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2002-12-23

Travelin' Blues

On the road again...

Don't expect any bloggage here until sometime early in 2003: yours truly is leaving on a jet plane early tomorrow morning -- I'll be long gone 'fore the crack of dawn, heading for New York town and other points east. I'll be visiting family and friends, driving from town to town, following that broken white line, heading down that two-lane highway, and doing some reading (selections from Epicurus as well as Nietzsche's Joyful Wisdom) when I get the chance. Speaking of the latter, the following is just a song before I go:

Toward New Seas

That way is my will; I trust
In my mind and in my grip.
Without plan, into the vast
Open sea I head my ship.

All is shining, new and newer,
Upon space and time sleeps noon;
Only your eye -- monstrously,
Stares at me, Infinity!

(From the Songs of Prince Vogelfrei, the appendix to Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft, translated by Walter Kaufmann. How many other songs are hinted at above? I count nine. Yes, Friedrich, what we seek is none other than a philosophy that sings!)

Posted on 2002-12-23 at 22:37. File under personal.

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More Patent Nonsense

Second thoughts on AOL's IM patent.

Today I completed a preliminary but fairly thorough technical analysis of U.S. Patent 6,499,344 and its relation to Jabber. My conclusion? That Jabber technologies do not infringe on the patent. (In fact the patent seems to describe the technology used to build ICQ, which is quite different from most other IM and presence systems in existence today.)

So we've dodged the bullet. But still I'm feeling a bit uneasy, and I wonder: what other potential traps lie waiting in the pipeline of patent applications within the USPTO?

Posted on 2002-12-23 at 22:07. File under jabber.

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2002-12-19

Patent Nonsense

First thoughts on U.S. Patent #6,499,344.

Today we discovered that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted to AOL a patent on IM and presence technology. If this patent is enforced and upheld, it could spell the end for non-AOL IM systems, or at least ones (like Jabber) that could not afford AOL's licensing fees. Whether they enforce the patent is an open question, but the uncertainty this introduces into the market (and into standards efforts) is extreme. The Jabber Software Foundation, of which I am the Executive Director, today issued a position statement, established a watchdog website, and started a dedicated mailing list to gather prior art and discuss potential legal strategies. Look for regular updates on this topic for quite a while.

Posted on 2002-12-19 at 21:34. File under jabber.

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Guns and Freedom

Read every word.

Rachel Lucas has posted a guest blog entry on guns and freedom by one Bill Whittle (who, like me, does not and never has owned a gun). Most decidedly worth reading in its entirety. (Thanks to GeekPress for the link.)

Posted on 2002-12-19 at 21:22. File under politics.

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On Enlightenment

The Nietzschean perspective.

Speaking of the Enlightenment, I think my favorite among the Nietzsche books I've completed in my current re-reading process is Human, All Too Human, which is the work of his that is most closely connected with the Enlightenment. This connection is best explicated, I think, in the following entries:

A delusion in the theory of revolution. -- There are political and social fantasists who with fiery eloquence invite a revolutionary overturning of all social orders in the belief that the proudest temple of fair humanity will then at once rise up as though of its own accord. In these perilous dreams there is still an echo of Rousseau's superstition, which believes in a miraculous, primeval, but as it were buried goodness of human nature and ascribes all the blame for this burying to the institutions of culture in the form of society, state, and education. The experiences of history have taught us, unfortunately, that every such revolution brings about the resurrection of the most savage energies in the shape of the long-buried dreadfulness and excesses of the most distant ages: that a revolution can thus be a source of energy in a mankind grown feeble, but never a regulator, architect, artist, perfector of human nature. -- It is not Voltaire's moderate nature, inclined as it was to ordering, purifying, and reconstructing, but Rousseau's passionate follies and half-lies that called forth the optimistic spirit of the Revolution against which I cry: 'Ecrasez l'infame!' [Crush the infamy!] It is this spirit that has for a long time banished the spirit of the Enlightenment and of progressive evolution: let us see -- each of us within himself -- whether it is possible to call it back! (Volume I, §463)

