Ethiopian Christian Tradition

In my previous post, Conciliator and Unifier, I wrote that Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed Ali had set aside May 25 for "Africa Day."

Abiy Ahmed Ali, PM of Ethiopia, is a conciliator and Unifier, in the tradition of past Ethiopian leaders (Emperors), who led a diverse country of religious groups (mostly Christian and Muslim), ethnic groups, and languages, and formed one nation. Abiy takes that role further, in the tradition of the late Emperor Haile Selassie, as a leader of Africa.

I should specify that although there has been a constant empathy towards Muslims over the centuries, and other religious groups, the traditional, historic, leaders were all Christian. It is important to add that the majority of these emperors were of Amhara origin, the group that combined Christianity and ethnicity to form a united whole, a nation.

And Ahmed Ali himself is half Orthodox Christian (on his mother's side) and half Muslim. He is married to an Amhara Orthodox Christian woman, and he professes to be some kind of evangelical protestant. His wife regularly appears in the traditional Ethiopian/Amhara dress, with embroidered crosses.

I keep saying that it won't be long before PM Abiy takes on the religion of his Ethiopian ancestors, and becomes an Orthodox Christian.

The Paradox of Tradition

The Paradox of Tradition
Excerpt from Camera Lucida, 2009

The funny thing about tradition is that it changes subtly through time. Innovations happen by building the new from the old; by adapting the past into our own present environments. This is what modern artists just don’t get. They are stuck in a rut with their experimentations and self-expression. The true inspiration and, paradoxically, change comes by pursuing tradition

Credo

Jim Kalb still has his site Turnabout where he posts his activities on other websites and publications.

Here is the credo he posted at Turnabout, I assume around 2003 from the comments it generated.

Turnabout is:

- Antimodernist, and rejects the stripped-down understanding of knowledge, reason and reality that has led to the current intellectual, social, and spiritual dead end,
- Hierarchical, and accepts that man is a composite being—free and bound, individual and social, physical and spiritual—and each aspect of what he is must be given weight within an ordered whole.
- Traditionalist, and views particular attachments, the development of social habit, and informal refinement and transmission of past acquisitions as essential to a reliable understanding of almost anything,
- Catholic, and accepts the authority, sacraments, and teaching of the Church as an ultimate reference point.

We recognize that the great enemy today of Catholicism, a tolerable human existence, and even reason itself is a technocratic view of man and society. That view takes human desire, know-how, and purely formal—and therefore empty—concepts like equality as its final standards. It rules out all thought of a precedent order of things that is given by God, nature, or culture, and so must be respected. The “dignity of the individual” becomes identified with an equal right to the satisfaction of desire, and everything becomes a means to that end.

The technocratic outlook thus aims at comprehensive transformation of human life on simple principles. Equality, rationality, and efficiency become the highest goals. Traditional distinctions and standards are done away with in favor of universal technically-rational organization designed to secure the equal satisfaction of desire.

The self-contained perfection to which the outlook aspires demands that all things be subordinated to a universal administrative scheme that pervades and controls everything. The creation of such a system, and the abolition of principles of order not based solely on human will and formal rationality (for example, the particularities of religion, historical community and sex), become overriding political goals.

The attempt to establish such a system leads to self-seeking hedonism, politically-correct bureaucratic tyranny, and in the end utter irrationality due to its inability to recognize any principle of order or judgment outside itself. To avoid such an outcome, renewed emphasis is needed on man’s transcendent setting, on the natural basis of human life, and on the relative mutual autonomy of the various spheres of life.

The good life is possible only with the aid of the principles of well-ordered freedom, which Catholics sometimes call subsidiarity—limited government, decentralization, tradition, and public recognition of transcendent religious authority. Catholics should therefore promote those principles, and reject whatever fundamentally opposes them: liberalism, the welfare state, “human rights” as now understood, radical secularism, and contemporary ideologies such as feminism and inclusiveness.

By taking such a position. we put ourselves at odds with the functionaries and apologists of the technocratic order: the experts, educators, academics, lawyers, bureaucrats and media people who provide and make authoritative the asserted facts, concepts, and principles that order relies on.

