The Happiness of Motherhood.

Dalrock has put up an interesting post on a woman who regrets having her children. This woman has attracted a lot of negative commentary and I certainly admit that I don't support her position, but it's a position I've seen rather too frequently in my line of work.

I think that many conservatives, particularly traditionalists, see a woman's role through a polarised light. Women, according to them, should either have a family and stay at home or work and not have a family. Their logic would seem to imply that if a woman decides to have children then the proper thing is for her to look after them.

As I see it, there are several underlying assumptions with this line of reasoning:

1) Women are able to accurately forecast that they will enjoy motherhood.
2) Women are capable of looking after children.
3) Motherhood is an intrinsically rewarding experience for all women, and a woman who doesn't like motherhood has something wrong with her.
4) Good child rearing is incompatible with a working mother.

As someone who deals with a fair amount of post-natal depression (which I've managed to treat rather successfully) I think that many of these assumptions are false and are contributory to a lot of female misery.

Before I get into the grist of my argument I would like to state that motherhood today is given a bum deal. Lots of women who have taken on the role of a stay at home mother feel that they have taken the lesser choice in life. Women, being much more socially attuned and susceptible to social pressure than men, feel acutely their degree of conformity to group norms. Our media constantly blare the message that the way for a woman  to achieve true happiness is to live life riding the cock carousel whilst slaving away in an office cubicle, eventually becoming head of useless widget production. Women are constantly being sold this lie.

On the other hand, conservatives have, in mantra like fashion, repeated that the path to happiness lays in staying at home, cooking and cleaning up after the hubby  and the kids.  Unfortunately, there is actually a great body of evidence that many women find this existence miserable. The conservative response to this is similar to liberal response to HBD evidence, namely to bury their heads in the sand and to deny any problem with their conception of womanhood, rather they blame to women for not fitting to their conception of womanhood.

Fifty percent of my medical course was composed of women, usually women who had been  groomed in high school for a "power girl" existence. These were women that were going to take on and change the world. The funny thing is though, is that the vast bulk of them, once they had gotten married and had children, actually wanted to stay at home and look after the children.(Much to the disappointment of their husbands) To their surprise, they found the experience of motherhood enjoyable, even though they did not expect it to be. On the other hand, many of my patients (especially IVF couples) idealise motherhood so much and prepare for it diligently only to find the actual experience of motherhood a disaster. These are the ones prone to post natal depression.

Maxim No 1: Most women do not know if they will enjoy motherhood until they actually experience it.

The idea that all normal women will naturally enjoy motherhood is a falsehood.  It would appear from my experience that women form a spectrum, with one  end of the spectrum forming the natural stay at home mums whilst the other end of it forms the women who find staying at home with the children psychologically difficult to bear. This latter group of women aren't necessarily feminists, I've dealt with a fair few traditionally minded women who found the actual experience of mother hood incredibly psychologically difficult.

The task of the conservative is to orientate his thinking toward reality, and the reality is that a lot of women are not suited to being stay-at-home mothers. One of the great "fault lines" in conservatism was in the assumption that women are happiest when they are at home.(This was a fault line exploited by the liberals)  I really can't emphasise enough how much this state of affairs is not a result of an ideological position but rather a "natural" feature of the women themselves. 

The second conservative misconception is that women are naturally capable of looking after children. The sad fact is that a lot of women are hopeless for a variety of reasons. And whilst some of this can be remedied through peer education and inter-generational experience some women just can't seem to do it, despite their best efforts.

Maxim No 2: The natural skill of motherhood is not evenly distributed amongst the female population.

The third misconception is that all women enjoy the experience of motherhood and that there is something wrong with them if they don't. The pleasure we experience as a result of anything is a consequence of how our brains are hard wired.  You can't make yourself enjoy something, you either do or don't. As a result of a terrible university sculling competition  accident,  I cannot enjoy beer. No matter how hard I've tried I instinctively wretch at the taste of it. My brain "wiring" has been changed. Similarly, obesity in females is unattractive to many men, and they can't get over it.  The repulsion to fatties is not a choice but a fact.

Maxim No 3. The pleasures we get from things are not a choice. 

Women who don't get pleasure from motherhood are no more bad than men who do not get pleasure from looking at fatties. Most of the motherhood experience under the age of five is a grind. The problem is that many women feel that they have to enjoy it, the consequence of this is that women who are unhappy about being stuck at home with the kids also are unhappy as a consequence of the near constant guilt that they experience.

Maxim No 4: A working mother is capable of being a good mother. Many of the best mums I know  work. What separates them from the neglectful careerist is that the  good woman takes an active interest in the child's care even whilst she is working.  These women work because they are better at working than being stay at home mums. What they do in effect is "purchase" the skill, patience, temperament, etc. that they don't have. Skills they probably did not realise they lacked until after the baby was born.

The inability of conservatives to see that women are not a homogenous block, yet form a spectrum from those naturally gifted as mothers and others naturally gifted as workers  has been one of the great disasters of conservatism. A disaster that was exploited by the liberals to great effect.

With regard to the woman mentioned in the article, I think she was wrong to regret her children but I'm not going to criticise her for not enjoying motherhood. I think people should be less critical of her since even though she did not enjoy motherhood she stuck at it to the end.

