What is the case for government funding of mitigation research?

I ended a recent post by suggesting that serious consideration should be given to Bjorn Lomborg’s view that mitigation of climate change is likely to require a substantial increase in government funding of relevant research.

   

That position is somewhat at odds with a view that I have held for a long time that governments should stay out of the business of trying to pick technological winners by funding research and development. I acknowledge the case for public funding of basic research on grounds that it is a public good that would not be adequately supplied via the normal operation of market forces. If someone suggests, however, that governments should become heavily involved in funding of research into alternative energy because the world is running out of cheap sources of fossil fuels, I would regard that as a fairly silly idea. When the world does start running out of cheap sources of fossil fuels the prices of those resources can be expected to rise, providing a strong market incentive for private sector investment in research into alternative energy sources.

So, what grounds are there to argue that carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes that impose a cost on carbon emissions will not have a similar effect on research incentives? I don’t see any. In both cases, as the production of energy through conventional use of fossil fuels becomes more expensive the market should provide adequate incentives for research.

The case for substantial government involvement in funding of research directed toward mitigation of climate change cannot rest on arguments that apply to equally to many other forms of research, even though some eminent economists may think it does. For example, Ross Garnaut argues (in Chapter 9 of his 2011 climate change report) that ‘the carbon price alone will not lead to adequate investment in research, development and commercialisation of new technologies, because the private investor can capture only part of the benefits’. Similar externalities apply, of course, to a wide range of research, development and commercialization activities throughout the economy. Perhaps the existence of such externalities warrants some government assistance to industry, such as allowing capital spending on research and innovation to be treated for tax purposes as a current rather than capital expenditure.  It might also warrant some government involvement in funding of development rather than just basic research, particularly since it is often difficult to draw a line between R and D. But it would be difficult to justify the large increase in tax – and associated economic costs – which would be required to embark on a major program of government funding of research, development and commercialization of new technologies in all sectors of the economy.

It seems to me that the case for substantial government involvement in funding of research directed toward mitigation of climate change must rest on a form of government failure (the difficulty of obtaining international agreement for concerted action) rather than on market failure (or externalities). If governments were able to agree to an appropriate carbon price the case for additional government funding of research would disappear.

Bjorn Lomborg seems to be on strong grounds in arguing that international agreements to invest in research and development are likely to have a greater chance of success than carbon-reduction negotiations. Wealthy countries are less likely to object to making greater research contributions. Agreements to fund more research may also be seen as likely to make it easier to negotiate future carbon reductions by reducing the cost margin between existing fossil fuel technologies and less polluting technologies.

However, there is potential for gradual mitigation to continue to occur even in the absence of international agreements. Governments of countries with high per capita emissions will continue to come under political pressure – from internal and external sources - to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps the most likely outcome is that the world will stumble on toward a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, relative to what would otherwise occur. The climate will nevertheless continue to change. This may impose high costs on some people (those faced with high adaptation costs relative to their current income levels) and benefits to some others. But the general story might be one of successful adaptation.

If that is the most likely scenario, it would make sense to view increased government involvement in research to mitigate climate change as a precautionary measure. It is probably worth doing even though it will, hopefully, not be necessary. Imagine a scenario where climate change accelerates and costs of adaptation begin to rise steeply. My guess is that in that situation, international agreement would be reached fairly quickly by the United States, China and Europe to cut emissions of greenhouse gases drastically and take steps to ensure that other countries do likewise. The economic cost of such reductions in emissions will be very high if there is still a substantial cost margin between energy generated using conventional fossil fuel technologies and cleaner technologies.

So, it seems to me that the case for substantial government involvement in funding of research to mitigate climate change is largely precautionary. It is in our interests to reduce the risk that will be posed to our standard of living if we have to make sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions at some later stage.

Can cyberbullying lead to mental health problems?

This is a guest post by Emily Isenberger.  Emily is associated with a website which provides resources for people interested in counselling, with a particular focus on how bullying and mental illness have been exacerbated by the Internet.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can leave lasting scars. Once a fact of childhood, playground bullying has taken to the internet and social media networks. For a new generation, the advent of cyberbullying means that home, once a safe haven from a school environment, is just as dangerous, if not more so. Because cyberbullying can reach larger groups, be performed anonymously, and comments can last forever, those bullied have no escape hatch and school administrators have little power to punish perpetrators. This can lead to serious mental health consequences. 