Turnabout will develop facts and arguments relating to these issues and propose considerations relevant to their understanding. Criticism and debate is of course welcome—there’s nothing necessarily correct about what any of us say, and what’s worthwhile in it can only become apparent if it’s questioned and tested. I hope you join us!

Sunday Gentleman

Photographic Portrait of a Victorian Gentleman
Failte Irish Pub
[Photo By: KPA]

This photograph hangs in one of the alcoves in the Failte Irish Pub and Restaurant. It may be hanging in a pub, but it surely merits a Sunday post. This gentleman looks kind enough not to scare away little children, but firm enough to get things straight. He may have a pint (but not two), but won't have any qualms over others (men, of course) doing so.

Here is a photo I took of the alcove at another time. The room is, appropriately, called "The Victorian Parlour."


Failte Irish Pub, The Victorian Parlour
[Photo By: KPA]
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

The Feisty Prince

The Feisty Prince

If England is to get a new Prince, then this one fits the bill! It's time that a feisty prince is in the running. Here he is, at almost one. His first birthday was on June 22, and this photograph was taken on April 19.

There have been several Georges in the British royal family. George is the name of the patron saint of England. The legend of Saint George is that he slew the dragon to rescue a princess.

May that young Prince George's name give him the strength to vanquished the evils of our modern world, to save his England.


St. George Slaying the Dragon
St. Joseph's Orphanage, Lancashire, England

St Joseph’s Orphanage was opened in 1872 and St Joseph’s Hospital for the Sick Poor followed five years later.

The hospital tended injured soldiers during both world wars and its nuns, the Sisters of Charity, also delivered tens of thousands of babies.

The orphanage shut in 1954 and the hospital in 1982 and the building fell into disrepair since nuns using it as a rest home moved out a few years ago. [Source: Lancashire Evening Post, April 16, 2013]

I searched for a while for an image of Saint George (that I liked). I found the one above. It is from an orphanage and hospital that is falling apart, as the linked article relates. More work for this young prince.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Auster/Asrat Interaction: On Beauty

Larry Auster took time to write this short post on February 21, 2013, when he was ill.

THE ETERNAL WORTH AND EXAMPLE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON

Two days before his birthday, Kidist Paulos Asrat has re-posted a 2004 entry of mine on the character and face of George Washington. She entitles it “Larry Auster and Reclaiming Beauty.”

Below is my full post, which I posted on February 20, 2013 at Reclaiming Beauty, and which is also at View From the Right).


Lawrence Auster at work on View From the Right

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Larry Auster and Reclaiming Beauty
Although Larry Auster didn't directly write about beauty, his work is infused with the desire to bring beauty back into our world.

One of the most memorable posts he did on art (and beauty) was his reaction to a bust of George Washington. The image of the bust he has posted is huge and takes up the whole screen, so that we, like him, can have as close a look at it as possible.

Here is his post, published at VFR on February 20th, 2004 (nine years ago today!), titled Washington's Birthday:

Happy Birthday, G. Washington! This Sunday we celebrate the 272nd birthday of the man who is justly known—though so few have an adequate understanding why—as the Father of our Country.

That the Father of the United States of America was one of the greatest men who ever lived, who impressed on this country his character, his prudence and far-seeing political wisdom, his extraordinary personal force modulated by his mildness and self-control, his dedication to classical ideals of honor and patriotism combined with his future-oriented grasp of an expanding America, his profoundly felt sense of America’s reliance on the protection and guidance of Divine Providence (and not just Providence, but Jesus Christ, as can be seen in his 1789 proclamation of a national day of thanksgiving), and his deeply experienced vision of the national Union, is something that we are still receiving the benefits of to this day, in myriad and incalculable ways, even in the midst of our current decadence, and even if we ourselves don’t know it and don’t care.

