Autarky, Illusion Of

People fall increasingly under the illusion of autarky as information becomes more readily available. These days, anyone with access to a search engine thinks he's an expert. And these beglamoured folk then spread the cloud of unknowing further and farther.

This is why in the past you could accept 'mechanical failure' as a reason for a tragic accident but now many are pundits on the topic of how mechanical failure need never happen. And those who aren't pundits are pundit-echoers. And if not, they are pundits on how mechanical failure is an erosion of civil liberties, or on how the state is covering it up, or on how shocking it is that we aren't shown the proton-emission tomographic scans of the failed parts under discussion.

Not that many could interpret the latter even if they existed. It is all an illusion, this informational autarky. Almost nobody is informationally self-sufficient. There is still a role for the expert, or the well-educated generalist, or the amateurs who have taken time to know their stuff.

But the public sphere, the so-called marketplace of ideas, the whole 'civil society' construct? These are now polluted by people who have no ideas to market, who think the public sphere is a constraining box, who have no concept of civility (let alone civitas), or who think society lives to serve individuals rather than serves to keep individuals alive.

It is as the Good Book says; men have become lovers of themselves more than anything else. Professing wisdom, they have become fools.

Anarchy

In my few decades in this world, I have seen a few kinds of would-be Anarchs, some less tiresome, some more. Here are some of them.

1. The simplest kind is the kind that covers its ears and yells loudly that it doesn't care and you can't change its mind. It is self-defeating sort, since it thinks to elude the rule of law by imposing an even sterner law on itself. So be it, then.

2. Another kind claims to be anti-establishment and pro-people. This political animal dresses in the robes of vendetta and the mask of anonymity; unfortunately, it overuses the former and abuses the latter. It really wants to bully or coerce, but retain moral high ground by presuming that individuals do indeed want to form anonymous mobs to take down social institutions, and that they will be led by such an animal.

3. A true anarch, such as Thanos the Mad, courts destruction of all things. This is the only philosophically self-consistent view. However, it is (to me) far better that this is combined with 1 above, in which case I will remain but the anarch will self-destruct, thus achieving mutually satisfying goals.

I first encountered Alexander Pope's Dunciad when I was very small; I think I was about ten years old at the time, maybe older. My aunt had lots of her old literature texts lying around, and I used to hide in her house and read when I thought I had nothing better to do after school. Almost forty years later, I recall these lines and find them an apt description of one perspective on our modern world:

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head!
Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public Flame, nor private , dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine !
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal Darkness buries All.

Law is a good thing. It is a facile (cheap, shallow, easy) argument to say that all law is repressive or oppressive. In a sense, it is, since it limits action (actual, potential, desired or desirable) by threat. But so too does awareness of the natural sciences. You know that ingesting chromic acid will kill you, that gravity and time are not your friends. This doesn't make you attempt to undermine them.

Yes, I admit that's an extreme position; after all, human law is not like nature. Well, humans do make laws for the governance of larger groups. A good body of law allows for law to be changed reasonably, whether this is onerous or not (there are arguments that seek to establish how onerous this should be — too easy and we get frivolity, too hard and we get draconism). Humans always get to where they're going, for good or bad, but there should be some degree of predictability. It gives a sense of security and mental well-being to know that you can carry on without the fabric of reality warping unpredictably around you.

So I am all for civil disobedience, but against uncivil and personal attacks. I am for the rule of law, but as a living thing with the bare minimum of stone pylons, tablets and other unyielding principles (or principalities and powers). I am not an anarchist, but I am not an overarchist. And there we leave it.

The End of Politics?

It wasn't so long ago that you could look at a political landscape and feel all kinds of ire at the repression of political freedom. And it is still true today that you can do that. But there are fewer kinds of ire now. In a world without borders and states, the individual will and action become more important and yet less so, since there will be fewer instruments to leverage that power.

What happens as we sink (or rise) towards greater equipotential is that each person will have more space and less effect. Suppose that information, energy, time and material resources are all distributed evenly. Then there are fewer or no gradients, and work cannot be done. This is why great works require great inequities.

But no, this is not a politically safe statement to make.

