In a sense, William Safire entered my life in June 1973 with his New York Times op-ed piece “Gunga Dean.” The only story, right then, was Watergate and the only journalistic passion was to eject President Richard Nixon from the White House. And, if possible, send him to prison. Nixon’s personal lawyer, John W. Dean III, joined the project by testifying before Sen. Sam Ervin’s committee to investigate Watergate.

I suspect that just as he changed my life with a few deft moves, he must have changed many others.

Bill Safire exited my life three decades later, in 2002, discussing my retirement from the Dana Foundation where (as if he needed more to do) he was chairman. I suspect that just as he changed my life with a few deft moves, he must have changed many others. But go back to where my rendezvous with Safire was set in motion. The chairman of the Dana Foundation, which I joined in 1982 as a program officer, was David Mahoney, known as a founder and CEO of the first U.S. “conglomerate,” Norton Simon. At some point in his rise, David hired a public relations agent named William Safire. Safire told me: “David said my job was to get his name in the newspaper every day.” The 1968 Presidential election pitted Richard M. Nixon against the most leftwing major party candidate in U.S. history, Sen. George McGovern. David and Bill Safire took a break from earning a living to work for Nixon’s election. When Nixon won by a landslide, Safire’s reward was to become his senior speech writer. Mahoney’s reward was to become chairman of the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission. To skip ahead: Things went bad. As Bill Safire put it: “I worked for Nixon and managed to stay out of jail.” Worked for Nixon and defended him to the end. It was like Safire. And his most brilliant effort was a knock-off of Rudyard Kipling’s “Gunga Din.” As an aspiring poet among other things, I told him I thought it was fantastic. How often did he use poetry in his column? “Never more than once a year.” David Mahoney later sold his creation, Norton Simon, for a record amount. He had money and nothing to do. He slipped into a serious depression. One of Bill Safire’s favorite terms was “reinvent yourself.” He steered David Mahoney into “reinventing” himself as a lay advocate of brain science. Speaking of reinventing yourself, Safire said of his beginnings as a columnist for the Times: “It didn’t work out.  I had to reinvent myself as an investigative reporter.” And that did work. In 1978, he won a Pulitzer Prize for a column on Bert Lance, director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Jimmy Carter. Fast forward: I was communications director for the Dana Foundation when Safire became chairman in 2002 after David Mahoney died and then full-time CEO in 2004, the year he finally gave up his Times Column.  The first thing I ever said to him, at a dinner for trustees, was “Sit closer to the podium, Mr. Safire.” And the first thing he ever said to me was “No, Walter. Podium, podiatry, feet. A podium is a box a speaker mounts. Over there is a lectern.” You don’t forget something like that. I was a fan of Safire’s weekly column begun in 1979 for the Sunday Times, “On Language.” I wondered if I might end up there as an example. A table in the board room of the Dana Foundation was the next scene. As the foundation’s director of communications, I was responsible for its quarterly newsletter. And proud of it because I had begun my career as a reporter (for the Worcester Telegram) and thought I did real reporting for the newsletter. Bill Safire made a few comments about the newsletter that (later) I realized were euphemistic. I said: “I don’t know exactly what you’re saying.” “It’s boring.”

You would write it well, but not about anything negative or controversial. Obviously, to Bill Safire, that was firing blanks.

All my colleagues were at the table. I didn’t agree, but I didn’t argue. I knew what he meant. This was a “house organ,” a publicity vehicle. You would write it well, but not about anything negative or controversial. Obviously, to Bill Safire, that was firing blanks. I had been at Dana as neuroscience—specifically, building public understanding of the brain and support for brain research—came to dominate the foundation’s programs. But my portfolio, including the annual report and the “boring” newsletter, never called for any of the “real writing” I always had intended to do. That so far had been on my own time, freelance. Then, Bill Safire said, “This foundation needs a real publication on brain science. A high-end publication for lay readers and scientists. Do you want to do it?” Did I want my job? Bill even provided the title: “Cerebrum: The Dana Forum on Brain Science.”  It was the first time in my official career that I could be a “real” writer and editor. This was going to be brain science as written by the country’s and world’s leading neuroscientists—and edited for readability by my associate editor, Cynthia Read, and me. Bill Safire seemed to read every issue of Cerebrum before we published it. I have no idea how he had time. Once, we took on the arguably most politically incorrect topic imaginable. An associate professor with a joint position at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins made the case that decades of IQ-testing had confirmed a significant average IQ difference between races, which no attempt at eliminating “confounding factors” had changed. She argued that the best thing we could do for Black Americans was to base policy on reality. Cerebrum published it. Safire strode into my office. He said, “Okay, now get me critical comments from three top neuroscientists. When the three strongly condemnatory comments arrived, he said: “Send them to the author, let her reply.” That was Bill Safire. In 2002, I was called to a meeting with Safire and Edward Rover, president of the foundation. Yes, Cerebrum was viewed as the best initiative of the foundation, but it also cost $1.0 million a year (including my salary and Cynthia’s). We needed to retreat from the physical world to the online world. And publish one article a month. “Well, that isn’t a full-time job,” I said. No, they both said. “What are you going to do?” Safire asked.

A brain-related theme of the foundation was never, ever retire.

“Retire, I guess.” (A brain-related theme of the foundation was never, ever retire.) “You’ll go out of your mind,” he said. “I think I’ll write poetry.” “Okay, but take it seriously. Take courses.” The last thing I did was thank him for giving me an opportunity before the end of my career at Dana to create a “real publication.” I am afraid I teared up, a bit. He brushed off the compliment. In fact, I began writing books (more than a dozen, now) and articles (hundreds), but also three volumes of poetry, and now my collected poems, and have continued to write daily for two decades. I heard from Safire no more. I was in retirement, visiting a spa in Colorado with my wife, when I saw in the news that Bill Safire had died on September 27, 2009, in a hospice in Rockville, Maryland. He was 79 and the cause of death was pancreatic cancer. His life had brushed mine only in passing—but changed it.     Feature Image: William Safire receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush in 2006.  

  In this article my focus is on the human development (HD) approach to social planning. Much has been previously written about the failures of central planning in providing a satisfactory framework for economic development. Most readers will already know about the failures of central planning in the Soviet Union and many low-income countries. The deficiencies of the HD approach have received less attention, presumably because it has the appearance of being a benign form of social planning designed to expand individual opportunities. The concept of “human development” is closely associated with the annual Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The concept was originally anchored in the work on human capabilities of Amartya Sen, a famous philosopher/economist, whose aim was to counter the neglect of the human element in economic development policies adopted by governments. Sen suggested that HD should be defined as “a process of enlarging people’s choices in a way that enables them to lead longer, healthier and fuller lives.”

I am using the term “human development” (HD) to encompass forms of social planning that aim to improve the well-being of individuals by influencing the choices they make, as well as those which enlarge their opportunities.

In this article I am using the term “human development” to encompass forms of social planning that aim to improve the well-being of individuals by influencing the choices they make, as well as those which enlarge their opportunities. The influencing of choices seems consistent with Sen’s view that people should “have reason to value” the outcomes that they seek. He uses those words in explaining the meaning of the title of his book, Development as Freedom: “In pursuing the view of development as freedom, we have to examine—in addition to the freedoms involved in political, social and economic processes—the extent to which people have the opportunity to achieve outcomes that they value and have reason to value.” (p 291) Sen argues strongly in favour of human rights, but he leaves the door open for social planners to claim that individuals do not have reason to value some of the things that they aspire to have. I have refrained from using the concept of development as freedom in Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing because I don’t think conflating ideas about freedom, progress, and human flourishing in an encompassing concept of freedom offers any insight into the relationships between those concepts.

HD is an activity that social planners are engaged in, whereas human flourishing is an activity that individual people are engaged in.

The more fundamental point I make is that HD and human flourishing are different concepts. HD is an activity that social planners are engaged in, whereas human flourishing is an activity that individual people are engaged in. If we want to explore the relationships between freedom, progress, and human flourishing, we need a conceptual framework based around an understanding of the nature of human flourishing that individuals are engaged in, and the basic goods that are integral to human flourishing. At this point, some readers may be wondering what difference it actually makes to view human flourishing from an individual’s perspective rather than from a social planner perspective. There are important differences associated with the way progress is viewed and measured, and in views adopted about individual decision-making. Before discussing those differences, however, I need to outline my approach to the question of what it means to be a flourishing human.  

What are the basic goods of a flourishing human?

As I see it, the question of what it means to be flourishing is a matter for individuals to reflect upon, discuss with others, and ultimately to decide for themselves. I draw on the ancient wisdom of Aristotle and some modern writers in seeking to persuade readers that there are five basic goods that a flourishing human could be expected to have:

1. Wise and well-informed self-direction
2. Health and longevity
3. Positive relationships with others
4. Living in harmony with nature
5. Psychological well-being

You will need to read Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing to understand why I argue for those items to be considered as basic goods. For present purposes, there are just a couple of points to make. First, basic goods are linked together as an integrated whole when an individual is flourishing. You can test that by listening to the responses of your friends when you ask them how they are faring these days. In my experience, when encouraged to offer more than perfunctory responses, people tend to talk about a combination of different things related in some way to those basic goods.