Across the board, victims of cyberbullying demonstrate higher rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and withdrawal from school and other activities than their peers. Studies have shown that people who are bullied develop abnormalities in brain maturation. Specifically the corpus callosum, which binds the hemispheres of the brain together, lacks myelin when under stress, and therefore lessens the ability of the individual to deal with vision and memory. In other words, short-term bullying can have long-term effects on brain development.

Girls who are bullied produce less cortisol than girls who were not bullied; boys who are bullied produce more cortisol than boys who were not bullied. Because cortisol is the hormone secreted to help deal with stress, girls have a tendency towards shutting down completely, without the tools to process further stress. On the opposite hand, the fight or flight mechanism in boys triggers the former response, and boys have a tendency towards lashing out against their aggressors. Cortisol changes like this also depress the immune system, meaning that bullied students are likely to get sick more often than their classmates. 

Bullying affects more than just the victim. Families and other bystanders have higher incidence of depression, absence, and substance abuse addiction. Even the aggressors have a greater likelihood of domestic abuse, criminal violation, and alcoholism down the line. 

Cyberbullying can affect people of any age, race, or class, but if you want to study and research cyberbullying, Australian teenagers may unfortunately be the ideal subjects. Australian teenagers took the number one spot in Ipsos testing across 24 countries, and the results are in, just short of 90% of families in Australia have been affected by bullying. 

To prevent or overcome bullying, take the opportunity to talk to your children about their internet usage. If they’re feeling threatened by someone over the web, they do not have to sit quietly. Go over their options for privacy settings and talk about how to handle negative interactions with people over the internet. Currently, only one in three families use Internet-filtering software, and 40% restrict Internet usage to common areas. By putting blocks in place and monitoring how long your child can be on the web, you reduce not only his or her chance at being bullied, you reduce the chance that he or she will be the bully. 

Let your children know that you’re there to talk if they need you, but don’t push for more information than they’re willing to give. Above all, stay aware of changes in your child’s behavior. For more resources on counteracting cyberbullying, you may turn to the Jed Foundation’s website, which focuses on preventing suicide in bullied college students, but has information applicable to all age groups. 

Does it make sense to view human progress as a risk to the environment?

I don’t think so, for two reasons. First, human progress is about ‘leaving the world a better place’. That sounds a bit like motherhood, but motherhood statements are probably appropriate on Mother’s day. I particularly like the context in which Ralph Waldo Emerson used the phrase:

‘To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.’ [It would have been more accurate to attribute the phrase to Bessie A Stanley. Please see  Postscript 2 below for further explanation.]

Second, the environment adapts to whatever we do to it. I like the way Mark Dangerfield makes that point in his little book, ‘Environmental Issues for Real’ (2012):

‘Our debate has been about how the environment is hurting, that we are to blame and only we can do something about it. Only the environment does not hurt, it just responds. Evolution has come about in spite of all the disturbances, atmospheric upheavals and changing climate. And evolution will be ongoing with or without us and the environment will always be there doing its thing’.

Mark makes the point that real environmental issues are about us. They are about ‘how we will cope with the notion that perhaps we are reaching the limit’. Environmental change will obviously be a problem for us if it means that our lifestyles are compromised. As I see it, values are also involved. I think most humans think that it is good to share the planet with a diverse range of other species. We see the lives of most other species as having value.

The idea that environmental issues are about us is consistent with the view that about 8000 years ago Earth entered into the Anthropocene – the new age of humans. This corresponds to the period in which humans have affected the environment through the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, urban centres and industrial activities. The Anthropocene coincides largely with the Holocene (the last 12,000 years).

Some people argue that we should be aiming to bring environmental conditions on Earth back to where they were at the beginning of the Holocene - on the grounds that the further the Earth’s systems get from those conditions the more likely we are to reach some kind of tipping point. The most common nightmare scenario is runaway global warming, ending up with and crocodiles in Greenland (if not a climate like that on Venus).