The problem with this woman is that she is good but shallow. Good in the sense that she is a woman of her word, shallow in the sense that she blames her children for the choices that she made. Choices that  she thought would make her happy and yet didn't.

Gloomy thoughts.

As a conservative, it's with quite a bit of dismay that I read of other supposed conservative commentators calling for Greece to restructure (not to pay back) it's debts. Others are calling for Greece to opt out of the Euro and to go back to the drachma, thereby being able to manipulate its currency to pay back its debt. Amongst far too many commentators there is the notion that a bit of inflation is not too bad a thing, as it makes stealing paying back debts easier.

The problem with this line of thinking is that they haven't thought about the problem very deeply, else they wouldn't be advocating such a stupid notion.

We need to remind ourselves one of the ways that banks make money is by lending out other peoples money. That "other peoples money" is usually someone else's saving or investment. Hence, when commentators are advocating that Greece give the bankers "the finger" what they're advocating is that Greeks give the finger to the bankers,........and the little old lady who saved up for their retirement..........and the nurses pension fund...........and the couple saving for their first home.

The biggest losers of any debt restructuring will be both the Greeks, whom afterwards no one will want to lend to(austerity then won't be an option), and some baby boomers whose retirement funds will be vapourised in the process. It's a lose/lose situation.

However it would be a mistake to think that this is just a Greek Crisis. I've got the feeling that the birthplace of democracy will also end up having its burial of it there.

The problem is that nearly all the western countries have borrowed more than prudent, and at the moment, systemic debt is so great that there is simply no way to pay it back. The net result of this is that a lot of people, particularly baby boomers who were encouraged to save for their retirement, are going to be poorer--a lot poorer--as a result of global debt "restructuring". 

Previously, given the pyramidal demographic structure of the West. Inflation which eroded the savings of retiree's could be compensated for by increasing taxation and hence spending on social security.  However as birth rates collapsed, the pyramidal demographic structure has become a rectangle, the ratio of workers to retirees is much smaller.


The cultural and political implications of this make for unsettling prognostication for  a conservative. The baby boomers, who are still a very large demographic block,  are not going to give up the retirement which they were counting on just because their own funds vapourised, rather they will vote for politicians who promise them "social justice". Just as there was in the Great Depression, there will be a cultural and political lurch to the left. The New Deal would have been impossible without the Great Depression.

Futhermore, taxation social security spending will continue to remain high for a long time yet, a least until the baby boomers cease being viable political force. 

We're in this recession for a long long time.

Careerism.

A few days ago Roissy put up a post discussing the subject of female careerism.  The main thrust of Rossy's argument was that careerism is a form of female infidelity and to a degree I think he is right.

The problem with careerism is that fundamentally it is incompatible with the concept of marriage, since careerism is fundamentally solipsistic.

At it essence, careerism is the pursuit of self-identity through work and as such is fundamentally self-focused.

Marriage, on the other hand, was traditionally (and correctly) thought of as a union of two people. In being united, they were "one thing" and henceforth the "other" had to be factored in all calculations. Marriage, as traditionally understood was intrinsically anti-solipsistic.

A career then is only compatible with a marriage as long as it is subordinate to it. In other words, a career is quite OK when it takes the marriage into account, it's not OK when the marriage is subordinate to it. A woman whose career comes first is a woman who is attacking the very nature of her marriage.

The reason why I bring this up is that many that careerism is a vice in women, something I agree. But what they fail to see is that careerism is a vice in men as well. People can be unfaithful to their marriage by sleeping with others but they can also be unfaithful to the marriage by having an affair with their job.

Athens Burning

It's an old article but a good one and pertinent once again to contemporary financial events.

It is perhaps an inherent problem wherever the universal franchise is unaccompanied by widespread virtues such as honesty, self-control, providence, prudence and self-respect. Greece is therefore a cradle not only of democracy, but also of democratic corruption.

The Greek demonstrators did not understand, or did not want to understand, that if there were justice in the world, many people, including themselves, would be worse rather than better off, and that a reduction in their salaries and benefits was not only economically necessary but just.

Read of the rest of the article here. The American Founding Fathers knew the score: Democracy ends when the mob becomes corrupted. It's not just the bankers and politicians which are wicked, so are the people.
 

Philosophy

Grief is impossible without love.

In Memoriam

Today my best friend died.
I picked him from the litter (more like he picked me) and I held him in my arms as he died.

Harry (2000-2011)

Cool Britannia: Chav Empire.

The things you see at Royal Ascot.

On ladies day no less! It's all class.

Elgar's Britain is dead. So sad.



(From The Daily Mail)

Some thoughts on Economics.

Recently Ferdinand Bardamu put up quite a good post arguing the merits of a guaranteed living income. Voxday has also put up a couple of good posts arguing against the merits of unconditional free trade. Both have taken positions that I support with some reservations, but what is interesting to see is just how much opposition they have had from conservatives, particularly economic libertarians.

