Book reviews…Cities, roads, history, society…

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Sci Fi Engineer

I have as always been reading a lot on a broad range of topics. Here are three very worthwhile reads that have some things in common and might give you some interesting insight into society history, cities, transportation.

Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention Kindle Edition
by Ben Wilson

Saw this at Barnes and Nobles but bought the kindle edition. The physical book is nice but was not sure it was a real keeper. This is a good book, probably written before 2020 and Covid-19 raised questions about ‘the urban’ but I think either well thought out and thus an argument against the Anti-Urban angst right now, or edited well to address it without being too pointed.

This is an interesting read going back to pre history and even pre town/village to show that mankind was building monuments long before cities and that the typical early city surrounding religious/social centers was not an after thought but the genesis of the city. Also pointed out that when Mesopotamia was originally ‘urbanized’ it was more like Tenochtitlan, a wetland/jungle, not a desert as it is today. This actually points to a minor theme about natural climate change in this book and how it enabled then destroyed many early societies and their cities.

Dr. White works up from Uruk (probably oldest major city) through the more well known Mesopotamian city states to the coastal city states of the Mediterranean and Asia and how these cities lived and died by trade as much as by being centers of power. That usually the power came after economic power. Each city is put in its own context but that context extended to today. A city on the monsoon trade routs of the Middle Ages compared to modern Singapore. The trashing of Medieval Paris by Napoleon the II’s city planer (in the 1850’s) to build todays ‘city of lights’ is compared to the trashing of many other city centers in the name of modernity and the car.

But throughout the dynamism of the city, its inventiveness and its beating heart at the center of economic power is stressed. And above all that cities are human creations and habitats that are rebuilt and rehabilitated by the human spirits that enliven them. And despite wandering into and even making a strong case for the maleness and misogynistic tendencies of cities and the anti other tendencies Dr. White pulls back and strongly supports the case that cities are centers of diversity and new ways of living and new ways of empowering the downtrodden. While at the same time pointing out again and again that the elite urge to ‘clean up’ slums and old sections invariably destroys as much or more that is strong and beautiful as ‘helps.’ That the humans that give the city heart and power are the lower and middle classes not the elites and that elite re-planning is generally destructive of the human in the city. Again and again slums and ghettos are shown as a horror to the elites that is utterly at odds with the dynamic creativity that they hide in back alleys. Even in Mumbai and Lagos today the power of the slum is at odds with its image as presented by the largely ignorant elite.

The chapter on Warsaw in WWII is hard to read, but again and again points to the humanity of the urban core and its draw on the human soul for those it has become home to.

This book is an eye opening read and an excellent piece of work with a different view of the urban and the city. Not the least because it even deals with the suburbs and the suburban city (LA) and shows that it is in many ways just part of the continuum of development over something like ten thousand years.

I grew up in what I would call metro-suburbs of England and the Suburbs of the US and find that this book provides a much more solid base for thinking about the city than any article or techno dissection of the city vs suburbs vs rural…. Read the book, don’t miss some fascinating images and the use the author puts them to to explain times and places in some depth.

The effect of Covid-19 and the internet (one cannot be dealt with without the other) the coming impact of electric and autonomous cars and then personal air transport should be thought of AFTER you have read this book. It gives one pause and a new way to address what a city is and its draw to and repulse from the human spirit.

Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe Kindle Edition
by Judith Herrin

Ravenna on the Adriatic (the sea between Italy and the start of Eastern Europe is not a city one has heard of. Rome, Venice, Pisa, these cities of the Middle Ages and Renaissance are famous but a city that was for some hundreds of years the Capital of the Western Empire is simply not mentioned in most history books. Largely because its history started when Rome fell for the first time to the invaders and the Roman capital moved to what we call Constantinople. This was the start of the dark ages as first the barbarians and then Islam destroyed the Roman Empire. But that empire took a great deal of killing and our simple view of Rome the City = Rome the Empire, reinforced by Gibbons and others is simply false.

The city was important in Roman times, a city on an estuary that was much like we might imagine Venice a few hundred years later. The romans built/dredged a large harbor next to the city and it became the main sea link from Rome to the East, Anatolia, Greece, etc.