We are so accustomed to the Gilbert Stuart portraits, painted in Washington’s sixties when he was already showing premature signs of age (though his firmness of character was not diminished), that it can be a shock to see a more vital Washington. Here is a marvelously life-like image of the then 53-year-old Washington rarely seen by Americans, one of the heads sculpted by Jean Antoine Houdon from the life mask he cast when he visited Mount Vernon in 1785, now at the Museum of the Louvre in Paris. Houdon told a friend he was in awe of “the majesty and grandeur of Washington’s form and features.” One has the same awe at Houdon’s genius; it is to be doubted that any photograph could make us feel that we are as close to the living man as he really was:



Here is another head made by Houdon from the same life-mask, enabling us to look directly into Washington’s face as though he were standing before us:

In the moving final verse of Byron’s “Ode to Napolean Bonaparte,” the poet turns away in disgust from that vain French tyrant and looks westward to find a man who embodies true political virtue:

Where may the wearied eye repose
When gazing on the Great;
Where neither guilty glory glows,
Nor despicable state?
Yes, one—the first—the last—the best,
The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeath’d the name of Washington,
To make men blush there was but one!

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Auster/Asrat Interaction: Saving the West and Other Urgent Matters

In my last post, I wrote of my first posted interaction in November 6, 2008 with Larry Auster's View From the Right. I did a search at VFR's site to see if I was correct, and in fact, my first posted comment was as an anonymous KPA, in the article Minority Female Republicans For Diversity, written on May 9th, 2006. That is a couple of years earlier than what I thought.

Here is what I wrote in 2006 as KPA, commenting on the article:

KPA writes:

Mr. Auster,

I admire your fairness and generosity towards all types of people. Those who may have called you racist are using the term erroneously. Racial pride does not equal racist.

I had noticed your staunch support for Hirsi Ali, when I could see months before that she had no intention to really help the Netherlands, but was focused on her own status as female, Muslim (and I suppose black too).

Malkin seems also intent on vociferously asserting herself. I always find that such passionate self-justification (maybe to feel a part of the rest) is a symptom of insecurity and dare I say, inferiority.

Perhaps all these non-white women need to do is to have a certain humility. To agree and accept the fact that America was founded by other white nations. That a Philippino or a West African population could never have created what the British did.

And if that becomes too difficult, then stay away from public life, rather than eventually become hypocrites.

Although, one final thing that I may add. Race is war in a sense. Each one wants supremacy over the other. Rice may very well envision a land full of powerful blacks, and Malkin may lapse at times into a vision of a world of powerful browns.

Well, we certainly are headed for interesting times!

I commented on this interaction, again at VFR, which I wrote on June 19, 2012:

It was fun to go through your search engine to find my first emails to you. I used my initials KPA then, and I think I identified myself as being from Canada since the beginning.

From what I can find, my first email to you was on May 9, 2006. The thread was on how nonwhites, even the “conservative” ones, push for the advancement of nonwhites at the expense of whites, as well as on Hirsi Ali, Islam, Western culture, gender, and what I thought were race “wars.” Quite a post! And I declared myself your ally!

My second comment, in the entry, “The enemy is not jihad,” deals with more pressing and tangible material, namely: Islam’s incursions into Western society, from cultural strongholds to actual preparations for jihad. This was in September 2006. I am surprised that I understood (I think) the problem so well so far back, when few people were talking or writing about the reality of Islam.

It is interesting that Laura Wood, in her first email to you, was also concerned about religion (or the loss of Christianity).

It seems that spiritual and religious matters are at the forefront of the West’s problems, and the decline of religion makes it easier to dismantle the civilization.

Larry added the article I had written for VFR, Christian Tolerence, Islamic Jihad:

Also see the article Kidist wrote for VFR in 2007 (when she still was ID’d as “KPA”), in which she told how the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia’s tolerance toward its Muslim minority in the 16th century enabled the Muslims to launch a jihad.

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Addendum: The View From the Right search engine, in the right margin of the VFR website provides shortcuts to the posted articles.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Auster/Asrat Interaction And Saving the West

Below is my first posted interaction with Larry Auster, at View From the Right. The full discussion can be viewed here (with comments by other View From the Right readers).

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Kidist Paulos Asrat, a woman of Ethiopian origin who has spent most of her life in the West, writes:

In the entry on Proposition 8 being approved in California with minority votes, you wrote:

Warning to naive conservatives: this does not mean that we can depend on “socially conservative” minorities to save our culture. We, the white majority, have to save our culture. Minority individuals may be of help, but the minority groups as a whole are on the left and will not be on our side.