Assuming all other variables are held constant, economic liberalism is the best way to maximise growth and world prosperity. Free trade, prudently minimal regulation of the market, property rights and "sound money" are the best way to increase wealth. I think many economic libertarians think along the similar lines when they criticise the two above mentioned bloggers. The problem with many of these libertarians though is that they can't see past the "economics" of the question and recongise that economic activity does not exist in isolation but is intimately intermeshed  in the social and political dimensions of the real world.

Take for example the concept of a minimal living wage.  There is no doubt in my mind that setting a "floor" on wages will result in the non-viability of certain business arrangements. In other words, there will be less business activity and hence smaller economy by doing this. However having decent minimal wages means that there are less destitute on the streets, less child labour, less proclivity for social revolution and less incentive for crimes of need.

Socialism was not born in a vacuum. It's fertile feeding ground were the poor, especially the labouring industrial poor,  swelling in multitude with the idustrialisation of Europe and America.  The resentment felt to their capitalist masters may have been justified or not, but it was a resentment that was exploited to assist the birth of Socialism.

Efficient capital allocation is only possible in a society of human beings that allows it. If the society puts a stop on it, capitalism dies. Therefore the primary aim of any good capitalist is to ensure that society remains in such a state that allows capital allocation to the degree in which it is possible in that particular society. The good capitalist wants to avoid the capitalism that pisses the majority of the people off.

Likewise, free trade is another example of their inability to see the bigger picture. I'm all for free trade but it needs to be recognised that free trade has its trade offs. The more free trade the more interdependent the countries become and this in turn limits the independence of a country. Australia is a strongly pro-human rights country, except when it comes to China. Perhaps it being our biggest trading partner has something to do with it?

The point I'm trying to make is much like the point I was trying to make on my post on Engine Failure.
Ensuring that the "economic engine" runs long term probably means running the engine at sub-maximum potential,  the limiting factor not being the "economics" but the other parameters and components which make up the economy.

This difference between the maximum theoretical and the maximum practical economy is the "price" we pay for system stability.  I think it is money well spent.

Skin Cancer, Osteoporosis and Modesty. Multiparametrism.

Australia is blessed with sun to the degree that Canada is blessed with snow. It's exceptional for it not to be sunny here.  As a consequence, Australia is "blessed" with extraordinary high rates of skin cancer compared to the rest of the world. The pale skin of the Europeans (especially the Aryan types) is prone to mutagenisis when exposed to copious Australian sun.  Fortunately, most skin cancers are relatively benign, and a good part of the average GP's practice consists of cutting out skin cancers.

With the exception of people who have rare genetic conditions, the risk of skin cancer is correlated with sun exposure. In fact we can roughly plot the risk/exposure graph as follows.

From about the mid 30's to the late 70's the local culture strongly promoted sun exposure and as a consequence, the skin cancer rates were quite high. Concerned individuals lobbied the government and a quite successful skin cancer awareness and protection campaign was launched.  Dermatologists and a government funded campaign advised people to limit their exposure to the sun.  It was a quite successful program and people are now far more aware of skin cancer than before and widespread protective measures are employed.  As a consequence, skin cancer rates in young people have begun to stabilise, the old are still suffering for their previous sins. 

In the mid 90's however it began to be noted that more and more people were becoming Vitamin D deficient.  Now Vitamin D deficiency contributes to osteoporosis which most people think is relatively benign. Yet the disease burden of this condition is quite significant, resulting in fractures, pain and a quite severe reduction quality of life. Endocrinologists were to first to notice this affect,  and their solution was to get more sun.

In fact if we plot the risk of Vitamin D deficient osteoporosis vs sunlight we get the following graph.

As we can see the risk of one is inversely related to the other. Choose your poison. More sun, increase your risk of skin cancer, less sun increase your risk of osteoporosis. You can't win.


A lot of the conflicting "medical advice" that people get from the mainstream media is due to the above phenomenon. Given the "connectedness" of biological processes. Altering one, results in effects on other systems.  The source of this conflicting medical advice is from the medical profession, particularly the specialist component of medicine.

The nature of the medical profession is such that when expert opinion is required on any matter, the authoritative words of a specialist in the field is required. This professional, who is very knowledgeable in their particular field, looks at the human being from the vantage point of that particular field, offers advice from the vantage point of that particular field. So when the news article is about skin cancer, a knowledgeable dermatologist is trotted out who advocates less sun. Two weeks later when the osteoporosis is the flavour of the day, and endochrinologist is trotted out who advises people to get more sun. The public are confused.

The problem is of course, specialisation, which is another word for cognitive compartmentalisation. It takes a generalist to see what the specialist can't. A generalist would ask,  what is the systemic risk vs sun exposure? A crude graph could be drawn as follows:

Here we see that minimum risk is somewhere between the two extremes. Trying to avoid one pathology by avoiding all the risk factors associated with it frequently increases the risk of a different one.  Zero risk is impossible, and trying the achieve it is likely to lead to more pathology. The trick to healthy living is to minimise risk, not avoid it all together. It's the common-sense philosophy of the golden mean.

As a side issue. It would appear that the healthy human beings need a reasonable amount of sun exposure on their skin to keep them healthy. Excessive Victorian Era and Modern Islamic prudery are objectively unhealthy. People need to show a little flesh to be healthy.