I Two Am Four Something

It's interesting how the right wing often confuses ambivalence (or ambiguity) with irrationality, while the left wing often confuses ambiguity (or ambivalence) with open-mindedness.

In the first case, this is because conservatives prefer to identify fixed positions and a wary of moving positions or flexibility, whether real or imputed. In the second case, this is because liberals are inherently against fixed positions except as unattainable ideals.

But, as F Scott Fitzgerald said, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

In the first case, it is not always irrational to consider two opposed or different positions as both being tenable. This is because social phenomena depend a lot on social context for validation. Discipline in school and discipline in banking are different (and yet the same) in many (different) ways.

In the second case, it is not always open-minded to consider two different or opposed positions as both being tenable. Sometimes it's just a mark of indifference, lack of mental rigour, or desire to not create a fixed position of any kind. Yet that too is some sort of fixed position.

The upshot of these two positions is a third non-position. People who are unhappy with both extremes are called centrists, which just muddies the waters further. Since most intelligent people hate muddiness, this forces them to be unhappy. What a mess.

A fourth non-position is the 'apolitical' tag. People who are intelligent but do not want to be unhappy just refuse to think too hard about politics in public (lest somebody label them lefty, righty, or centristy). But that too is a position, and if it avoids the left-right axis, may end up being judged on a vertical axis of 'beneath politics' to 'above politics'.

You can't win. So you might as well have fun. I stand by the fifth — the position that I'm willing to aggressively engage any position that I'm not happy with, just to make myself happy. Heh heh.

The Difference Cliché

"What a difference a week makes!" is one of those clichés that relies on truism. It's hard not to find a difference between snapshots of anything taken a week apart, especially the closer you look. But my life has changed a lot.

Some of you know about the Atlantean enterprise that has been launched. Is it possible to break the narrative of the burning books and launch a kraken into the gates of the Temples of Learning? We call on those who have such hopes to join with us — and it is a call we would not have dreamt of making a week ago.

Meanwhile, back at the Citadel, they've bid farewell to the busy one and will be bidding farewell to the business one. Will times change? Will the Pillars of Herakles still stand guard at the mouth of the 'Inmost Sea of all the Earth'? Only the long view will tell.

And we look further across the world, wondering how a contender for a throne of the world can fail to differentiate between 'wooden ships, iron men' and 'nuclear carrier battlegroup, Iron Man'. A week (as the other cliché goes) is also a long time in politics.

Systems of Government (Part 3)

Communism: See Christianity, early church, Acts of the Apostles II:xliv-xlv and IV:xxxii-xxxv... as Marx did.

Communalism: A kind of mutualism based on communes; that is, separate self-sufficient communities working tangentially together if at all. Hence commun-al-ism.

Communitarianism: A desperate attempt to continue complicating the issue by mashing communes into communities and asserting that this is not communism but libertarianism writ large. Or something like that. It reminds me of a moonbase in which everyone uses comm units to network.

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I suspect the problem is communication.

Systems of Government (Part 2)

Fascism: taking 'spare the rod, spoil the child' to its logical conclusion — a bundle of rods and no innocent children.

Plantar Fascitis: being caught flatfooted and looking vaguely fascistic.

Systems of Government (Part 1)

Democracy: a system of government in which the most convincing win, whether they are good or not, right or not, smart or not. Also, a meritocracy in which being convincing is meritorious.

Republic: a system of government in which the public elects representatives only to find that these best represent only themselves. Duh.

Sunnandæg

By some infelicity of language, sloppy pronunciation of Old English leads to 'Sunday' sounding a lot like 'Sun-Ending'. And that's the paradox of life — if the sun rises, it must also set.

Recently in Atlantis, the Deputy High Priest was treated to some verbal abuse regarding his lack of desire for the answering of questions posed to him by some young angst-ridden acolyte. Essentially, when asked a question about (that inchoate construct known as) the future, the DHP looked at his presumptive interlocutor and asked him, "What do you think?"

Apparently, an observer (who subsequently was overjoyed to see his f*ck-ridden piece go viral) took offense at this. His main point was that 17-year-olds with little life experience should not be expected to think for themselves in the presence of glory. Similar sentiments were expressed by others: "What on earth are we tithing our loot and lives for, if the DHP himself cannot supply answers?"

