Entropy and Human Nature

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According to the laws of thermodynamics, all things devolve into chaos and disorder unless acted upon by an outside force. The same is true of human behavior. Unless we continue to preach, teach, expound, exhort, encourage, direct, correct, and recognize even the minor improvements, humans also devolve into their baser nature and act like every other animal. They will cheat, lie and steal to preserve their own. They believe that to the victor goes the spoils. They will kill their rivals to take mates, power, positions, shelters, or victuals. Everything devolves away from civilization unless civilized behavior persists. Civilized behavior starts with a moral and religious people. That's probably why America is on the decline, because "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". Default human belief holds the conventional view that if we don't act, everything will be destroyed. Well, that's true, but the actions they propose have a short sighted end game in mind, an end game that is only far enough away to get them reelected. In fact, that's what politics is- applied rhetoric, where people persuade people to agree, where the best arguer wins and not the best idea, because the person who argues best is declared the winner. well, history is replete with examples of persuasive arguments that failed- the Spanish Armada, the Third Reich, HD DVD, every single Crusade, the guillotine, ad infinitum. Almost every time we rush, we fail, or at least we get something other than what we intended. Desireable outcomes come from deliberate and consistent action. However, that's not human nature. Everyone is actually, if left to themself, concerned with their own advancement, the rest of the people be damned, in particular people they dont' know or like. No matter what we like to think of ourselves, each of us is human, and human beings seem to be selfish, indigent, lazy, dishonest and debauched. It is not war that never changes. It is human nature that never really seems to change.

Changing human behavior without changing human nature is like hacking at the leaves of a problem rather than the roots. Until we address the root of the problem and deal with the enmity inherent in the natural man, in instinctual behavior, hacking at the leaves will not gain us any ground. In fact, I remember from graduate school learning that many plants, when the leaves are cut, increase root growth, and so I think in many cases we are making it worse by only attacking the leaves while allowing the problem to be even more firmly rooted in our society. Why do liberals insist on superficial and superfluous activity on the leaves? It's easy to hack at the leaves and people can see your work. I dug a palm tree out the first year after I bought this house because it was growing so it would block access to the front door, and it was a pain. Seems like every time I cut a root, four more would appear to replace it. It took weeks to dig this palm tree out, and nobody even noticed until it was gone because I did it after work, in the dark, and only as much as I felt like it that summer until I was too tired and hot to continue. Politicians aren't in office long enough for the correct plans to bear fruit, so they do things to look busy knowing that most people equate action with achievement. You may not like the Democrat party, but nobody can argue that liberals are very good at getting what they want into play. Liberals act first and think about it later, forcing everyone else to play "catch us if you can".

Instead of teaching virtue and trying to solidify the family, liberals preach about laws and try to solidify government. The world works from the outside in, hoping, erroneously, that if they change behavior it will change nature. Well, it is a canard that doing begets being, but being almost always begets doing. Not everyone who does the right thing is a good person, but good people do the right thing. When Democrats rammed through Obamacare, they told us that we had to "pass the bill to find out what's in it" but when the GOP wanted to replace it, the Democrats cried foul that they didn't get to see it first. How can they possibly honestly protest the things they do when done to them by others? It's because they don't understand human nature- that people tend to do unto others as others do unto them. If liberals really wanted to change the world for the better, they would not pass laws that disavow access to raw materials. They would work at teaching the most crucial raw material (people) to be responsible, to be honest, true, chaste, benevolent, and then those same liberals would set the example. instead, liberals show us that they, like humans naturally do, are willing to do whatever it takes as long as it doesn't cost THEM anything. Then they point out the mote in another's eye to distract your gaze from the beam in their own. I do care about children, women, sick people, and the poor. It is a fallacious argument to claim that unless I agree with you that I must not care about them. IN fact, when you quickly jump to an emotional argument, I know that your logic and reasoning is weak or else you would continue to defend your position on its merits without such a reducto ad absurdium.