Austrian Slutwalkers: A tale of two Autists.

Most of the manospehere has rightly condemned the slutwalk phenomenon for the idiocy that it is.  In the end what the sluts are protesting against is human nature. Men will always be attracted to provocatively dressed women because they signal sexual availability. And a woman who signals sexual availability through her dress, is more likely to be a target for unwanted sexual attention than a woman that is demurely dressed. This is not my opinion this is fact. Protesting about this fact of human nature shows a degree of either entrenched idiocy or social autism or both.

What the slutwalkers are complaining about is having to take account of the problem of evil in their day to day affairs. Evil,  in this instance, being the propensity to be raped. The core contention of their theory is that with enough "education", punishment and shaming men can be stopped from raping. This, of course, is a rejection of the doctrine of original sin. No amount of legal stricture will ever stop evil.

Normal people recognise the existence of evil in their day to day affairs and accommodate for it. Girls don't dress provocatively around drunken men, they don't take rides with strangers, they don't walk through dark parks at night and so on. Yes, in an ideal world there should be no threat to their safety, but the world is not ideal and trying to ignore the existence of evil in the human condition is simply reality avoidance.

A lot of the Austrian Economic school are a bit like the slutwalkers.  I personally believe that they provide the best explanation with regard to economic phenomena with one exception, they are socially autistic. Sluts complain about getting raped when dressed provocatively, and Austrians complain about people getting upset at loosing their jobs as a consequence of economic efficiency. Both completely ignore the reality of human nature.

Take for example envy. The Austrian school says that it is bad, and I agree, that just like rape it is bad. But envy, like rape, is a real world phenomenon and any decent economic theory has to take it into account. Unfettered capitalism may make the world a richer place but the forces of envy that it unleashes may destroy the world and any sane economic theory must take into account envy, not simply protest about it. What may limit successful long term capitalism may not necessarily be resource access but envy which restricts capital allocation.

A smarter economic theory would acknowledge envy and try to mitigate (not eliminate since it is impossible) it's effect by economic means. No one ever asks the question, is it possible to maintain social stability with maximum economic efficiency? It's always assumed it is possible, yet is it?

The greatest threat to capitalism is socialism. An ideology which was born during the greatest period of laissez faire capitalism in history. The parents of Socialism were Darwinian capitalism intersecting with human nature.

Personally I don't think it is possible; optimising for one parameter, say economic efficiency, comes at the expense of social stability, which is ultimately the foundation of the economy. I think that there is a sweet spot  along the economic efficiency "curve" which mitigates envy enough to stop it being a threat.

The Austrians have a good explanation for economic events. The problem with their theory, though, is that there is a huge blind spot in acknowledging the evil in human nature and making allowances for it. Just like the slutwalkers.

Tragic

Shoppers' shock as man proposes in mall food court........... and is REJECTED.


Cringe. He may not feel that great at the moment but he's dodged a bullet.

Human Nature as a Parametric Limit.

In the post on engine design, commentator R Brockman made the following comment;

The interesting question is whether there are multiple stable equilibrium points. What happens when a society goes outside the set of parameters that it was "designed" for? Advanced technology has radically changed our life -- do the Old Design Rules still work?

I think that this warrants some further elaboration. It's my belief, and a cursory examination of history will confirm, that it is possible to have different type of societies (i.e equilibrium points) but only only within certain limits. The whole point about the "Tao of Life" is that there is more commonality amongst enduring societies than than there are differences.

I suppose the reason why there is limited range of equilibrium points within a human societal "system" is because the material from which human society is built, human nature, puts constraints on types of societal structures that can be maintained.  Human capabilities with regard to jealousy, trust, fear, love, friendship, etc. are the limiting factors with regard to human interaction.  Human nature is the material from which societal "engines" are formed, and this in turn places limits on the type of enduring societies that are possible.

An example of this is with regard to sexuality.  Most men naturally desire variety and it would be expected, that given this nature, societies would develop which would cater to this fact. Yet it's pretty obvious that culturaly advanced polyamorous societies have failed to develop, since sexual activity occurs in the context of other parameters such as reproduction, love and investment. Any society that attempted to institute such a practice would be torn apart by feuds, lusts, jealousy etc.  Likewise, Communism, a great idea in theory, fails because it ignores the fact the human nature responds to incentives.

Human nature, being what it is, therefore limits the type of advanced societies that can exist.

What we do tend to see is that amongst primitive peoples there does seem to be more latitude with respect to human nature and stable "society", but as a society becomes bigger and culturally advances, the potential for alternative normative behaviors lessens.

Happiness as a Multiparametric Optimisation.

Men usually find some degree of happiness in the satisfaction of their desires. The hungry man is a happy when fed, the thirsty man, after a drink, the poor man in the achievement of wealth. Human nature being what it is, is made up of a multitude of desires which are frequently in conflict with one another. For example, our desire for leisure is against our desire for for wealth which we achieve through work. Our desire to look attractive is opposed to our desire to eat lots of sweets, and so on.