The perilousness of the Enlightenment. -- All the semi-insanity, histrionicism, bestial cruelty, voluptuousness, and especially sentimentality and self-intoxication, which taken together constitutes the actual substance of the Revolution and had, before the Revolution, become flesh and spirit in Rousseau -- this creature then went on with perfidious enthusiasm to set the Enlightenment too on its fanatical head, which thereby itself began to glow as though in a transfigured light: the Enlightenment, which is fundamentally so alien to the Revolution and, left to itself, would have passed quietly along like a gleam in the clouds and for long been content to address itself only to the individual, so that it would have transformed the customs and institutions of nations only very slowly. Now, however, tied to a violent and impulsive companion, the Enlightenment itself became violent and impulsive. Its perilousness has thereby become almost greater than the liberating illumination it brought to the great revolutionary movement. He who grasps this will also know out of what compound it has to be extracted, of what impurity it has to be cleansed: so as then to continue the work of the Enlightenment in himself, and to strangle the Revolution at birth, to make it not happen. (Volume II, Part 2, §221)

For Nietzsche, then, Enlightenment is above all a personal matter: it works quietly, progressively, internally, out of sight; it is alien to mass movements; it is nearly impervious to revolutionary sentiments and radical manifestos; it is a matter not for collective action but for individual cultivation.

Cultivation. It is no coincidence that Human, All Too Human is steeped in the Epicurean imagery of tending one's own garden, of looking at the world with clear eyes, of pruning one's hopes but plucking the day (Horace Odes I.11), of living "happily and peaceably with oneself even in the turmoil of life" (Volume I, §626), of simple and moderate pleasures, of that serenity which Epicurus called ataraxia. Has anyone written at length on Nietzsche and Epicurus? I sense the need for a comparative study.

Posted on 2002-12-19 at 20:43. File under philosophy.

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A Tolkien Future?

David Brin on looking forward vs. looking back.

David Brin has written a fascinating exploration of the nostalgic character of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which Brin ties to the Romantic backlash against the Enlightenment. The dialectic of Romanticism and Enlightenment, of pining for the good old days vs. looking forward to the future, of nostalgia vs. progress, is eternally fascinating. Most people and authors and philosophies and movements combine both aspects, usually in an uneasy balance of forces that will sometimes explode into atavism or (less frequently) a burst of forward progress. Brin argues well that we live in what is essentially but quietly an Enlightenment culture, but that we don't recognize it and that we mistakenly idealize older times (and medievalist fictions like those of Tolkien), perhaps at our peril. Thought-provoking stuff.

Posted on 2002-12-19 at 19:38. File under society.

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2002-12-16

On the Lighter Side

Wherein I take a break from Nietzsche.

When I have a book in my hand, I can usually be found reading all that heavy stuff like Nietzsche (just wait until I decide to re-read all of Aristotle!). So yesterday I took a little break and devoured two of my favorite books for young adults: The Wonderful O by James Thurber and The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Both are highly recommended for kids from ages 10 to 100.

Posted on 2002-12-16 at 19:29. File under literature.

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2002-12-14

TOC

Scholarship vs. the organizational imperative at The Objectivist Center.

Longtime readers of this blog or of my essays know that I consider myself a recovered Randian. I first read Ayn Rand at the age of 13 and have been interested in her ideas ever since, although over time my differences from her approach have become significant enough that it would not be honest of me to say that I am a Randian or Objectivist. At this point I tend to describe myself as a Rand scholar (e.g., I have three essays forthcoming in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies and I'm currently doing fairly intensive research on Rand's philosophical and aesthetic debt to Nietzsche). Early in my intellectual "career" I was on the academic fast track, and planned to pursue a PhD in philosophy, probably with a specialization in Aristotle and Greek philosophy. Yet at some point in college I became disillusioned with academic thinking (probably when one of my professors told me that "it doesn't matter what's true, it matters what you can get published") and I decided that I would rather be an independent scholar in philosophy than to pursue the traditional path of earning a PhD, focusing my energies on publishing, hiding my ideas, begging for money from grant-giving organizations, and grovelling for tenure. Not that I don't have respect for people in academe: some of my best friends are academics. :) It's just that the academic life is not for me. I need more intellectual freedom than is possible in the ivory tower, so I've kept my distance, with the result that I can write what I want when I want. For me, it's all about freedom.

