The Philosopher Justice

 Around the world, one of the most common stories we tell are stories about animals who have human characteristics and speak languages like humans. Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books are a great example of this tradition. We love to anthropomorphize, which is to project human characteristics onto animals, machines, and even inert objects like chess pieces. But in our world, the human world,we know the rules are different. In our world, “Rules rule.” In the animal world dominance rules, because their world is strictly based on the biological inheritance of acquired traits, and acquired traits are the ones that are passed on by successful reproducers.  Non-human animals act mostly by instinct.  They don’t share rules, they don’t teach rules, they don’t follow rules, and they don’t enforce rules. Any so-called exceptions to this usually involve humans laboriously teaching animals some simple rules such as a sign language. Can the same be said for any  animal in the absence of human interve

We have a yard that gently slopes down from our little yellow house. The yard is about thirty by thirty feet.  It is surrounded on three sides by a six foot tall cedar board fence.   Near one corner, is a pathetic vertically-challenged compost heap.  In the other corner there is a scruffy spruce that we had topped off a couple of years ago.  Beside the spruce, at the very back of the yard stands a tall, slender aspen,  and elsewhere in the yard there is a plum tree, and a siberian pear tree.  In the middle is a shaggy uneven lawn with a couple of piles of dead brush.  Multiple types of berry bush form most of the  perimeter.  Is our yard a system?  If we define “system”  as, “a way of doing things”,  then it is.  We have a way of doing things in our yard, which could be summarized as professional-level procrastination.   (Sorry for the big words here.)  The yard is bounded by a wood house and a wood fence.  Our way of doing things in our yard doesn’t spill out into the neighbouring y

The Universe is the first and oldest system .  All other systems are contained within it and subject to its  universal framework, bound by the forces of gravity and electromagnetic energy. What are Systems?  Let’s call them: “ways of doing things.”  At the end of the seventeenth Century Isaac Newton showed, in his derivation of the laws of motion, that gravitational force impacts the motion of all physical objects. At the beginning of the twentieth Century Albert Einstein, in his theories of Special and General Relativity, showed how the dual forces of electromagnetic energy and gravity determine the very geometry of space and time. The force of gravity and the speed of light define the boundary of the Universe.     Outside the Universe there would be no energy, no movement, and no possible development.   Everything is either a system or a part of a system, starting with and contained within the Universe. All systems do things.  Doing things takes energy, so all s

I have an ongoing joke with my wife Candace about my “system”.  It’s the way I like to heat the rooms of our little  house in the winter, and it involves turning in-room heaters on or off and opening or closing certain doors at various strategic times. Candace smiles at the arcaneness of my “system”.  Here, where I am  referring to my “system,”  I mean my "way of doing things”. We can call the local weather a "system" in another way.  It is certainly a regular way of doing things, but, unlike my opening and closing doors,  it is not a goal-directed process.  It is a natural, self-organized, physical process that begins in the Pacific Ocean and sweeps across parts of North America, eventually dissipating over the Atlantic.   There are many other regional weather systems around the Earth, and these together make up an evolving Global Climate System that is presently warming, but that  last wrapped most of the Northern Hemisphere in ice sixty thousand years ago and

Machines are a kind of human tool that uses energy to perform a pre-designed activity. Machines are built, maintained and have evolved always within the care and guidance of human hands. Simple tools like a hammer require the human body to apply the energy, but many machines run by themselves with the assistance of some power source. A machine like a computer, can execute a human command to fetch or manipulate information all on its own. Machines are a wholly new phenomenon. They did not exist before humans existed. That’s why it is an error to conceptualize living things as machines, as was done by Descartes. Descartes was the first modern philosopher. He framed the famous body-mind dichotomy for the modern era. Machines don’t have instincts. They require human purpose and guidance in order to survive over time. If you look around at nature, it does not require human purpose and guidance. It’s parts are self organized. The Earth does not require our help to orbit the Sun. We

There are two basic ways to see things: as simple issues with only two ways to see them or as complex issues that deserve our attention and understanding. Simple sees things only in black and white and avoids colours and shades of grey. Simple is good to grab people’s attention but it doesn’t sustain it. Simple thinks there’s only two choices when there are many.Too much simplification leads to polarization as well as to prejudice and hatred, and ultimately to social fragmentation and war. Simple thinks that the easiest way to solve problems is to get rid of people. Joseph Stalin, one of the worst mass murderers in history, said: “No people, no problems.” You can see that same kind of frightening stupidity in racist rants about undesirables, and illegal immigrants. You can also see it in people who say the earth would be better off without humans. Life is simple if you just consider it to be about birth, marriage, and having children. But it’s complex if you consider that every

When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the the rest of us as his servants or inferiors.  We can’t accept this.  We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody.  So we always speak of his meat as worthless.  In this way we cool his heart and make him gentle.  - !Kung Healer ,  quoted by Boehm   1999   from Lee, The !Kung San .                                                  VS Talent and ability create inequality…. to rectify this supposed injustice, we are told to sacrifice the able for the unable.  Egalitarianism demands the punishment and envy of anyone who is better than someone else at anything.  We must tear down the competent and strong - raze them to the level of the incompetent and weak…      - Gary Hull (Ayn Rand Institute)   Ayn Rand was an American intellectual, born in Russia, who has been very influential in the U.S. conservative, Republican and libertarian circl

Perhaps the first sound we ever hear is our mother's heartbeat, and the last thing we hear may be our own.  The heartbeat's tempo, regularity, and  its steady repetition is what sets the pace for all of the many things that we do in our lives.  That beat becomes slow and steady when we fall asleep, but in times of stress the heart beats faster to facilitate the incredible bursts of energy that may be required to get us out of danger. Analogous to  the way that the heart pumps blood to the muscles and makes action possible, we can say that the drum beat drives the music forward.  The softer, the quieter the drums, the more laid back the music.  The louder and more insistent the drums the higher the energy  becomes.   The drums and percussion are the instruments most felt by the entire body.  We instinctively move to the beat of a drum, we can't help it.      But the heart, together with all the other organs in the body, is a team player.  So too, the drums.  In dru