Few argue that such outcomes are likely any time soon, but they may not be beyond the bounds of possibility. The following view, in The Economist in May last year, seems to me to have merit:

‘In general, the goal of staying at or returning close to Holocene conditions seems judicious. It remains to be seen if it is practical. The Holocene never supported a civilisation of 10 billion reasonably rich people, as the Anthropocene must seek to do, and there is no proof that such a population can fit into a planetary pot so circumscribed. So it may be that a “good Anthropocene”, stable and productive for humans and other species they rely on, is one in which some aspects of the Earth system’s behaviour are lastingly changed’.

So, how much would we have to modify our view of human progress in order to ensure that we continue to have a good Anthropocene? Is a good Anthropocene consistent with ongoing expansion of economic opportunities? The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) - the result of a major collaborative project of research agencies associated with Yale and Colombia universities – does not seem to me to provide much support for rejection of the view that human progress can involve ongoing expansion of economic opportunities. In general, high income countries – those which have had most economic growth in the past – have higher EPI scores than low-income countries. Over the past decade, there have been substantial improvements in average scores (population weighted) for Environmental health objectives (i.e. environmental factors affecting human health) and even some improvement for Ecosystem vitality.  Most countries with poor performance on environmental health have improved substantially over the last decade. The performance in relation to ecosystem vitality has been mixed. There has been further decline among the worst performers, but some other relatively poor performers (e.g. USA and Singapore) have improved.

We need to take account of the possibility that the future may differ substantially from the recent past. Some physical resources will probably become scarcer. This is unlikely to stop economic growth, however, because the real story of economic growth is largely about productivity growth and technological progress rather than electricity generation and steel production.

What about the precautionary principle? I am usually in favour of taking precautions, but the use some people make of the precautionary principle is highly questionable. Jeff Bennett has discussed the issues in his recently published book, ‘Little Green Lies’.  He agrees with the general proposition that we should be careful in making decisions where future outcomes of those decisions are uncertain and potentially catastrophic.  He points out, however, that the way the precautionary principle is advocated often ignores the costs associated with protecting the environment and risks hobbling society in its request for improvement.

The most quoted statement of the precautionary principle is in the 1992 Rio Declaration. If I have correctly found my way through the double negatives in that definition, it is suggesting that ‘cost effective action’ to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should not be postponed just because we don’t have ‘full scientific certainty’ that greenhouse gas emissions are likely to cause ‘serious or irreversible damage’ to the environment.  

As a general proposition that seems to me to have some merit, but it raises the question of what actions are cost effective. The only kinds of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that can possibly be cost effective for a small country acting alone are ‘no regret’ policies. In that context, I have previously argued that a carbon tax would have merit if the revenue was used to get rid of less efficient taxes. Unfortunately, those conditions don’t apply to the carbon tax currently being introduced in Australia.

Jeff Bennett applies the precautionary principle to climate change as follows:

‘Climate change poses a risk to society. That risk may or may not be due to human action, but it is a risk nonetheless. When confronted with the risk of a catastrophic outcome in the future, it is always worth contemplating taking out an insurance policy. In the climate context that can involve the adoption of adaptation policies. Essentially, those policies involve taking actions now that will protect society’s interests in the event of climate change causing a threat’.

Adaptation policies seem to be sensible for any single country acting alone. The problem is that adaptation would be massively expensive under the nightmare scenarios. In that context the issue arises of what international strategies have best prospects of success in actually addressing climate change. It seems to me that Bjorn Lomborg is correct in arguing that international agreements to invest in research and development are likely to have a greater chance of success than carbon-reduction negotiations.  Lomborg writes:

‘If we continue implementing policies to reduce emissions in the short term without any focus on developing the technology to achieve this, there is only one possible outcome: virtually no climate impact, but a significant dent in global economic growth, with more people in poverty, and the planet in a worse place than it could be’.

A lot of people seem to get upset whenever Lomborg’s name is mentioned. The question we need to address, however, is whether his diagnosis of the issues is right or wrong. If Lomborg is wrong, why is he wrong?

Postscript 1: 
The discussion of these issues is continued in a later post on the case for government funding of mitigation research.
Postscript 2:
Ooops! The quoted passage that I attributed to Emerson is actually not by Emerson. The original was apparently written by Bessie A Stanley. She wrote: 'He has achieved success ... who has left the world better than he found it ...'.The story is here. I am indebted to Howard DeLong for pointing out the error.