Chaos erupts from an inequity between human nature and behavior because we all have different subsets of information and because some of what we know isn't actually true. Knowing that even if everything you know is true that you may not know all the truth, liberals appeal to emotion without evidence, selling people on a reaction to information rather than conclusions based on actual evidence. Even when you present them with evidence, they discount it if it doesn't corroborate what they already happen to believe. When new information comes to light, they either disregard it or say "oops" and assume they have been forgiven and set about to try again. For them, it's ok to be only human, but I never get to use that argument. All too often they excoriate me for an inability to perfectly live a standard they refuse to even attempt. Ordinarily, it's considered insanity to try the same thing twice expecting different results, but they keep trying to build a socialist utopia, despite all the other tyrannies that ended in failure, insisting that THEY are special, and that THEY will succeed. Perhaps that's why liberals keep lying and why for them the ends always justify the means. They believe honestly that they will succeed where others failed, that what they believe is and of a right out to be the only desireable outcome. Well, each of us values different things, and even when we value the same things, often we value them for different reasons. What if I don't like the ends or I am hurt by them? It's only a win for me if the outcome is desireable to me. Since their beliefs are ideological, and inherently selfish, if they are satisfied, they erroneously conclude that it is by definition virtuous, even if obtained by immoral means, even if other people are hurt, because they won.

I really like the guy who writes BirdandHike.com, but today I saw on his website that he thinks that if you want to protect and preserve access to public lands you ought to vote democrat. This is an argument from ignorance. The mine at Anniversary Narrows is a lithium mine, and the demand for lithium is driven largely by liberal democrats who equate lithium batteries with environmental responsibility. That is incredibly incompetent. I have seen the earthen works at Anniversary Narrows and Silver Peak, both of which are lithium mines, and those mines like most mines are MESSY. Consider also the pollution associated with making a battery and then generating energy to store in that battery, and the "environmental" movement is at least as harmful as the alternative. However, since the people driving the cars aren't creating the pollution, they conclude because they do not see it that it must not exist. What? Liberals who drive hybrid vehicles must sleep well at night knowing that although their cars are also polluting and killing the environment the pollution is created by other people, probably those evil republican corporations that own the mines, and so it must be ok. This straw man dinner theater somehow leaves liberals clean as a whistle and ladles the blame fully onto the evil GOP. Let's not forget that Barack Obama (D-IL) was president when the mine reopened and that both Sandoval (R-NV) and his predecessor were liberal RINOs. Somehow, everyone associated with diminished access to the area is liberal, but the GOP becomes the scapegoat and takes ALL the blame.

Human nature must be overcome by consistent and intentional correct training, which is why parents, families, and marriage matter so much. Behavior is learned by example, and the examples people see teach them how the world really works. Most people are born innocent, and although many of them are taught correct behavior, since their parents, peers, and patrons practice contrary to their preaching, people learn that in order to get ahead, you break the rules. Eventually they learn that connections mean more than achievement, that people can and will be bought, and that "it's only a crime if you get caught". Since so many people seem to escape the negative consequences of their actions, they think that nothing matters and do whatever they like. Fortunately for me, I didn't notice the way the world really was until I reached high school because my parents endeavored to live what they taught, and it wasn't until my activities extended beyond my own household that I noticed the duplicity. With so many people born out of wedlock, raised without a parent or by a surrogate, and taught by the sophistry of man, even when mingled with scripture, it ensconces the notion that hypocrisy is normal, acceptable and laudable. People must be held accountable for their actions as well as the consequences thereof. Just because a thing is legal doesn't mean it is moral. Just because we can do a thing doesn't follow that we ought to.

People must learn to do what they ought to do and be held to the fire to do so whenever possible. We excuse too many people and blame too many others. Our best athletes, musicians, clinicians, and artisans rise to prominence because their coaches and mentors hold them to high expectations. There is a good reason why teachers matter so much, because people need to be taught the best way to do something rather than a way that happens to work. Most people are not the exception; most people are the rule, and you're not probably going to be lucky enough like a coworker of mine to go to the same bar every Friday night and be approached by an attractive woman who exalts you like a king. Family is the crucible of correct civilization, so when the family is faulty, formed incorrectly, or fractured, and when the parents abandon their obligations to the tutelage of other influences, people do not do what they ought, sometimes because they don't know what they ought to do. Entropy says that we end up sharing the least common denominator, so the further we are from ideal the further our behavior will be from ideal. This renders utopia impossible, because people who cannot conceive of or understand what utopia looks like cannot possibly be expected to build it.