You are right. I grew up mostly in England and France (that was the nature of the exile my family had to take to avoid the massacre of the Communist dictator). My best friends growing up were French and English (I have a great love for England—especially Kent, where I went to boarding school). I had very little to do with Ethiopians, except what we got at home. Very few Ethiopians went to England or France—most went to Canada or the U.S. Growing up there doesn’t necessarily make one a non-leftist, but I have an innate attachment to these countries, and of course the West (much more so than to Ethiopia.) My uniqueness was in our isolation (although I never felt isolated) from Ethiopian culture, something which those living in Canada or the U.S. never experienced.

So, now living in Canada, it is with great shock that I realized all my Ethiopian relatives (and there are many of them in Canada and in the U.S.) are decisively leftists, except maybe one. And that their attachment to Canada or the U.S. was purely opportunistic. And even their children who grew up here at some point will complain that this isn’t really their home, or that they are being discriminated against, or they believe in the leftist programs like subsidized housing (for all those poor immigrants), or they question the truth behind 9/11, or slide in the superiority of Muslim culture in discussions, or they have a lingering scorn for Western culture.

I said a few times, in quite large company, that the majority of Ethiopians should just go back, since they are so unhappy here and are basically recreating an “exiled Ethiopia” in the snow and the cold. It didn’t go very well. But it’s true, better in a country where you feel at home, even if it means a lower standard of life. Plus, just as these people suddenly picked up and came out West, some with nothing on their backs, how much easier is it to just pack up and go back now that many have prospered?

The big surprise is that the group that I was born into, the Amhara, were the leaders of Ethiopia throughout the centuries. Even now, although another group is running the country (a Tigre, also from the north), he has the Amhara running the government for him. So, the Amhara should instinctively know about leadership, and how countries are run by the strong and the able, and if a weak group comes along, how detrimental it is to the nation as a whole. In fact, the Amhara lived by this strict strategy for centuries. But a few in the 50s and 60s, after being “educated” and “liberalized” (mostly, ironically in the U.S.) decided that equality of tribes was the most important thing. Thus Ethiopian leftists were born. And then came the Communist dictator Mengistu Hailemariam in the 70s (himself an unknown hybrid).

You are right in that if such a strong and confident minority group cannot see through leftist groups, and in fact hides behind them and even joins them, then who will?

LA replies:

I was so impressed by your e-mail, so interested to hear these personal facts about your background. What a strange world we live in. Because of Communists taking over your country decades ago, you grew of age in England, and then ended up in Canada, where you found that your own relatives were on the left and hostile to the very country that had provided them refuge from those Communists. And you, an Ethiopian by birth, found yourself identifying with the countries that were really the only countries you knew, while your relatives absorbed, or perhaps brought with them, the typical leftist minority alienation against those countries.

How can we understand the disorder of human existence, without seeing that it is somehow a distortion of God’s order?

Kidist replies:

Yes, it is a little mystical.

But, I am actually an optimist by nature. I think part of my “mission,” although I am not making it part of my life’s plan, only putting it in where it is obviously asked for, is to tell my relatives that their best bet is their own country.

I also think, after a long study of Ethiopian art and culture (as an outsider!!) that the Amhara have always identified with Western culture—I see this in the religious art, in the development of the alphabet, in the aesthetics of the people, in the great Emperor Haile Selassie, in the political and social organization of the Amhara (always thwarted by more aggressive southern tribes and envious northern ones), and even in the very leftism that the Amhara elite adopted! There is something in the “brain chemistry” that understands Western culture and thought. So I would say that the Amhara are the most Western of the Africans. So my association isn’t so strange, I think.

Finally, I think in a strange way I also bring these insights, more intuitive than intellectual at the moment, to the West. I can see how a confident country gets destroyed (almost) because of the false gods of leftism, how Islam can (almost) destroy a country unwilling to see its evil, how it takes a long time for people to realize their deathly (almost) mistakes. I have a lot of faith in the Amhara. I have a lot of faith in the West as well.

Plus I love the West. I have studied under it—the music, the art, not just studied them but practiced them as well. I am a part of it. I have never met an immigrant who has passed my rigorous criteria for being part of the West. It is a tough call, and your skepticism about true minority support of Western civilization is well-founded.

Kidist writes:

As I re-read my last email to you, where I wrote: “I think part of my ‘mission,’ although I am not making it part of my life’s plan, only putting it where it is obviously asked for, is to tell my relatives that their best bet is their own country,” it sounds as if I’m evading the issue.