Our happiness then can be thought of as the degree to which we have satisfied our desires. Considering the multifaceted nature of our desires, each "facet"being a parameter of happiness, our degree of happiness can be considered as a sort of reflection on the  multiparametric satisfaction of our desires.

As said before, some of our desires are in conflict with each other and therefore satisfaction of parameter X may come at the expense of parameter Y.  Philosophically speaking, the task at hand is similar to that of the engine designer; how do you optimise for happiness given conflicting human desires.

From a systems point of view, system optimisation will occur somewhere between the extremes of the conflicting parameters. In other words, total system optimisation will occur at a point where the individual component parameters may not be completely satisfied. Now this is very important, since it explains a lot of human cognitive pathology and folly.

Consider human sexual satisfaction. The hedonist may argue that sex is the ultimate pleasure and that satisfaction of this one parameter will lead to happiness. (This of course is a simplification, but bear with me). Consider the following "Sexual Happiness Decay curves", for three hypothetical women, a 10, an 8 and a 5 respectively.

We see that sex with a "10" is much better than sex with a "5" but over time, due to factors such as familiarity and habituation, over time  the pleasure from each act tends to diminish. There is nothing like the rush of the new. The natural strategy to then to optimise sexual pleasure is to try and recreate the "rush" of the new.  The following graph illustrates this strategy. (Each new curve is a new partner)

The theory being that by changing the partner a recreation of the initial satisfaction state can be achieved. In reality, the easier the "prey" is to catch the less pleasure that one gets from it. The strategy then for the sexual hedonist is to achieve a steady supply of new lovers to keep his sexual satisfaction at a high state. The problem is though, most humans do not live on sexual satisfaction alone, and need other things such as companionship and love from others. Now true abiding love, seems to be a time dependent phenomenon. A love/satisfaction curve could hypothetically be drawn as below.
(N.B love as opposed to infatuation)

Now consider a man who meets a "10" and sticks with her, a graph of the sexual pleasure/love curves could be visualised as follows:

Now note, his system happiness is greater than his potential sexual happiness after a while. Compare this to the "player approach":

By optimising for one parameter, sexual satisfaction, he has traded this off for deep abiding love. The rapid turnover of partners never lets deep abiding love develop. There is no doubt that he may be sexually more satisfied than than the man above, but his total "system" happiness is less than in the above graph. This is the dark side of "Game"; it's a uniparametric optimisation of the multiparametric human system.

Of course these graphs are simplifications, but they illustrate the logic behind a lot of human folly. The systemically optimised man, at any given point finds that any one of his particular desires remains unsatisfied, if he is unable to see the "big picture view" of his condition, he may be tempted to focus on one parameter at the expense of all the rest.

The thing to realise about earthly happiness is that it is not a satisfaction of every human desire, but a balance of them. A lot of human misery is caused by seeking a uniparametric solution to the problem of unhappiness. In trying to satisfy every one of our desires, or even one fully, happiness eludes us.

Supercharger.

In the post on engine design, commentator R Brockman made the following comment;

The interesting question is whether there are multiple stable equilibrium points. What happens when a society goes outside the set of parameters that it was "designed" for? Advanced technology has radically changed our life -- do the Old Design Rules still work?

I think that this warrants some further elaboration. It's my belief, and a cursory examination of history will confirm, that it is possible to have different type of societies (i.e equilibrium points) but only only within certain limits. The whole point about the "Tao of Life" is that there is more commonality amongst enduring societies than than there are differences.


I suppose the reason why there is limited range of equilibrium points within a human societal "system" is because the material from which human society is built, human nature, puts constraints on types of societal structures that can be maintained.  Human capabilities with regard to jealousy, trust, fear, love, friendship, etc. are the limiting factors with regard to human interaction.  In the same way that the parameters of car performance are derived from the properties of materials, so is human society limited by human nature.


A classic example of this is with regard to sexuality.  Most men naturally desire variety, and it would be expected that given this nature, societies would develop which would cater to this fact. Yet it's pretty obvious that any advanced polyamorous societies have failed to develop, since sexual activity occurs in the context of other parameters such as reproduction, love and investment. Any society that attempted to institute such a practice would be torn apart by feuds, lusts, jealosy etc.  Likewise, Communism, a great idea in theory, fails because it ignores the fact the human nature responds to incentives.


What we do tend to see however, is that amongst primitive peoples there does seem to be more latitude with respect to human nature and stable "society", but as a society becomes bigger and culturally advances, the potential for alternative normative behaviors lessens.


Indeed a theoretical plot could be made with regard to a societies proximity to the Tao Ideal and its advancement.

What we see here is the closer a society approximates the Tao point the greater its advancement and stability. Ancient Rome at its apogee possessed a different culture to Ancient Rome in its decline. It appears that in order for a society to survive and flourish it has to overcome a certain degree of barbarism or primitiveness. But once it establishes itself, it has to protect itself against decadence which destroys societal stability. Note, that a bit of primitiveness or decadence may not be too bad, but once the line is crossed, so to speak, the rot sets in. The trick in keeping a society stable, is in keeping it within a proscribed deviation from the "Tao point".