As Rome as Rome fell Ravenna became a center of gov’t and it also became a center of Christian faith, usually linked to the Abbot of Rome but also linking to the Eastern Faith, it was often at odds with the Abbot of Rome and or the Abbot (Patriarch) of Constantinople, where the later emperors tried to control the universal (Catholic) faith and failed.

Because of its link to the Eastern Church and Greece its Churches were richly decorated with mosaics, some of the most startling survivals of a period of history little remembered in the west.

Over the period of the barabarian invasions and later Empire the Emperors in Constantinople used Ravenna as their Western center of Government from where famous generals led army after army out to defend or recapture Roman lands. But in the end the powerful warrior tribes out of Germany, etc beat down the empire and took it as their own and Italy splintered into the city states that enliven the story of the Renaissance.

This history is rich and interesting, politics, religion, sociology, art, woven together. Dr Herrin uses a lot of first sources and actual peoples words to weave the story. Photographs of the wonderful mosaics makes one want to visit this historic city. The details of this ‘missing’ period are deeply interesting and helps explain the rise of Catholicism and the split with Orthodoxy. Another great read if you are interested in the history of Rome, Europe, the Middle Ages.

The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways Kindle Edition
by Earl Swift

Earl Swift’s The Big Roads starts at the beginning, in the nineteenth century with dirt tracks and cobbled lanes of the towns, cities and rural expanses and leads through their evolution over time. It is interesting that so much of the early work was more about associations building assets for commerce and the socialization of the automobile, prior to its becoming a power in its own right. And that the bicycle had a part to play before the automobile was big.

The story of the US routes, Route 66, Route 31, Route 71 etc etc and then the genesis of the interstate system are fascinating tales of time, place and actors.

A very human story interwoven with fascinating people and lacing in stories of places and times that you had heard elsewhere but never linked into the creation of the highways and now byways across the US.

As with the books above, particularly Metropolis this book talks about the hubris of the elites and of the blinders that technical leaders can have and the damage they can do while believing they are in the right and having the best interest of the people they are displacing at heart.

A fun book with fun side stories that especially resonate with me as I grew up as the Interstate system really came into its own and the knock on effects it had became visible, mostly for good but too often at a cost to various neighborhoods and towns.

Artificial…uh, dance partners?

Posted on December 31, 2020 by Sci Fi Engineer

Two items run across recently the emphasize the huge progress that robotics and Artificial intelligence has made in the last couple of years.

From Robot Reports a somewhat frightening video:Watch Boston Dynamics Robots Tear up the Dance Floor.

Boston Dynamics Atlas doing parcur from an article in The Verge

The Boston Dynamics robots are at the point that they can do most things a human can in regards to locomotion. It is unclear how much beyond balance and moving is local to the robots as the thoroughly bounded arena makes clear but the basics of the body frame is there. Ability to manipulate the environment other than in the most basic way has not been demonstrated by Boston Dynamics but other companies are making huge strides in manipulators. Ability to sense and understand the environment is another huge step. Except that the sensors exist (autonomous cars etc). Leaving understanding the environment beyond a very limited ‘world.’ And that takes a brain, and that seemed a long way off….except is it?

Hat tip Maggies Farm, in Towards Data Science: the article; GPT-3: The First Artificial General Intelligence?

From the article
The picture above shows an inverted dome with a waterfall at is base pouring water into another circular waterfall. An interesting visual metaphor for the reinforced learning of many modern AI systems.

GPT3 would appear to be on the threshold of general purpose artificial intelligence. In the article it is noted that GPT3 is a brain in a box with no ability to sense or manipulate the environment without human intervention. But ‘wrapping’ those abilities ‘around’ GPT3 appears all but trivial. Given its ability to learn on its own would a Boston Dynamic’s wrapped GPT3 become something close to the robot of our dreams and nightmares. It certainly appears so.

Atlas’s is battery powered, I think, to the tune of an hour or so. GPT3 is instantiated on a huge computer network but both of those limitations are receding every day as computing power and battery storage continue to improve driven by their broad application across the tech scene.

Five years from now it would seem likely that the general purpose android robot will be a real thing. If built in quantity like say a Tesla 3 are you looking at $30K a pop? What does that lead to?

I want to make sure they understand that I for one welcome our dancing robot overlords.

Meaning of Liberty

Posted on December 29, 2020 by Sci Fi Engineer

Triggered in the best possible way by the following, Benjamin Constant, writing on meanings of liberty, ancient vs modern, in 1819 France. Read the whole thing it is shockingly applicable today.