Not at all. Even a quiet word of “Well, there is always going back” resonates, as shown by feedback I get months later. Also, I am not going to hold slogans saying, “Go back home,” but will consistently and continuously repeat my position in social and casual environments. Also, my general behavior and interpretation of things shows people my position. To be big-hearted about it, I just think that minority immigrants (and their off-spring) will be happier where they came from. I can see generations of discontent, bitter people otherwise. So, I’m saying this for THEIR benefit.

Finally, I am actually much more vocal about immigration, which is probably the more controlable factor.

LA replies:

I thank you again for this contribution to our discussion, and I want to add something. What is it that made it possible for you to see clearly this important truth about most non-Western immigrants’ lack of fit in the West—this truth that most contemporary white Westerners do not see? It is that for you, the West is not an abstraction. It’s not an idea of freedom. It’s an actual cultural tradition and way of being, which you yourself loved and chose to join. Furthermore, it’s not just the West that you see in real, concrete terms, but the cultures of the immigrants. They also are not abstractions but real people with real cultures and real ways of being. Therefore you understand that these two cultural substances, the West and the respective immigrant cultures, are distinct from each other and cannot happily co-exist in the same society.

Westerners cannot see this basic, obvious truth, because the modern Western mind only allows for universalist abstractions. In the name of the “equal dignity of all human beings,” liberalism strips away our actual humanity.

Kidist replies:

You say:

It is that for you, the West is not an abstraction. It’s not an idea of freedom. It’s an actual cultural tradition and way of being, which you yourself loved and chose to join. Furthermore, it’s not just the West that you see in real, concrete terms, but the cultures of the immigrants. They also are not abstractions but real people with real cultures and real ways of being.

That’s exactly right. Why is it so hard to see that? :-)

Sage McLaughlin writes:

I’d be gilding the lily by adding anything to your fascinating discussion with Kidist. I just thought you should hear that it is edifying reading, and illustrates why VFR is a treasure (if I may be so, um, sycophantic…).

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Obama's Martin Luther King Day Speech

Obama in front of the Lincoln Memorial, presenting his speech for the
50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's march on Washington, on August 28, 2013

I'm posting below excerpts from Obama's "I have a dream" speech which he gave on the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King's march on Washington. The event was commemorated at the "Let Freedom Ring" ceremony, on August 28, the title being a quote quote from King's speech.

The event took place at the Lincoln Memorial. Obama chose that location since it is where Martin Luther King also presented his "I have a dream" speech in 1963.

I waded through Google images and a sixteen minute video of King giving his speech, and could find no images of him standing in front of the memorial.

But, while viewing the video, I can come upon white-capped men on the stage with King. Below is a long shot of him at the memorial (a screen-shot from the video), surrounded by the men wearing the white caps.



It looks like the men are wearing Gandhi caps, I suppose signifying the "non-violence" mantra that Gandhi initiated to activate social change, and which King said he followed.



The image above is from the online Christianity Today, in a January 21, 2013 article titled: Why I Changed My Mind About Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' Speech.

Audrey Ruth comments on the white-capped men shown in the article:

August 29, 2013: There's not just one man in a white hat behind MLK in that pic -- there are a lot of them. The prevailing wisdom is that MLK was inspired by Gandhi above all. He did quote some scripture, but, as noted below, He did not believe that Jesus was/is Lord. He had some Muslim friends too, including Malcolm X. The bottom line, though, is that if any white preacher is immoral, he is deemed unworthy, period. He's not given a chance by the public to repent and be restored to the Lord. But people seem to give black preachers a pass on such things. I've noticed this through the years and wonder why this is so. I also noticed that not one black conservative leader was at the MLK memorial yesterday, yet he said he wanted people to be judged by their character, period. It doesn't look like that day will come anytime soon.

Here is are forum participants commenting on the Gandhi caps:

okay, so they are Ghandi caps. But that leads to my next question: what's up with Ghandi caps in America?

Obviously, Martin Luther King proudly associated himself with Ghandi's movement and its messsage of non-violence. But had the Ghandi cap become a popular symbol in America of 1963? Or was it pretty much limited to this one demonstration, and then faded away?