However, another point needs to be considered. Getting a society to within the desired range of the Tao point will get it only so far.  What I mean by this is, with the exclusion of Western Civilisation, the level of societal and technological advancements of all the other advanced civilisations of the world were roughly the same. The Chinese may have eaten and dressed differently to the Romans, but their societies were more alike than different. No, the one society that really stands out of the pack with regard to its "performance curve" is Western Society, compared to the others, it's supercharged.

Several books have been written about this phenomenon. What's so special about the West that made it the predominant power, not just militarily but intellectually, economically and artistically as well over the past five hundred years?

Well the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was asked by their government to look into this very thing. An anonymous scholar provided their conclusions:

He said: “One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world.

“We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had.

“Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system.

“But in the past twenty years, we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful.

“The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”

A Digression.

To tell the truth, I'm not actually that interested in the Dominiqe Strauss-Kahn controversy. High powered officials have a long history of being stupid, especially when it comes to sexual matters. However what really struck me as absurd, is that the head of the IMF is a Socialist. In fact; a former communist.

It would be like putting Trotsky in charge of the Fed.

Life is stranger than fiction.

Engine Design.

Modern auto engines are marvelously complex pieces of machinery. Over a century of improvement has resulted in engines that are lighter, more powerful, more fuel efficient and more reliable than their original predecessors.

The engine designer has a hard task. He is usually given a design brief which on closer inspection is contradictory. For a given engine capacity, his engine must produce maximal power and yet he is also told to minimise fuel consumption, which is directly related to power output. He is told that the engine must be light and reliable, but in order to improve reliability he must make some of the parts heavier than what is needed. The engine must be cheap and simple to manufacture, but the high temperatures and pressure needed to achieve fuel efficiency mean more expensive alloys and cooling. And so on.

In the end, engine design like most other mutiparametric design, is an exercise in compromise amongst competing independent parameters. Things are a trade off.

Once a multiparametric system has been optimised for a certain state, system integrity is dependent upon the system operating within certain design parameters. Operating mulitparametric systems outside their design parameters may result in loss of system integrity,  reduced system life or suboptimal system performance. Now most robust systems usually allow for some minor variation outside design criteria, but this becomes harder the more complex the system is.

For example and engine may have the following design criteria. (I've made these up)

1) Fuel consumption of 20mls @ minute at idle.
2) Cylinder head temperature not to exceed 160 degrees Centigrade.
3) Coolant flow at 10 liters a minute.
4) Oil temperature not to exceed 90 degrees Centigrade.
5) Maximum 9:1 fuel compression
6) Oil change every 200 hours of operation.and so on. 

The system, in order to be viable, has to stick to its rules of operation.

Car engines, for a given class of car, are more similar than different since the parametric constraints placed by by materials science and thermodynamics mean that there are only a limited number of compatible mutiparametric solutions to the engine design problem.

This does not apply just to cars. Cake mixers, bicycles, pens, passenger aircraft, etc. are more alike than different, its because as the state of the art improves and matures, it becomes apparent that there are only a limited number of viable solutions to the design problem. Initial ideas which were promising are found to be impractical from a variety of perspectives.

(There is rumour that the Volkswagen 1.4 TSI engine, a novel solution to engine design requirements, is going to be discontinued because it is too expensive to make. )

Now the point about all this is that society can be considered a multiparametric system, being composed of multiple competing and interacting elements, and as such, society can be looked at from a systems engineering perspective.

It was Jim Kalb's writings that got me thinking about looking at society this way. His battle against modernism is based upon a traditionalist perspective. The argument, as I see it, being that traditional cultures such as Islam and Chinese Confucianism have lasted because they cater towards human beings better than modernism does. After reading this, I asked myself the question, given the stability of Confucian and Islamic society, what sort of rules of operation produce a systemically stable society?

When you look at it from a systems engineering point of view you see that stable and relatively advanced societies seem to operate under a relatively narrow systems of rules; what C.S. Lewis called the "Tao of Life." In fact these rules can be don't actually have to be divinely inspired, rather they are relatively self evident to any man of moderate reflection. Christian writers would have called these operating parameters Natural Law. Anyone who is really interested should have a read of C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man, where he quotes similar passages from Hindu, Norse, Egyptian, Roman, Jewish, Greek and Chinese texts.

Some of these rules of system operation can be summed up as follows:

The existence of a morality which is independent of the individual.
A belief in objective truth.
Censure of some kind for transgression of the rules.
Benefit of some kind for concordance with them.
Just and fair dealings with others
Consideration of others in our actions.
Preference for our own kind.
Sexual restraint.
Magnanimity.

The fact that these cultures, which lasted for centuries, separated both temporally and spatially should have broad common approaches to their operation suggests that stable complex societies may only be possible if run according to these broad principles. The fact that large scale promiscuity, institutionalised lying and moral relativism have not stood out as organising principles amongst surviving cultures suggest that from a systems perspective, these operating rules may be inimical to system stability. Relatively advanced stable societies may only be possible under a narrow set of system parameters.

Engine Failure.

In the previous post, I tried to illustrate, using the engine example, of how optimising for one paramenter in a multiparametric system, may result in a deterioration of the the system itself. The question is, why does this occur?

Most stable systems have negative feedback loops, in that any perturbation from the designed state is met with immediate corrective action by the system itself to ensure its stability. The real danger arises when there is no negative feedback system, here the system progressively deviates from the desired state to a point of self destruction.

Now an engine motor, like society, is a human designed thing, and its operation is effectively under supervision. It follows then that the human operator is part of the system itself and being a intelligent and sentient being, why doesn't the human recognise the dangers beforehand and take corrective action?

In the first instance, the human operator may not care about the system integrity at all, and may actually wish the system to fail. Marxists, for instance, pursued active policies to destroy traditional bourgeoisie society which were wildly successful. The Marxists believed they could build a better engine.

In the second instance, the operator of the system may be operating it under ignorance, either deliberate or innocent, and does not recognise that the system is in dangerous territory.  Perturbations from the desired state which are obviously malignant are easily recognised and corrected, but perturbations which in the short term appear benign, or positively beneficial, are the most dangerous. Here the danger is not recognised, and in instances where there is apparent positive benefit, actually encouraged, accelerating the system decline.

All societies recognise the socially destructive effect of murder and make prohibitions against it. Very few societies see the socially corrosive effects of inflation and sexual liberation, seeing them as a benign or even positive perturbations of the system.  Improvements in the same way that "chipping the engine" improves system performance.  Its all win-win until it isn't.

Here in Australia, we are very sexually liberated. Our statisticians tell us that only 75% of people will marry, and of those that do 50% will divorce. That's a lot of emotional pain, loneliness, disrupted childhoods, domestic violence, etc. Most people cannot see the link between "bonding failure" and sexual liberation, but it's there.  Great party, hell of a hangover.

Sexual repression was in many ways a bad thing, but sexual liberation, may in the long run, turn out to be a very, very bad thing. The problem with long run damage is that it is not noticed by short term minds.  Especially whilst the corrosion is "pleasant".

"Pleasant" corrosion is perhaps the most dangerous corrosion at all. In democratic societies, the mob, fixated on the here and now, refuse to believe that what is pleasantly beneficial and without consequence currently, will turn out to be malignant.

America's economic golden age spanned from the beginning of the 50's to the end of the 60's. The chairman of the Fed at the time was William McChesney Martin, Jr.  He was the man who saw the Fed's role as "to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going". (Negative feedback against popular approval). He was your classic mulitparametric analyst. He did not believe that the Fed could simply base its policy on a single indicator, rather its policies should be based on a thorough analysis of the economy. He was big picture man of fierce independence. Check out the Wiki link.  This point struck me as rather pertinent:

Martin was a graduate of Yale, where his formal education was in English and Latin rather than economics.

Big picture long term man.

Chipping the Engine.

Modern passenger car engines, such as this one, are conservatively designed.  Their components are not stressed to their limits in order to preserve engine life and reliability. The fact that components are not pushed to their limits gives after-market component manufactures the opportuinty to exploit this phenomena to change the parameters of the engine operation. By reprogramming the engine's computer management system, frequently large boosts in power can be achieved.

(notice the parabolic "return" curve)

An engine that has been "chipped" usually has it warranty voided. As the "boosting" of the engine usually comes at the expense of engine life and reliability.

A primitive form of "chipping" was used during  WW2.  Some military aircraft had War Emergency Power setting. This setting pushed the engine beyond its intended design parameters with the following results;

In normal service, the P-51H Mustang was rated at 1,380 hp, but WEP would deliver up to 2,218 hp.^[3] The Vought F4U Corsair, not originally equipped for WEP, later boasted a power increase of up to 410 hp (17%) when WEP was engaged.^[2] ............. All WEP methods result in greater-than-usual stresses on the engine, and correspond to a reduced engine lifetime. For some airplanes, such as the P-51, use of WEP required the plane to be grounded after landing and the engine torn down and inspected for damage before returning to the air. (My italics)

The point about all this is that engines are mulitparametric systems and stability and long life expectancy is achieved by designing the engine within conservative parameters. The inbuilt "margin of saftey" in component design can allow at times for quite significant excursions from the usual design parameters but come at the expensive of system life and integrity.

Now human society can be considered a multi-parametric system that only maintains its long term cohesion as long as its constituent parts operate within conservative limits. The conservative limits can be pushed for a time, and given the large degree of "conservatism"in the system, can appear "apparently stable", much like an engine that's been chipped.  With the same consequences: the engine breaks down suddenly and without warning.

The intrinsic problem with systems with a large degree of component redundancy is that fatal changes in system operating parameters can occur and initially appear quite innocuous and beneficial, their true malignancy being manifest sometime later on.  Intelligent men who understand the system will try to take corrective measures to restore it to its initial state. But to the man possessed of a short time horizon or inability to extrapolate in the future(most of humanity), the "boost in system power" is without consequence as he cannot see that the "engine" is rapidly wearing away. Likewise many social changes are accepted by the bovine masses because they are pleasant and unable to see how they can be harmful in any way. When the critics of the social changes point out that the system is going to fail, they look around them and see everything working perfectly and dismiss them. Until it doesn't

The Law of Parabolic Returns.