Well, in the last Grand Quorum, the citizens of Atlantis made it quite clear that they wanted the hierarchs of the land to engage them more, to ask the people and consult with them over all kinds of things. One would have thought that the sight of the DHP graciously asking this young man for his opinions would have brought joy to the hearts of all (Atlantean) humanity. But no, no...

Leadership is a thankless task. Half the population thinks they're paying you to govern them; half the population thinks they're paying you for the privilege of consulting them in order to govern their living space. I can't help but laugh at it all.

First-World Parliaments

The oldest parliament (or place of parley) in the First World was held in the shadow of a huge black basaltic slab on the west face of the Thingvellir, the 'Valley of the Thing', in Iceland. Sources generally agree that this democratic assembly of all the local people, the Althing, started around AD 930 and has been in existence therefore for more than a thousand years. That span takes into account the periods of anarchy and times of war that disrupted the Althing and scattered the assembly. To this day, a thing is an object to be agreed upon.

But the longest continually-running democratic institution in the world is probably found a bit further south, on Britain's Isle of Man. There, the local assembly or Tynwald has been meeting regularly since AD 979, and this is its 1033rd year of existence.

These are true First World parliaments, the first ancestors of various assemblies that spread throughout the North Atlantic region, and eventually culminated in the Westminster Parliament at London, which some call the mother of all modern parliaments. The big difference is that at Westminster, those who meet represent a majority or plurality of their constituents, but sometimes not even half of those they claim to serve.

A First-World parliament thus became one at which the laws of the realm are fully and freely debated not by all those bound by such laws, the laws of the commonwealth of the people, but by their representatives. This is of course somewhat necessary as states get larger, but one also has to wonder about what has been transacted without the full, free knowledge of the people.

The Atlantean Myth (Part V): The Kobold's Tale

The Kobold just passed on his gun-carriage way, old beyond his years, pleasant beyond his early nature, just another nonagenarian gone to seed and dust. So little of his story is known, and yet so much. His was a contrary nature, and a sharp-edged one.

He was there at the beginnings of the Third Age; it was he who held the Hammer of Might as the Thunderer was confirmed in place as the First Among Equals. And few noticed who sat in the chair, who deputised, who querulously grumbled about the cold and yet wielded colder powers. For the Kobold was master of iron and steel, as are most of his kind, and his ways were those of the dark arts and the academic life.

My revered ancestors worked with the Kobold. Like a lizard, he would sun himself cold-bloodedly on the metaphorical sundial or lawn and pronounce judgement on those he felt were lacking. In those early days, he was the main purger of the heretics, the heterodox, the insufficiently rigorous. Indeed, my near ancestor was nearly purged himself, save for the intervention of the Gnome.

The Kobold was steel to Golden Mountain's concrete, was iron to Black Diamond's diplomatic charm. His was not the art of compromise, although in later days he mellowed. He railed against the Thunderer's excesses, as all smiths will against the warlords who use their tools.

Like a Lear, he let drop the reins of power, and found no leverage to take them back. He had seen the Thunderer dissolve in tears, he had put courage into the heart of the Gnome. But all that was taken from him, and he descended into obscurity, scattered moments and a wheelchair.

I used to greet him, mornings or evenings. He had become gracious, relaxed as he contemplated the end of a story that had dragged on too long. Very few caught any glimpse of the dragon, the iron chancellor, who had wielded the sword and lash over the temples of the Book in the bad old days. I remember him both ways. But morning and evening pass, and thus the day is done.

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Note: For other mythic discursions into this modern Atlantis, see here. Yes, some of you might have noticed, this was Toh's day.

Pop Cap

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
But not on sleeves the players show
For FIFA says 'political'
And so remembrance has to go.

Am I a Conservative Liberal or a Liberal Conservative?

For many years it's been difficult to articulate my political position (and indeed my position on many socially-related issues). That's because, as with most people, I have complicated positions; but I'm also picky about definitions, and it's hard for me to say I'm 'conservative' or 'liberal' without a whole bunch of caveats.