Will the 'better angels' keep winning?

When about half way through reading Steven Pinker’s book, ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’ (2011) I wrote something supportive of his view that Enlightenment humanism is a coherent world view. Since I have now finished reading the book I can now take a broader view of it. However, I don’t propose to attempt more that a one sentence summary of the line of argument in the book. Peter Singer’s review seems to me to provide a good summary.

Pinker argues that our ‘better angels’ are winning because violence has declined over the centuries. His book is full of evidence supporting this proposition, most of which I find persuasive. My lingering doubts centre around the spread of nuclear and biological weapons. There seems to me to be potential for crazy political leaders to destroy a higher proportion of humanity in future wars than in past wars.

Some reviewers have raised more fundamental doubts about Pinker’s view of moral progress. For example, John Gray suggests that if Darwin’s theory is right there is no rational basis for expecting any revolution in human behaviour. In my view Gray misses the point. Pinker’s view of moral progress seems to be based primarily on cultural evolution – the evolution of social norms – rather than biological evolution.

However, Pinker suggests that we should not expect our explanation of the evolution of norms opposed to violence ‘to fall out of a grand unified theory’:

‘The declines we seek to explain unfolded over vastly different scales of time and damage: the taming of chronic raiding and feuding, the reduction of vicious interpersonal violence such as cutting off of noses, the elimination of cruel practices like human sacrifice, torture-executions and flogging, the abolition of institutions such as slavery and debt-bondage, the falling out of fashion of blood sports and duelling, the eroding of political murder and despotism, the recent decline of wars, pogroms and genocides, the reduction of violence against women, the decriminalization of homosexuality, the protection of children and animals’.

The historical forces that Pinker views as leading to a reduction in violence are: the emergence of government with a monopoly on the use of force; the growth of commerce i.e. mutually beneficial exchange; growth in the power of women; an expansion in the circle of sympathy to encompass people in other communities and other countries; and what he refers to as ‘the escalator of reason’. The escalator of reason involves ascending to the vantage point of an impartial spectator (i.e. detaching oneself from a parochial viewpoint). Pinker argues:

‘A humanistic value system, which privileges human flourishing as the ultimate good, is a product of reason because it can be justified: it can be mutually agreed upon by any community of thinkers who value their own interests and are engaged in reasoned negotiation, whereas communal and authoritarian values are parochial to a tribe or hierarchy’.

The main distinction between the expanding circle and the escalator of reason is that whereas the escalator of reason requires the vantage point of impartiality, the expanding circle requires a capacity to see things from the vantage point of other people. Pinker explains that the expansion in literacy and greater reading of fiction from the Enlightenment onwards is one of reasons for an expansion in the circle of people for whom we feel sympathy. Australian blogger, Legal Eagle, helps make this point by combining a review of Pinker’s book with a review of Suzanne Collins’ series ‘The Hunger Games’. Legal Eagle suggests: ‘If, in popular fiction, we explore with the ideas of how various utopian designs of society can go wrong, and feel sympathy for the victims, hopefully we can guard against being swayed by such visions’.

Even though Pinker argues that we should not expect our explanation for the decline in violence to fall out of a unified theory of cultural evolution, it seems to me that he is actually not far away from developing such a theory. His linking of growing skills in abstract reasoning (the so-called Flynn effect) with Adam Smith’s concept of the impartial spectator is a major contribution.  As I have argued previously, however, the extent to which we develop impartial spectators that influence our behaviour must depend on the context of social interactions that reward particular behaviours and penalize others. The prisoner’s dilemma model and the concept of moral progress as positive sum game, which Pinker uses in his final chapter, seem to me to be on the right track toward development of a unified theory of cultural evolution.

It seems to me that a theory of cultural evolution should have four central ingredients:  a vision of ethical behaviour promulgated by the major world religions; the sense of personal identity of individuals in different communities and cultures; the incentives individuals have to change the way they perceive themselves and the way others perceive them; and the incentives of groups to change the rules of the game that determine individual incentives.

