Curt Doolittle

Form: Outline

  • On Education Policy (UNDONE)

    I. A NEW MYTHOLOGY

    Neil Postman’s proposed five new ‘gods’ or narratives, that may better serve american culture. Postman’s ideas are interesting in that there is nothing ‘American’ about them. They are the feminine values of the campfire. They fail to address what made the west a religion of rationalism, a high trust society that consistently embraced technology and became the master of the vicissitudes of nature rather than the victim of them. In keeping with the “balance of powers” I’ve proposed a competing masculine perspective. By teaching the two story arcs as a dynamic tension, or balance, we can accurately represent both the feminine need for community  and the masculine need for institutions that allow us to compete and invent, so that we may continue to transform the universe to suit our will, and fulfill our ‘destiny as heir to the divine’.  

    Our Shared Human Experience

    The Communal Feminine Universalist Underclass View

    The Miracle Of The West

    The Minority Tribal Masculine Heroic Aristocratic View

    1) The Spaceship Earth The story of the Earth as a “vulnerable space capsule” with humans as its stewards and caretakers1) Transform The Universe To Suit Our Will  – Man as god. Our desire is to master the hostile universe into a beautiful garden for human existence.
    2) The Fallen Angel The story that human beings make mistakes, but can get closer to the truth by learning from their errors and eliminating what is false2) Heroic Man Scarcity Minority Persistence Hubris Technology against the dark forces of time and ignorance
    3) The American Experiment The story of America as a grand experiment (a perpetual question mark, not a definitive period) – one in which students are invited to play an active part3)  The ‘Game Society’ As Scientific Search For Solutions The Balance Of Powers Constitutionalism and The Common Law The Market Meritocracy THE SECRET OF MANORIALISM THE GREEK EXPERIMENT THE ENGLISH EXPERIMENT THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT THE EUROPEAN EXPERIMENT THE COMPETING TRADITIONS: Greek Rationalism And The Balance Of Powers Confucianism And Totalitarian Hierarchy Scriptural Monotheism And Theocracy Hinduism/Buddhism And Anarchy
    4) The Law of Diversity The story of how human culture has been enriched and strengthened through the inclusion of different cultures and their ideas4) The Pursuit of Excellence Society As Science Competition Innovation Meritocracy Identify And Learn From The Best
    5) The Word Weavers/The World Makers The story of how humans use language to give meaning to the surrounding world and, as a result, are then changed by their own creation5) The Calculators Reason, logic and Argument Numbers, Prices, The market as information system The Formula Makers

    II. FROM WRITTEN TO VERBAL  EDUCATION

      PROFESSIONALIZING TEACHING  

    III. ELIMINATING THE ARTIFICE OF CHILDHOOD

  • On Education Policy (UNDONE)

    I. A NEW MYTHOLOGY

    Neil Postman’s proposed five new ‘gods’ or narratives, that may better serve american culture. Postman’s ideas are interesting in that there is nothing ‘American’ about them. They are the feminine values of the campfire. They fail to address what made the west a religion of rationalism, a high trust society that consistently embraced technology and became the master of the vicissitudes of nature rather than the victim of them. In keeping with the “balance of powers” I’ve proposed a competing masculine perspective. By teaching the two story arcs as a dynamic tension, or balance, we can accurately represent both the feminine need for community  and the masculine need for institutions that allow us to compete and invent, so that we may continue to transform the universe to suit our will, and fulfill our ‘destiny as heir to the divine’.  