So here is some stuff about all that.

I'm politically a bit to what some people call 'the Left'. I believe that societies should make provision for their weaker elements, but I also believe that 'the poor you shall have with you always'. There will always be some freeloaders, and by the time that won't matter at all, we won't have political issues either. I don't like freeloaders, by which I mean people who can provide goods or services for remuneration sufficient to make themselves a living, but won't. However, I also believe that the 'better angels' of humanity need constraints in order to keep them better.

I'm socially a bit liberal in the sense that I believe that humans have inalienable rights and that they should be given freedom to express themselves within the meaning of those rights. However, I also believe that not all rights are equal and that some are downright spurious. I've written about such rights before. However, I am socially conservative in the sense that I don't think society needs to change without good reasons and sufficient infrastructural (both material and non-material) support; not all change is good, or good in practice even if good in theory.

I'm theologically conservative in the sense that given any particular body of religion, I'd examine the established canon of that religion before going on to speculative development of doctrine based on looser interpretation of that canon. If people have interpreted canon a specific way for a long time, I'd wonder why that would need to be changed if change were mooted.

Because of theological conservatism coupled with my other positions, some people think of me as morally and ethically conservative while others think I may secretly be a dangerous radical. I suspect I may be even more dangerous than that, but if so, I don't know it for sure. I just note, privately, that 'radical' comes from Latin radix, 'a root'. It doesn't quite mean what many people think it means: radicals are back-to-basics conservatives, who don't believe in preserving the existing complicated stuff-and-flummery structure of 'developed' society.

I think that all humans are essentially liberals at birth, but are made conservative later. At adolescence, some become badly-informed quasi-liberals. If they maintain the position into late middle-age, they often become pseudo-intellectual pseudo-liberals. It's only if they maintain their idealism into old age that they become true liberals again.

Not many humans let their offspring yell and scream without limit, throw their food around, remain unclothed, and set no limits on empirical education. This is what I mean by humans being 'made conservative'. Societies in general tend to have ideas about how children should be brought up, one way or another.

I've observed that universities in America are the most illiberal institutions with respect to what can or cannot be said, or their position on what is good, true and right for everyone else. British universities, by contrast, are hotbeds of dissenting opinion and subversive reasoning. They've honed the traditional British weapons of irony and satire well; nobody else is as good.

And here in Atlantis, the liberals are the ones who want more education for the masses, forgetting that education is the most conservatising force of all — unless of course you don't teach anything except how to reason without drawing conclusions and sticking to them and their consequences. How droll.

With all these opinions moving around in my head, and occasionally realigning differently, it's hard to say whether I am more liberal or conservative, or indeed which approach contributes more to my thinking. I am inclined to believe that my thinking contributes more to my perceived conservatism or liberalism. Politically, I'll vote for whoever makes more sense to me in a way that I like.

An Interview

This is part of the edited transcript of an interview which I found rather interesting. Some names have been redacted. The original interview was carried out by the Discoboulos and recently published by Marshall Cavendish (2011, extracts from pp. 31-34). Thank you, old Tom! Readers may attempt to guess who the protagonist, A, is. It's pretty obvious, though.

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A: But over the past four-and-a-half years since I left, it has been just like this — because of one perceived problem: [Personal name] is not loyal to [institution], which is not true. Which is not true! They make it up in their own imagination, and they move all their political reality in the direction of their imagination, which is a bad imagination.

[Details]

A: So I think that the only thing we can do with this is to ask for reconciliation. They're afraid of me, they don't trust that I'm not out for revenge. But I'm not out for revenge.

[Details]

A: Even when I am not in [the country] they don't want me to go back. Because they know they cannot compete directly. So it's a question of the way I go back. My return must be in a gracious way. And so I have to wait for the right moment. It may be at the end of this year [2011] ... in December.

B: If — or when — you go back, would you promise your people in the [institution], and in the [institution], and so on, amnesty? Forgiveness?

A: Yes, right.

B: No witch-hunt?

A: No witch-hunt. I think forgiveness is the key. I mean it.

B: And people can trust you on this?

A: Yes.