Self-direction is of fundamental importance.

Second, self-direction is of fundamental importance. It is implicit in the idea that it is ultimately for individuals to decide for themselves what it means to be flourishing. Once we recognize the importance of self-direction to individual flourishing, that poses the question of what rules of the game—or political and legal order—would allow greatest opportunities for individual self-direction. My views have been strongly influenced by the way Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl answer that question in their book, Norms of Liberty. Liberty provides the context in which individuals can flourish in different ways—in accordance with their own values—provided they do not interfere with the natural rights of others.  

What counts as progress?

I define progress as growth of opportunities for human flourishing and discuss those opportunities by reference to the basic goods. This definition is broadly consistent with the view of progress as ongoing betterment of the conditions of humanity, which developed in France and Scotland in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. As well as providing individuals with the greatest possible scope to exercise self-direction, liberty provides them with strong incentives to learn how to make wise and well-informed choices. Individual responsibility is a corollary of liberty. The choices that individuals make to pursue their aspirations often involve voluntary cooperation with others to obtain benefits of specialization and exchange in free markets. Importantly, those choices can also involve innovation. The economic growth resulting from such processes has been associated with widespread expansion of opportunities for human flourishing. Economic growth qualifies as progress because people often aspire to have more of the goods that economic growth provides. The book explains that economic growth has also helped people to have better physical health and psychological well-being. As their income-earning potential rises, people also have opportunities to enjoy more leisure with family and friends, and to give higher priority non-materialist aspirations, including a desire to live in greater harmony with nature. Over the last 200 years, ongoing innovation has been supported by the positive attitude that increasing numbers of people have had toward technological innovation and productivity growth. In an expanding number of countries, people have been willing to accept the possibility that innovation may disrupt their lives because they have recognized the potential benefits to themselves and their descendants of the expansion of opportunities that it offers.  

How do human developers view progress?

As you might expect, the indicators I refer to in discussing differences in opportunities to obtain basic goods in various countries overlap considerably with indicators covered in the UNDP’s Human Development Reports. However, my approach differs from that of the UNDP in one crucial respect. It recognizes that self-direction is central to human flourishing and, for that reason, acknowledges explicitly the importance of liberty and human rights in enabling individuals to achieve their aspirations. By contrast, despite claims that it respects the idea “of enlarging people’s choices,” the UNDP’s human development index (HDI) does not incorporate any indicator of liberty or human rights—it only takes account of life expectancy, education, and gross national income per capita. The UNDP also uses nine other broad indicators, but those do not include indicators of freedom, liberty, or human rights.

UNDP’s human development index (HDI) does not incorporate any indicator of liberty or human rights.

So far, the UNDP’s approach to HD has focused on issues associated with measurement, leaving economic policy to mainstream economists.  In their book, Advancing Human Development, Frances Stewart, Gustav Ranis and Emma Samman, whose association with the UNDP began in the 1980s, advocate a more ambitious policy agenda. These authors suggest that the HD approach should now be broadened to explore in depth “the implications and requirements of the HD objective for the way the economy is structured and managed.” They foreshadow that the kind of economic system that would provide decent work for all and fair income distribution would be likely to involve “a switch from a capitalist system to a ‘sharing’ economy (i.e. one where resources are owned and controlled by workers, consumers, or the community, and benefits from production shared equitably among them).” (p 231) I hope the authors do not envisage further replication of the failed experiments in socialism that have taken place in various parts of the world over the last century. Whatever they have in mind, it seems unlikely that their rejection of capitalism is compatible with recognition of the importance of self-direction to individual flourishing, and of the role of liberty in enabling individual self-direction.  

Shaping individual choices

In a report entitled, Mind, Society, and Behavior, (World Development Report 2015) the World Bank asks the question, “Why should governments shape individual choices?” That is a good question, but the answer provided by the authors of that report seems to me to be unwise. The authors argue that governments have a role in shaping individual choices because people are prone to make choices that do not promote their own well-being. They cite the findings of behavioral economics and psychological research in support of the view that people often make poor choices. I see three problems with that line of argument. First, my reading of relevant research suggests that it is unduly pessimistic to conclude that large numbers of people are so prone to make serious mistakes in pursuing their individual aspirations that they need wise and well-informed governments to shape their choices for them. Second, I am more optimistic about the capacity of adult individuals to accept responsibility for managing their own lives than I am about the likely outcomes of alternatives requiring intervention by wise and well-meaning governments. In the real world, wise and well-meaning governments are difficult to find. And even if we were lucky enough to have wise and well-meaning governments to guide us, they would not know as much as we do about our individual values and aspirations. Third, social planners underrate the importance of self-direction to the flourishing of individuals. We develop our ability for self-direction through experience, in making choices and accepting responsibility for those choices. As Aristotle observed, flourishing humans seek to attain their potential to be good humans—who exercise practical wisdom and other virtues—and take pleasure in doing so. The importance of self-direction is obvious to each of us when we look back at the decisions we have made in the past. We feel a sense of achievement as we recall good choices that opened up opportunities or enabled disasters to be avoided. The more aspects of our lives we allow governments to manage for us, the more we deprive ourselves of the satisfaction which comes from meeting the challenges of self-direction. Of course, when we look back, most of us also see some choices we regret. Self-direction does pose challenges. In Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing the focus of the discussion of the findings of research on common cognitive errors and determinants of happiness is on how individuals can use those findings to cope with the challenges of self-direction. For example, it is useful to be aware of the potential for our intuitions to lead us astray in making decisions that require thoughtful deliberation. Our ancestors would not have survived to maturity if they were unable to recognize when they needed to slow down and think carefully. At crucial moments they were presumably able to remember cautionary tales about the mistakes that others had made by relying on their intuitions when they should have thought more carefully. There is no good reason why we can’t do likewise.  

Conclusions

HD has the appearance of being a benign form of social planning that has potential to expand individual opportunities. It may even be claimed that some governments have pursued policies under a HD banner that have fostered the economic freedom required for mutually beneficial exchange, innovation, and productivity growth. Where such policies have been pursued, they may have helped people to meet their individual aspirations for basic goods including health and longevity, and psychological well-being.

Social planning is now extending into the realm of shaping individuals’ choices in ways that are likely to deprive individuals of the satisfaction which comes from meeting the challenges of self-direction.

However, the HD approach is not as benign as it appears. As adopted by the UNDP, the HD approach to measurement of progress downplays the importance of self-direction to human flourishing by excluding indicators of freedom, liberty, and human rights. Moreover, in advocating a switch from a capitalist system to a ‘sharing’ economy, some HD practitioners now seem to be advocating policies opposed to the economic freedom that is the basis for growth of individual opportunities. Furthermore, social planning is now extending into the realm of shaping individuals’ choices in ways that are likely to deprive individuals of the satisfaction which comes from meeting the challenges of self-direction. An important message of Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing is that the people who live in the Western liberal democracies and an increasing number of other countries are fortunate to have opportunities for self-directed flourishing that their ancestors could only have dreamed about. It is unfortunate to see people now passing over those opportunities by allowing social planners to govern their lives.    

 

This “institutionalized individuality/individualism” is neither particularly American, Western, Asian, Japanese, etc., but operates at the worldwide level.

Japan and America seem like opposites, the former a place where the individual is suppressed and the group extolled, while in the United States the individual is lauded and groupism frowned upon. But viewed in global context they are not that far apart. An in-depth examination of both societies reveals how whether formulated as individuality or individualism, the focus on the individual as a source of vast untapped resources requiring expression and exploration is built around the “project of the individual.” The individual is the “modern source of all meaning and action” rather than the needs and expectations of corporate groups and national societies. The “perspective of the individual, in one form or another, is increasingly celebrated.”[1] This “institutionalized individuality/individualism” is neither particularly American, Western, Asian, Japanese, etc., but operates at the worldwide level.  

How Sociopsychological Changes Led to an Individual-centric World

The forces of interiorization dug the groundwork for individualism and new definitions of the person that, by the 1800s, crystallized into what we call modernity.

How did the individual become the “primordial or grounding element of all social structures”?[2] A long-term historical perspective reveals how as societies grew in complexity since the early modern period, people began to view individuals as containing an inner mental stuff that was just as significant as obligatory roles, imposed norms, inherited position, and social status. In other words, we began to assign greater value to what might be called the psychic innards of the person. “Psychological interiorization” is the consequence or we might say the other side of the coin of social exteriorization; as political, economic, and technological complexity increased, our mental machinery needed to be scaled up. Interiorization encouraged people to reconceptualize personhood in the political and economic domains. What was “inside” the self became inherently valuable and thus was born the idea of self-ownership as exemplified in the writings of John Locke (1632‒1704). In other words, one should keep not just what one produces but one should also freely “own” one’s opinions uncensored by political authorities. The individual’s interior space not only requires expression but is also filled with personalized wishes. The forces of interiorization dug the groundwork for individualism and new definitions of the person that, by the 1800s, crystallized into what we call modernity. These definitions include the voting citizen premised on the belief in the inherently autonomous self with inalienable rights; the participatory citizen-soldier mobilized by national states; the consuming citizen as property-accumulating worker; the “subject” as a container of unconscious impulses/cognitive representations that has been the focus of psychoanalysis/research psychology; and “character” as the highly self-introspectable protagonist of the novel.  