    Our Shared Human Experience

    The Communal Feminine Universalist Underclass View

    The Miracle Of The West

    The Minority Tribal Masculine Heroic Aristocratic View

    1) The Spaceship Earth The story of the Earth as a “vulnerable space capsule” with humans as its stewards and caretakers1) Transform The Universe To Suit Our Will  – Man as god. Our desire is to master the hostile universe into a beautiful garden for human existence.
    2) The Fallen Angel The story that human beings make mistakes, but can get closer to the truth by learning from their errors and eliminating what is false2) Heroic Man Scarcity Minority Persistence Hubris Technology against the dark forces of time and ignorance
    3) The American Experiment The story of America as a grand experiment (a perpetual question mark, not a definitive period) – one in which students are invited to play an active part3)  The ‘Game Society’ As Scientific Search For Solutions The Balance Of Powers Constitutionalism and The Common Law The Market Meritocracy THE SECRET OF MANORIALISM THE GREEK EXPERIMENT THE ENGLISH EXPERIMENT THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT THE EUROPEAN EXPERIMENT THE COMPETING TRADITIONS: Greek Rationalism And The Balance Of Powers Confucianism And Totalitarian Hierarchy Scriptural Monotheism And Theocracy Hinduism/Buddhism And Anarchy
    4) The Law of Diversity The story of how human culture has been enriched and strengthened through the inclusion of different cultures and their ideas4) The Pursuit of Excellence Society As Science Competition Innovation Meritocracy Identify And Learn From The Best
    5) The Word Weavers/The World Makers The story of how humans use language to give meaning to the surrounding world and, as a result, are then changed by their own creation5) The Calculators Reason, logic and Argument Numbers, Prices, The market as information system The Formula Makers

    II. FROM WRITTEN TO VERBAL  EDUCATION

      PROFESSIONALIZING TEACHING  

    III. ELIMINATING THE ARTIFICE OF CHILDHOOD

  • Four Reasons For The Long Term Decline In Violence

    Regarding Pinker’s new book on the decline in violence in the world over time. I would argue that there are the following reasons for the worldwide decline in violence. 1. The Abstraction Of Property Stated by an unnamed commenter on The Economist: Odd that no mention is made of the most obvious point: that when one can abstract wealth (for example, into bank accounts and physical property) violence declines proportionately. In some parts of Africa where wealth is largely a function of how many cattle one has, violence is quite prevalent. This is because wealth can be captured by violent means – the risk/reward ratio is favorable. But in the West, what can a mugger hope to get? A few pounds or euros or dollars. The victim’s wealth is largely inaccesible. So only the most desperate resort to violence – far better to become a Wall Street banker and steal billions quite legally without needing to use any physical force at all. The correlation between violence and the abstraction of wealth is well understood so the omission of this fact is quite surprising.2. Increases In the Likelihood of Punishment. Contrary to liberal desires, it turns out that longer, and harsher sentences are in fact a deterrent. That’s the data. That’s the fact. Plain and simple. 3. Increasing real wealth Obviously a deterrent. 4. Cheap Entertainment A bored male is a dangerous thing.

  • SOCIAL STRATEGY: Sovereignty: Balance of Power/Competition INSTITUTIONS: Propert

    SOCIAL STRATEGY: Sovereignty: Balance of Power/Competition

    INSTITUTIONS: Property + Rule of Law

    EPISTEMOLOGY: Aristotelianism:Reason/Science/Literacy/Medicine

    ETHICS: Solidarity: Germanic Christianity/Work Ethic/Consumerism

    Note that Democracy doesn’t even enter into it.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-09-17 16:21:00 UTC

  • Develop a cohesive, written ideology and the economic justification of the ideol

    Develop a cohesive, written ideology and the economic justification of the ideology. Privatize the school system. Create a network of school. Teach the great tradition of western history for two generations. This line of reasoning is the best method of producing great minds – even in average people. These students will be sought by business and industry, and their social status will be something that people will seek to imitate. Create two new branches of military service: homeland maintenance (emergency preparedness), and foreign service (policing and administering), and leave the existing institutions for the sole purpose of violence. Withdraw our troops from europe and asia. Require military service of all citizens in order to vote. And in two generations you will make it possible to have a Constitutional monarchy. Monarchy is a government for nationalism – an extended family. Families have common values. Education an service make people invested. Our current form of democracy in the USA is more concerned with protecting our trade routes, disempowering white males, promoting ideological class warfare, and obtaining political power than it is in the long term health of the nation.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-05-16 17:19:00 UTC