B: They're not going to be [redacted]? Or worse?

A: No.

B: No investigation? The past is past?

A: I want to forgive and make the whole [institution] forgive each other. Because, if you don't forgive, you cannot reconcile your [institution]. You cannot be one [institution] anymore.

[Details]

A: Some people may not be comfortable if I go back and have political power, directly or indirectly. But I can even propose that I can be in any position; I do not need to involve myself in politics. For example, if the... [redacted example]. That kind of appointment would have the effect of forcing me not to get involved in politics. I don't want to have a [designation] position. I don't want to be anything that is ambitious. I just want to prove that I don't mind not being anything, but I want to prove that I am beneficial to my [institution] and my people.

B: Why?

A: Because I really worry about the [people]... And because I feel gratitude to my supporters.

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An alert reader has pointed out that 'A' sounds a lot like a certain character whose name sounds like a six-letter word meaning 'a warning bell'. Ah, yes. Very much so. Spot on. Heh.

Instrumentality

"[A] whole series of key concepts for the understanding of society derive their power from appearing to be just what they always were and derive their instrumentality from taking on quite different forms," said Smith.

I nodded sagely. There were theological and political implications. We both understood this. And the books just kept on coming.

The Problem of Small Strong States

A strong state, said Max Weber in 1919, is one which has a monopoly over the legitimate use of force. As many others have added since then (like Migdal in 1988), a strong state taxes the population in some way and reassigns these expropriations to the general purposes and for the general advantage of the population. Migdal also pointed out that a strong state, with its centralising authority structure, is opposed to a strong society, in which authority is decentralised. You can find variations of strong and weak states, and strong and weak societies, all over the world.

The USA is a superstate which balances the strong-state/strong-society dichotomy well. It has the advantage of being composed as a kind of federation of plausibly independent states. Hence there is a balance between the Federal centre and the functions of the USA on one hand, and the state epicentres and state functions on the other. This balance can be found to some extent in Germany and Switzerland, among others.

However, there is less latitude for tiny states. A small state like Andorra or Luxembourg, Monaco or Singapore, does not take decentralisation well because the web of relationships between various components is too tightly woven. Even if you artificially privatise everything, the state still needs to look after the integrity and needs of the overall polity. High-density city-states cannot survive as a bunch of separate but federated components — you cannot build a nation of independent farmer-soldiers or baronies when the population density is too high.

Eventually, individuals in a tiny state will bump into the web of relationships and be subsumed into the ruling establishment. There is little choice, because there is only one centre. Citizens can try to create separate centres of power and legitimacy, but these will only be mitochondria to the mighty nucleus of state government.

Strong states, however, need diversity to survive. Small strong states have the problem of obtaining sufficient diversity within their population limits. This means that, as with the smaller organisms, either asexual reproduction by splitting (probably not viable, but it's been tried before) or sexual reproduction by mingling imported genes must occur.

Most small states have been formed and continue to thrive by receiving external input. The problem is that frequently it isn't possible to tell when you're getting a 'junk' gene input that will never do you any good, a 'good' gene input that will help you do better, or a 'reservist' gene input that might be of use someday but not just yet. So a more diverse net must be cast, and yet more exacting filters must be used.

What a problem! How can small strong states survive? Quite often, they end up as members of an agglomerate, as parasites, or in some sort of mutual relationship where members all provide different functions to the whole. Very seldom do modern city-states thrive.

As of this century, only one full-fledged city-state remains.

After Brezhnev, Andropov

There are remarkable similarities (of course, also differences) between the regime changes at the Citadel and the regime changes in the Soviet Union. It almost seems that we have made the transition from Leonid Brezhnev to Yuri Andropov. Those who have eyes to read, let them read.

Democracy and Information

Imagine that each person is a mathematical point, a node. Each node can have two states: informed or not. And the nodes of a community are all connected in a network. The value of the network is determined by how many continuous chains of 'informed' nodes can be traced within the network, and how long and complex they are.

Logically, then, the value of the community increases the more 'informed' nodes there are. But in real life, the problem is that this imaginary construct is not real. In real life, people have infinitely different informational states and do things with their information, some of which are detrimental to the network.