The Ingredients of Individuality and Individualism

Let’s start with some basic definitions and distinguish three concepts. The first is the individual which obviously is found in all societies (kojin in Japanese). The second is individuality or what is unique or special about a person (kosei in Japanese). The third concept is individualism, an Anglo-American political economic philosophy that takes the individual as the basic unit of society (kojin-shugi in Japanese). While it is easy to associate individualism with Anglo-American thought, arguably it is more accurate to see it as a product of modernizing forces. Certain societies arrived at modernity earlier by recognizing how unleashing and exploiting a person’s capacities benefited society. And a distinction should be made between political and economic individualism. While the assumption is that they go together, they can follow different trajectories within the same society. For example, in the 1980s the Chinese Communist Party began to unshackle the productive powers of its individual workers. But China’s citizens remain politically oppressed. In their healthier manifestations both individualism and individuality can be distilled down into different ingredients. The first is self-individuation, which describes highlighting and prioritizing one’s personal traits. People then come to appear unique when compared to those of others and set against the backdrop of larger collectivities. The need to distinguish ourselves from others is something that is either encouraged or discouraged by place and period. Self-individuation promotes not just personal but also the common good since it underscores an individual’s special talents that can be used to benefit others. Discovering one’s assets not only aids oneself but it is also a boon to society in general who can benefit from one’s own strengths.

Fostering individual agency leads to a sense of control over one’s destiny. This is the third ingredient.

The second ingredient is self-authorization. This concerns to whom or to what we attribute control of our behavior. This locus of control is key to how we conceptualize our superior‒subordinate relations and the social structures in which we are embedded. It is the “who” of agency. Ordinarily we believe that one’s inner self, rather than supernatural entities as in times past or political ideologies in the present-day, governs our immediate behavior. Very much related to self-authorization is self-autonomy, i.e., fostering individual agency leads to a sense of control over one’s destiny. This is the third ingredient. A person is regarded as an intention-instilled being; accountability and responsibility are attributed to an inner, highly individualized “I” rather than ethnic-racial collectivities, ideological groupings, charismatic but cultish leaders, or religious hierarchies.  

The Individual in Japan

Japan is a land of myths. But not just of the religious and folkloric kind. It is a place where embellished narratives about history, politics, identity, and Japan’s role on the global stage are kept firmly in place by powerful elite institutions. Japan is often perceived as “exotic,” an “orientalist wonderland”; for many it is somehow special and culturally “unique” compared to other places. It is also considered by many to be a “small” and ethnically homogenous society. Other commonly heard myths about Japan is that it lacks a military (i.e., it only has a “defense force”), is predominantly middle-class, has a superb education system, and is a place where change is slow and incremental. All of these views are misperceptions or at least are in need of heavy qualification. One myth in particular deserves attention: The Japanese lack individuality. This ideological nugget is bound up with other fictions, e.g., the group is always given priority over the individual so that conflict, dissent, and tension are minimized and harmony privileged since offending egotism is subtracted from social dynamics that routinely unsettle other societies. When I began studying Japan in the 1980s researchers talked confidently about the “group model.” Somewhat later, even when few academics took it seriously, one still had to devote space in academic publications to why the group model needed to be challenged and mention the individualistic qualities of the Japanese. All societies, of course, spin fanciful, self-serving tales about themselves, but some are more talented than others at collective storytelling. It always struck me how while living in Japan I would meet visiting American scholars who, suspicious and skeptical of their own politico-economic institutions back home, were easily taken in by the “official” accounts of Japan. These tales were concocted by political and economic leaders, disseminated through the educational system, absorbed by the populace, exported overseas, and then imported back into Japan by unsuspecting Japan-watchers and scholars.

Many Japanese educators, concerned with how collectivism stifles creativity and expressions of independence, advocate kosei in schools.

For some, Japanese individualism carries negative connotations of selfishness, irresponsibility, and immaturity. While certain Japanese criticize individualism as a decidedly foreign import and believe it undermines Japan’s groupism, individuality is very much alive and encouraged. Indeed, many Japanese educators, concerned with how collectivism stifles creativity and expressions of independence, advocate kosei in schools. And despite a wariness towards individualism among certain Japanese thinkers, Japan is a stable democracy with a tradition of political rights and strong protections for the individual acquisition of private property. Despite a genuine interest in kosei among the average Japanese, arguably it has been pressed into service by advertisers, marketers, and profit-hungry corporations. A cynic might claim that the educatio-economic system harnesses the animal spirts of individuality for the agenda of economic nationalism; this is hard to deny. But it is also difficult to dismiss the colorful and irrepressible expression of individualistic qualities among the Japanese. In Japan, all the talk about group life (shūdan seikatsu), group consciousness (shūdan ishiki) and harmony (wa) seems to indicate a predilection for conformity, regulation, and standardization. But such a conclusion is superficial. Here the common use of another Japanese word designating individuality should be mentioned: jibun-rashisa, which might literally be translated as “self-likeness.” Self-expression is especially evident in the everyday world of consumption or in how consumers alter, supplement, and convert goods and fashion to personal preferences; think of the global impact of Japanese pop culture. Such subversion illustrates an adaptable, abounding, and resolute—indeed, at times stubborn—individuality.  

The Group in America

If individuality is central to Japanese conceptions of the person, groupism plays a prominent role in American life. Consider the rallying cries of “team player,” “teamwork” and “team spirit,” whether on the sports field or in boardrooms. Or the propensity of many Americans to hyphenate their identities in order to signal their affiliation with an ethnocultural group, e.g., Irish-American, Italian-American, Chinese-American, African-American, etc. Indeed, the fact that the American government categorizes its citizens (e.g., census) using outdated nineteenth-century classifications, despite supposedly being a beacon for civic rather than racial and ethnic politics, illustrates well American-style groupism, as does the media’s predilection to promiscuously racialize news items. And the unhealthy polarization of American politics into Democrat-versus-Republican, left-versus-right, vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated, indicates dogmatic groupism, not enlightened individual decision-makers. While it is easy to delineate the historical trajectory of politico-economic individualism, it is more challenging to describe how it has taken deep roots in the cultural life of a nation, especially when weeds rather than flowers sprout. In the United States we are familiar with the sins of twisted individualism: selfishness, egotism, self-centeredness. Misguided and misunderstood individualism also promotes being highly opinionated since “my view” must possess special significance by virtue of the inherent value of the individual. But the habit of holding unchallenged opinions leads to the illness of “opinioneitis.” If being opinionated makes one blinkered and narrow-minded, the symptoms of opinioneitis are ugly bigotry, cruel intolerance, and dangerous dogma. It’s what happens when an individual—spoon-fed heavy doses of excessive self-esteem, spoiled by helicopter parenting, misinformed by the media, misled by the government, and coddled by an educational system that puts more stock in feelings than facts—ends up being unable to empathize. One’s belief becomes the truth, one’s subjective judgment, objective reality.  

The Future?

This brings us back to the difference between economic and political freedom.

For better or for worse, the individual is the core element, the sovereign source of public life, whether political, economic, or cultural, as well as the source of problems in these areas; thus the modern emphasis on “therapeutic measures” for society’s ills. And due to the spreading roots of a consumerist capitalism nourished by a self-centric culture, every desire and demand must be instantly gratified. Driving individuation is interiorization, whose ideological spawn is not going away. So the question is how should societies respond politically, economically, and culturally to the individual-is-king as we rush headlong into an uncertain future that expands the inner landscapes of the individual? It seems commonsensical to begin with an attempt to balance the needs of the commonweal with those of the individual. But an obvious and more pressing problem is how politicians, policymakers, the average citizen, and (unsurprisingly) corporations confuse satisfying base consumerist desires with hard-won sacred political rights. This brings us back to the difference between economic and political freedom. I remember the excitement when China opened up after the Cultural Revolution and how Euro-Americans (“Westerners”) assumed that as its vast market expanded so would the political choices of the Chinese people. While certainly the satisfaction of material needs and wants has a stabilizing effect, it is no substitute for the self-autonomy, self-dignity, and self-respectability that can only come about through the attentive cultivation and robust protection of individual political liberties.    ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————- [1] Meyer, J. W. (2004). World Society, the Welfare State, and the Life Course: An Institutional Perspective SocialWorld—Working Paper No. 8. Available at http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/soz/Forschung/Projekte/socialworld/pdf/working%20paper%208.pdf [2] Frank, D. J., Meyer, J. W., & Miyahara, D. (1995). The Individualist Polity and the Prevalence of Professionalized Psychology: A Cross-National Study. American Sociological Review, 60(3), 360–377.    

  Ayn Rand set out the broad philosophical system of Objectivism in her novels and essays. Objectivism is her integrated system of thought that defines and explains the abstract principles by which a person must think and act if he is to live a life proper to man.

Objectivism is founded on the axioms of existence, identity, and consciousness.

