Good and Evil

For some reason, I've been giving a fair amount of thought to the problem of good and evil. Not why they exist, but rather are there any absolutes when talking about good and evil, or are they just cultural constructs. We need to start with biology and evolution. To talk about good or evil in the context of an extinct species strikes me a silly at best - the concepts are irrelevant when the entity acting does not exist. So, maintaining survival is a necessary condition to even discuss good and evil. But it is a mistake to just focus upon individual survival. The indications from biology and evolution are that species survival is the true goal, so good will generally result from actions that improve species survival, while evil will generally decrease that chances for species survival. Once that standard is accepted, there are absolute goods and absolute evils that can be defined for a species. Since our species is Homo sapiens, let's discuss what those absolutes might be. They should be things that seem obvious, in fact, so obvious that they are hard to define, or even think of. The first one I could think of is that humans do not eat their own young. This is an absolute evil for the human species because of the pattern of reproduction human have - relatively few children, with long dependencies upon parents. Note this would not be an evil for a species with a different pattern. Guppies, for example, happily eat their own young, but they have relatively many young and basically no dependency upon their parents. What is good or evil for guppies many not represent what is good or evil for humans.

Origins of Political Order

I recently read "Origins of Political Order" by Fukuyama and was very impressed - and a little upset too - many of hte themes he presents are themes I've been playing with for several years in an attempt to understand why political system succeed or fail. "Origins" is certainly more convincing and helpful that Diamond's "Collapse", which I found - frankly - to be simplistic and written with an agenda in mind. "Origins" on the other hand, does an excellent job of integrating politics, power, biology, religion, and ideas into a reasonable picture of how historic political systems came to be. It does not address the current global political structures, since the analysis ends at about 1800. But he has promised a sequal to address development since that time.

While I found it to be a comfortable read, it isn't an easy read, and one compliant I have is that Fukuyama tends to be a little to free with some technical jargon and historic allusions that could use more definition and support.

If you are interested in what makes a political system durable, and what factors historically weakened political systems, I strongly recommend this book.

Fishing again!

Another great day. A friend of mine has access to a private reach of the upper Arkansas River, near Leadville, and we spent the morning fishing it. 8 kept (a limit for both of us). They were caught a variety of flies, including copper johns, matuka streamers, tarantulas,and pheasant tails. Nice variety of fish, including browns, brookies, and one cuttthroat. Sizes were really nice, ranging from 9 inches to 14. This is the second fishing trip in one week - If I can keep this up, I might feel like I'm retired!

Fishing

I love to fish and had a great day on the south fork of the South Platte yesterday. I started with a #12 wooley bugger, then used a #10 elk hair caddis with a #16 brazzie dropped, and then switched to a #12 bead headed pheasant tail dropper. Got three good strikes on the wooley bugger and landed a nice 14 inch rainbow. The brazzie got me nothing, but the pheasant tail got me about 6 8 inch browns. And best of all, I was the only person fishing I saw all morning! It was a great day fishing!

Treasure Creed

Over the last several years, I've been playing with the idea of trying to state my "creed" for life is a fairly simple way. This is where I am now with that effort:

If you have a job,
Do it.
If you need to know something,
Learn it.
Your family is special,
Honor it.
Your country is special,
Defend it.
You are special,
Take care of yourself.
Keep a smile on your face.

This stuff seems so self evident, that, to me, it warrents no discussion. But I'm sure others would say something entirely different. For example, the whole question of God and religion is absent - and to many people, that is the first thing they would mention. It's interesting that the first thing I mention is work ("a job"). Of course, that's also reflected in my favorite Bible verse - Ecclesiastes 3:13 "That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God." A satisfactory life implies satisfaction in some action - and a (near) universal action is work - something you have to do whether you want to or not.

War

I find myself more and more displeased with President Obama for the military action in Libya. I have enough idealistic Wilsonian to understand the motives, but initiating this action without Congressional authority certainly violated the spirit - if not the letter - of the Constitution. I realise that sometimes military decisions need to be made on short notice, and that, as commander in chief, the President has to be able to act on short notice.

But, and it's a critical but to me, Congressional approval should be obtained as soon as reasonable to continue the action. And approval is what is needed, not "consultation", which is all this administration has offered. The Constitution does not require "consultation" before going to war, but states that only Congress can "declare war". And playing games with the difference between "declaring war" and initiating some other kind of active military action is just Orwellian.

That all being said, when should the United States be willing to initiate a "war of choice (i.e., a war where we or one of our treaty allies are not attacked or subject to immanent attack)? I can see several conditions that should be met.

First, that target of the action must be preforming soem action that justifies military action. So a trade disagreement would not typically be a "casus belli".

Second, there is some clear vital, or at least important, interest of the Uited States involved. Military action to stop the massacres in Rwanda would be difficult to justify under this condition.

Third, a viable political case can be made. This is, to me, the main reason we didn't take more aggressive military action in response to North Vietnam's violation of the treaty removing US forces from South Vietnam.

And, fourth, but certainly not last, it is a situation where U.S. military power can be effetively applied at a cost in time and resources that is reasonable, given the 1st and 2nd conditions. Again, Rwanda is a situation where this condition would be hard to meed.

Electricity

The United States has been blessed with readily available electric power for the last 50 years, at least. This - to me - is one of the great accomplishments of the United States (as well as other 1st world countries). One of my objections to the alternative power sources suggested to combate climtae change (wind and solar - but especially wind) has been their unreliability. Society must either do without power when conditions are not right for production (clouds or no wind) or maintain a second complete power system to "pick up the slack" in those conditions. Here is an intersting little aritcle form a British newspaper where the head of British Power basically says that people will just have to do without (http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Doc3.pdf).

But isn't htat a failure of government? To develop a society based upon accessable electric power, and then to limit it strikes me as a socially unviable model. And in a Democratic system, it seems unlikely that political parites that suppoet such a position will survive.