The blog at The Independent Institute has been running short essays by John C. Goodman, the author of a recent book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. The latest essay is Can Entrepreneurship Be Copied? where we can read Dr. Goodman’s claim: In mathematics, Gödel’s Theorem says that no complex, axiomatic system can be both consistent … [Read more…]
Lust is a deformed version of the virtue of love, the binding force in a number of human relationships including those involving God. Moreover, the passions and more quiet feelings we know as love are those which evolved amongst social mammals. It’s quite a plausible speculation that our ancient four-legged ancestors first began to melt … [Read more…]
By most standards, I have a funny definition of creativity. We shape our minds, our entire persons, by responding actively and properly to what lies around us, below us, above us, and in us, where all prepositions — `around’, `below’, `above’, and `in’ — should be understood in both spatial-temporal terms and also metaphysical terms. … [Read more…]
One of the worst things one generation can do is trap future generations in one specific way of life or one way of solving problems. There is perhaps more than some think to the witticism by someone whose name I can’t recall: “I refused to be a radical when I was young because I didn’t … [Read more…]
I’m coming to the end of this scattered series of essays inspired by Kenneth Minogue’s profound book on modern politics, The Liberal Mind. My thoughts have developed so that my understanding of liberalism has taken on a surprising form, but no form of liberalism seems to me plausible or rational. I’ve taken a position that … [Read more…]
I’m still dealing with the intellectual aftermath of Kenneth Minogue’s The Liberal Mind. In that book, he tells us: War is habit-forming, and peace is confusing to many people who cannot deal with conflicting standards and feelings of guilt. [page 111] I’m aware of others who made comments about the eerie and morally disedifying attractiveness … [Read more…]
I’ve used a chunk of this quote in an earlier posting ( The Liberal Mind: What is politics?): Now what makes liberal individualism so plausible is that the individual is the only self-conscious entity whose limits appear to correspond to a physiological creature; and also that the thoughts and feelings which constitute institutions such as … [Read more…]
There is a short animated sequence to be found at Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics [Animation] which shows how a warm and nurturing style of mothering by a mouse removes brain ‘markers’ which might otherwise lead to the young growing into fearful and anxiety-ridden adults, the females likely tending to pass on those traits to their … [Read more…]
Preface This entry is the core of a larger work. It’s sketchy and incomplete but possibly worth the read. Introduction In the Gospel of St. John, we read: As [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he … [Read more…]
In an earlier posting, The Liberal Mind: What is politics?, I addressed the obvious question, “What is Politics?”. I covered a lot of ground to start off a line of reasoning tightly tied to my current goal of enriching our store of words and concepts for discussing our moral and social lives. While it’s true … [Read more…]