I've reflected before before on what I call the organizational imperative: the subtle shift from finding truth and creating value to perpetuating the organization that I have seen occur in every for-profit and non-profit corporation in which I've been involved. Early on, I saw this imperative begin to poison an Objectivist organization for which I initially held great hope: the Institute for Objectivist Studies (since renamed The Objectivist Center). I saw the focus turn from discovering truth to holding bigger conferences, attracting more donors, and maximizing media mentions. Now, years after I stopped supporting them, Diana Hsieh reports that spending on scholarly programs is being slashed at TOC in favor of cultural commentary, op-ed pieces, and "having an immediate impact". It's sad, but it seems TOC feels it's off the hook because "the donors want it this way" and "we must please our customers" and all that.

To which I say: horsefeathers. Did Howard Roark, the hero of Rand's novel The Fountainhead, start building Renaissance palazzos or Gothic revival skyscrapers because his customers wanted him to? No, he struggled along in the building trades and even worked in a granite quarry for a while. But he persevered and eventually found customers who wanted a Howard Roark building, not a pale imitation of ancient styles. Similarly, if the leaders of TOC really cared about scholarship, they certainly could refocus the organization, scale back, seek other supporters rather than the short-sighted ones who just want to have an immediate impact, and so on. But that would require leadership, integrity, and a willingness to work in the quarry for a while if necessary. (No one ever said idealism or individualism was easy.) Instead, we see that the highest priority is to maintain as much funding as possible, price no object (even if that price is a cheapening of one's intellectual standards). It's disappointing but, unfortunately, not surprising.

Rather than lament the change in priorities, perhaps this is a perfect opportunity for someone else to offer a competing product, such as scholarly conferences offered to smaller audiences and run on shoestring budgets. Even if such conferences were run by a non-profit organization, such an organization could (at least for a while) attempt to resist the siren song of the organizational imperative and seek out donors who really care about ideas (I'm sure plenty of them have stopped supporting TOC over the years in dismay at the decline in scholarly standards there). It can't be that hard to run a small conference: people do it all the time (in fact, I assisted David Kelley in running the first IOS Summer Seminar, my wife and I managed the second one, and I participated in the planning for a focused organization that put together what became the first Advanced Seminar at TOC: the Network of Objectivist Scholars). And who knows, the competition might be healthy. After all, wasn't Rand an arch-capitalist who glorified the free market? For too long, Objectivists have accepted an intellectual oligopoly in the market of ideas (or monopoly, if you believe in the folks at the Ayn Rand Institute <shudder/>). If you ask me, it's time for some trust-busting -- from below.

Posted on 2002-12-14 at 21:12. File under philosophy.

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2002-12-13

Conversation

Nietzsche on marriage.

It's fascinating to me that Nietzsche had cogent things to say about an institution like marriage, given that he never wed. But so it is. Here is a quote on the topic from Human, All Too Human (Volume I, § 406):

Marriage as a long conversation. -- When entering into a marriage, one ought to ask oneself: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will be devoted to conversation.

Naturally Nietzsche thought he was writing only for men (was that really only 120 years ago?), but otherwise I find his comments insightful.

Posted on 2002-12-13 at 20:12. File under philosophy.

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Blogomorphosis

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Back in August I said my blog would focus exclusively on Jabber for a while, mostly because I was working on a book about the Jabber protocol and technology. However, now that I've had to cancel the book contract, it seems that I've returned to my regularly scheduled programming: philosophy, music, poetry, politics, language, and only a bit of Jabber and technology in general. It's a sad day for Jabber junkies, but then again they can always read the Jabber Journal, my weekly review of all things Jabber. So read JJ if you need a Jabber fix, and stick around here if you prefer the more rarified topics on which I'm wont to pontificate.

Posted on 2002-12-13 at 19:54. File under personal.

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2002-12-12

Some Levity

And now a word from our sponsors... :)

Yesterday I was passed by some fatcat in a fancy Mercedes (in a school zone, no less!) and this song popped into my head:

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz --
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz --

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV --
Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me.
I wait for delivery each day until three,
So oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV --

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town --
I'm counting on you, Lord, please don't let me down.
Prove that you love me and buy the next round,
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town --

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz --
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends,
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz.