This is related to the idea of todays forming Neo Feudalism and to a degree the concept of the Individual and sovereignty.

Constant lays out that in ancient times liberty (for the tightly defined citizen) was extremely broad and powerful, in Greece and early on in Rome, the citizens as a body had essentially unlimited power to wage war, make piece, expel, execute, as far as their power extended. But as individuals they were controlled, watched, forced to conform. This was possible because the citizens were a smallish percentage of the total population and well enough off to spend a huge part of their time debating.

In a practical sense these citizen assemblies were more like our Legislators than our citizens, though with arbitrary and absolute power. But Constant follows the traditional line and does not make this distinction. In part because he still lived in a world of urban aristocratic elites supported by a huge rural underclass.

In counter to ancient liberty he explains modern liberty as about the individual vs. arbitrary power of any kind. Essentially it is about the individual and their ‘happiness’ in the sense of controlling their own life and own concerns with the expectation that society and the hand of society (the government) has strictly limited power to interfere.

He points out that individual liberty is what humans really want but in the case of the ancients were willing to sacrifice for collective liberty since in their small and always threatened polities it was glaringly obvious that it was cooperate or be enslaved.

That stark choice is still there but hidden by the immensity and generally good living of the modern world. Governments span continents not little seaside towns and in the developed world we never want for goods unless we are ‘unlucky’ in some way. So the real power of gov’t is far from obvious to most, if you go along you get along and only criminals or sociopaths get in trouble…right? If everyone is on the same page maybe, but in a world of oligarchs, elites, yeomen, plebs and deplorables everyone is not on the same page any longer.

During the later 19th and through the 20th century there was, in the west and US, in retrospect, a fairly concerted effort to keep everyone on ‘the same page ‘ But as the echoes of WWI reverberated, the liberal republican concepts came under increasing threat from political philosophies we call communism, socialism, marxism, fascism, and their social outreaches of materialism, deconstructionism, etc. The ‘conservative-liberal’ mainstream dealt with the geo political threats fairly well but the social political attacks came through chinks in the armor that ‘freedom of expression and thought’ leave wide open. Children and Intellectuals are particularly attracted to the avant-garde, new, kind, progressive, and while many of them grew out of it as they moved through life ,all too many became entrapped in the mind fog if they did meet the real world of real people and real trade offs that the schools of hard knocks provide.

And so we are today a country, a civilization under threat of our own success. The varigated liberty of the constitutional republic has been hollowed out due to pragmatic, lazy, risk averse decisions by the interlocking social, fiscal, judicial, etc elites.

We deconstructed education, society, civility in the name of equality but without a consensus of what was going to replace those things and others. Deconstruction occurred in the shadows, the termites were at work on the frame with no replacement under construction because no one could agree on even a need as long as the old structure was there. Unfortunately no one told the termites to stop.

As this became somewhat obvious there were those, maybe many, who said, ‘let it crash,’ ‘let it burn,’ ‘tear it down’ because it represented something that they defined as completely evil, even if the same underpinnings being eaten away kept the roof over their head and provided protection for their food and defined their safety from the wild.

The problem is that the people who most want it torn down least understand what it took to create and what it protects them from.

If you look at things a certain way you can see the US, the West sliding towards something all too like the Chinese model. Perhaps a kinder gentler version but that is no certainty.

Is there a way out? ?

Was there a way in?

My view is that we stumbled and mumbled our way here. Reality is that nothing here was planned. We live with the contingent outcomes of unplanned inputs. it is possible that this outcome was expected by some but they are unlikely to have had any ability to direct it.

It does not really appear possible to plan anything like a society any longer unless it is a subset of self selected actors. And since humans are human no such society will last longer than about half an average human lifetime.

So?

It is what it is.

Don’t see evil around every corner, there is evil in the world but it is rare in the wild. Most people just believe what they believe they learned somewhere. They are most likely wrong (as am i.).

And remember this, over the sweep of time things have been getting better for more and more (in absolute and relative terms) people across time. There have been crashes and horrors but most people most of the time were relatively happy. The up slope was ver, very low ten thousand years ago but it has been steepening as it goes. While the whiners all see disaster ahead the reality is that there are solutions for every problem we (as a world civilization) have. Where we are going in any one part at any one time is always a bit of a random walk but that walk is usually uphill (in the best sense.)

Stay strong, be happy, work at making a difference.

Oligarchic Jousting vs republicanism

Posted on December 27, 2020 by Sci Fi Engineer

The IM-1776 review Neo Feudalism or New Class War is ,as good non fiction book reviews should be, a thoughtful look at the books and discussion of the core thesis.

Michael Lind in The New Class War and Joel Kotkin in The Coming of Neo-Feudalism both demonstrate the defunct nature of the ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ worldview that dominated post-Cold War politics. Lind’s central contention is that, because it creates vast power inequalities, class matters as much now as in pre-modern politics, in spite of our democratic aspirations. Kotkin, on the other hand, argues that class divisions now resemble the Middle Ages specifically. Both books herald a society we should strive to avoid.
IM-1776, Neo Feudalism or New Class War, Henry George

As a side note IM-1776, an online magazine, appears to be a very promising source of thoughtful discussion on society from a somewhat acerbic point of view.

Have not read either book, but have them on the list of possible future reads. Possible because from Mr. George’s review I have to say that I have absorbed much of what they think from a broad swath of other reading and my own thinking on the topic of where we are and where we might be going. It is also interesting that Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) our populist public philosopher seems to be paralleling the threads woven here but I see his perceptions as being driven from dynamic understanding of the online gestalt rather than analytical sourcing.

Put rather bluntly the gestalt of the populace regarding their own nation is largely illusory. That while the theory and form of gov’t is one thing the reality is largely different. While we think this is a republic where the ‘will of the people’ rules the reality is that a small number of people establish what that ‘will’ is through control of the focus of the media and the ‘rules of the game’ via law and regulation.

If you look beyond America, at some extreme examples, you may see a distorted mirror of this. That in places like the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, the ‘people’ who could rise up and blot out the ‘establishment’ don’t. Because the ‘hive mind’ that is our base perception is convinced that the status quo is as good as it gets or at worst is so ingrained with everyone else that your rising against would be useless.

Recently Scott Adams pointed out that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook invested 10’s of millions in changing the voting rules in many places to increase the % of people voting. That you might see this as a driving factor in why certain places saw unprecedented voting, which tipped the balance to Zombie Joe instead of Orange Man Bad. (Now I happen to think that unprecedented levels of cheating had something to do with this as well but am willing to see MZ’s contribution as having a large, perhaps overwhelming effect… perhaps by making cheating easier?)

So Scott Adams said, (roughly) maybe Mark Zuckerberg’s is really the only vote that counted in this last election. Please note that Scott Adam’s is purposefully hyperbolic in many cases to get his thoughts to stick ‘directionally’ (which is how he sees a lot of Trump’s messaging on Twitter.)

What has evolved in the Post Cold War west is a form of Oligarchy with a surface wash of ~~Republican~~ representative democracy. The forms that Japan, Korea, Europe, even Russia and China took on are in essence what we have evolved to. You could say that the US was ALWAYS this way to some significant extent. With the Oligarchs jousting, politely’ each other and to a large extent, ‘following the will of the people.’ And if that then those other states maybe saw this more clearly than ‘we’ did and followed along since it clearly left the Oligarchs in charge while also providing them a safety buffer against the pitchforks and tiki torches.

If this is the future (and maybe it explains the past?) then one has to hope that the oligarchs who manipulate (for that is what it is) the people’s thinking have the best interests of the country in mind and are smart enough to know what that is before the results of past actions come to fruition. Because the rest of us are going to be suffering when the ‘best minds’ screw up.

Noble Intention = Elite Pretension Elites, intentions, nobility, lies

Posted on December 26, 2020 by Sci Fi Engineer

I do not know the answer to the question: What can we do to slow the the spread of an airborne disease such as COVID 19. What I do know is that approaches with some history have been massively abused. Often with ‘noble’ intentions but to the detriment of the populace.