  • Translating Complaints About Private Sector Services

    When people disparage the private sector and seek services from the government what they really mean is one or more of the following: 1) DISCOUNT ON RESEARCH / RISK REDUCTION: “I am not able to judge the services in the marketplace, and unable to determine which of the inexpensive choices at my disposal in the market is optimum, and therefore I wish to circumvent the market in exchange for having the same services available to all.” – ie: the ‘roads and sidewalks’ analogy wherein, “I have a right to use the same common goods as everyone else.” 2) PROFIT REDISTRIBUTION: “I am not a desirable customer by any company and therefore, I wish to circumvent the market in order to obtain services that are greater in value than what I produce for exchange in the market by servicing others.” – The redistributive strategy. (To some degree this is a legitimate concern, since there will always be some that it is not worth the effort to serve other than by charity.) The basic idea is that if one conforms to social norms, and pays the high cost of respecting property, that one should get some return on one’s investment. 3) STATUS REDISTRIBUTION: “For any company to whom I am a desirable customer, I will be given services in a manner, and of a quality, that is less than I desire, or which is substandard to my self perceived social status.” (This is redistribution of social status is as important to many on the bottom half, as is monetary redistribution – and to some, more important.) It is particularly important for the lower two quintiles. It is this perception of status redistribution that creates ‘enfranchisement’ in the social order. Or rather, it is participation in the middle class, as a consumer, that people desire in order to consider themselves a ‘citizen’ who supports the social order. 4) ENCOURAGE GOVERNMENT COMPETITION WITH PRIVATE SERVICES: “I can more successfully petition the government for redress than I can a company, because I am a more valuable customer to the government than I am to any private company.” (There is increasingly truthful content to this perception – an argument which is beyond addressing here, but which is the increasing performance of public market, and public-credit companies, acting as bureaucracies because they can afford to rely on credit and prices rather than care of customers. Again, this is difficult, but there are in fact, ‘evil corporations’. It’s just that the government cannot change it by regulation of business performance.) Note that in listing these choices, I am relying on an assumption that differences in human ABILITY. I have not included the options that simply result from laziness. Laziness as a reason to circumvent the market is not redistribution. It is a form of fraud. (Although this is a longer argument.) If someone posits an argument that the government would better serve them, you can easily control the conversation by making the discourse about their individual preferences, and keep asking questions until you identify wich of these four positions, strategies or meanings, the person is relying upon in their arguments.