When I think of the famous historical symbols of the civil rights movement, I don't think of Ghandi caps. If I had been an average American watching the news that night in 1963 --would I have recognized the caps as a political statement? or as having any meaning at all?

One other point, this time on Obama's choice of his speech venue: Wouldn't it have been more meaningful to have held it in front of the Martin Luther King statue, and pass the torch on to King, rather than use other symbolic references to him?



There is ample space for a large crowd in front of the MLK statue, and some kind of platform could have been built for the speech makers.

I wonder if the statue is aesthetically unappealing to the event organizers, and deterred Obama and his organizing crew from setting the speech's stage before it?

Lawrence Auster wrote in 2011:

I’ve said the statue looks like an Oriental despot. But it’s more than that. It looks like a statue from one of the ancient cosmological empires, in which the pharoah, the god-king, personally embodies the all-ruling forces of the cosmos. Specifically, King’s hostile posture and facial expression are reminiscent of the ferocious statues of the kings of Assyria, that empire that crushed every nation it conquered until it was conquered and crushed itself.

Here are excerpts from Obama's August 28, 2013 "I have a dream" speech:

Because they marched [on August 28, 1963], America became more free and more fair, not just for African-Americans but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans, for Catholics, Jews and Muslims, for gays, for Americans with disabilities.

[...]

To dismiss the magnitude of this progress, to suggest, as some sometimes do, that little has changed -- that dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years.

[...]

But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete. The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own. To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency. Whether it's by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all in the criminal justice system and not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails it requires vigilance.

[...]

Yes, there have been examples of success within black America that would have been unimaginable a half-century ago. But as has already been noted, black unemployment has remained almost twice as high as white employment (sic), Latino unemployment close behind. The gap in wealth between races has not lessened, it's grown.

[T]he position of all working Americans, regardless of color, has eroded, making the dream Dr. King described even more elusive.

[...]

And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support, as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself. All of that history is how progress stalled. That's how hope was diverted. It's how our country remained divided.

[...]

[W]e can stand together for good jobs and just wages. With that courage, we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on earth for every person. (Applause.) With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child, from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit and prepares them for the world that awaits them. (Applause.) With that courage, we can feed the hungry and house the homeless and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and promise.

[...]

And that's the lesson of our past, that's the promise of tomorrow, that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.

Obama is very clever.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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The Metastasy of Wickedness

Left: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
Syndics of the Draper's Guild
1661
75.4 in x 109.8 in
Oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Right: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
Self-portrait
1659
Oil on canvas
33.3 in x 26 in
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

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The Metastasy of Wickedness
By: Kristor
The Orthosphere
April 29, 2013


The basic operation of every society is maintaining its essential order – the order that makes it the society that it is – in the face of adversity. It is the work of tradition: of transferring to rising generations the essential order of their forefathers, amended at the margin, or accidentally, so as to cope with changes in the environment.

This interminable project of social reproduction requires practical wisdom. And practical wisdom is possible only to the virtuous man, and then only to the extent of his virtue. Societies live or die, then, depending upon their preponderant degree of virtue. This is just as true for societies of multi-celled organisms – i.e., for men themselves – as it is for societies of men. It is true for any social organism: for the family, for the tribe, clan or people, for the church, for the guild or business enterprise, for the town or for the nation.

Thus the basic task of social existence, the quotidian moral housekeeping that is the sine qua non of successful social life, is the attainment and maintenance of virtue. The first and most basic product of society then, is righteousness. All other economic production is founded upon it. Worldly success – survival, vigor, prosperity, strength – is the fruit of practical wisdom, of applied virtue. Prosperity, then, is a fairly good indication of virtue.

There are to be sure in this Fallen world many ways to get rich by wickedness. Thus the fact that a man is rich is no sure indication that he is mostly righteous. But even ill-gotten wealth, such as that of the thief or gangster, is the product of a kind of virtue – a corrupted and ill-directed excellence, yes, but an excellence nonetheless (the competition among gangsters is keen, and ruthless; only the best survive). Likewise for the wealth of the corrupt executive or politician. The excellence of these sorts of men lies in their ability to game the system: to exploit the niches created by defects of the social order.