Quarantine – traditionally the people who have the disease. In this case the people most obviously at risk, the elderly. Where this has been implemented it seems to help, BUT the negative impact on the individuals and their family are significant. In the end will this be shown to have been a disaster because of the isolation killing tens of thousands by suicide and drug overdose? Also abuse of this by sending infected into ‘isolation’ wards that weren’t sufficiently isolated killed thousands.
- The ultimate abuse of quarantine is the tyrannical lock downs, has damaged the economy to the detriment of everyone and in all likelihood killed tens of thousands if not more through overdose, suicide and delay of medical attention to lethal but treatable medical problems.
Social Distancing – a modern form of soft quarantine (needs very specific circumstances to mean much.) Where companies implemented for critical staff it appears reasonable, its bland plastering on ever floor in every stored seems silly.
Masks – traditional but misunderstood: It stops you from spreading vastly more than catching. Along with social distancing it is reasonable for limiting spread if followed well enough.
Crowds indoors – known bad BUT: space and air handling is very important, driving many gatherings into homes was a stupidly obvious result of stopping certain types of events.
Crowds outdoors – People need to get out and sunlight and exercise, good feelings are seriously helpful. And the chances of spreading especially in the day is near nil. Health enhancements massively outweigh risks for most. Of course then supporting rioting at night made the rules look political and stupid.
Restaurants/bars – Obvious targets of concern. But crowd limitations and rules about cleaning and masking mitigate issues. The ability to get out and mingle in reasonably controlled environment along with the support of the economy outweigh risks.

At the start of all this if the elite (gov’t, medical, media) had acted with open clarity about what was known and unknown. There might have been a chance to get through the last nine months without the breakdown we are seeing.

Politics, especially ‘orange man bad’ was a starting point for the majority of the elite, spin, narcissism and gotcha were key issues especially in what was seen as an existential election year. Lies, more lies and counter lies to control of information, opinion and public activity spun out so that the general populace at this point pretty much ignores whatever is said other than as a sort of televised comedy/drama.

The following and at the link is a fairly mild analysis of the issue from the CATO institute via Instapundit

The main political conflict in recent years is between experts or elites and non‐experts. For lack of a better word, the non‐experts are called populists. Their complaints have been specific: Elites and experts are arrogant, they have different values, they condescend in annoying ways, they ignore the sometimes legitimate concerns of populists, among others. Experts say that they should be listened to because they’re more knowledgeable. We see it in debates on every issue from climate change to trade, immigration, and everything in between.
CATO Institute: Against the Noble Lie – COVID 19s Edition (March of 2020)

Noble intention = Elite pretension

Modes of War

Posted on December 24, 2020 by Sci Fi Engineer

War in the western civilian mind has been debased and fetishized. And these ways of ‘seeing’ war limit our perspective on the reality.

Huh? You may say, what the heck does that mean? So let me expand:

War has been debased in the common vernacular by declaring war on the depression, then poverty, drugs now on inequality, racism, etc (mainly by progressives riffing on their First World War success .) Here the mental model of war is the turning of the states blunt tools of expropriation and exploitation to the ‘good’ of raising some group or suppressing some evil. The thing they overlook is that the tools are authoritarian and often counter productive, destroying on one end while delivering ‘something’ at the other. In the original meaning of war, (at least the good war of self protection, not war of aggression) the destruction on your end is acceptable since your expectation is that the ‘other’ will cause far greater damage if they win. But when used in this self targeted context you are essentially damaging/destroying something you do not value (for whatever reason) to provide some ‘good’ to another (for some other reason.)

And war has been fetishized in the minds of most by the recent American experience of essentially total battlefield domination and near bloodless success (those who bleed are mostly ‘the bad guys.’) This has been metastasized by military video games that while they make clear the messiness of the battlefield also make it glamorous and episodic. Exotic weapons and robotic precision make things look all very neat. But also there is our memory of WWI and WWII and Desert Storm and even the first months in Afghanistan and Iraq. Domination and victory, spoiled by purported lies and then stupidity of trying to change cultures we do not understand.

So war is debased to massive government intervention on one hand and on the other the fetishized ability to break the other’s toys and make them do what we want. But these views of war, government directed war, war with parades and victories and tragedies and stories we can tell each other’s, providing historians and anthropologists grist for their mills may be relics of the past in our globalized age.

What if war is no long any of that? Properly envisioned it was/is never something you turn on yourself. Seen clearly it is never something that you can predictably win. No war in the modern era been what governments tell their populace it is, nor are they what the memories of the participants remember them being.

Clausewitz is famous for ‘War is diplomacy carried on by other means,’ Sun Tzu pointed out that misdirection is the heart of war. What if real war today outside of the fratricidal, is non kinetic and never ending?

