—” If I were a total newb what book/books should I start with?”—Ziggy
Propertarianism (Natural Law) is a painfully precise language for the amoral comparison between the various categories, values, methods of ‘knowing’, methods of communicating, and means of decidability social orders, as well as making inferior superior, moral and immoral, and true and false decisions within and across them.
While the grammar of Natural Law is demanding, and the number of principles you need to understand not much more difficult than say, geometry, it is much easier to learn Natural Law (Propertarianism) if you understand the context that we’re coming from.
So, if you asked me how to learn any subject I would tell you to start with an historical novel, or movie about it to provide cultural context. Then I would suggest an autobiography about it to provide personal context. Then I would tell you to read an introduction to the technical aspects – something short. Then to read a textbook about it.
So I would tell you to work from broad brush strokes to very precise formula by incremental means. You do not need to know the history of warfare, of the common law, of the differences in truth content between argumentative and communicative structures, or the depths of epistemology. You need to know a little about mankind, and then a very little about western civlization’s “luck of the draw”: Sovereignty is possible under certain geographic conditions: when no resource can be centralized and exploited for the purpose of concentrating the proceeds of production in a minor class, and where a self- funded militia is necessary for the defense of territory.
So to get you started, I’ll leave you with that one idea, and these four books.
After that see the Reading List at the top of the website for more.
And honestly, the best way to learn is to follow me. I basically teach class every day, in a vast one-room schoolhouse with students of all grades: Facebook on the internet.
THE INDIVIDUAL
Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind
THE COMMUNITY
Francis Fukuyama: Trust
THE NATION
Garett Jones: Hive Mind: How Your Nations IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own
MANKIND
Peter Turchin: Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth