Quotes: Sunday 2 June 2024

Provocative thoughts that create more thoughts

Thus, the title.

I think Uncle Milton would refer to this as “helicopter money.”

Long & deep, but worth your time. But I’m not sure that Arendt gets it entirely correct (if I’m understanding her correctly). The past is irrevocably fixed: we can’t change what has actually happened: past events and deeds. The present is open for the passing instant, but it’s only a tiny aperture given the constraints imposed by the fixed past. Only the future is sufficiently open to allow human action to unfold.

Still true.

Liberalism begets antiliberalism. We live in a Manichean political regime; the site of a perpetual struggle between liberalism and antiliberalism, between chaos and order. Freedom occupies the sweet spot between order and chaos. Liberalism is the political project that seeks the sweet spot, that wants to attempt the balancing act.

I’m not so sure about the main contention in this quite; to wit, that liberalism (or antiliberalism) is simply a matter of belief, a randomly assigned faith. I think of myself as conservative by temperament—I’m innately cautious and skeptical about change. But I’m liberal by education: I’ve learned to go beyond my temperament, my innate caution, my preference for the status quo, by learning from history, reasoning, the empirical discoveries and concepts of the natural and social sciences, and experience, both personal and learned (literature and the arts). We humans can create a better future; the past isn’t always to be preferred. All action—or inaction—entails risks and costs. Reasoning is better than coercion (less costly, more efficient, more lasting, more rational in retrospect, and—most importantly—it treats other persons with the dignity and recognition they are entitled to by nature of their humanity). Liberalism is certainly influenced by temperament, by openness, agreeableness, and extroversion, for instance, as cataloged in the Big Five scheme of personality traits. But these traits alone—without a liberal education—do not of themselves create a liberal mind. I didn’t get my degree from a liberal arts college for naught!