What are the modes of war today. Strategic, Cyber, Economic, Kinetic, Propaganda, Tactical, Commercial, Geographic, Genocide, Civil, Bio, Nuclear, Chemical, Political…

Huh? Some of these things are not like the other you say? And maybe you are right but I say that war has broken the bounds of the geographic/naval/aerial field of battle and has bled out into the world in general.

I will close with a thought…. What if an enemy realized that they could make use something as unexciting as a novel disease and modern media’s defining need for ‘bad news’ to terrify populations into ‘a crouch’ that would make political control easier. And by use of basic propaganda and twisted truths could make the politicians of their unsuspecting opponent break their own economy and even break down the social trust that is required in a modern open cultural polity.

The above does not require any particularly lethal bug, or any large scale distribution of battle plans. All the enemy needs is a leadership willing to make use of the ‘main chance’ and a cadre of workers willing to take direction. Nothing needs to be said, ever.

You do not win a war this way but you win a battle this way. Maybe you win several battles. Damage an enemies economy, damage their self confidence, maybe bring down their most effective leadership with some directed propaganda and a few tools.

Now maybe a more compliant government comes into power. You have been pushing on some geographic restrictions but have been held back by your adversaries strong leadership. With that leadership gone now you can push more heavily and gain some more ground.

Maybe your aggression causes more reaction and eventually the ridiculously erratic opponent once more selects a more trenchant government and puts the brakes on. But one more nibble has been taken, an enemy has been weakened a little bit. All that is required is time and constant purpose to win, and a nation with a multi thousand year history can take the long view.

The individual

Posted on December 6, 2020 by Sci Fi Engineer

The big difference between the West and the Rest is the concept of the individual. Something that has been ‘forgotten’ or more realistically ‘suppressed’ in this our ‘post modern’ world. It is something easily missed if you do not have a rich background not in pure history but in social, economic, philosophic and practical history.

Starting with ‘the rest’ there is what is most likely an evolutionary base state of biological relatives, clan and tribe, those who we are of and who we know.

For a million years our ancestors operated in family groups, hunting groups, nomadic bands, of varying sizes and proximity depending on resources and most likely personal power. The family group was the natural base unit, not our family of mother and father but a more power based prime and his or her immediate family and then close relatives and a relational entourage.

While in the most basic state this family group could be either maternal or paternal in nature in most cases it would be physical in basis and paternal, with occasions where circumstances lead to a maternally lead or co leadership. Not getting into the development of language and our brain it is very likely that this development was biased by the ‘natural’ circumstances and lead to a paternal bias.

In the nomadic hunter gatherer state there is no real demarcation between family discipline, clan rule and religion, it is all one and the world is alive with thinking alien beings because our ancestors would have no conception of self as different from other. Superstition, ghosts, magic are all in the world. Like us these people would tend to idealize the past and childhood and so elders and then those who have passed develop a powerful mystique leading to ancestor worship.

As sedentary habits developed along with more complex societies and more hierarchy, ancestor worship tends to develop a formalized place in the society and the head of the family develops a priest like persona. As the hierarchy develops with time and population the family heads of the leading families develop into an aristocracy. Hierarchy being ‘natural’ the head of family is the most important figure and all others subsidiary. Often the mate of the leader is next most important, often symbolically, sometimes with nominal power. Then come heirs and possible heirs along with direct and near relatives. Then depending on the circumstances of time and history, would come lesser relatives, entourage members, hangers on, servants…slaves.

Thus evolves the PaterFamilias the GodFather, the ClanHead the chief, the chieftain, the king. As the sedentary society develops to a certain extant it becomes more possible for some surplus of resources to be accrued and then used. This may be communal at first but the chief has a big say and the chief can use the surplus to ‘pay’ for certain things. For protection, psychic, physical, social. As in any possible society the chief has a small inner circle, the circle members have circles. The nearer the chief you are the more power you are likely to have. Though, as with feral cliques today, individual members may be extremely marginal to the group.

This is the world we first start to see in recorded history. These societies became highly sophisticated and wide spread though far from global, or even continental in scope. In these societies the head of family was the only really important person, all others were subordinate with their self defined by their relationship (inherent and developed) to the head the main measure of their importance. They were not individuals they were members of sub classes and ‘knew their place’ in the society and would act to suppress anyone who stepped out of line, because it destroyed that understanding of worth.