The golden rule of treating others as one would like to be treated oneself qualifies as the vision of ethical behaviour. A person who perceives himself or herself as the kind of person who acts in accordance with the golden rule is likely to obtain satisfaction from acting in accordance with this ideal. The extent to which individuals perceive themselves in this way will depend on their perception of the incentives in their environment. If they perceive that people outside their family group or tribe are not to be trusted they will not risk attempting to engage with them in cooperative ventures or mutually beneficial exchange. If they perceive that the incentives in their environment favour predatory behaviour they will tend to adopt a sense of personal identity that enables them to feel comfortable with such behaviour. Since societies that adopt rules of the game which discourage predation will tend to be more successful in enabling individuals to flourish, there is an incentive to adopt similar rules of the game in other societies.

This model suggests that moral progress depends heavily on the extent to which individuals perceive that others can be trusted. This is supported by research, some reported on this blog, which has shown that the countries in which community values are most strongly supported tend to be those with relatively high levels of social trust. An implication of the importance of trust, however, is that moral progress of societies may tend to be somewhat fragile.

Postscript:
I keep referring to 'The Better Angels ...', particularly the 'escalator of reason'. There are references here and here.

In my view 'The Better Angels of our Nature' is one of those books that people will still be referring to in 50 years time.

Is a desire for enlightenment (in the Eastern sense) consistent with Enlightenment humanism?

‘The mind is the ruler of the soul. It should remain unstirred by agitations of the flesh – gentle and violent ones alike. Not mingling with them, but fencing itself off and keeping those feelings in their place. When they make their way into your thoughts, through the sympathetic link between the mind and body, don’t try to resist the temptation. The sensation is natural. But don’t let the mind start in with judgments calling it good or bad.’

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor from 161 to 181 AD).

‘Every sensation arises and passes away. Nothing is eternal. When you practise Vipassana you start experiencing this. However unpleasant a sensation may be-look, it arises only to pass away. However pleasant a sensation may be, it is just a vibration-arising and passing. Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, the characteristic of impermanence remains the same. You are now experiencing the reality of anicca [impermanence]. …

Only this experience of anicca will change the habit pattern of the mind. Feeling sensation in the body and understanding that everything is impermanent, you don't react with craving or aversion; you are equanimous. Practising this continually changes the habit of reacting at the deepest level. When you don't generate any new conditioning of craving and aversion, old conditioning comes on the surface and passes away. By observing reality as it is, you become free from all your conditioning of craving and aversion.’

S N Goenka, leading teacher of Vipassana meditation, from aspeech in Bangkok in 1989.

I have chosen the quotes to illustrate the similarity between an important strand of Western philosophy, stoicism, and Buddhist meditation practice. Goenka seems to me to be an appropriate source to quote because his courses attract students from a wide range of different religious backgrounds all over the world (and I have rudimentary personal experience of Vipassana meditation).

In a comment on my last post Ramana asked: Should civilization be devoid of a desire for enlightenment in the Eastern sense of the word? I have changed his question because it seems to me that the critical issue is whether particular ideas are consistent with Enlightenment humanism. Some ideas that are broadly consistent with Enlightenment humanism might nevertheless not survive the competition of ideas in modern societies. I have in mind, for example, a range of different beliefs about life after death.

In my view a desire for enlightenment, in the Eastern sense, is highly consistent with Enlightenment humanism because the people who have that desire are usually inclined to respect the rights of other people and seek to live peacefully with them. That doesn’t mean that I accept that people can actually achieve some ultimate state of complete enlightenment through successive reincarnations. In my view, the desire to walk the path has merit at a human level, in terms of improved mental health and personal relationships, irrespective of the end point attained.

In his monograph on the merits of western civilization, which was briefly reviewed in my last post, Wolfgang Kasper is critical of adulation of Tibetan wisdom in the West:

‘At present, one can observe a certain cultural ennui among elites, who take prosperity and freedom for granted. Protest songs, adulation of Tibetan wisdom (which, with a big class of indolent monks exploiting the workers, looks not all that attractive from close up), and the nihilistic cult of dropping-out reflect a certain disenchantment, but also utopian assumptions about what humans can achieve’.

I know what Wolfgang means. There is a tendency in some quarters to put forward utopian visions of society that are inconsistent with liberty. Such a vision seems to be reflected, for example, in the introduction to the ‘World Happiness Report’, that I wrote about here recently. But, in my view Wolfgang’s remarks about Tibetan wisdom and indolent monks are inappropriate. Such remarks are analogous to questioning adherence to traditional Christian virtues on the grounds that church leaders have failed to protect children from molestation by predatory priests. The existence of indolent monks and predatory priests should not be a reason to reject either ancient Buddhist wisdom or traditional Christian virtues.