  • The Properties Of Political Argument

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    NOTES

    Forms Of Argumenta) Our Republican political system is a trade of violence for argument. Argument, consent, and majority-voting are proxies for violence. These proxies for violence were the result of the need for expensively equipped warriors to resolve disputes among a military class of necessarily meritocratic warriors, and to enfranchise additional soldiers into western battle tactics, which required individual imitative and consent. But regardless of the reason of it’s origin, we have traded violence for argument. b) The unspoken purpose of our political structure is the management of the market. A society cannot have a division of labor without a market. Nor can it decrease prices, nor generate wealth — and particular, the relative wealth needed to defend the market as it becomes more attractive and prosperous. The purpose of government in the west, since it’s inception, is to create a market, and to control the quality of goods in the market, to convert barbarians into observing market behavior in exchange for participation in the market, and frankly, for the shareholders to extract profits from the market, while providing sufficient benefit and incentives to the consumers and traders that the cost of policing property was widely distributed to all ‘enfranchised men’. In effect, soldiers were shareholders in the market and were expected to police that market. The joint stock company was not a modern innovation. It was the very structure of western civilization from it’s inception. Cities were formed as markets under the Germanic manor system, and under the Roman and Greek systems, by fraternal soldiers who defended and regulated them.The origin of this market is the egalitarian joint-stock company of fraternal soldiers who created, defended, and managed it. A ‘barbarian’ then, is a person who does not pay the fee for participating in the market: respect for the rules and regulations of that market, the first being, non-violence, the second, maintaining the quality of the market’s ability to attract and serve consumers, so that the joint shareholders could profit from the market.b) Our political system has transitioned such that it is founded upon economic arguments. It is no longer founded on moral or religious arguments. Moral and religious arguments are, in the large part, poorly articulated economic strategies. While some are better and some are worse than others, religious arguments and moral arguments are almost entirely economic in nature. Religious arguments in particular are Since IQ and Religiosity decrease together and IQ and Morality increase together, we assume incorrectly that the behavior is not the same despite the different narrative methods held by people at different positions on the scale. Reason and science can be taught but not utilized by a child who must rely instead upon simple narratives and repetition of good behavior, and an elder wise man has no need of fairy tales, and finds his juniors often tedious. c) Where our political system does not consider economic arguments it considers equality. Our politics is no longer founded upon roles and responsibilities that are necessary for the maintenance of social cooperation. Cooperation is assumed as a legal, moral, political mandate, as part of the capitalist process, and redistribution now forms the moral component of political argument, rather than role and responsibility. This structure is a result of the increase in the division of knowledge and labor in industrial, post-agrarian, society. Our political discourse emphasizes the post-productive object Money, but ignores the pre-productive object opportunity. In particular we do not include the opportunity economy as the only means of prospering now that prices are so low. We do not articulate that the barbarians ‘are paying a tax in opportunity cost’ for their citizenship simply by avoiding violence and fraud, and we rarely discuss opportunity costs, since they were a minor import to agrarians, but are the primary source of wealth in advanced societies. This error is a product of temporary irrational wealth in the west gained by the acquisition of a new continent. Government is obsessed with redistribution and insufficiently obsessed with innovation, competition, and accumulating human, intellectual, and built capital for the purpose of maintaining our quality of life.d) A political argument must contain at least one of these forms of argument. (Most political argument consists of sentiments supported by selectively applied biases that confirm the sentiments. Very few arguments are sufficiently articulated such that the underlying sentiments are expressly stated. In many cases this is because these sentiments are not understood by the person making the argument. Because of this tendency, )e) All sentiments are preferential biases, not absolute truths. Biases are not truths because humans are unequal in their abilities and wants. These different biases are expressions of preferences for uses of capital. Capital is scarce and the uses of it infinite. Therefore uses of capital are in conflict and are irreconcilable. Since they are irreconcilable, parties use a variety of techniques from overstatement, to distortion, to taking advantage of mutual ignorance, to deception, to outright fraud, to corruption, to threats, to violence in order to appropriate capital for their preferential purposes.f) Democratic Groups must rely upon sentiments in order to achieve goals and form leaders.Sentiments are goals. Goals can be agreed upon, and means cannot be agreed upon. The democratic process forces aggregation and compromise of means in order to achieve goals. Leadership must form or seize power in order to resolve conflicts over means. g) All arguments rely upon sentiments, because all arguments MUST advocate a sentiment. Since people are of different in ages, possessed of different knowledge, preferences, biases, classes, resources, and abilities, rational debate among individuals over means, is of necessity difficult, and solutions that employ complex means, and imply complex causes, are OPAQUE to the majority of participants. Only sentiments, or goals, that express common aggregate desires, are possible across a broad enough polity to enact a policy by the process of democratic violence: majority voting. h) A scientific argument contains data, assumptions categorized as proposed facts, and a theory of causality without which facts have no meaningFurthermore it must state how it can be proved false, and in the social sciences no one test is sufficient for proof of an argument – an argument in the social sciences is only possible if considering all similar studies from all similar circumstances from all similar cultures, including the opposing positions. This is the Aristotelian argument. Citation of a study is a guarantee of falsehood. Citation of the full body of studies is the only material reason for judgment. i) An economic argument should contain ALL of these forms of argument. (The primary component of an economic argument is a theory of incentives. An economic argument is supported by exhaustive application of correlative mathematics to indirectly accumulated data (economic activity that was naturally recorded, not intentionally constructed.)j) Economic arguments are the only possible arguments.They are not a preference. They are a necessity. Only an economic argument is sufficiently useful for a polity that must make capital decisions in a division of knowledge and labor whose scope both in people and time is sufficiently complex that no human can perceive that answer by other means. Conversely, the population may not consist of a sufficient number of people literate enough to communicate rational choices to each class, race, culture, and generation. This problem can be solved by fairly simple education. But such education would disadvantage numerous political groups with selfish motivations.k) All politicians represent a bias. They are not corrupt. They are not ill intentioned. They have no choice. The human mind is incapable of synthesizing the universe of outcomes. As such they will advocate any set of preferences to the maximum of their abilities. They cannot do otherwise. they are not hired by their constituents for any other reason, even if they were able to expand the scope of their understanding. However, we can hold them accountable for deceptions. And they are anthropomorphic symbols of opposing arguments for and against the use of capital. And we should see them as such. the fact that we allow the ignorant and foolish into office is a problem with our system of election.The Limits Of Social and Economic Science Unlike the physical sciences, all human economic activity is, cumulative, and correlative, not absolutely causal. Certainly, human interpersonal activity is causal, because it is observable. However, systemic data, and all non-contradictory causal derivations and deductions from narrative or factual history are correlative in the sense that they are necessarily insufficient, and open to external causality. We have markets because of our lack of perceptive ability. We have numbers, math, accounting, narrative, and reason to assist in compensating for a lack of perception. But history is constantly open to interpretation due to additional data, or because of an increase or decrease in the scope of the context of the causes and incentives we are applying in our analysis. This difference in scope of context, is the reason that scientific argument is often difficult to use in resolving political differences; due to the fact that most scopes of context are related to class, knowledge and intelligence, and are generally expressed as ‘time preferences’ – longer and shorter time horizons, as well as expressed as ‘population preferences’, – the scope of people to be affected by the outcome. That is because, while events are the same, the level of ‘noise’ in economic activity varies considerably, Pseudo-Science Survey data is a formal argument of sentiments – it is not scientifically causal. It is only scientifically descriptive. And it is open to distortion and deception to the degree that it is universally suspect.