A coherent philosophical system must have axioms which are irreducible self-evident truths that are implied in all acts of cognition and that cannot be logically refuted. Objectivism is founded on the axioms of existence, identity, and consciousness. More specifically, existence exists, to be is to be something, and consciousness is the faculty that perceives that which exists independent of consciousness. Existence is identity and consciousness is identification. Human consciousness perceives reality, as against creating it in the act of perception (some philosophers have argued the latter). The denial of any of Objectivism’s axioms is illogical because they are implicit in the very act of their denial. The person denying the axiom is forced to use it in his efforts to deny it. Affirming the primacy of existence, Rand declared that existence is primary and irreducible and that consciousness is a characteristic of human beings by which they acquire awareness of an independently existing reality. Rand states that a thing’s actions are determined by its nature—an entity cannot act in contradiction to its identity. She explained that reason and free will are features of human nature and that free will is compatible with the law of causality. Men are beings of conceptual consciousness and reason is man’s sole source of knowledge and should be his sole guide to action. Rand defined reason as the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by the senses through the formation of concepts. She maintained the validity of a man’s senses (i.e., perceptual realism) and that reason is competent to know the facts of reality.  

Rand’s Philosophical Foundation

Rand’s metaphysics and epistemology are inextricably interconnected and together they form Objectivism’s philosophical foundation. Knowledge is based on the observation of reality. Through both extrospection and introspection, a man pursues knowledge using the methods of induction, deduction, and integration. A man forms concepts according to actual relationships among concretes and uses concepts according to the rules of logic. Rand provided a set of rules for deriving valid concepts. She explains that concepts refer to facts, knowledge has a base in reality, that it is possible to define objective principles to guide a man’s process of cognition, and that the conclusions reached via a process of reason are objective. Rand contends that it is possible to obtain objective knowledge of both facts and values. For Rand, essence is an epistemological (as well as contextual and relational) concept rather than solely a metaphysical manifestation. An essence is a product of epistemological processes that permit men to group concretes into classes. Her objective theory of concepts, including essences, is integral to her rational epistemology in which concepts are derived from reality. Rand’s epistemology, in which concepts or essences are epistemological rather than metaphysical, is arguably superior to the Aristotelian view which sees them as metaphysical.

Like Carl Menger, the Austrian economist, Rand espouses a contextually-relational objectivity in her theory of value.

Rand states that it is only the concept of life that makes the concept of value possible. Life as a particular kind of being is an ultimate end (i.e., an end in itself) for any living being. For a man, living as a rational animal means living by the use of his reason. She explains that reason is a man’s only proper judge of value and his only legitimate guide to action. For Rand, what is good is an evaluation made of the facts of reality by a man’s consciousness according to the rational standard of value of the promotion of his life. According to Rand, the concept of value depends upon, and is derived from, the antecedent concept of life. Life, an ultimate goal and end in itself, makes the existence of values possible. Her naturalistic value theory is concerned with what is, in fact, proper or good for human life. Like Carl Menger, the Austrian economist, Rand espouses a contextually-relational objectivity in her theory of value. Rand contends that it is possible for a person to pursue objective values that are consonant with his own rational self-interest.  

Human Flourishing

Rand’s moral theory is based on the Aristotelian idea that the objective and natural end for a human being is his flourishing. Practicing morality will lead to his well-being and happiness, which is the highest moral purpose of his life. A man’s need for morality arises from his distinctive nature as an entity with volitional consciousness. Because a person does not automatically perform the actions necessary to meet his needs, it is imperative that he ground his ethical judgments on reason. Adhering to a rational morality enables a person to make the most out of his life.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy can be viewed as a paradigm of human flourishing.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy can be viewed as a paradigm of human flourishing.[1] Her self-perfectionist morality of rational self-interest is, in essence, eudaimonistic. She holds that benefits and happiness for an individual human being derive from what is in that person’s rational self-interest. Each individual is responsible for thinking and acting in ways that enable him to become the best human being that he can be in the context of his facticity. Rand’s eudaimonistic account of ethics involves the virtues of rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, and pride. Life is conditional and requires choosing values, gaining them, and the development of character attributes. A man must exercise his mind in the service of his life and thus requires the power to act without coercion from others. It follows that men must deal as traders giving value for value through free voluntary exchange to their mutual benefit. A man should not obtain values from others by the use of force and may not institute the use of force against others. Rand explains that a person’s rights can only be violated by physical force or fraud and that the proper function of government is the protection of a man’s rights. It follows that she views government as the agency that holds a monopoly on the legal use of physical force. Ayn Rand, whose philosophy is a form of Aristotelianism, had the highest admiration for Aristotle. Intellectually, she stood on Aristotle’s shoulders and she praised him above all other philosophers. Rand acknowledged Aristotle as a genius and as the only thinker throughout the ages to whom she owed a philosophical debt As naturalistic realists, Aristotle and Ayn Rand are the philosophical champions of this world. Both Rand and Aristotle appeal to the objective nature of things. They agree that logic is inseparable from reality and knowledge. Affirming reality, reason, and life on earth, they concur that a man can deal with reality, attain values, and live heroically rather than dismally. Men can grasp reality, establish goals, take actions, and achieve values. They view the human person as a noble and potentially heroic being whose highest moral purpose is to gain his own happiness on earth. Their shared conception of human life permits a person to maintain a realistic moral vision that has the potential to inspire men to greater and greater heights. Rand follows the Aristotelian idea of eudaimonia as the human entelechy. Like Aristotle, Rand ascribes to only a few basic axioms: existence exists, existence is identity, and consciousness is identification. Aristotle and Rand agree that all men naturally desire to know, understand, and act on the knowledge acquired. For both, all knowledge is arrived at from sensory perception through the processes of abstraction and conceptualization. They each see rationality as man’s distinctive capacity. Both develop virtues and concrete normative behavior from man’s primary virtue of rationality. For both Aristotle and Rand, the issue of how a person should live his life precedes the problem of how a community should be organized. Whereas Aristotle sees a social life as a necessary condition for one’s thoroughgoing eudaimonia, Rand emphasizes the benefits accruing to the individual from living in society as being knowledge and trade. Although Rand does not expressly discuss the human need for community in her non-fiction writings, her portrait of Galt’s Gulch in Atlas Shrugged closely approximates Aristotle’s community of accord between good men. Of course, the organization of Galt’s Gulch is along the lines of anarcho-capitalism rather than the minimal state political system of capitalism advocated by Rand or the somewhat paternalistic ideal of Aristotle’s polity. Rand defended the absence of government in Galt’s Gulch as being workable in a small cohesive community of shared values, but not in a large nation governed by laws. Viewing human life in terms of personal flourishing, both Aristotle and Rand teach that we should embrace all of our potentialities. Their similar visions of the ideal man hold that he would have a heroic attitude toward life. The ideal man would be both morally and rationally heroic. They both saw pride (or moral ambitiousness), according to Rand) as the crown of the virtues.  

Differences between Rand and Aristotle

So, where do Rand and Aristotle differ? Rand argues that her philosophy diverges from Aristotle’s by considering essences as epistemological, contextual, and relational instead of as metaphysical. She envisions Aristotle as a philosophical intuitivist who declared the existence of essences within concretes. Rand considers an essence to be the epistemological product of a classification process that reflects the best knowledge that a person possesses about the particular entity in question at that time, and thus may change over time, but Plato and Aristotle viewed essences as unchanging. For Rand, an essence is an idea or concept about some part of reality—it is not something existing in that part of reality itself. In addition, Rand, like Menger, appears to require the conceptual recognition of what is valuable or good in order for it to exist in reality as something potentially valuable to, or good for, a given person. Rand states that value consists of an evaluation of the facts of reality by man’s consciousness according to a rational standard of value. Menger says that value does not exist outside the consciousness of man. In contrast, the Aristotelian view is that the values that a man may strive toward exist in reality as potential values in relation to him even before he cognizes and chooses among them.

Rand and Aristotle apparently disagree regarding the role of choice in morality.

Also, Rand and Aristotle apparently disagree regarding the role of choice in morality. According to the “official” or “voluntarist” interpretation of her thought, Rand contends that an individual needs to choose to live or to flourish in order for ethical obligations to exist. If one chooses to live, then a rational ethics will inform him regarding the principles of action he is required to take in order to put his basic choice into effect. According to Aristotle, a person’s obligation to pursue his self-perfection stems from facts pertaining to human nature. It is the nature of an individual human person’s potential for flourishing, which exists as a potentiality whether or not it is chosen, that determines his obligation. Aristotle maintains that individuals make choices only about the objects of their deliberations, which are not ends, but are the means of ends. For Aristotle, the ultimate end (or good) for man is not chosen—it is part of man’s nature. Neo-Aristotelian philosopher, Douglas B. Rasmussen, is critical of the claim that Ayn Rand definitively holds the view that all moral obligation rests on a pre-moral choice to live. He explains that Rand held that life is the ultimate value for each and every human being. Her idea of ultimate value has no reference to choice. The choice to live does not underpin moral evaluation. It follows that the choice itself can be morally assessed based on the existence of something (i.e., a person’s life) that is an end in itself—one should choose life because life is a value. Life is “choiceworthy” and has “directive power” for a person’s actions, regardless of an individual’s choice. Rasmussen therefore concluded that Rand repudiated the notion that all moral obligation depends upon a choice to live. [2] She, however, maintains that living a man qua man life (i.e., a rational life) is a choice. Whatever their differences, it is clear that Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism is within the Aristotelian naturalistic tradition. Rand inherited significant elements of the Aristotelian eudaimonic tradition. Rand, like Aristotle, recognized her task as helping people to know. Because of Rand, we have had a rebirth of Aristotelian philosophy with its emphasis on reason and on man, the thinker and doer.   ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– [1] See Den Uyl, Douglas J. and Douglas B. Rasmussen. 1984. “Life, Teleology, and Eudaimonia in the Ethics of Ayn Rand.” in Den Uyl, Douglas J. and Douglas B Rasmussen, eds.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press: 63-80; Bloomfield, Paul. 2011 “Egoism and Eudaimonism: Replies to Khawaja” in Gotthelf, Allen and James G. Lennox, eds. Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand’s Normative Theory. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press: 74-84; and Bissell, Roger E. 2020 “Eudaimon in the Rough: Perfecting Rand’s Egoism.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 20. No.2, 452-77.   [2] See Rasmussen, Douglas B. 2002. “Rand on Obligation and Value.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 4. No.1, 69-86 and Rasmussen, Douglas B. 2006. “Regarding Choice and the Foundations of Morality: Reflections on Rand’s Ethics.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 7. No. 2, 309-28.  

Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen discuss the ethics of flourishing with Vinay Kolhatkar. Coverage includes the Aristotelian conception, Ayn Rand’s ethics, and the way the two eminent professors approach it. Also covered is the objectivity and individuation of flourishing,

 

Any claim to “most startling” is itself striking.

It’s the pandemic; no need to specify it further. It’s far from over. For two years, it has been the dominant news item globally; it’s likely to dominate the news wires for some time to come. Hence any claim to “most startling” is itself striking. We have not been short of astonishing claims and counterclaims related to the pandemic. Here’s a dozen battlefields where the conflicts have been most intense:

1. The origin of the virus. The Establishment brushes aside claims it came from a lab, it squashes any opinion, even a scientific one, which forwards that thesis. Yet even the Biden Administration’s investigation concluded that the “lab leak theory [is] as credible as [the] natural origins explanation.”
2. Merely to entertain the possibility that this was a bioweapon released deliberately as part of a more elaborate plan places the proponent in a tinfoil hat. But the U.S. did most likely fund a lab in Wuhan, China that was geared toward a gain of function, i.e., enhancing a virus, ironically with the purported aim to prevent a pandemic. If it was a well-intentioned program gone horribly wrong, what’s shocking now is the complete lack of public enquiry.
3. The death count is in considerable dispute—there are those who have died from COVID, and there are those who died with And there are those allocated as COVID deaths when they merely showed symptoms of a respiratory illness at death and were never even confirmed as having died with COVID.

Those controversies began early in the pandemic. Then came the vaccines, and the opinion wars exploded on social media. At least nine other battlefronts opened up:

4. How safe are the vaccines? The detractors allege long-term injuries and deaths well in excess of the Establishment’s admissions.
5. How efficacious are the vaccines in preventing (i) infection (ii) hospitalization, and (iii) death?
6. How long does the vaccine efficacy last? Even the Establishment admits that efficacy against infection wanes after a few months, but not against hospitalization and death. Their answer: Take boosters, i.e., the same vaccine, or the same type (instructions to make spike protein) yet again. Israel, the poster child of the pro-vax lobby, is onto its fourth jab for many, but “cases” continue to multiply.
7. Can treatments, especially cheap and safe ones, work well as prophylactics as well as curatives? Depends on which source you trust—see here and here.
8. Are treatments claimed to be safe and efficacious being dismissed, subdued, suppressed, and even attacked? Manifestly they are.
9. Should governments have a right to pressure organizations to force their employees to get vaccinated, making the vaccines compulsory in all but name? But they have, in several jurisdictions across the world. Italy has made it a legal requirement for all over 50.
10. PCR tests are the global gold standard for testing whether one is infected with the virus. The detractors claim they can be manipulated. The Establishment claims otherwise.
11. SARS-CoV-1 survivors had immunity from the disease for 12-15 years after it came and went in 2003. Data from Israel suggested such “natural” immunity is stronger by some 13 times than double-dose vaccinations, but most governments still insist that the naturally immune must get vaccinated six months after being cleared of the disease. Indeed, there may well be people who unknowingly have had some variant of COVID, and that population could be in multiples of those identified as “cases.” But antibody testing, which would reveal this, is not well funded, and repeatedly scoffed at. Indeed, the tests carried out even over a year ago suggested that asymptomatic transmission and recovery may be many multiples of existing estimates. While case numbers, deaths, incessant urging to get double vaccinated and a third booster, morning press briefings by the “authorities” that are repeatedly broadcast is the order of the day, antibody testing is simply not in the news.
12. Blaming the unvaccinated for causing new strains hits a raw nerve. Some scientists claim the opposite—that leaky vaccines cause pathogens to evolve. This was accepted wisdom in peer-reviewed literature (“Marek’s Chickens”) in 2015. A “leaky” vaccine is one which has some benefits but does not completely prevent infection and transmission. It makes logical sense that pathogens would evolve in a leaky vaccine environment, against the vaccine. And voilà—even the authorities admit that the latest strain, Omicron, is penetrating the double vax barrier much more easily than previous strains did.

So there are at least a dozen major unresolved controversies. We may never have a resolution of any of these.

But “vaccine safety,” our battlefield number 4, got an unexpected and inadvertent boost from a strange finding.

But “vaccine safety,” our battlefield number 4, got an unexpected and inadvertent boost from a strange finding. It has slipped by, with hardly an uproar. But here’s why it’s so crucial: Vaccine proponents admit to some serious injuries. Astra Zeneca has caused death, and blood clots which may have led to heart attacks or strokes. The coroner concluded that BBC presenter Lisa Shaw “died due to complications of an AstraZeneca Covid vaccination.” In Shaw’s case, it was a brain hemorrhage, clearly a sign that the vaccine crossed the blood-brain barrier. Pfizer and Moderna jabs are not “off the hook,” even in peer-reviewed literature, for a range of seriously adverse outcomes (rare deaths, and rare events of pericarditis, myocarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and admit to a possibility of causing shingles; all very rare). But micro blood clots are not easily measured, and not rare, say the detractors—they further allege such clots can cause exercise intolerance or permanently reduced exercise capacity if present in the lungs or coronary arteries; and further that spike protein presence in the ovaries can change menstrual cycles and hasten menopause. In June 2021, it was Steven Kirsch, appearing on a three-hour plus Dark Horse podcast with Bret Weinstein and Robert Malone, who claimed (see 2:18 to 2:48) that the vaccine manufacturers’ own data showed a distribution of spike protein all over the body and in various critical organs.

But did we need to play Russian roulette at all?

The vaccine proponents countered—Kirsch was using the data collected from rats, not humans. But for many of us, the anecdotal data was scary. The serious (some lifelong) injuries seemed way higher than what was admitted. The Russian roulette odds seemed closer to one-in-a-hundred, not one-in-a-million. But did we need to play Russian roulette at all?  

Aspiration before Vaccination

See minute 1 to 4 in this video for what aspiration before vaccination is. It’s a way of preventing the vaccine components entering the bloodstream directly when the recommend route is via muscle tissue. Aspiration used to be standard practice in medicine globally. In August 2021, researchers associated with medical institutes in Hong Kong published this result: “Intravenous injection of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine can induce acute myopericarditis in mouse mode.” Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, is one of serious (but treatable, not lifelong) side effects of the mRNA vaccines. The paper admits that “the effect of accidental intravenous injection of this vaccine [in humans] on the heart is unknown.” But the rats were administered the vaccine either intravenously (the IV group) or intramuscularly (the IM group). Only some rats in the IV group developed myopericarditis. The researchers conclude that the “study provided in-vivo evidence that inadvertent intravenous injection of COVID-19 mRNA-vaccines may induce myopericarditis.” And the risk is not limited to mRNA vaccines. Anecdotal evidence suggests that every case of major vaccine-related injury came about when the victim did not specifically ask for aspiration. Neurological damage, blood clots, a career ruined…see here, here, and here. Do you think they are all lying? I don’t. Now even the mainstream media (BBC) is now admitting to it, that the issue of serious injuries is related to vaccine components getting directly into the bloodstream (see minute 15 to 19 here). See also a June 2021 peer-reviewed paper here. See also Voice of Healthcare (July 2021).

Most vaccination centers refuse to aspirate, but you will find trusted physicians who stand by the practice.