Even the PaterFamilias was defined by position and if they fell from that position they were essentially non persons. This is something one should take into account when reading history in this historical past, actions that to us seem illogical were often driven by what we might see as a pathological need to maintain their place in society. It happens today but it is really pathological now because we should not define ourselves by our position and relation to others, though we do, a ‘natural’ hang over from our deep deep past.

In that world the old gods, demigods, demons etc explained much that had once been explained by animistic magic. It was always about heirarchy and your position vs the ‘real power.’

Into this world came the monotheistic religions. There were multiple starts and they most likely had philosophical links one to the other over hundreds or even a few thousand years. But eventually there was Judaism with its powerful emphasis on the god and a personal relationship to god for all members of the faith, though the relationship has a strong blood line connection which limited the impact. Then came Christianity which expanded the potential for membership to all mankind.

We can talk forever about the reality of the Christ and the Resurrection and many other events of the epoch but they are beyond the scope of this discussion. What the church that Paul created out the fabric of Jesus of Nazareth’s life did, was call out to those who felt hollow in the ancient regime, whose life as defined by their relationship to the PaterFamilias was empty of real meaning. Everyone has worth, everyone has a connection to the Christ, to God. You have inherent value equal to anyone else but no more, you are responsible for your actions and responsible for what you leave behind in this world.

And because Paul ended his apostolic work in Rome he established what was to become the path to the individual. Rome tried to suppress Christianity but eventually, through the back door of mothers and servants, saints and heroes, it built an eminence that forced the emperor to become Christian. Probably in the hope of subverting the faith but in the very long run with the result of it becoming a form of government unto itself separated from the political world. Over a thousand years and more the Catholic (universal) Church grew and spread and reached out first across Rome and then Rome and Byzantium and then far beyond the original secular boundaries. And the bishops and their clerks did battle (usually on paper or papyrus) with the emperors, kings, dukes, caliphs, to establish the Church as responsible for the soul of all the people, high and low, while the secular rulers were responsible for right rule and ‘happiness’ of the people.

Unintentionally this developed into a foundational philosophy that defines ‘the West.’ That every person is an individual with rights and worth that are equal before God (the universe) and before the Law (the government, other people.) It also definitively decided the secular and the sacred as two realms that should not intersect. The sacred should not Rule the Secular, the Secular cannot rule the Sacred. They are different realms one focused on the individual re the Universe. The other the integration of individuals in society.

If you look out across the world, Asia, Africa, Pacifica and pointedly the Islamic world, this evolution of the Individual, and its concomitant separation of secular and personal/sacred/religion, never occurred. It is a thing that people see when described, and feel once embedded in it but it is not native to those societies. It is something quite antithetical to some of those societies while quite easily integrated in others

Islam has Sharia, demanding obedience to the one God and a hierarchy of subservience that is at odds with the individual and the separation of the secular and sacred. You have Asia which, generically and simplistically, subsumes the secular and sacred in the nation/government/hierarchy and expects the individual to ‘worship’ this gestalt (in many ways very much like Marxism.) You have much of the rest of the world ‘Africa and Pacifica’ which is still extremely tribal, with a headman and hierarchy, where the perceived ‘cult’ of the individual is destructive in that it makes the cannon fodder think they have value.

So what?

I claim that the West is defined in part, by one very simple concept. That the individual has value in and of themself. Every person matters however young or old, damaged or heroic. That a closely related principle is that the secular and sacred realms do not overlap other than in the individual and thus are separate spheres as the individual is sovereign.

Every person has value to the universe and to society. Every person is responsible for themselves in the ‘eyes’ of the universe and society. No one can be responsible for any other responsible individual.

The problems I see in the ‘West’ today are caused by a long term breakdown of education and social learning due to both knowing and unknowing destruction of teaching the young and educating the populous.

We spout platitudes about individual rights and responsibility but do not root that in a social fabric. We have allowed our societies enemies to take the reins of education both active (schools) and passive (media) and trash the reality of what came before in the banal hope that ‘a better idea’ is in the wings. The enemy boosts the narcissistic tendencies of Individualism, see gender bending, et al, to destroy the root concept of the individual as having Value in the eyes the Universe (God) and society.