  • A Life In Denial: The Scripture Of Democratic Secular Humanism

    Tenets Of Democratic Secular Humanism (DSH). 1) IQ Denial: The belief that people are, all things considered, equal. When instead they are unequal in ability, and demonstrate that inequality both in testing and by the demonstrated result of their actions in real life. 2) Class and Status Denial: Classes Do Not Exist or are irrelevant. When instead they not only exist, but they appear to be biologically determinant, and are materially useful in the division of labor. 3) Race Denial. Race is immaterial and a construct. When instead, races are material because people act as if they are material, and they act that way because status in-group and status extra-group are achieved with different degrees of difficulty. In grop status is easier to obtain. And status determines access to opportunity, access to mates, and access to talented individuals.

    [callout]Secular Humanism is a faith. It is a utopian religion. And there is no difference between holocaust denial, moon landing denial, and secular humanism’s requirement that members of the religion practice Reality Denial.[/callout]

    4) Gender Denial: The belief that men and women mature at the same rate, have similar IQ distributions, prefer the same experiences, and think in the same manner, and that any difference is environmental. 5) Acquisitiveness Denial: The believe that humans can suppress acquisitiveness — when humans show signs of unlimited acquisitiveness simply to occupy themselves, or to gain stimulation, and their acquisitiveness is a two edged sword: both providing incentives and creating demonstrative differences. 6) Anthropo-implasticity Denial. The belief in the Infinite Plasticity of Humans and their society — When instead, Natural Law is demonstrably correct in that people have permanent unalterable tendencies 7) Rational Limits Denial The belief that rational arguments about political subjects are both persuasive and comprehensible to a democratic polity. 8) Integration Denial: The belief that groups with different racial identities and religions traditions integrate into the utopian homogenity of universal human equality. 9) Democratic Limit Denial: Unlimited people can agree on both ends and means 0- – the Consensus Cognitive Bias – when there are Limits to Political Consensus On Means Of Achieving Goals : 10) Positivism, or The Limits of Empiricism Denial. Empiricism yields universal truths – when there are consequential limits to empiricism and probabilism in prediction of Human Behavior. 11) Concreate Metaphysical Beliefs Denial The belief that people change their beliefs – when people never change their beliefs, they only reinforce them. The restructuring of metaphysical judgments is so expensive only the most dedicated can alter them.All changes in political sentiments come from demographic shifts, not changes in belief. Most political argument is preaching to the choir. Secular Humanism is a faith. It is a utopian religion. And there is no difference between holocaust denial, moon landing denial, and secular humanism’s requirement that members of the religion practice Reality Denial. Secular humanism is anything BUT scientific. Scientific observation would demonstrate what people DO. It is up to religion and philosophy to determine what people SHOULD do, and up to science to determine whether it is possible for them to do it.

  • The Euro. What Will Happen?

    Germany Moves East Germany and Russia are now more politically aligned because they are now economically aligned. Europe will have: 1) the German-Russian block, which will reclaim the eastern block countries. 2) the France and PIGS block (latins – portugal, spain, italy and greece over whom it can feel superior) 3) The UK trying to figure out if it’s part of the Anglo-american, French or German block, and becoming irrelevant unless it simply becomes the world version of switzerland -weak but trustworthy with your money. The European left-coast lost. And the USA can’t protect anyone any longer.