Catchy.

Posted on 2002-12-12 at 16:02. File under music.

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IP.net

File sharing, piracy, and intellectual property.

Tim O'Reilly strikes again, this time with some timely thoughts on file sharing and the fortunes of those who create music, books, and what nowadays people call "content" (ick). And speaking of timely, here's a fascinating article about J.R.R. Tolkien and intellectual property, explaining how he dealt with pirated copies of the Lord of the Rings back in the 1960s.

Posted on 2002-12-12 at 10:24. File under publicdomain.

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2002-12-04

Conducting

An attempt at a job description.

The other day, a new contract employee at Jabber, Inc. asked me what my role is. The best I could come up with is that I'm the conductor of the Jabber Community Orchestra: I stand up front and wave my arms around, and good things happen. I certainly don't have the technical talents possessed by most of the individual "players" in the community. But I suppose I am good at documenting the protocol and such, so maybe we're playing a concerto and I'm conducting from the piano. ;)

Posted on 2002-12-04 at 21:47. File under jabber.

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Philosopher or Ideologist?

More thoughts from Nietzsche.

In another worthy quote from Human, All Too Human (Volume II, Part 2, § 171), Nietzsche reflects on those scholars who...

lack all impersonal interest in a problem; just as they themselves are personalities through and through, so all their insights and acquirements in the field of knowledge coalesce together into a personality, into a living multiplicity whose individual parts are dependent on one another, cleave to one another, are nourished by the same food, and as a whole possesses its own atmosphere and its own odor. -- Natures such as this produce, with their personality-informed structures of knowledge, the illusion that a science (or even the whole of philosophy) is finished and has reached its goal; it is the life in their structure that performs this magic.... The name usually given to such men is philosophers.

I'm not so sure -- to me, such "scholars" sound more like ideologists than philosophers.

Posted on 2002-12-04 at 21:04. File under philosophy.

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The Kernel

Jabber and the Internet OS.

OpenP2P is running an interesting interview with Tim O'Reilly (well, all interviews with Tim are interesting). He says "we're at the stage of trying to define an operating system for the Internet", which will involve creating "an operating system that's about managing the relationship between a bunch of individual computers providing different services, and figuring out how to coordinate and manage all those services". I pointed DizzyD (of Gabber and now Nitro fame) to the interview, and we were just chatting about how Jabber is the OS. Actually it's not the entire OS, it's more like the signalling bus of a computer, or perhaps even the kernel. But saying "Jabber is the Kernel of the Internet OS" sounds a bit too much like marketing-speak. ;)

Posted on 2002-12-04 at 09:48. File under jabber.

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2002-12-03

Opposites and Transitions

Yet another quote from Nietzsche.

I found this paragraph interesting (Human, All Too Human, Volume II, Part 2, § 67):

Habit of seeing opposites. -- The general imprecise way of observing sees everywhere in nature opposites (as, e.g., "warm and cold") where there are, not opposites, but differences of degree. This bad habit has led us into wanting to comprehend and analyze the inner world, too, the spiritual-moral world, in terms of such opposites. An unspeakable amount of painfulness, arrogance, harshness, estrangement, frigidity has entered into human feelings because we think we see opposites instead of transitions.

I think I could fill my blog with a quote a day from Nietzsche and not run out for several years. I wouldn't agree with them all, but who ever said agreement is a fundamental value, especially in intellectual matters? Would that I had time not only to quote from Nietzsche but also to reflect on his thoughts at length.

Posted on 2002-12-03 at 20:02. File under philosophy.

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2002-12-02

Technorati

A fun new blog toy.

Dave Sifry just Jabbered me about a new web service he's launched for webloggers. Here's his weblog entry about it. It's fun, check it out!

Posted on 2002-12-02 at 14:32. File under technology.

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2002-12-01

Anti-Politics

Thoughts on Emerson, Nock, and Jefferson.

I just finished reading an online version of Albert Jay Nock's book Our Enemy, the State, a mind-opening exploration of the nature of government (first published in 1935). Actually Nock draws a distinction between government -- by which he seems to mean fundamentally self-government, and highly local forms of governance that spring out of self-government and universal consent -- and the State. He argues persuasively that the State (i.e., government as we know it) is, always has been, and always will be an instrument of force, coercion, violence, and domination, and that the State is diametrically opposed to the health of human society (i.e., voluntary relations among individuals).