Most vaccination centers refuse to aspirate (see minute 21 to 28 here), but you will find trusted physicians who stand by the practice. I asked around. Every privately-practicing medical specialist over the age of 60 (“old school”) that I spoke to was “shocked” that the aspiration practice of giving IM injections was not being used in mass vaccination centers. But haven’t we been taking the vaccine in the deltoid? And isn’t it true that there are no major blood vessels there? Yes and yes, but inadvertently, minor blood vessels may be pierced. And then the vaccines, in this case, instructions to make spike protein, directly enter the bloodstream and they spread. What’s supposed to happen? The spike protein should be made in the deltoid. The antibodies should follow as a consequence, and the antibodies should then travel through the bloodstream. Everywhere. Precisely to avoid the risk of vaccine components directly entering the bloodstream a technique known as aspiration was standard practice in medicine before it was discontinued as “standard” practice. Why? “It takes an extra five seconds” See 22:10 and 22:30 here. Five seconds? Yes, that’s all it takes. The nurse or physician draws the needle back after insertion, and, if no blood is drawn back, we are safe, and the needle can now be reinserted, this time with the plunger containing the vaccine pressed. If blood is drawn, we start all over again. Oh, fifteen seconds for the one-in-a-thousand occurrence! Five seconds to spare us lifelong injuries? “Yes, but when it comes to mass vaccinations,” say the opponents of aspiration, “five seconds per patient is a lot.” Me? I would rather go to a physician who costs me the extra five seconds. I did precisely that. “Oh, and the needle may move and can cause tissue damage,” say the opponents. But the arm can be stabilized quite easily with the free hand. “But small children move around.” Why are we giving vaccines to an incredibly low-risk group? “Oh, but the pain is more.” Seriously? Why can’t the patient decide? Won’t we all have five extra seconds of needle insertion pain instead of a risk of lifelong reduction in lung capacity? A stroke? A heart attack? The opponents shift their assault. ”Due to the paucity of data, it has not been proven that aspiration has significantly reduced injuries.” Of course not, when you don’t aspirate, you have no idea how many times a blood vessel has been pierced. As the opponents assert, “It’s highly unlikely.” Which means, not 0.00%. One-in-a-hundred, or one-in-a-thousand times, or rarer still, they hit a blood vessel and risk serious vaccine-related injuries. See minute 15 to 18 here. As to the real-world frequency of hitting a blood vessel, see the various anecdotal experiences described here (from minute 10:40 to 19). They are far worse than one-in-a-thousand. “But the rats were given, in bodyweight equivalent terms, 500 times the human dose. That’s a highly toxic dose. So we can’t extrapolate from the rat study.” But remember, none of the IM group rats got injured. Only the IV group did. “Oh, and vaccine injuries differ by cohort (age and gender).” They do. “So it can’t be only due to lack of aspiration.” True, but the vaccine components interact with hormones, which differ by age and gender. And the higher concentration levels in the bloodstream, coupled with the interaction, could be producing the injuries. So if you decide to take the vaccine, or a booster if you had your two shots (not of whiskey), insist on going to a physician who will use aspiration before vaccination. Just because the first two jabs did not give you long-lasting injuries does not mean that the third won’t. There is no need whatsoever to take a one-in-a-thousand chance when you do not have to. Opponents of aspiration will even tell you the odds, how medicine is all risk and reward, that even without aspiration, vaccination is worth the risk. On a grand scale, it may well be. But the risk-reward trade-off talk normally associated with vaccines is irrelevant. If you believe the booster gives you a reward, boosting your waning immunity against COVID, then you get the same reward while removing a major source of risk. As if we must take the risk because “aspiration is no longer a standard practice.” Denmark has made it so again—(see minute 3 to 6 here). Apparently so has South Africa. And Taiwan. “But the practice started when injections were given in the gluteal muscle, not the deltoid where there are no major blood vessels.” But there are minor ones, and now we have vaccine components that are very advanced, including instructions to the body to make toxic substances that mimic components of a dangerous virus. See minute 8 to 10 here. “But the vaccine components enter the bloodstream eventually anyway.” Yes, but not as fast, and nowhere near in the same proportions as when you hit a blood vessel directly. It is startling that the raging battle over vaccine safety may be drilled down to the State’s criminal negligence, not an inherent defect in the new style of vaccines. Unless you are ideologically anti-vax rather than empirically cautious with mRNA. As to inherent defects and depopulation theories, as yet the all-cause mortality rates have not gone up even in places with fully-vaccinated rates over 90%. But time will tell if many of us have been slow-poisoned.  

Will Omicron Wear the Crown?

On Nov 24, 2021, a new variation was first reported by officials in South Africa to the WHO. Variation B.1.1.529, which had more than 30 mutations in its genes, was labelled “Omicron.” The first known and confirmed infection with Omicron was from a sample taken on Nov 9, 2021. Eight weeks later, as of January 3, 2022, it had already been detected in 110 countries. It’s the variant that’s currently driving record highs in several countries. Omicron’s mutations enable it to largely evade vaccine-induced immunity. Ominous?

Pathogens evolve to become less dangerous to their hosts.

Not exactly. Lab studies suggest Omicron should be far less dangerous, staying in the airways and not getting into the lungs. It’s not startling. Pathogens evolve to become less dangerous to their hosts (see minute 32 to 33 here). SARS-CoV-1 killed itself by killing over 50% of its older (above 65) hosts in China. A parasite needs you alive. Many coronaviruses have evolved to cause the common cold. Omicron is spreading way faster than Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. But it seems a lot milder. Perhaps one or two variants away from the common cold viruses, but seemingly more infectious, perhaps because we have all had the common cold and each of us have strong levels of immunity against its forms. Early studies on Omicron report an 80% less chance of hospitalization. In South Africa, where Omicron has been there the longest, death and hospitalization rates have dropped markedly. But the news gets better. Omicron survivors (aren’t they all? The 24/7 news media are not reporting death by variant) get T-cell and beta-cell immunity (see minute 6 to 9 here) which is long-lasting immunity. The research is even telling us there’s cross-variant immunity. South Africa’s cases are going down as everyone else’s are going up.

Both the pro- and the anti-vax lobbies will want the credit for the less potent mutation, Omicron, which delivers cross-variant immunity upon recovery.

The tables may turn on controversy 12. Both the pro- and the anti-vax lobbies will want the credit for the less potent mutation, Omicron, which delivers cross-variant immunity upon recovery. So how do we get herd immunity? Probably not through vaccinations and endless boosters, but through the bulk of the population recovering from a milder, highly infectious version. That doesn’t mean you should avoid a booster if you are convinced it may reduce your chances of hospitalization and death. Just make sure you get aspiration with the vaccination if you go for it. But the virus may be evolving faster than the vaccines can. So keep (or start) taking Vitamin C and D, zinc, quercetin and bromelain supplements. And store NAC tablets for the rainy day. Progressively milder mutations are not biologically guaranteed, but likely. Omicron is evolutionarily fitter than Delta and will outlast it. Delta was milder than Alpha even though the press didn’t say so—fear sells the news. At the current spread rate, most of us are going to get Omicron in 2022. Most of us will beat it without long-term damage, and with natural, cross-variant immunity enhanced. Good luck.    

  Imagine you and your neighbours living peacefully in a small village in a valley in the Central Interior of British Columbia. You fish, you hunt, you farm the land, you raise livestock and you raise your families here. There is a community church. And a community graveyard. Your town is self-sufficient. No one depends on the government. Problems are few. Until one day government agents show up and tell you they’ve just finished building a dam down the valley a few miles. What? No one told you about that. Apparently, they’ve been building it for two years. They just plugged the last gap and the river will be rising steadily. You’re told you better get out before you’re flooded out. Oh yeah! They do offer some compensation and will help you relocate. They ask you to sign on the dotted line to cede your property. You refuse. However, you have no choice but to move. The justification for this? The dam is for the common good.

The Cheslatta T’en, a tribe of the Carrier First Nations, had lived in the Nechako Valley for 10,000 years.

The Cheslatta T’en, a tribe of the Carrier First Nations, had lived in the Nechako Valley for 10,000 years. They were a hunter/gatherer society whose traditional territory covered a large swath of central British Columbia that included “the valleys of the Upper Fraser, Blackwater, Nechako and Bulkley Rivers as well as areas around Stuart and Babine lakes up to the borders of Bear Lake. To the east, Carrier traditional territory extended as far as the Rocky Mountains.” In 1950, the Cheslatta “lived on 17 reserves, totaling some 1052 hectares on or near Cheslatta and Murray Lakes.” These reserves included several villages and some areas that were exclusively used as pasture. B.C.’s economy after WWII was sluggish with high unemployment and both the federal and provincial governments courted Alcan Aluminum to build a smelter at Kitimat. An energy intensive business, the deal with Alcan included the right to build a dam and power plant. Dam construction for the Kemano I power project, as it was known, began in 1951. A poll showed 93.9% of British Columbians favoured the project. The Kenney Dam, the “largest sloping, rock-filled, clay-core dam in the world” was completed in 1952. No thought was given to the Cheslatta people living in the Nechako Valley. In fact, the story of Cheslatta is a tragedy that is not well known. Geographers J.E. Windsor and J.A. McVey write that:

The story of the Cheslatta is a disturbing one. In March 1952, when the Kenney Dam was nearing completion after a nearly two-year construction period, Alcan notified the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) that the Cheslatta would have to be evacuated. On 3 April 1952 the DIA informed the Cheslatta that they would have to move immediately. Until that day, the Cheslatta had never been informed either that the dam was being constructed (the reservoir is enormous and the dam site is many kilometres from the traditional Cheslatta territory) or that their land was to be flooded. Prior to April 1952, the Cheslatta were entirely self-sufficient and “knew nothing of the government”.