Someone once said that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Indeed it is the sad disposition of almost all men that as soon as they obtain the least scintilla of power as it were they immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Most of this unruly and unrighteous behavior is about power- about establishing our dominance as a species and in a tribe of our own species. People are mean to people in order to get power- stealing, murdering, coveting, disobeying, backtalking, etc., are all parts of asserting dominance. It is concluded among our species because it is true among the others that the last man standing is in charge. So, they shout down opponents, attack their character, attack them with intent of bodily harm, in a bid to appear to be the best. They are proud without principle. Just because you are principle among a people does not follow that you are a principled person. Principles must be connected to actions. That is why I believe in Constitutional government and why I defy liberalism. Nothing convinced me more that liberalism was the philosophy of hell, the philosophy of chaos, as reading CS Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters". As I read those pages and then listen to liberal politicians prattle, it's as if I hear Screwtape, Wormwood, or Lucifer himself trying to persuade me that they can build on earth, which is fallen, the utopia that heaven alone can sustain. Chaos and disorder are normal. They are the rule unless your rulers are people of principle, people whose actions actually lead to the outcomes they claim. It is however human nature to do whatever it takes to get ahead, and that's how you know who the base among you truly are.

Genius and Debauchery

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One of our adjuncts talked with me about James F Watson of DNA Double Helix fame and gave me information I didn't already know. Since becoming a professor, I have defended Dr. Watson against spurious accusations of professional impropriety, but now I learned about the rest of his story and the unspoken reasons why Watson did and believes as he does. Bernie's major professor in graduate school was a classmate of Watson back in the 1950s who described Dr. Watson as a "veritable horndog" who would chase any woman any time for any reason. As we talked, I realized that many of the people we consider to be genius in their field were also debauched to the point of almost moral bankruptcy, which explains their concomitant ability to do whatever it took to succeed. In fact, isn't that who we usually consider to be elite- those willing to do whatever it takes? Along the way, everything else is important only for the moment it remains in focus, as these geniuses focus single-mindedly on the only thing that actually matters to them- whatever makes them great.

Michael Phelps

Like most athletes, Phelps got into drugs and women as a consequence of his catapult to stardom. However, he doesn't really care about any of that. What he really cares about is swimming. He wanted those medals. Everything else was coincidental and consequential to his athleticism. If you spent six hours every day swimming, you would probably also be as attractive and find yourself surrounded by beautiful women. Of course, none of them mean anything to him, which is why he didn't spend more than a single night with them and essentially regards them as immaterial strangers since more will come. If you swam that much, you would probably be ravenously hungry too, but Phelps apologized for smoking pot, not because he found it immoral, but because it put his athletic career and olympic prospects at risk. He quit something bad only because it threatened the only thing about which he actually cares.

Albert Einstein

Everyone knows the unkempt, frazzled-haired genius who described the behavior of matter and energy in the universe. What they may not know is that in describing our universe he destroyed his own. Albert had at least one son and one wife, both of whom he essentially abandoned in order to pursue science. Along the way, he also had a series of illicit affairs and fathered other children, but none of them really seem to mean anything either to him or the world. The state of chaos associated with his desk attests to the fact that he really didn't care about learning to tie his shoes, drive a car, cook, or clean up. Those things detracted too much from his scholastic research. He even had an escort to make sure that he didn't wander out into oncoming traffic, so focused was he on his "genius".

