With most of my books packed away and not easily accessible, I’m going to let my sometimes misfiring memory have a partially free rein. I remember that Hannah Arendt had once asserted—I believe in Life of the Mind—that Americans (by circa 1970) had already made political decisions which would force us to a crisis point … [Read more…]
Shortly after I published my essay, Mathematical Models of Human History: Are They Plausible?, on the use of mathematical models in history, I saw an article by Stephanie Pappas summarizing some results of work done by Simon Powers, “a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolution at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.” Powers is working … [Read more…]
I’m not an unqualified supporter of quantitative modeling in the social sciences, most certainly do I have my doubts about modeling in history. It’s a dangerous business and the results have been spotty at best. Yet, it could work for some sorts of analyses and doing it in a disciplined way would allow rejection or … [Read more…]
Col Pat Lang (ret), a Green Beret and military intelligence officer, has written another of many short and authoritative commentaries on the current messes which are the US civilian government and US military. Of the two, the military seems to be the far lesser mess, even to the point of being reformable so long as … [Read more…]
I’ve written on this general topic before: as one example, one revealing an important development in my thoughts, see The Need for Abstractions in Moral Self-understanding as one example. In that essay, about the necessity of abstractions, but proper abstractions, I stated: My interest lies in an important stream of thoughts and attitudes of New … [Read more…]
The center hasn’t held and the pieces fly away. Without the most basic sorts of order, the sorts of order which are specifically labeled `moral’ aren’t possible, at least not on a large-scale such as that of the United States or even that of the city of Springfield, MA less than a quarter mile away … [Read more…]
Conspiracies. Don’t underestimate the number and importance of conspiracies in human history, conspiracies political or economic or even cultural but usually criminal and often highly immoral. Don’t overestimate their importance in the general scheme of things but don’t forget their sheer abundance indicates they play a role in God’s story—I’ll pass over a discussion of … [Read more…]
I’ve just finished reading Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly and considered it a perversely entertaining read about a disedifying aspect of much of human history—the sheer stubborn stupidity of many political leaders. After quick discussions of Jeroboam, son and successor of King Solomon, and the legend of the Trojan Horse—which likely had some historical … [Read more…]
Despite my—so to speak—metaphysical biases toward empirical knowledge, I carry with me a human respect for `ideals’, loosely defined, so that I don’t like the idea that liberty is gained and held by a balance of weaponry between the citizenry and their government. I do accept the arguments in the end, partly because the number … [Read more…]
This essay is written in response to an article which is highly rational and not `conspiracy-minded’ according to the current mind-set: Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever. This article deals with the price-fixing activities of money-center banks and allied financial institutions, activities which are proving to be wider ranging and larger in scale … [Read more…]