Windsor and McVey quote a 1993 essay in Harrowsmith by J. Goddard:

By all accounts, the Cheslatta people once enjoyed a prosperous life. In late 1951, an Alcan surveyor wrote admiringly of their farms, traplines and wagon roads. ‘The Indians,’ he noted; ‘are comfortably settled in an area that provides them with enough game to be self-supporting and enough hay lands and pasture to support their (cattle and horses). (Goddard 44)

DIA officials met with the Cheslatta on April 21st to get the natives to “sign the necessary documents to surrender title to their traditional lands (which the DIA had already deeded to Alcan).” The authors continue,

“Although the Cheslatta refused to sign the documents, DIA records show that the Cheslatta T’en unanimously approved the surrender of land. To this day, the Cheslatta insist that the signatures on the documents are forgeries.”

It should be noted that “most ‘signatures’ consist of an ‘x’ witnessed by a DIA official representative.” “Those who refused to move were told they would be forcibly removed,” the study continues, and refusal would deprive them of compensation. How much compensation were the Cheslatta T’en paid? With ten days to impending flooding, they were induced to accept $77.22 per hectare for their land. Oh, I should mention that “the few non-natives (mostly ranchers) who were displaced by the flooding were paid an average of $1544 per hectare of land and were provided with an average of two years notice of the reservoir flooding.” To add insult to injury, the Cheslatta were moved to Grassy Plains, lands that traditionally belonged to a different people, the Wetsuet’en. “Two weeks after they were evicted,” Windsor and McVey continue, “all their buildings were razed and their ranches bulldozed. When the Alcan contractors refused to burn the Cheslatta church (a Christian church built in 1915) in the village of Bel-ga-chek, the Indian agent flew in by helicopter and razed it himself.” Although promises had been made that “graveyards would not be affected,” the cemetery at reserve # 9 was eroded resulting in “several coffins being carried downstream in the current.” All of this, of course, was for the common good. The authors quote another geographer, J.B. Waldram, to the effect that “the common good more and more looks like the good of the party in power.” What became of the Cheslatta T’en after that? “By 1990, alcohol use among the Cheslatta had reached epidemic proportions and welfare dependency was 95%.” A program introduced that year to “help young Cheslatta rediscover their roots and their heritage” brought both alcohol and welfare dependency to under 35%. Indeed, the authors aver that “the flooding of the Nechako Reservoir left the Cheslatta not only ‘homeless’ but ‘placeless’, that is, without ‘identity’.” It was the rediscovery of their identity that brought them out of their morass. Today, the Cheslatta are “back on the road to self-sufficiency. They have, through their business arm – Nootsenay Enterprises – joined with two partners to create Cheslatta Forest Products.” In 2002, “the Cheslatta were awarded a Community Forest License” covering “some 25,000 hectares of Crown Land around Cheslatta Lake.”

 

Understanding Indigenous Property

Native Americans did not have formal structures to their property. They did not have title deeds. Their property rights were asserted through tradition, and as written language was only used by the native cultures of Central America—the Aztecs, the Mayans, etc.—all records were carried forward through oral tradition. But the property, the territories to which they laid claim, were very real indeed. Existence is not predicated on knowledge. Reality exists independent of our knowledge of it. And so too it is with property rights. Most Western societies subscribe to the Lockean theory of property rights, that a property right is created from the state of nature by mixing one’s labour with the land or other resources provided by nature. To the extent that aboriginal peoples had mixed their labour with the land, they had a property right to it, even if they did not understand the concept. And the Cheslatta T’en certainly had mixed their labour with the land—they hunted, they fished, they farmed, they harvested the forest, they built homes and even a church. To say they didn’t have a property right because they didn’t understand the concept of property rights is absurd.

The British Crown, in fact, did recognize native property.

The British Crown, in fact, did recognize native property. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 “stated that the Crown must negotiate and sign treaties with the indigenous people before land could be ceded to a colony.” (Wikipedia) The Wikipedia article notes that while treaties were concluded in the prairie provinces, “the Government of the Colony of British Columbia, however, failed to negotiate many treaties and as a result, most of the province’s land is not covered by treaties.” Today, Canadian governments are trying to rectify this situation. The British Columbia Treaty Process (BCTP) has been ongoing since 1993. The landmark treaty concluded with the Nisga’a people in 2000 was started before the BCTP began and is considered a blueprint for the process. Two treaties have been drafted under BCTP since the process began but there remain many unceded lands. Indeed, when my wife and I attended a theatre event on Granville Island not long ago, there was a sign that read: “We acknowledge that the land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəýəm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səĺílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.” (Vancouver Theatre Sports League). Such territories—properties if you will, are all collective properties. Some indigenous peoples, like the Nisga’a, now that they have the sovereignty to act, are in the process of taking their newly negotiated land and converting it from collective ownership to deeded properties.  

The Difference between Capital and Property

While it is argued that the governments of the day did not recognize the Cheslatta sense of place in their traditional lands—their connection with the land—at a more fundamental level, the government failed to recognize the property rights of the Cheslatta. They had a justified claim to their land and the government failed to recognize it. The Cheslatta were evicted in the name of the “common good.” Sense of place is and must be tied to a sense of property entitlement. It should be noted that in their footnote 12, Windsor and McVey note that the problems of alcoholism and dependency faced by the Cheslatta also decimated other tribes not facing displacement. But they aver that the displacement aggravated the situation. Undoubtedly true, but it raises an important question—why? One problem is the nature of Native Reserves. All property is collectively owned by the tribe. Individuals cannot own property as such. Individuals can get a Certificate of Possession, but it is at the discretion of the band and the federal government. One abstract describes the situation:

“Although the CP holder gains similar property rights to an off-reserve resident, there are several important differences. The ability to transfer possession, the legality of wills, the right to an equitable division of property after divorce, the power to lease, and the ability to use property as equity are different from off-reserve practices. As well, Indian private property rights are subject to the exclusive power of Parliament, and to the discretionary will of the Minister of Indian Affairs.” (Alcantara 2003)

Relevant to this discussion is Hernando de Soto’s discussion of the difference between property and capital. The Peruvian economist notes that most people in the “third world” have property and lots of it. What they don’t have is capital. The upshot is poverty and squalor.  The essence of capital is in the potential of property. It is a concept, not a tangible entity. And in the West, it is based on the fixing of property to its owners through property titles. “The moment you focus your attention on the title of a house, for example, and not the house itself, you have automatically stepped from the material world into the conceptual universe where capital lives.” Besides being able to fix property through titles, de Soto lists five other properties of capital. Perhaps the most important is fungibility. This means the ability to interchange property titles. For example, you can mortgage your house to get capital for various projects. You don’t actually trade the house, but the right to a title. The physical asset remains yours unless you default on the contract. Native land tied up in the reserve system is like “third world” property that is not fixed—in other words, is not capital. De Soto calls such property “dead capital.” Some indigenous people in Canada are making efforts to change this. In 2012, Manny Jules, former chief of the T’Kemlups tribe near Kamloops spearheaded a move to introduce the First Nations Property Initiative. It is a proposal to give the land back to the people, “take the feds out of the equation and let aboriginals do what they want with it,”  One of the objectives was to create private property rights within the reserve. (Ferreras 2012)

Indeed, today native land claims are widely recognized in Canadian society as a valid pursuit.

Indeed, today native land claims are widely recognized in Canadian society as a valid pursuit. In 2000, an historic treaty ceded 2000 square kilometres of the Nass Valley to the Nisga’a as a self-ruling nation. Addressing his cheering supporters, Chief Joe Gosnell said, “We are no longer beggars in our own land. We are free to make our own mistakes, savour our own victories and stand on our own feet.” (Hopper) Like the T’Kemlups, one of the objectives was to turn their collectively owned land into a system of individual ownership. In 2013, the first three privately owned homes were created on Nisga’a land. Kevin McKay, chair of the Nisga’a Lisims Government said, “We negotiated our way into Canada, and what British Columbians take for granted in land ownership is now available to Nisga’a homeowners. We aspire to a market economy, and this is a key feature of any market economy — and we’re no different.” (Hopper) As a self-ruling nation, the Nisga’a could act unilaterally. Twelve other bands were eager to follow these two bands out of serfdom and into prosperity but require permission from the federal government to do so. Sadly, the Assembly of First Nations, representing 600 bands across Canada, condemned the Nisga’a move declaring that it “will lead ultimately to the individual privatization of indigenous collective lands and resources and impose the colonizer’s model on our Peoples.” The tragedy of the Cheslatta T’en could have been avoided if the governments of the day had recognized that these people did not just live, work and play in their territory, but they, in fact, owned it. They had a vested right to the territory based on their mixing of their labour with the land. But their rights were ignored, their land usurped, and their people forcibly removed to alien territory to their detriment. All in the name of the common good. The Cheslatta should have been given self-rule long ago as the Nisga’a have since. Indeed, a good resolution to the problems afflicting native communities is to give them self-rule. Let them be masters in their own house instead of serfs of the federal government.   I wish to express my gratitude for the constructive feedback I received on the first draft of this essay from my editor, Donna Paris. It improved the final essay greatly. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Works Cited

  Alcantara, Christopher (2003). “Individual Property Rights on Canadian Indian Reserves: The Historical Emergence and Jurisprudence of Certificates of Possession“. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, XXIII 2(2003): 391-424 De Soto, Hernando (2000). The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, Basic Books (see my summary of de Soto on The Difference Between Property and Capital on my blog) Ferreras, Jesse (2012). “First Nation Private Property Proposal Feeds Fears of “Land Rush”“. Huffington Post, 10/06/2012 Goddard, J. “Sold Down the River”. Harrowsmith, December 1993 Hopper, Tristin (2013). “B.C. First Nation leads historic and controversial move toward aboriginal private home ownership“. National Post, Nov. 8, 2013 Windsor, J.E. & McVey, J.A. (2005). “Annihilation of place and sense of place: the experience of the Cheslatta T’en Canadian First Nation within the context of large-scale environmental projects”. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 171, No. 2, June 2005    

We interview Ian Plimer, world-renowned critic of climate alarmism, about scientific methodology and the lack of it in the climate alarmist movement and why heads of state fall prey to lip service when they know the truth.

