Free The Animal

Many commenters to my last entry complain that Che Guevara can indeed be regarded as an “idealist.” I say emphatically no, and I lay out a bit of the reason for it in my own comments to that post. The error everyone is making is that they are setting up a dichotomy that does not exist between an idealist and a realist, and I’m using realist in the sense of conformation to reality, and not in the sense “realism” is used in art and literature (which, as opposed to “romanticism,” is a very valid distinction). In the sphere of human action (which includes ethics and politics), an idealist must necessarily be a realist, and vice versa. They are two ways of expressing the exact same things in terms of essential characteristics. There’s nothing in the world more ideal than acting in accordance with reality—invoking all that implies, ethically and politically. Given the above, and given that communism is not now, and never has been “good in theory, but impractical” (another vicious false dichotomy), Che Guevara is no idealist. Quite the opposite. Communism is an abject rejection of all relevant facts and a complete betrayal of human nature. As such, it…

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Billy Beck has latched onto a tiny bit in an email I sent that alluded to how we’re sometimes condemned on the sole basis of the guttural language we sometimes resort to. He’s also drawn Martin McPhillips into it. To get what I’m going to get at, you really need to read both references, including the comments to McPhillips’ entry. I spoke peripherally to this issue in a recent entry, which, not so curiously, also involved Beck (and Kim du Toit, another potty mouth). Now I’ll address it more specifically. As Billy already indicated in the first comment to Martin’s post, I said there was something else to it, in addition to his excellent work-up. Experience breeds confidence. We express as we do because we’ve stood the test and know we’re right. It’s that simple. I’ll explain. I read on his blog (I can’t recall where) that Billy was up to 20,000+ posts to Usenet. For those who don’t know, Usenet was the Internet, insofar as political ideas were exchanged, before the advent of the blog. I did most of my time there between 1994 and 1996 or ‘97, and although I don’t have a post count, my posts totaled…

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This is surely nothing new to the world, but as I was walking the dog this morning, I was thinking about humanity from the widest perspective possible. For lack of a better term that might present itself later, I’m calling it Human Destinies. There’s a point to that. I speculate that we must either achieve our Destinies, or it means we’ve destroyed ourselves. To put it another way, I speculate that achieving such Destinies could be an essential part of the defining characteristics of human beings. In other words, it’s just what humans do—or they cease to exist; they become extinct. Now, the thing is, there’s no superfluous stuff, here. We’re talking about the widest scope possible—events that changed entirely the course of human history, irrevocably. Here’s what I came up with: 1. Agriculture / Basic Civilization. 2. Enlightenment / Secularization. 3. Technology / Capitalism / Industrialization. And that’s it, so far. Now, given the above, what’s number 4, out into the future? I further speculate that your answer to what number 4 is tells us a great deal about you. It could be the ultimate litmus test, in fact. Go ahead and comment, if you dare. Update: Greg Swann,…

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Preface: This entry encompasses an almost unimaginable scope. Please bear with me and read the whole thing if you can. I don’t make such a request routinely. I’m going to give my own view of what I think is next that changes everything, but it will take me a while to get there. Thanks to Greg Swan and Kyle Bennett who provided input into the final draft (which doesn’t mean they necessarily agree with everything). Thanks also to all the commenters on the original entry. Very interesting (I invite everyone to read them). To summarize, I was asking what comes next in the list of grand human destinies that changed everything. As you can see if you’ve read the original entry, I’ve made some edits as I’ve considered comments and developed my own thinking. 1. Agriculture. 2. Primitive Civilization. 3. Heliocentrism / Enlightenment / Secularization. 4. Technology / Capitalism / Industrialization. 5. The Internet. I think agriculture and civilization are important and fundamental enough to merit their own categories. How could I have left out Copernicus? I include him in what is now number 3. Heliocentrism isn’t important enough to merit its own category, but I think it prefigures Enlightenment…

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Yes, but not how you think Sometimes, even very smart people can be thoroughly convinced of the veracity of some position they hold…right up to the moment where they suddenly become not so sure. For an example, see this post and comments over on the QandO Blog. The comments are extensive, but what they reveal is that those arguing that natural rights do not exist were initially arguing against a bad formulation of their own design. Of course, the easiest way to stand effectively against some position is to be afforded (or take) the opportunity to state, in your own terms, the tenets of the position you are about to argue against. One should always try to find the best arguments that support (or deny) the position one intends to debate. If you follow the comments in that entry, you’ll eventually notice how the debate changes, once those claiming that natural rights don’t exist are confronted with the prospect of arguing against what natural rights really are (rather than the strawman argument they’d erected to later knock down). Here were my contributions (with a few edits for clarity): Having read a good deal of the comments at this point, I…

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