There are several intellectual assumptions which I feel are at the root of many of society's maladies. One of the them is what I would call is the misattribution of linearity.

The erroneous logical process runs as follows. Let's say something called X is good, then even more by implication, is better. It's  runs on the assumption that systems are linear and predictable. It's common error that's seen in many facets of life. Take for example vitamins.  Small doses of vitamins are definitely beneficial to individuals who are vitamin deficient, but at ever greater doses, the effects become  negligible and some instances harmful.  Likewise with exercise, many people,  especially sportsmen, are of the the opinion if a little bit of exercise is good for you even more is better and you can never really get too much of it. Public policy makers, who view education in the same light as motherhood, extrapolate its benefits in the same way.

It's a common intellectual pathology and it exists amongst both the left and right to varying degree.

Very few systems of any complexity are linear in their effect. In fact, most systems obey what I call the law of parabolic returns. Here, what happens initially, is there is a bit of a linear effect which after a while peters out and then finally becomes negative. The more you think about complex systems, the more you recognise the effect.

My interest is as to why this phenomenon exists in the fist place. After thinking about it for a while I believe that it is due to three things:

1) Limitations in intelligence. (That is the ability to process information)
2) Limitations in knowledge, which can either be from ignorance or from a lifetime of specialisation.
3) Superficial thinking. (Sentimental thought)
4) Ideological bias. (Thought-filtering)

Understanding multi-parametric systems is hard and therefore, given the relative scarcity of deep and broad thinkers in our community, linear thinking is more likely to be the predominant mode of thought. Hence, in community based decision systems, there will be a deep bias towards linear explanations of complex phenomena. The simple solution is more easily grasped than the complex one, especially when it needs to be explained by the moronic media to the bovine masses.

Ontologically, linear models frequently bear some relation to reality under some conditions, in other words, there usually is a degree of truth to them. This is why some of the claims of Marxists, Libertarians, Keynesian's etc have some validity; they are not outright fantasy. The problem is that their model is only valid under a limited set of conditions.  Conservatives err when they dismiss leftist claims reflexively; sometimes there is a degree of truth to their claims.  In doing so they make themselves look stupid.

The phenomenon of linearity also explains a lot of the idiotic polarisation in our society at the moment.
Take for example, the two extremes: Communists and Libertarians.

Both of them engage in a denial of reality. The communists fail to see that collectivisation has negative consequences just as much as the rabid libertarians can't see that individualisation is just as socially destructive. In many ways they are similar having the same cognitive blinders, just different cognitive models.  As the general levels of intelligence decline and Facebook becomes the information source for the majority of the voting population,  simplistic solutions to complex problems will assume greater political force.

Charles Munger, Warren Buffet's partner, was a meteorologist prior to him becoming a lawyer. Meteorology is hard probably the ultimate multi-parametric discipline He describes the problem of linearity as the problem of "the man with a hammer". To a man with a hammer every problem is a nail. He has written and excellent and easily readable essay on the importance of multi-parametric knowledge: Academic Economics: Strengths and Faults After Considering Interdisciplinary needs. It's well worth a read.

An Interesting Article.

One of the reasons why I think the Modern West is in decline is because the political theory upon which it is premised is based on a misunderstanding of human nature. One of the great fallacies which is incorporated into western political and legal theory is the myth of the "rational man". By which I mean, the theory that the average man is a sober and reflective judge when it comes to political judgment. The myth is actually a composition of two fallacies:

1) The effective doctrine that each man's political deliberation is just as valid as another's. This denies the validity of experience, study and IQ.
2) The myth that men are impartial judges of data. Whereas in reality both conservatives and liberals "filter" away data that is inconvenient and effective have a rationalisation hamster that justifies their beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence.

One of the hardest things to do, when attempting to think, is to try and eliminate one's biases from one's reasoning. It is possible, but what it requires is a devotion to the totality of data present and not filtering data away which is inconvenient.

For example, I am an anthropogenic climate change skeptic. Not because I have some emotional agenda which I want to keep intact, rather its because the totality of the data that I have seen makes the CO2 argument appear a bit weak. Now the Medieval warm period had lower CO2 levels than today. This in itself does not invalidate the CO2 argument, since it is quite possible that there are several mechanisms of climate change, and good scientist  trying to understand how climate actually works will acknowledge this. He will not try to deny data which is inconvenient to his preferred theory, rather he will modify his theory to incorporate the data. When a scientist tries to "hide the decline" I know that he is more committed to his ideology than to understanding the truth.

Its not a scientific paper but a good article (from the left wing perspective) of how a lot of people are "biased" when it comes to processing information.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of the population "feel-think" instead of "truth-think" and and any political theory or constitution which fails to take this into account is a bit like an civil engineering course which neglects soil mechanics: It's going to eventually fail.

Our political process has not been corrupted as a result of outright conspiracy, the problem is more fundamental. As political power is passes from the few to the many, the likelihood of policy being decided on sentiment instead of reason becomes greater. Feel good policies become predominant over are-good policies. 

Perhaps the reasons why democracies eventually fail is because, by becoming every more inclusive, they become incapable of making the hard decisions that ensure their survival. Universal suffrage paves the way for political instability.