Such men are always with us. And indeed, they are not altogether useless, or they would never have succeeded at what they do. The corrupt politician succeeds by pleasing his constituents and his customers; the thief succeeds by pleasing his fences with the goods he offers; the Mafioso succeeds by pleasing the customers of his drug distribution system. The social utility of such men derives quite directly from their gaming of the system. In effect, their exploitation of defects in the system design corrects for those defects, or at least compensates for them.[1] Their gaming activities are similar in some ways to arbitrage. Like the arbitrageur, the wicked exploiter restores some equilibrium or other, and compensates for a defect of society.[2]

Can the system be gamed? It will be. Indeed, it ought to be.

Sins are corrupted virtues. So long as society is so ordered as to promote or encourage or reward vice, there will be vice. The control of vice and the promotion of virtue therefore depends, not on the elimination of the vicious – who are, after all, only responding rationally (if amorally) to the vicious environment in which they find themselves, and who if eliminated will be replaced – but of the weakness and perversity of the system itself.

There is then ever a need for systemic social reform. And like the requirement that a society learn to adapt to changes in its environment, the need for social reform is permanent. The first is analogous to eating, the second to sleeping. The work of social reform is interminable, for most innovations fail – fail to work as intended, or even worsen the situation. Even with reforms that succeed at their ostensible goal, there is a very good probability that they will create new and unanticipated system defects in their own right, new niches for new sorts of viciousness.

Utopian idealists overlook this difficulty. The utopian temptation is to the notion that we can get everything right. The essence of conservatism lies in the recognition that we never ever will.

That social reform is a hazardous undertaking does not mean that we ought therefore to be afraid of it. Indeed, timorousness with respect to correction of social defects is a recipe for social death. To death, there is at any time no alternative but to try to do better. We ought therefore rather as reformers to be careful, prudent, deliberate, judicious, and sagacious. I.e., practically virtuous.

Above all, we must be honest. Social defects generally arise due to noise of some sort, somewhere in the system. Noise misleads people about the true state of affairs, and so distorts their judgements, impoverishing them. So long as it continues, it prevents them from learning: from correcting their understanding, and making the commensurate tiny marginal adjustments in their own lives that could repair those distortions of judgement, and stop the losses they generated. It is just such individual adjustments that, as integrated across the whole culture, can organically correct the systemic defects that produced the noise in the first place. If you want a prosperous, happy society, you need first a proper understanding of the weaknesses that prevent it. This is why humans spend so much time talking to each other about what is happening, and why, and what ought to be done about it.

Dishonesty, then, or lack of candor, cannot but increase the noise to signal ratio. It’s no good to pretend that a problem is not a problem (e.g., “Muslim immigration is just fine.”), or to present a bug as a feature (e.g., “homosexuality is natural and good.”). If the Emperor is naked, we are obliged to notice the fact, and inform each other about it. Likewise it’s no good to cry wolf about a problem that is not really there (e.g., “Not everyone is equally talented, beautiful, rich, prestigious, and famous: it’s not fair!”).

Unfortunately, even when our understanding of the source of a problem is accurate, our first impulse – whether amending our own habits, or those of our polis – is to force a correction in the outputs of the system, without correcting the distortion in the inputs that generated the loss of output value we have noticed as problematic. We treat the symptom, rather than the disease; so the treatment of symptoms generated by a chronic disease becomes itself chronic, along with its side effects, each of which calls out in turn for additional chronic compensations. Does the unregulated steam engine whirl about so fast that it flies apart? Our first thought is to install a brake that engages at a threshold RPM. But this eventually threatens to result in an explosion of the boiler, so some additional measure must taken as well – perhaps stationing an operator at the engine, who can throttle it back before the brake engages. The operator has to be hired, trained, paid, supervised; and so forth.

Given the danger that any reform is likely to create new problems, what, then, ought to be the basic form of social reforms, the default option? This: the identification of the source of the noise that has led to a loss of value, and the correction of the defect in the signaling system. The basic question should be, “where are the feedback circuits broken or incomplete, and how may they be restored or completed without breaking other circuits?” An economist would characterize this procedure as the perfection of the market, as the correction of its failures – to identify the real costs that market signals are not properly accounting for, and to improve price discovery procedures so that they do. Returning to the analogy of the steam engine, the reduction of noise, or equivalently the increase in the information accounted for by the system, would recommend the installation of a governor, that would reduce the fuel supply automatically as RPMs approached the critical threshold.