  A reader of my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, asked a few months ago how I would respond if someone offered to pay me to write an edition for Chinese readers. Would I say that the exercise would be pointless because few Chinese readers are likely to be receptive to the idea that human flourishing is inherently individualistic? Or would I say that a Chinese edition would need to include a discussion of additional constraints holding back individual flourishing in the People’s Republic of China? My book was written primarily for readers living in the Western liberal democracies. It presents human flourishing as an individual aspiration and endeavor, involving the exercise of practical wisdom. I suggest that it is ultimately up to individuals to use their reasoning powers to form their own judgements about the basic goods of a flourishing human. I seek to persuade readers that a flourishing person manifests wise and well-informed self-direction, has good health and psychological well-being, enjoys positive relationships with others, and lives in harmony with nature. I argue that progress occurs when there are growing opportunities for individuals to flourish. Economic growth counts as progress to the extent that self-directed individuals aspire to have improvements in their living standards. (You can read a little more about the book on the publisher’s website and on my blog.)   Is Chinese culture opposed to individualism?

The World Values Survey (WVS) does not support claims that Chinese people are too preoccupied with filial piety, altruism, and obedience.

Some cultural research on individualism and collectivism might suggest that Chinese people would tend to adopt a collectivist, top-down view of human flourishing, rather than an individualistic, bottom up, view. However, the World Values Survey (WVS) does not support claims that Chinese people are too preoccupied with filial piety, altruism, and obedience to have individual aspirations. Data from the 2017 – 2020 wave of the WVS suggest that the percentage of people in China who say that one of their main goals in life is to make their parents proud (23%) is not particularly high; corresponding figures for other jurisdictions are Taiwan (27%), Hong Kong (15%), Singapore (28%), Australia (26%) and U.S. (31%). The percentage in China who identify independence as a desirable child quality is relatively high (78%); corresponding figures for other jurisdictions are Taiwan (68%), Hong Kong (55%), Singapore (56%), Australia (52%) and U.S. (55%). The percentages who identify unselfishness, good manners and obedience as desirable child qualities are not particularly high (29%, 84% and 6%, respectively) by comparison to Taiwan (23%, 74% and 9%), Hong Kong (11%, 73% and 9%), Singapore (27%, 79% and 17%), Australia (42%, 84% and 19%) and U.S. (28%, 48%, and 20%). It is not difficult to find aspects of Chinese cultural heritage that imply an important role for individual self-direction. The Daoist philosophy of skill is directly relevant to the question of what nature tells us about how we can flourish as individuals. (There is a relevant post about the Laozi, Zhuangzi and Liezi on my blog.)   Cultural support for economic growth

The percentage of people who consider that most people can be trusted is relatively high in China (63.5%).

The discussion of determinants of economic growth in Chapter 5 of Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing suggests that aspects of culture that are favourable to entrepreneurial innovation include interpersonal trust, respect and tolerance, and individual self-determination. WVS data suggests that the percentage of people who consider that most people can be trusted is relatively high in China (63.5%) by comparison with Taiwan (31%), Hong Kong (36%), Singapore (34%), Australia (48%) and U.S. (37%). The percentage in China who identify tolerance and respect for other people as a desirable child quality (60%) is not particularly low; corresponding figures for other jurisdictions are Taiwan (73%), Hong Kong (70%), Singapore (64%), Australia (80%) and U.S. (71%). A relevant indicator of self-determination in the WVS is the data on ratings of the extent that survey respondents feel they have a great deal of freedom of choice and control over their lives (a rating of 10 on the 10 point scale) or alternatively that what they do has no real effect on what happens to them (a rating of 0). The average scores of Chinese respondents (7.0) were similar to those of Taiwan (7.3), Hong Kong (6.6), Singapore (6.8), Australia (7.5) and U.S. (7.7).   Economic freedom My discussion of determinants of economic growth also emphasizes the importance of economic freedom and a prevailing ideology that supports economic freedom. Improvements in economic freedom contributed to the high rates of economic growth experienced in China in recent decades. However, the Fraser Institute’s ratings of economic freedom suggest that the process of economic liberalization has now stalled, leaving China’s economic freedom rating for 2019 (6.5 on the 10-point scale) far lower than that of Taiwan (8.0), Hong Kong (8.9), Singapore (8.8), Australia (8.2) and the U.S. (also 8.2). Productivity growth in China has slowed considerably over the last decade, according to World Bank and IMF research. IMF estimates suggest annual productivity growth of 0.6% from 2012 to 2017, much lower than the average of 3.5% in the preceding five years (reported by the Wall Street Journal). It seems unlikely that China will be able to maintain high GDP growth rates in the absence of substantial economic reforms to promote greater economic freedom.   Ideological constraints

The prevailing ideology of governance in China, Marxism-Leninism, was imported from Europe.

The prevailing ideology of governance in China, Marxism-Leninism, was imported from Europe. This one-party state ideology was developed by Joseph Stalin in Russia the 1920s. The current system of government—with the communist party bureaucracy guiding the state bureaucracy at all levels—was copied from the Soviet Union. Although the evidence discussed above suggests that people living in the PRC tend to have as individualistic a view of human flourishing as people in the U.S and Australia, it is clear that the leaders of the Chinese government do not recognize fundamental rights that support individual flourishing. The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, by Dexter Roberts, provides an insightful account of the ideological constraints currently limiting human flourishing in China. The government of the PRC does not even recognize the rights of people to choose where to live, or to own land: “Despite huge progress in wiping out poverty, the countryside still has large numbers of poor people and incomes continue to fall behind the rest of the country. This unfortunate fact is in part because of the hukou system, which restricts rural people’s ability to fully integrate into the cities. Equally responsible, however, are the continuing limits on farmers’ rights to the land. While they were given freedom to decide how to use the land they lived on, they were not given ownership.” (p 74) It is common for local officials to acquire agricultural land for conversion to industrial and commercial use, with farmers being paid little compensation. The user rights are then sold at high prices to developers on the outskirts of cities. The highest priority of the party-state is to stay in power. That involves a combination of responsiveness and repression to construct a “harmonious society.” Responsiveness takes the form of top-down efforts to reduce disparities in living standards. Repression occurs by suppressing dissident speech, extensive use of monitoring technology and a social credit system which rewards and punishes people based on aspects of their personal behavior that the government wishes to encourage or discourage. Daniels suggests: “For years, China’s leaders have had an unspoken agreement with the people: they guarantee rising living standards and, in turn, the populace tolerates control by a nondemocratic and often unresponsive party.” What will happen if living standards do not continue to rise? Like many other analysts, Daniels is concerned that a “militarily powerful Communist Party facing widespread dissention at home might well seek to distract its citizens by lashing out in a hot spot in the region, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, or the South China Sea” (p 191). With the benefit of hindsight, it now seems obvious that gains in economic freedom that occurred in China over the last few decades were the efforts of an authoritarian government to harness market forces for its own purposes, rather than reforms undertaken in recognition of links between liberty and individual flourishing. It seems appropriate to end this brief discussion of ideology by quoting from some ancient writings by Lao-Tzu (Verse 57 of the Tao Te Ching):

“If you want to be a great leader, you must learn to follow the Tao. Stop trying to control. Let go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself.”

  Conclusions Chinese people are not unduly preoccupied with filial piety, altruism, and obedience. They tend to have an individualistic view of human flourishing that is not greatly different from that of people in the U.S. and Australia. The contemporary culture of Chinese people tends to be favourable to the entrepreneurship likely to be necessary for living standards to continue to rise over the longer term. However, the ideology of the party-state is much less favourable to ongoing improvement of living standards. Past gains in economic freedom reflected the efforts of an authoritarian government to harness market forces to lift productivity in response to aspirations of the people to enjoy higher living standards. The gains in economic freedom occurred because that suited the purposes of a communist party primarily interested in its own survival, rather than because its leaders had undergone an ideological transformation to become supporters of liberty. The ideological opposition to liberty of general secretary Xi Jinping now seems to be impeding the ongoing expansion of economic freedom that is needed for productivity to continue to rise. The ideology of the party-state is preventing people from meeting their individualistic aspirations.