Maggie's Farm

Will Wilkinson responded to the Posner piece which we linked the other day with the following excellent synopsis and, I think, accurate correction of Posner's views:

Humans are genetically uniform, but one of those uniformities is a capacity for acquiring and transmitting culture, some of which is moral culture, from which comes variation in moral dispositions. Different institutional structures are possible only because cultural variation is possible. And a configuaration of institutions, once in place, exerts pressure on culture, which in turn exerts pressure on institutional structure, and so on. If more peace and prosperity is better, and the institutions and behavior that produce peace and prosperity are mediated by  moral cultured, and moral culture is embodied as emotive and behavioral dispositions by the people within that society, then it seems evasive to deny that those people are “better” in a pretty obvious sense. People who are better at producing moral ends are morally better. It’s not wrong to visit a place rife with corruption, dishonesty, racism and cruelty and remark that “the people are horrible.” It may not be anyone’s fault that they turned out this way, but people do turn out that way, and whole societies, whole peoples, can and do get better.  If behavioral dispositions were in fact invariant, and variations in peace and prosperity were entirely due to variations in institutional structure, Posner would be right. There would be no difference in the people. But since variations in institutions are themselves due in large part to variations in people, Posner is wrong. The evidence points to the conclusion that people in commercial societies are better, which is one of the best reasons to prefer commercial societies.

Comment from Dr. Bliss: Yes, I agree with WW that the always interesting U of Chicago Law Prof and blogger Posner gets it wrong. Institutions shape neither people nor culture: the relationship between people and their culture - and the institutions they produce - is circular and interactive, and an ecological sort of model applies better than a binary or unidirectional one. Funnily enough, I happen to be planning a post on the subject.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

That's the powerfully poetic way John's Gospel begins, echoing Genesis. 

(I am fairly certain I awoke this morning with those lines from John 1:1 in my head because I had been thinking, in my amateurish way, about Bird Dog's post on Monday about Important things that don't exist, virtual reality, and the power of abstract nouns.)

We do not know who this "John" was, or whether the prologue (which scholars believe to be an early Christian hymn) was added some time after the Gospel was written around 90 AD. It's probably the most powerful beginning of anything in the Bible (after Genesis.) The NAD has the first verses thus:

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 He was in the beginning with God.

3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be

4 through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;

5 the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

6 A man named John was sent from God.

7 He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.

8 He was not the light, but came to testify to the light.

9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him.

11 He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.

12 But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name,

13 who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man's decision but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth.

John draws a parallel between Christ's relationship to God (God in a human form) to Creation itself (God's idea, made real and tangible). In doing so, he uses the untranslatable Greek term "logos," which we translated in English to the humdrum "word." While being no student of epistemology, it was clear to me that the author was introducing a note of Platonic Idealism (the basis of all modern mathematics, and lots of other stuff too) to the early followers of Christ. (Here's the Wiki on Christ the Logos.)

"Logos" aside, whenever I wonder what words are all about I tend to go back to Roger Brown's classic Words and Things. Epistemolologic altitudes just make a practical fellow like me dizzily short on oxygen in the same way that contemplating the cosmos does: it makes me want to split some firewood, practice my drives, clean out some stalls, or have a Scotch.

Well, I will leave Logos and Platonic Idealism to the experts and scholars and our better-informed commenters. My preferred image of Christ is William Holman Hunt's "The Light of the World," (image) where I have seen it hanging in St. Paul's Cathedral right down from Bread Street (where John Milton grew up, and where the Mermaid Tavern used to be). That image of the offer of illumination, with Christ knocking at the cottage door, works best for me.

As does Psalm 131, David's song of ascent to prayer:

1 My heart is not proud, O LORD,
       my eyes are not haughty;
       I do not concern myself with great matters
       or things too wonderful for me.

 2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
       like a weaned child with its mother,
       like a weaned child is my soul within me.

 3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
       both now and forevermore.

From Richard Posner in Does the free market corrode moral character? - one quote:

Of course politicians lie a great deal, but so does anyone who depends on the goodwill of others. Max Weber in a famous essay on politics as a vocation distinguished between private and public morality. Anyone in a public position--and this includes business and academic leaders as well as politicians--cannot indulge a taste for candor or altruism and expect to be successful at his job. It is the same reason why good business leaders drive hard bargains with their suppliers, play off subordinates against one another, lay off workers by the thousands, receive huge compensation packages, and often relocate plants overseas when foreign wages and taxes are lower.

Our friend Sipp's post inspired this contest.

Winners receive a year's free online subscription to Maggie's Farm, with a special Free Bonus of unlimited commenting privileges.

I am sure that all would agree that the famous Florida development retirement community ticky-tacky pressboard Disney World for Viagrified Republican golfers, The Villages (pictured below), could have been named far more creatively, like The Greens at Paradise, or The Coffins at Happy Acres.

So we invite our readers to put on their Marketing Hats and come up with some names for American developments yet to be built. Punsters welcome.

I'll give it a lame start:

The Lakes at Dripping Springs
The Verandas at Mosquito Point Lighthouse Point
The Niches at Holiday Harbor
The Views at Hillcrest Swamp Vale
The Breezes at Landfill Hillview Corners
The Cottages at Gator Swamp Rabbit Hollow
The Links at Dark Harbor Sunny Harbor
The Anchorages at Stormy Point Pleasant Bay
Ye Barnes at Ye Olde Farme Villagee (for AVI)
Wistful Vista at Chicken Neck Creek Mapleview River
The Preserve at Blueberry Hill - or The Hills at Blueberry Preserves?
Sweet Meadows at Beaver View Valley