Franklin Roosevelt

Although largely deserving of gratitude for helping America roll back the Axis powers, a lot of the methods used in arriving thereat come under question regarding their morality and expediency. Many of you know that Korimatsu v. United States deals with the illegal incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent as dissidents. President Roosevelt was also a pathological liar who led America to believe that he was perfectly fine when in fact he was a cripple. What kind of an example is that for the handicapped in America- a man who would not confess his and excoriated others for theirs? He was also somehow a bully, who threatened judges to comply or be replaced in their Supreme Court seats until he bludgeoned them into compliance. Held up as a great humanist, it was his idea to develop and use the atomic bomb on our enemies. Imagine if he were a Democrat today! His target might be Trump Tower.

Rosalind Franklin

One of the reasons Watson was able to "steal" Franklin's work is because she was in a relationship at one point with James Watson. Her only interest was in X-ray diffraction, and so when Watson asked her associate Wilkins for access to the image, Wilkins complied. Franklin didn't care what they meant; she only seemed interested in creating them, which eventually lead to her death from exposure. She was marginalized by Watson who excluded her from credit for the Double Helix model, but to my knowledge she never officially protested. It was simply ancillary to her work creating images of things you could not otherwise visualize, and once the pictures were "taken" she seemed completely disinterested in their disposition.

Benjamin Franklin

Well known liar and womanizer, Franklin was never educated, but he convinced France that he was an American Doctor and inventor. True, he had a keen mind, but if you ask Thomas Jefferson, who has his own skeletons, Jefferson couldn't stand working with him because he would entertain the attention of every woman in France, married or not, and had incestual relationships at least allegedly with several. Franklin was incontinent in some ways, rarely exercised, ate decadently, and engaged in all sorts of immorality, then he helped write a Constitution fit for a "moral and ethical people". Paradoxical. I had more difficulty embracing him as a Founder and Framer than any other of the men of '76.

Mark Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg not only dropped out of college, but he became rich for creating a website meant to track who was currently having sex with whom. The entire premise behind Facebook as a part of Harvard life was to keep track of who was available to hook up for a fling. I guess so many people are driven by hormones that it caught on, grew, and somehow grew profitable. Now it's a means by which to become famous, albeit for a moment and albeit sometimes for embarrassing reasons, it encourages people to waste time on feelings rather than anything substantive and encourages and enables debauchery. Facebook censors conservative commentary, but if you want to spread child porn or advertise for Muslim extremism, Facebook will leave your page alone in the name of "free speech".

Errol Flynn

Renowned womanizer and heavy drinker, Errol Flynn died young at the age of 50. If you watch "Don Juan" you can see him shortly before he died, apparently and acutely aware of the consequences of his choices, but still unwilling to abandon the largess that lead to his ultimate demise. Did he ever quit? No, and his only known son followed suit but died as a war correspondent during WWII probably at the hand of Japanese soldiers.

Nikola Tesla

Often lionized by those who feel slighted by his marginalization in favor of Edison, Tesla was no paragon. He was addicted to billiards and rarely ever slept. He was exceptionally critical of people who were overweight, openly calling them out and in mean fashion. One wonders what he might have thought of Ben Franklin... Although some reference his belief that women were superior to men, they seem to forget that in later life he was extremely critical of women whom he perceived willing to trade feminism for power. Paradoxical since Tesla sought so much power. He was obsessive compusive, and demanded dinner precisely at 8:10 PM. He was also rude, one time calling a friend in the middle of the night for an audience while he talked out a problem with a theory after which, once solved, he promptly hung up. He believed in eugenics and selective breeding, but I never hear his fans mention his similarities with National Socialists. He disdained religion, but claimed that he would see visions and flashes that inspired his work. Tesla was essentially a man of vision who saw no real purpose in receiving them. In essence, he was two-faced.

William Shakespeare

Prolific playwright, Shakespeare abandoned his family in Stratford on Avon to work in London, having a series of alleged affairs, which may be the muse behind some of his more famous works. Before winning the patronage of Queen Elizabeth, he routinely bilked patrons by using their money for drink and debauchery and writing plays for other people to whom he was in arrears for work, the funding for which he already squandered. In fact, Elizabeth probably spared him from the shank or the gallows, and at the very least from debtor's prison, but his behavior didn't really stop. It just changed venue.