Wolfgang’s remarks about Tibetan wisdom are in a section of his monograph about ‘enemies of civilisation’. In my view such terminology would only be appropriate (in the context of a discussion of western civilization) when used in relation to people who are opposed to institutions such as freedom and democracy. Western civilization has nothing to fear from the Dalai Lama. He makes clear in his writings that although he is not a fan of many aspects of modern economic life in the West, his quest is for spiritual revolution in the minds of people all over the world. There is a vast difference between seeking to change behaviour by influencing the perceptions and beliefs of individuals and seeking to change behaviour by imposing restrictions on individual freedom.

Postscript

The following account of historical links between Indian religion and western culture is based heavily on material written by Jean Sedlar, an American historian.

The most promising direct historical link between Buddhism and Stoicism seems to be via Pyrrhon of Elis (365-275 B.C.), the reputed founder of Scepticism, a forerunner of Stoicism. There seems to be fairly reliable evidence that Pyrrhon accompanied Alexander's army to India. Diogenes Laertios (2nd cen. A.D.) claims further that Pyrrhon's encounters with Indian wise men led directly to his love of solitude and to his formulation of the Sceptics' fundamental thesis: namely, that knowledge is impossible and that the truly wise man should therefore suspend judgment on all questions.

Jean Sedlar acknowledges that Pyrrhon could ‘scarcely have failed to notice’ the ‘mental impassivity and physical endurance’ of the Indian holy men. However, she questions whether a mature and well-educated Greek, with ideas presumably well-formed already, would be significantly influenced by talks with them. She also suggests that there were obvious prior causes within Greece for the ideas developed by Pyrrhon, so it would seem gratuitous to assume Indian inspiration. 

The legend of a meeting between Alexander and Dandamis, an Indian holy man, is also relevant. Sedlar describes several different accounts of this meeting. From the perspective of the influence of Indian influences on western civilization, the one that seems most interesting is the interpretation in terms of Christian monasticism of the 4^th Century. The points emphasized are that the Indian ascetics advocated a life-style that satisfies only the minimum physical needs; they attacked riches, luxury, and the perversions of Greek life. According to the story, Alexander had to go to meet Dandamis because he had refused an audience, despite inducements and threats. Dandamis said nature already furnished him with everything he needed and he did not fear death. When they met, Dandamis invited Alexander to abandon the world and find tranquillity in a life of renunciation. Alexander refused, citing the responsibilities of his position.

Sedlar comments: ‘The message of the text is clear: Alexander approves of the ascetics' life-style. Only practical considerations prevent him from imitating it himself’.  She notes that this account of the meeting became favorite reading in Christian monasteries both West and East – providing ‘support from pagans in defence of a Christian-ascetic mode of life’.

However, in the late 4th or early 5th century the story was changed to provide the opposite message, ‘namely to deprecate the monastic ideal’. In this text, Alexander had the last word, expressing the view that the Brahmins' life of renunciation is due not to free choice, but rather to the conditions of poverty prevailing in India. He then praised the riches of Greece and the high morals of its citizens. But that was not the final version. During the medieval period, the text was again rewritten to exalt Dandamis' philosophy of asceticism.

I wonder whether the meeting between Alexander and Dandamis has been portrayed in any modern movies. Different interpretations of what could have happened at such a meeting might well have an ongoing influence on culture in the West and the East in the years ahead.

Jean Sedlar also refers to the links between Greek philosophy and Buddhism that are evident in ‘Questions of King Milinda’ (probably written ca. 150-100 B.C.) which is included in the Burmese version of the Pali Canon. The book is an account of discussions between Menandros, the Hellenistic ruler of part of India, and a Buddhist sage named Nagasena. It concludes with the king becoming the monk's disciple. As Sedlar notes, the book is modelled in some respects upon a Greek dialogue. An abridged version edited by Bhikku Pesala is available on the web.  

Should Enlightenment humanism be equated with Western Civilization?