Governance has two properties. First and most morally supportable, it allows the community to act optimally in keeping the community viable. Second and most unfortunate, it allows the community to divide itself into nodes that govern directly and nodes that don't.

In a democracy, information is supposed to make humans wise enough to govern themselves or to choose proxies that will do it for them. The problem is that information without effective application is not knowledge, and information without optimal effect is not wisdom.

That problem in turn is a problem of complexity — quite often, nobody knows what will be effective, let alone optimally so; worse, the people who are likely to figure it out are a minority that shrinks relative to the size of the population. If there is only one right answer, then as the population grows, the number of people who will figure it out will diminish in percentage simply because of the law of regression to the mean.

But hang on, some will say, surely they can share that answer, thus raising the percentage. Sadly, no. They can share that answer but it may not be believed, as was the case with Cassandra. In fact, the larger the number of non-enlightened, the harder it is to inform them, let alone convince them. Sharing is harder, and sharing effectively is worse.

In the end, it seems, the problem of very large numbers is simply solved but hard to accept. Since a large number of people will act as if it is controlled by a statistical model, then the larger the number, the more likely that effective control will either be by unremitting tyranny (perhaps, a machine autocracy or theocracy), or by complete anarchy with the understanding that any outcome will be considered right. The latter is the logical outcome of true democracy.

Empirical observation will show that neither extreme is viable. What is viable is a synthesis of the two extremes, but with one important proviso for each: the unremitting tyranny must not be unremitting, and the complete anarchy cannot be complete.

Tyranny must be balanced by forces that deny it, for nobody is wise enough to be God. And chaos must be checked with wisdom, for nobody will survive complete chaos. In both cases, information is the key; it must be withheld from those who would misuse it, and yet it must be available to all.

The state of information is never fixed, but the status it has within the continual negotiation of society is what keeps a society viable. The capacity for never-ending argument punctuated by tyrannical acts and anarchic opposition is what makes societies work. If you remove all punctuation, you get a text that is too malleable; if you remove all flexibility, you get a text that is too unpalatable.

So if you want democracy, you need to be prepared to sabotage it and yet defend against others' attempts to sabotage it. You must prepare to be rightly wrong and wrongly right. If you cannot tolerate this rather Heisenbergian situation, you should opt out altogether. Enjoy yourself.

Income Inequality

I've noticed a lot of people talking about income inequality these days, mostly revolving around the ideas of debt, fair wages, and how uncivilised such inequality seems. Very few grasp that it's somewhat inevitable in specific contexts.

Actually, it's inevitable in a context that is very specific and also very rarely thought about. All city-states are like that, because a city-state seldom has control over its hinterland except by huge investment in overwhelming military force.

Such investment normally cripples the economy, because you need to reward the soldiers and mercenaries. A rich city-state normally avoids that, one way or another, by disproportionately rewarding wealth generation, networking ability, and the personal power to control and manipulate others. And this is also how the state will define merit implicitly.

That's it in a nutshell. The whole argument is partly historical in nature and very much longer. Major footnote: see here.

The Nanny State

It is indeed possible to enjoy life living in a country where anything bad can apparently be remedied by immediate recourse to a legal system that is armed with mighty codices, grimoires and tomes of high complexity. Such a place has many ways of spanking the evildoer for a multitude of crimeless crimes, with long and involved litigation at great expense to the taxpayers.

Such a place would be most of the United States of America. It is one of the few countries in the world that requires people to label anything potentially dangerous (even if this danger is patently obvious) as dangerous. Even then, using a product labelled in this way and inflicting such danger upon yourself still allows you to sue for mental anguish and suchlike.

I'd rather live in Atlantis. Frivolous lawsuits get thrown out really fast. Litigation clears quickly too. Sometimes, the justice system seems much too peremptory, too interested in efficiency. But when you look at it close-up, most justice is quickly and correctly delivered. The only problem is that some people think they are living in a nanny state.

No. Atlanteans should know by now that the priesthood has only one main goal for themselves and one main goal for the country: immortality and prosperity — the main difficulty in this formulation is figuring out which goal is for which entity.