One thing is consistent about the people considered genius. They found their niche. If not for that, they would largely just be schmucks. What unites most of them is their debauchery- that most famous and powerful and rich and influential people are morally bankrupt in their debauchery, and we only know about them because they got lucky. If not for the chance to become famous, they would just be more schmucks who gave in to the natural order of instinct and followed their emotions and hormones to do whatever they liked when they felt like it because they could. As the Bard wrote, "the evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones" and President Lincoln once said that "If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it you surely will." Genius is nonsynonymous with virtue, and in fact it seems that in order to be a genius one must essentially eschew a life of virtue. Unfortunately, people only seem to look for the evil in people they don't like and see only the good in people they truly do like. Perhaps that is the truest genius...

Classic Canards

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Enroute to work this morning, one of my radio stations entertained a caller as they do every Thursday who solicits input from the listening audience on a conundrum. Today's caller was a woman who wants to date a married man who called asking for feedback but who apparently really sought cheerleaders to endorse a decision already reached. In the City of Sin, she apparently thought that the listeners would tell her to "do what feels right", "just follow her heart", and do whatever is best "for her", since that's what she intended to do. Both she and I were surprised that most people thought she was bound for heartache owing to the logical fallacies she entertained in order to even consider this option. No matter what, she was going to date this guy, it was going to work out for her, and it didn't matter to her what facts contravened her expectations, who else might be hurt or at least inconvenienced by her single-mindedly selfish search for satisfaction. I was glad other people called her out for her nincompoopery and the canards that mislead so many other people. It is inhumane to continue the lie that rations the niceties of logical fallacy, that ignores empirical fact that this kind of behavior is not sustainable in a civilized society.

This woman labors under the mephistophelean argument: Heads I win; tails you lose. No matter what, she was going to be right. She was going to date him anyway, she was just hoping people would call in and support her decision so she could feel better. Instead, she took the opposition to mean that she was doing right on the auspice that opposition mounts most often when you are reaching a desirable and noble end. Well, that's true in MORAL things, but what she's doing isn't moral at all. Most of the respondents were critical, and I was frankly surprised that even the show hosts were critical since it's not exactly a paragonal program. Most people seem to think that she will crash and burn. I hope she does, not because I have any animus towards her, but for another reason altogether. No matter what they say, she was going to press forward, and no matter what happens, she will not be bound by any of their prophetic pronouncements. No matter what she wins. If it fails, she can lay the blame on others for "poisoning the universe against her" with their "negative thoughts", and if it works out, she can take credit for being smarter than all the nay-sayers. No matter what, it's a good idea and you are just hating on her or wish to deny her her happiness if you don't license and lend support to her cause. No matter what, it's not her fault and all the glory is hers. This argument based on emotion, on selfish search for satisfaction ignores the things you don't control and blames any outside influence for interference. It's the canard that accompanies every failed effort that amounts to nothing more than an ideological pursuit for utopia.

It boggles my mind how many people feel that no matter who is hurt in the process that the ends always justify the means. She labors under the delusion that she can build a sure relationship on the ashes of a former failed one. Men are told that a woman who will cheat on their other relationship with us will also cheat on us for someone else. I am sure that also applies to women, but this woman insists that he's not cheating and will never cheat. She knows what she wants, and she will doggedly pursue it no matter what. I cannot comprehend why so many people will bend heaven and earth to pursue and then maintain relationships with people who are aberrant and abhorrent morally and who will bend over backwards avoiding a relationship with me. The male caller they took on the show was dating three women at once while married, and everyone knew except his wife. So, he's out there schtuping three different women, and this woman caller wants to be the affair with another guy, but meanwhile I cannot get a date to save my life. However, something tells me that I wouldn't want any of these women anyway because the means they propose do not lead to the ends I seek. I have previously opined the maladjusted notion that delicious food can come from spoiled ingredients, but these people are all inherently selfish. It's all about what they want to be true, the actual facts and truth and opinions of others be damned. Unfortunately, this isn't the attitude of a spouse and partner; this is the attitude of a teenage girl, and no man of substance wants to date a teenage girl because teenage girls are never happy. In fact, it is not true that there are no good people to date, it's that so many people are competing for the attention of those already taken. A misbegotten notion exists that if someone is taken, they are desirable and we by extension ought desire them too. It makes as much sense as fighting over a single piece of cake when the rest of the cake remains available. You cannot build on earth, which is fallen, using the sophistry of man a utopia that heaven and its laws alone can sustain.

