Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2015/05/walter_block_lawsuit_times.htmlEXPLAINING WALTER BLOCK’S NARRATIVE DEVICE

I have been a frequent critic of Walter and the Mises Institute that is his platform, despite knowing him personally for years, in no small part, because his technique for grabbing the audience’s attention is to use examples that are morally horrifying in order to illustrate economic, political, and moral principles.

The purpose of his parable that is to illustrate the spectrum of involuntary association.

He’s saying this: If you work voluntarily with other people to pick cotton for a living, that’s very different from picking cotton for someone else involuntarily. Lots of people in this world do horrible work. Lots of people have been, are, and forever will be poor. Likewise serving people in your business that you prefer not to, and that may be damaging to your business, is also undesirable. Just as paying taxes for things you don’t support is undesirable. Using these three data points he paints a spectrum of undesirable forced associations.

The Jewish tradition, and Jewish law, emphasizes separatism and individualism to preserve jewish group identity: ‘separate and apart’. The western aristocratic tradition emphasizes local universalism but preserves hierarchy. The western christian tradition emphasizes universalism and family. So Walter is, as are many jewish intellectuals, bringing his cultural traditions to the argument: he’s advocating in favor of separatism.

Just as there is a long tradition on the left of using parables of suffering for the purpose of illustration, there is a long tradition on the right of using absurdity in parables for the purpose of illustrating the long term consequences of everyone adopting a behaviour. The reason progressives use suffering (short term, and personal experience) and conservatives use humor (long term, exaggerated effects), is because that is our evolutionary division of labor at work: progressives perceive the short term and experience of individuals regardless of consequences, and conservatives perceive the long term consequences regardless of experience.

You will see the same thing from most popular conservatives, including Limbaugh – who specializes in this technique. For conservatives, two whom disgust is as influential a moral impulse as compassion is for progressives, these ‘horrific’ narratives are highly loaded with emotion: they are excellent pedagogical parables.

We cannot really understand each other, unless we understand that the moral spectrum evolved as an inter-temporal (across time) division of perception, comprehension, knowledge, advocacy and labor. And that one of the reasons we humans can adapt to circumstances, is that we each have biased perceptions. Some of us advocate for the short term to ensure offspring survive, and some for the long term to ensure the tribe competes against others. Conservatives can understand progressives. Libertarians understand a little of progressives and conservatives, but progressives cannot comprehend conservatives.

It’s only when we agree that we know we have made use of all available information. Because its voluntary exchange – expressed as the middle – that determines when we have made use of the entire moral spectrum, that concerns both the short (progressive nurturing), medium (libertarian production), and long term (conservative defense).

That is why centrism in democratic politics is so important, and why the middle road is so prominent an idea throughout political and philosophical history in all cultures. Those cultures did not, however, as Walter is trying to communicate, figure out that it is voluntary exchange that allows us to ‘compute’ that middle, not the wisdom of one or more rulers.

So his lesson is profound. And it is a lesson in the language; in the inter-temporal spectrum; of libertarians and conservatives who are his audience.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.

http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2015/05/walter_block_lawsuit_times.htmlEXPLAINING WALTER BLOCK’S NARRATIVE DEVICE

I have been a frequent critic of Walter and the Mises Institute that is his platform, despite knowing him personally for years, in part because his technique for grabbing the audience’s attention is to use examples that are morally horrifying in order to illustrate economic, political, and moral principles.

The purpose of his parable that is to illustrate the spectrum of involuntary association.

He’s saying this: If you work voluntarily with other people to pick cotton for a living, that’s very different from picking cotton for someone else involuntarily. Lots of people in this world do horrible work. Lots of people have been, are, and forever will be poor. Likewise serving people in your business that you prefer not to, and that may be damaging to your business, is also undesirable. Just as paying taxes for things you don’t support is undesirable. Using these three data points he paints a spectrum of undesirable forced associations.

The Jewish tradition, and Jewish law, emphasizes separatism and individualism to preserve jewish group identity: ‘separate and apart’. The western aristocratic tradition emphasizes local universalism but preserves hierarchy. The western christian tradition emphasizes universalism and family, and hierarchy. So Walter is, as are many jewish intellectuals, bringing his cultural traditions to the argument: he’s advocating in favor of separatism.

Just as there is a long tradition on the left of using parables of suffering for the purpose of illustration, there is a long tradition on the right of using absurdity in parables for the purpose of illustrating long term consequences if everyone behaved as such. The reason progressives use suffering (short term, and personal experience) and conservatives use humor (long term, exaggerated effects), is because that is our evolutionary division of labor at work: progressives perceive the short term and experience of individuals regardless of consequences, and conservatives perceive the long term consequences regardless of experience.

You will see the same thing from most popular conservatives, including Limbaugh – who specializes in this technique. For conservatives, two whom disgust is as influential a moral impulse as compassion is for progressives, these ‘horrific’ narratives are highly loaded with emotion: they are excellent pedagogical parables.

We cannot really understand each other, unless we understand that the moral spectrum evolved as an inter-temporal (across time) division of perception, comprehension, knowledge, advocacy and labor. And that one of the reasons we humans can adapt to circumstances, is that we each have biased perceptions. Some of us advocate for the short term to ensure offspring survive, and some for the long term to ensure the tribe competes against others. Conservatives can understand progressives. Libertarians understand a little of progressives and conservatives, but progressives cannot comprehend conservatives. Progressivism is the most narrow moral code – a specialization of sorts.

Because of this division of advocacy, it’s only when we agree that we know we have made use of all available information. Because its voluntary exchange – expressed as the middle – that determines when we have made use of the entire moral spectrum, that concerns both the short (progressive nurturing), medium (libertarian production), and long term (conservative defense).

That is why centrism in democratic politics is so important, and why the middle road is so prominent an idea throughout political and philosophical history in all cultures. Those cultures did not, however, as Walter is trying to communicate, figure out that it is voluntary exchange that allows us to ‘compute’ that middle, not the wisdom of one or more rulers.

So Walter’s lesson for his audience is profound. And it is a lesson delivered in the language; addressing the inter-temporal spectrum; in the moral interests – of the libertarians and conservatives who are his audience.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.

http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2015/05/walter_block_lawsuit_times.html