Similarly, in his essay Politics, Emerson calls the State "the system of force" and argues that "every actual State is corrupt". He envisions a time when the state will disappear, for "with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary." But this occurrence depends on a high degree of ethical advancement: "there will always be a government of force, where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force, they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of commerce, and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be answered."

Of the American Founders, it is Jefferson who came closest to understanding this code or system of force. I've been reading a bit in his selected writings, and they are instructive. Here is a quote from his letter to Joseph Cabell, in which he advocates that as much power as possible should reside in the smallest possible political unit, which he calls a ward (the immediate context is a proposal of his for funding elementary education):

Declare the county ipso facto divided into wards for the present, by the boundaries of the militia captaincies; somebody attend the ordinary muster of each company, having first desired the captain to call together a full one. There explain the object of the law to the people of the company, put to their vote whether they will have a school established, and the most central and convenient place for it; get them to meet and build a log school-house; have a roll taken of the children who would attend it, and of those of them able to pay. These would probably be sufficient to support a common teacher, instructing gratis the few unable to pay. If there should be a deficiency, it would require too trifling a contribution from the county to be complained of; and especially as the whole county would participate, where necessary, in the same resource. Should the company, by its vote, decide that it would have no school, let them remain without one. The advantages of this proceeding would be that it would become the duty of the alderman elected by the county, to take an active part in pressing the introduction of schools, and to look out for tutors. If, however, it is intended that the State government shall take this business into its own hands, and provide schools for every county, then by all means strike out this provision of our bill. I would never wish that it should be placed on a worse footing than the rest of the State. But if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience. Try the principle one step further, and amend the bill so as to commit to the governor and council the management of all our farms, our mills, and merchants' stores. No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to. Let the national government be entrusted with the defence of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate. And I do believe that if the Almighty has not decreed that man shall never be free, (and it is a blasphemy to believe it,) that the secret will be found to be in the making himself the depository of the powers respecting himself, so far as he is competent to them, and delegating only what is beyond his competence by a synthetical process, to higher and higher orders of functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer powers in proportion as the trustees become more and more oligarchical. The elementary republics of the wards, the county republics, the State republics, and the republic of the Union, would form a gradation of authorities, standing each on the basis of law, holding every one its delegated share of powers, and constituting truly a system of fundamental balances and checks for the government. Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day; when there shall not be a man in the State who will not be a member of some one of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte. How powerfully did we feel the energy of this organization in the case of embargo? I felt the foundations of the government shaken under my feet by the New England townships. There was not an individual in their States whose body was not thrown with all its momentum into action; and although the whole of the other States were known to be in favor of the measure, yet the organization of this little selfish minority enabled it to overrule the Union. What would the unwieldy counties of the Middle, the South, and the West do? Call a county meeting, and the drunken loungers at and about the courthouses would have collected, the distances being too great for the good people and the industrious generally to attend. The character of those who really met would have been the measure of the weight they would have had in the scale of public opinion. As Cato, then, concluded every speech with the words, "Carthago delenda est," so do I every opinion, with the injunction, "divide the counties into wards." Begin them only for a single purpose; they will soon show for what others they are the best instruments. God bless you, and all our rulers, and give them the wisdom, as I am sure they have the will, to fortify us against the degeneracy of our government, and the concentration of all its powers in the hands of the one, the few, the well-born or the many.

Jefferson's thinking here is so different from the ways of our "modern" administrative state as to be thoroughly alien. He is proposing to fund elementary education not from the general funds of the government located in the District of Columbia, in Richmond or some other state capital, or even in the local county seat, but to raise the necessary funds from among the people of a ward (or, if those people so choose, to have no school whatsoever). And how large is a ward? Its boundaries are co-equal with those of a militia captaincy! Yes, back in those days (1816) there were no standing armies in America, and the defense of the nation rested with local militias consisting of every able-bodied man with a gun. Jefferson generalizes his proposal and ends up advocating that fewer and fewer powers be delegated to more centralized bodies -- and indeed this was nearly the reality of life in those days. Oh, how far we have come! Now the entire life of the republic is centralized, centralized, centralized -- government of the Beltway, by the Beltway, for the Beltway. The national government takes some 25% of economic output, a state government perhaps 10%, and local governments much less. Our priorities are exactly inverted. And there is absolutely no sign that this sorry state of affairs will change anytime soon, because most everyone (and certainly the two major political parties) are perfectly happy with this arrangement.

Ah well, enough political musings for today. I need to think about the sphere of things that I can influence, and focus my energies there....

Posted on 2002-12-01 at 16:20. File under politics.

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POP Culture, II

More Post-Objectivist Premises.

There is some other interesting stuff at the post-objectivism site, including a call for dialogue between Buddhists and Randians (not as far-fetched as you might think), a fine interview with literary scholar Kirsti Minsaas, reflections on the Culture novels of SF writer Iain Banks, and some intriguing essays on Rand and feminism. I happen to be a female chauvinist, so the latter essays strike a chord with me. But I find it hard to accept statements such as the following:

Feminists, as a rule, assume that there are few if any inherent, unchangeable differences between men and women; only a lot of individual differences and variation. (Thomas Gramstad, What is Feminism?)

"Man" and "woman" are social-cultural categories, not biological ones. (Thomas Gramstad, Vive Les Differences)

While I appreciate Gramstad's call for a biological individualism, it does no good to ignore aggregate biological differences. This is not some primitive sociobiology, but more and more simple biological fact (read Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate for an overview and pointers to the research results). It's downright silly to say that 'man' and 'woman' are purely socio-cultural categories -- would we say the same thing of our near-relatives the chimps, orangutans, and gorillas, or animals such as dogs, horses, pigs, ad cattle ("don't be so patriarchal, 'bull' and 'cow' are purely socio-cultural categories, not biological ones")? However, admitting that there are aggregate biological differences between the sexes does not imply collectivism or a desire to ignore individual differences. The dogma of the blank slate is not the only defense against simplistic stereotyping, nor the best one (since the evidence proves it false).

Posted on 2002-12-01 at 11:06. File under philosophy.

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POP Culture, I

Post-Objectivist Premises.

Over the last week or so I read a number of the essays collected at the Premises Of Post-Objectivism website run by Thomas Gramstad. My original reason for visiting was to re-read Mrs. Logic and the Law, since I'm slowly doing some research for a paper I'm even more slowly writing, entitled "Anarchy, State, and Objectivism" (an exploration of Ayn Rand's views on government). I stayed to read a number of other essays there on political philosophy, mostly on the debate between minimal government (minarchism) and no government (anarcho-capitalism). It's interesting stuff if you're a former philosophy major, but even I find the debate rather abstract and lacking in real-life referents, especially since current governments are so far from being minimal.

Personally I'd like to see a well-reasoned historical argument for why a period of small or no government is likely to follow the large administrative states we see today. After all, there's no reason to think that our current forms of government will last -- certainly monarchy, feudalism, and communism have been cast into the dustbin of history, so why not the welfare-warfare state? But I have yet to see some wizard of dialectical libertarianism make this argument. Some of the evidence for the argument has to do with the emerging age of abundance I blogged about the other day. Yet a countervailing tendency is the need for more rules in a highly complex society. I'm not saying that such rules need to be formulated and enforced by governments, though; in fact, one could argue that with the incredible and increasing pace of change in fields as diverse as finance, computing, medicine, and even agriculture, governments move too slowly to apply appropriate guidelines and are thus counter-productive. The modern administrative state fields legions of bureaucrats to govern minute details of business and life in general. That approach may have worked when things changed more slowly, but soon that approach will seem hopelessly outdated if it doesn't already, because changes in technology and lifestyles will only come faster and faster over the next 50 to 100 years. Consider this: more changes in technology and medicine and financial processes and so on occurred in the last 100 years than throughout all of recorded history. And consider that such changes increased at something approaching an exponential rate during that time. Can the modern bureaucratic state track such changes, or is adjustment and governance best left up to free markets, professional societies, non-profit organizations, grass-roots volunteers, and individuals? It's a question worth pondering.

Posted on 2002-12-01 at 09:47. File under philosophy.

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