In a comment on Jim Belshaw’s blog a couple of weeks ago Ramana, one of his regular readers, commented:

‘Surely, words like civilisation and progress themselves need acceptable definitions before we can arrive at a consensus?

These two words have gained a lot of notoriety because of the heavy slant towards the Western idea of them. That other parts of the world could have different ideas need to be recognised and accommodated.’

Jim drew attention to the comment in a later post in which he also referred to my post: ‘Is Enlightenment humanism a coherent world view?’ A spirited discussion ensued.

My response to Ramana, influenced by Steven Pinker’s ‘Better Angels  …’ book (which I still haven’t finished reading) was that the civilizing process is about widespread adoption of an attitude that violence is unacceptable, accompanied by a reduction in violence within societies. I suggested that such a view of the civilizing process should have appeal all over the world. I noted that the societies in which rates of internal violence have fallen over the last couple of centuries are certainly not all in the West and the process doesn't have much, if anything, to do with the 'westernization' of culture. I was making a distinction between western culture and the social norms associated with classical liberalism and humanism.

Wolfgang Kasper’s monograph, ‘The Merits of Western Civilization’ (IPA, 2011) is directly relevant to the questions we have been discussing. Wolfgang discusses the evolution of western civilization in a particularly thoughtful manner.

In discussing the tendency of people to feel that their own civilization is superior to others, Wolfgang acknowledges that there could be a kernel of truth in such claims.  They make sense because each individual ‘has to become habituated to his community’s given rule-set, and many institutions have to be internalized to the extent that they are obeyed unthinkingly’.  Wolfgang makes the point, however, that ‘not all rule-sets … are objectively of equal value in terms of attaining such fundamental goals as freedom, justice, security and peace’.

Wolfgang also discusses the importance of rule-sets - particularly informal institutions or social norms - being able to evolve in response to changing circumstances, in harmony with accepted cultural values. He notes that civilizations tend to decline culturally and materially when they are based on rigid rule systems.  On this basis, he argues that the most outstanding feature of western civilization is that it has remained adaptive and open to new challenges and opportunities as well as sufficiently open to allow other civilizations to borrow from it.

The openness of western civilization to influence from other cultures, along with strong historical influences from Western Asia, make the task of defining western civilization somewhat difficult. In his discussion of how to define ‘the West’, Wolfgang provides a fairly supportive critique of the views of Philippe Nemo, in his book ‘What is the West?’ Nemo argues that a common cultural heritage is shared by Western Europeans and North Americans, as well as outliers such as Australians.  He asserts that the values on which western civilization are built stem from the invention of the city and rational science in ancient Greece, Roman invention of the law, the addition of compassion by Judaeo-Christian thinkers, a papal revolution between the 11^th and 13^th centuries (which apparently introduced the concept that individual initiative and good deeds can redeem humanity) and the Enlightenment from the 17^th to the early 19^th centuries.

Nemo ‘fails to completely convince’ Wolfgang that a medieval papal revolution acted as ‘a stepping stone to modernity’. He suggests that Nemo ‘almost forgets’ the role of the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th Century, which gave religious endorsement to innovation and material progress ‘and distinguished European civilization from the many others that made a virtue of a fatalistic outlook on life’.

The intellectual, political and economic liberalism of the Enlightenment is viewed by Wolfgang as the ‘crowning achievement’ of western civilization. Since the Enlightenment happened in the West, it seems to me that it certainly makes sense to identify the emergence of modern western civilization with Enlightenment humanism and intellectual pluralism.

Does this mean that Enlightenment humanism and intellectual pluralism should be equated with western civilization? I don’t think so. I think it is an exaggeration to assert, as Wolfgang does, that ‘no civilization outside the West has turned intellectual pluralism into a value of its own’. It seems to me that recognition of the merits of intellectual pluralism has spread outside the West to such an extent that it is no longer appropriate to identify these values solely with western civilization. In my view Enlightenment humanism and intellectual pluralism should be seen as cosmopolitan values that tend to be reflected in social norms to the extent that a society is open to influence from other cultures.

Wolfgang Kasper ends his monograph with the assertion that the history of civilizations and the role of cultural evolution are among the most fascinating fields of study. In my view his monograph makes a useful contribution in demonstrating that to be so.

What is the 'World Happiness Report'?

