But other work I have done, am doing, has afforded me the means to express the liberty of action, has given me the freedom--not from other people but from privation--to do as I choose. Money is not essential to human satisfaction, but it is the sine qua non of many sorts of satisfying experiences.

So this is my take: For the greatest possible quantity of Personal Liberty you can achieve right now, in your one real life, work as hard as you can at the thing you love best, and, if possible, get paid a lot for doing it. This won't make the sky stop falling--but you won't have time to notice. It won't get the peas out from under the mattresses--but you'll sleep too soundly to care. What it will do is give you the most and the best Personal Liberty--the liberty of action--you can have in the only life you will ever have.

Work hard. Make money. Rejoice in the Splendor that comes only from within.
posted by Greg Swann at 9:57 AM

SplendorQuests