Most people are not the exception, they are the rule, or else the exception would be the rule. If dating married people always worked, nobody would date single people, because statistically single people are undesirable as aforementioned. Of course, then why would a married man want this unmarried woman, but that's overthinking it, isn't it? Most people discouraged it because natural law dictates that her efforts will likely end in failure, heartache, and disappointment, and then she will excoriate all men as pigs when the fault lies with her for following a false premise and promise. He's already broken promises to his betrothed; what makes her different? She's special, and things ought to work out for her because she's her. You don't really know all the faults of a person until you live with them, and in that tender point of their courtship, she probably sees him with rose-colored glasses as someone who can do no wrong, who is misunderstood or underappreciated by his wife, and that this woman can and will by extension do better. What hubris! What narcissism! Her opinions are unhinged from moral roots, from reality itself, caught up in the delusion that fairy tales are still real at least for her. What is she, six? If it works, she will doubtless not consider herself fortunate, lucky, or the exception but will consider herself exceptional, omniscient, and omnipotent. She will take this as a sign that she is always right about everything. This naivete is common to and defining of young people, and although I don't really know her age, by now she should know better than to think that people fart rainbows and vomit skittles. I cannot believe how fully she capitulated to contrarian canards of logic that she will be special, that he really loves her, that it will be different with her than with the current wife. Why do we delude ourselves? Why do we ignore all pretense at logic when in love and see only what we wish to see? This adolescent attitude and argument was met with appropriate scorn and disfavor from the listening audience. One woman went so far as to excoriate the woman as the worst person she's ever met (notwithstanding they have never met), which I felt was a bridge too far, but I digress. Before the hosts returned the program to music, even they predicted and prophesied misery and woe for this woman. I would love to see how her story plays out, but we only hear about the ones that do. Dating sites parade on the successful without telling you how many are failures. Mark Zuckerberg is heralded as a financial wizard when he's really a reprobate college drop out who built a financial empire on coitus, since that's what his social network was originally designed to do. These people are not the rule or EVERYONE would be rich, famous, or happy.

I know this may seem odd coming from a man who is himself divorced, but my marriage did not fail because I quit it. It failed because my wife quit the marriage and refused to entertain any effort on my part to repair the breaches, real or imagined, that led to her feelings of slight. With my cynicism came wisdom, that I am not the exception, that it is not all about me, and that only right things done for right reasons bring outcomes that I actually desire to keep. Rather than blame her or seek to rationalize or excuse myself, I took ownership of my faults and asked others for wisdom, and eventually I listened. At no point did I ever seek a relationship outside the confines of matrimony while married. In fact, that's how I got closure from most of my relationships; as soon as they married or moved in with someone else, it no longer mattered. Any romantic feelings I might entertain needed to die, and I let them, because to entertain them put their marriage at risk, even if that marriage was one of Common Law. I will not be the scapegoat for any failed marriage. I will not deserve the scorn that comes to a homewrecker. My late friend Tracie sought my affections while married, and she was totally taken aback when I declined.  After her divorce when she no longer seemed interested, I knew I had made the right move.  I truly hope that woman are not all this stupid, or else no wonder I can't find one I desire to keep, and it's no wonder that none of them are interested in doing what it takes to keep me. In their minds everything does and of a right ought to revolve around them. We all know that's not a persuasive argument even if it is a pervasive one. People like this are the problem- in religion, in relationships, in commerce, in philosophy, and especially in politics because, more often than not, if you think that you cannot possibly be wrong, you are, because pride comes before destruction.