Looking around the world, there are plainly societies which manage their citizens’ lives well with good rules and societies which manage their citizens’ lives badly with bad rules. Good rules reward exchange and specialization; bad rules reward confiscation and politicking. South and North Korea spring to mind. One is generally a fair and free place, … Read more
There is a single twitch of progress in biface hand-axe history: around 600,000 years ago, the design suddenly becomes a little more symmetrical. This coincides with the appearance o f a new species of hominid which replaces its ancestor throughout Eurasia and Africa. Called Homo heidelbergensis, this creature has a much bigger brain, possibly 25 … Read more
Clearly, big brains and language may be necessary for human beings to cope with a life of technological modernity. Clearly, human beings are very good at social learning, indeed compared with even chimpanzees humans are almost obsessively interested in faithful imitation. But big brains and imitation and language are not themselves the explanation of prosperity … Read more
Selected excerpts from Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World by Rene Girard. Fundamental Anthropology “The most we can do is to recognize as the one who produces symbolic forms, systems of signs, and who then confuses them with ‘reality’ itself, forgetting that in order to make reality meaningful he interposes an always particular … Read more
Tulip Mania is known as a primary example of a bubble. The Beginning of Tulip Mania It all started in Holland, in the seventeenth century. Years before (in 1593), a botany professor from Vienna brought to Leyden, a city in the Dutch province of South Holland, some unusual plants from Turkey. The Dutch were fascinated … Read more
The Selfish Gene by Dawkins is an ambitious project that seeks to explain how and why evolution selected for the behaviors, characteristics, and ideas that are now prevalent in any society. The gene is the basic unit of evolution. It is essential information that can exist for a very long time, which is why it … Read more
The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch was published in 1979. Lasch argues that the “me generation” that Tom Wolfe previously celebrated, was in fact, dysfunctional, empty, and worthy of contempt. He bases his argument on Sigmund Freud’s insights, who wrote an important paper on the subject called, On Narcissism. At first, Lasch points out … Read more
The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker argues that violence has declined with time. He does this by discussing the threats of violence one by one, going through what the statistical data shows us. Human malevolence is a constant threat to peace and prosperity, but while human beings do have an evil side, … Read more
So far, Pinker has argued that the history of human beings has been shaped by violence. He has also noted that violence has declined. There is nothing about human nature that is exclusively violent or peaceful. The environment that we occupy, either through our own innovations or by sheer accident, is what determines our movement … Read more
The Venezuelan politician Juan Pérez Alfonzo said, “Oil is the devil’s excrement.” A country can be cursed by natural resources because they concentrate power and wealth in the hands of whoever monopolizes them. Usually, this is a governing elite, but sometimes a regional warlord. Rather than foster networks of commerce, the leader’s only concern is … Read more