The espousal of individual value is the most powerful concept in our society. This does not mean that we are free of all bonds, we are responsible for ourselves as well and that means responsible for our mind, body, family, society and universe inasmuch as it touches us. But if everyone has value then every last pervert, criminal, fool, teacher, hero is of value independent of their being or history. Self aware machines would fall under this, as well as every human ever conceived and every living thing…this does not mean we have to starve because the lettuce plant might ‘want’ to go to seed on down the line to some reasonable level of ethical behavior on our part and the part of society.

I leave you to think about this, I am putting this down as my understanding right now. Not some timeless philosophy of all. And i understand that some ramifications of the above are unsettling but that is the way of the world we live in, there is no perfection, just striving.

Trust is the core of America’s strength, to generalize, the wider the circle of trust the richer the society

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

At Civil Horizon: Trust

Trust is far more important than law.

Think of it: how many times have you sued somebody, or been sued? Have you ever been arrested? Each of us interacts with many others in numerous ways every day, and recourse to the law is exceptionally rare. Our actions may be constrained by certain laws; but usually they are far more limited by the expectations of those with whom we are dealing.

Great piece! (Edited for clean up)

The Romans did it

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

This image shows a drill core of volcanic ash-hydrated lime mortar from the ancient port of Baiae in Pozzuloi Bay. Yellowish inclusions are pumice, dark stony fragments are lava, gray areas consist of other volcanic crystalline materials, and white spots are lime. The inset is a scanning electron microscope image of the special Al-tobermorite crystals that are key to the superior quality of Roman seawater concrete. (Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley)

Roman technology was very advanced, their society collapsed due to political and social forces not for a lack of tools.

What the Hayek?

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Sci Fi Engineer

Economist Philosopher F.Hayek

The Road To Serfdom is often referenced and probably like many such books rarely read. This link goes to a real life Readers Digest version, that seems to hit hard and capture well his central thesis, at least it seems so from the references to his writing.

Its certainly making me think of buying a version either at Half Price books or more likely for Nook.

From the Post Referenced above a few key pieces:

From the preamble:

At that time it was a political philosophy that stood for progress through preserving the Autonomy of the INDIVIDUAL, and the protection of the INDIVIDUAL’S civil liberty. Oddly enough, today “liberalism” equals “socialism.” Equally as odd, conservatism (and in many instances, libertarianism) champions the independence of the individual.

From the first section:

Yet is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavor consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?

Planning and Power

In order to achieve their ends, the planners must create power – power over men wielded by other men – of a magnitude never before known. Democracy is an obstacle to this suppression of freedom which the centralized direction of economic activity requires.

And despite the somewhat old fashioned and formal words this should have striking impact because it tells you exactly what is going on today and why so many fear it. It does not matter that we voted ‘the planners’ into place or that they are bureaucrats subject to dismissal. We are providing the keys to power and we are then likely to forget about them until they are far too entrenched to remove easily.

It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves. When all the means of production are vested in a single hand, whether it be nominally that of “society” as a whole or that of a dictator, whoever exercises this control has complete power over us.

Now this sounds like Communism, Socialism or Fascism not the American way but the truth is that any major part of the social structure-economy in one groups hands creates a massive center of power, privilege and patronage, the 3P’s of tyranny writ small or large. The 3Ps lead to lawless, corrupt and ineffective organizations.

Individualism, in contrast to socialism and all other forms of totalitarianism, is based on the respect of Christianity for the individual man and the belief that it is desirable that men should be free to develop their own individual gifts and bents. This philosophy, first fully developed during the Renaissance, grew and spread into what we know as Western civilization. The general direction of social development was one of freeing the individual from the ties which bound him in feudal society.

This is not a theologian’s statement it is a philosopher’s recognition of the Christian-European (unstated but clear) understanding of the centrality of the individual as the basis of societies. That societies are are the emergent organization of many individuals interacting with each other. And societies that provide ‘room’ for people to find their own level and best place in the social fabric are vastly more fair and kind than ones organized in rigid hierarchies and treat or form the person as an interchangeable cog.

From the post script a quote from Frédéric Bastiat.:

Individualism, in contrast to socialism and all other forms of totalitarianism, is based on the respect for the individual man and the belief that it is desirable that men should be free to develop their own individual gifts and bents.