Douglas Purdy

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/american-decline

I am repeatedly impressed with the writing in the Atlantic.  So much so, that it joins the Economist as the only two periodicals to grace my Kindle.

James Fallows recent article with the same title as this post is a compelling read.  Although the reasons may not be what you expect.

The first reason is summarized best in a John Adams quote found in the article.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

It is worthwhile to consider the track record of democracy as long-term governing mechanism.  If you decide to undertake that, decoupling individual “freedom/liberty” from “democracy” during the process could provide new insights.

The second reason is the policy point around the importance of the public sector as “capital collector and director” (my words).

Robert Atkinson, the director of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, in Washington, has written that several times per century, a “transformational wave” of new technologies ripples through the economy and creates new opportunities and wealth. In the past, these have included mass-production systems, modern chemicals, aviation, and so on. Today the economically important technologies include genomic knowledge, information technologies like the Internet, and the geospatial information, from the GPS network, that is built into everything from dashboard navigators to the climate-change-monitoring systems that measure the size of glaciers or extent of forests. Private companies now create the jobs and wealth in each field, but public funds paid for the original scientific breakthroughs and provided early markets.

It couldn’t have been otherwise, Atkinson says. The scale of investment was too vast. The uncertainty of payoff was too great. The risk that profits and benefits would go to competitors who hadn’t made the initial investment was too high. The difference between promising and dead-end technologies was too hard to predict—especially decades ago, when work in all these fields began. So each started as a public program: the Internet by the Pentagon, the Human Genome Project by the National Institutes of Health, and the GPS network by the Air Force, which still operates it. The government could not have created Google, but Google could not have existed without government efforts to establish the Internet long before the company’s founders were born. This pattern—public investment and standard-setting, followed by private industrial growth—has been consistent through the years, Atkinson said, which is what worries him now. “Our companies and entrepreneurs are matchless in their power to adapt,” he said. “We lead in many categories the private economy can handle by itself. But where you need any public-private coordination, we’ve become handicapped. I worry that our companies can adapt, but our system can’t.”

This is a passage from Thus Spake Zarathustra (Chapter 14 — same title as this post) that resonated with me recently.

It is interesting to think about interactions with people that you either consciously or unconsciously wish to punish for a perceived slight.

Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspireth them—but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that maketh them so.

Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers’ paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy—they always go too far: so that their fatigue hath at last to go to sleep on the snow.

In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

In the end, these interactions diminish you.

Nietzsche has a recommendation on how to ensure that you don’t fall prey to the above.

It can be found in Chapter 51 (On Passing-By): “Where one can no longer love, there should one—PASS BY!”

I normally tweet things like this, but I have been reading Thus Spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil for what seems the 21th time (they should be read together, I have found) and this post really spoke to me.

From EcoGeek.org

Lori Marino at Emory University is taking a scientific approach to determining how human dolphi[n]s are. She’s simply running them through an MRI and measuring the complexity of their brains. The result, unsurprisingly, is that dolphins are extremely smart. Their brains, according to Emory, are more complex than any other non-human brain, beating out Chimpanzees for the title.

The question that post raises is how this fact should impact the way that treat dolphins and the ethics associated with that.

My question is a little more in depth, as I would love to question the fundamental values that led us to believe that (generally) humans are more valuable than dolphins.

As absurd as it may seem, ask yourself the question, “Why am I more valuable than a dolphin?” and then follow the chain down to your axiomatic values.

You may think that has a simple answer, but under careful scrutiny you end up with a teleological question and those sorts of questions are very hard indeed.

That aside, I think it is wonderful that we are getting some quant that we can use to determine the intelligence of a given non-human species.

I just completed Stoic Warriors.

This book was notable for two reasons.

First, it was the first book at I read on the Kindle device.

I have read several books on the iPhone with the Kindle app, which I enjoy (small screen and all), but the reading experience on the device itself was great, modulo one thing — it needs a backlight for nightime reading.

Second, this is the last book that I will complete this year and it will likely have the most impact of any book in 2009.

In short, the book outlines Stoic philosophy through the lens of the needs of today’s military forces. For example, what does Stoism tells us about anger, grief, loss, etc. — all emotions and feelings that are most manifest in military situations where life and limb hang in the balance.

The book covers basic Stoic philosophical teachings, largely through Cicero and Seneca, but a sizable portion of the work covers ‘applied Stoism’ through military experiences in WWI, WWII, Vietnam and the Gulf Wars.

The book has flaws. The final chapter should have likely kicked off the work as the notion of a human community makes war and its horror much more profound. The points about Buddhism and Stocism should have been explored. I think there was maybe a paragraph on it throughout the whole book — but I think the connection is profound. Lastly, the author seems to be an Aristotlian but doesn’t come out and say it.

I wrote a big wrap-up paragraph here, but the Wordpress iPhone app ate it, so I will close by saying that I recommend the book, especially if you are one that holds (as I do), that practical philosophic inquiry is not about Truth (whatever that is), but about ways of thinking about the world that help us survive and even thrive in a hostile environment.

The true king can walk among his subjects unarmed, unguarded at night, so it is said.

Of this, I am of two minds.

My Romance, the desire for true brotherhood and love of the human family, wishes this to be true.

How long I have wanted such a world!

My Reason tells me that the king would be cut down in seconds.

How long have we lived in such a world and how much longer still?

Now, the real question is which world is best for humanity?

Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the “omnipotence of war”. Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the laboring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

To understand, Prometheus Unbound, it is important consider “Promethesus Bound”.

No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.

I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?

I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,

Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,

Heaven’s ever-changing Shadow, spread below,

Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?

Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;

To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates

From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;

This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory

Prometheus Unbound (Shelley)

On golden wings I soar above you all

Downward my gaze is cast

Lofty, great, with terrible claw

Yet in the deep, I feel descending sorrow 

For one day, I know I will fall