As things now stand, the people charged with the reformation of society – chiefly our legislators, but by extension everyone who participates in politics, from executives and bureaucrats to lobbyists and electors, both the regulators and the regulated, and especially the media – are rewarded for increasing the noise of our social system. Where there is a problem, especially of the sort caused by the brakes they have already installed, they are encouraged to apply further brakes to the brakes, and brakes to the brakes to the brakes, and so on ad infinitum. This is why our code of laws has metastasized, so that laws proliferate without let or hindrance, and so that they more and more pervade every aspect of our lives, no matter how humble.

The system design defect that generates this sort of runaway growth lies in the fact that there is no feedback from the success or failure of social policy to the formation thereof. The social costs of political imprudence and the social benefits of political prudence are likewise buffered, muddled, and masked. Put differently, vice is not discouraged efficaciously, nor is virtue reliably rewarded. Indeed, the basic feedback circuit of a democracy characterized by universal suffrage is positive, a vicious cycle: the electorate is strongly motivated to vote themselves more benefits and lower taxes, more liberty to act out with fewer limits or constraints, or costs, for doing so. The more people see they can get from the state, the more they vote to get from the state. Nothing signals to them that they are demanding too much, that they are eating cultural seed corn. In the circumstances, any other behavior on their part would be irrational. So the bankruptcy of the system – economic, moral, and intellectual – is hardwired in.

As that bankruptcy approaches, the universal franchise makes of every man a thief. By rewarding political imprudence, it vitiates prudence in every other domain of life. It forces every citizen into daily combat in a war of each social atom against all others. It rewards gluttony and penalizes discipline, deferral of gratification, and every sort of capital investment, from savings to charitable or familiar altruism. It reduces all social intercourse to a system of explicit economic exchange. It saps authority of all sorts, especially doctrinal or philosophical authority: no doctrine is permitted to gain sway over the immediate pushes and pulls of the next few minutes. Thus it renders any transcendence of perspective irrational (this is why they call us fundamentalists “crazy”).

Because in a demos of gluttons where all values are rapidly inflating it is sensible only to grab as much as one can get and immediately devour it, the universal franchise tends rapidly toward the destruction of love and the triumph of nihilism and despair. In the limit, it promotes a culture that seeks in each man the death of all others. Its apotheosis is the Culture of Death, in which living children – the future of the species – are killed on account of the short term costs they impose upon parents.

This is Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons, writ nationally large, and deep as Hell.

But what if the current positive feedback circuit could be re-wired so that it was a negative feedback circuit, like that of the steam engine and its governor? What if the penalties for vicious and imprudent political decisions were immediate and severe, while the rewards for virtuous, prudent political decisions were both explicit and compelling?

I’ll address those questions in a subsequent post.

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[1] Such men are generally uninterested in the systemic correction of the defects in the social system that have opened the economic niches from which they gain their livelihood. Indeed, their interests lie in the protection of their niches, and thus in the maintenance and proliferation of social defects. That interest in the increase of preponderant wickedness among their fellows (so as to expand the size of the markets into which they can sell) is the primary reason they are considered enemies of society, even though they are providing products and services that their customers value. An acquaintance who is a professional gambler in Las Vegas tells me that the Mob keeps prostitution illegal in that county (it is perfectly legal in most of the sparsely populated counties of Nevada) so that they can continue to control the industry in its densest market, thus keeping the prices and profit margins high where it matters most.

Likewise, the liberals who make a living on race-baiting or administering affirmative action programs have no interest in actually solving the problems to whose amelioration they have ostensibly committed their careers. Should a systemic amelioration arise organically – as tends to happen with adaptive cooperative systems with distributed intelligent control – they may be relied upon to move the goalposts.

[2] I leave the connection between wicked gaming of the system and Game to the reader. I’m not sure that they are the same sort of thing, but it might be interesting to think about. As there are wicked exploiters, so there are virtuous exploiters, such as the arbitrageur who is a fair trader. So are there likewise both wicked and righteous Gamers?

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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