The release of the UN’s ‘World Happiness Report’, edited (and to a large extent authored) by John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs, does not seem to have captured much media attention. I became aware of it only while looking for reports of the meeting on ‘Happiness and Well-being:  Defining a New Economic Paradigm’, which was held in New York early this month. My interest stems from my attendance at a preliminary meeting in Bhutan last year. I still don’t have much idea what happened in New York, but the ‘World Happiness Report’ deserves consideration.

The mainstream media apparently didn’t consider the ‘World Happiness Report’ to be particularly newsworthy. That is presumably because it doesn’t contain much information that is new. It is not news that people in wealthy countries tend to be happier than people in poor countries. It is not news that average levels of happiness are still fairly low in China despite substantial gains in income levels over the last couple of decades. (That makes it difficult for me to understand reports that the Chinese government has apparently made it difficult for people in China to obtain the report via the internet.)

   

The report consists of an introduction by Jeff Sachs and chapters on the state of world happiness, the causes of happiness and misery, and policy implications. The report also contains three case studies – one on measurement of Gross National Happiness in Bhutan, one on the work of the ONS in Britain and the other OECD proposals for measurement of subjective well-being.

The introduction sets the scene by arguing that the quest for happiness should be seen to be intimately linked to the quest for sustainable development.  The author seems particularly concerned that economic growth will ‘undermine the Earth’s life support systems’: ‘In years or decades, conditions for life ‘may become dire in several fragile regions of the world.’ He is also concerned that economic growth is not making people happier: countries ‘achieve great progress in economic development as conventionally measured; yet along the way succumb to a new crisis of obesity, smoking, diabetes depression and the other ills of modern life’. He suggests that we can ‘protect the Earth while raising quality of life’ if we adopt ‘lifestyles and technologies that improve happiness (or life satisfaction) while reducing human damage to the environment.’

In my view the picture painted in the introduction is exaggerated, in terms of both impacts of economic growth on the environment and human happiness. In broad terms, the regions where conditions for life are under threat are suffering from lack of economic growth, rather than too much of it. The regions where happiness levels are highest have had greatest economic growth.

It is tempting to dismiss the introduction as alarmist nonsense.  It provokes in me the same feelings as I get when religious fanatics try to tell me that the end of the world is nigh. Yet, I readily acknowledge that some aspects of human activity are impacting adversely on the environment and that many people who have the benefits of living in high-income countries do not make good use of the opportunities that modern life offers to them. My point is that the introduction is unlikely to persuade many people that the measurement of happiness is worth considering seriously.

The introduction raises in my mind the question of how measurement of happiness will induce people to change their lifestyles in ways that reduce environmental damage. Will this occur through a spontaneous change in culture or are we about to see a new wave of central planning to regulate individual lifestyles? Perhaps happiness research will provide evidence that individuals with a small environmental footprint tend to be happier, other things being equal. Such evidence might induce larger numbers of people to make substantial lifestyle changes spontaneously.  I would not be surprised to see such evidence emerge, but the possibility of obtaining it doesn’t seem to be discussed in this report.

I think there is reason to be concerned that we are about to see a new wave of central planning of individual lifestyles, linked to happiness measurement. I am not referring here to limited action by governments to change relative prices in order to reduce specific negative spillovers associated with economic growth e.g. through carbon taxes or trading schemes. My concern is about the manipulation of the tax and regulatory system in ways designed to counter any aspirations that people might have that are not immediately reflected in happiness or life satisfaction. The author of the introduction fuels my concerns by objecting to the view that ‘happiness is in the eye of the beholder, an individual’s choice, something to be pursued individually rather than a matter of national policy’. There are plenty of political players in most countries, who will be only too eager to use this report to support their efforts to try to make people happier by regulating their lives.

Will these government planners be successful in their efforts to use happiness data to make people happier? It seems to me that there are parallels here with the use of GDP in economic planning. Half a century ago economic planners had great hopes that national income measurement - then being standardized with United Nations involvement – would help them in their efforts to lift economic growth rates. The UN’s 1969 Declaration on Social Progress and Development (discussed on this blog a few weeks ago) must have provided economic planners with great comfort by supporting their efforts to raise GDP through economic planning.  In the end, GDP measurement has helped to show that the efforts of the economic planners were counter-productive. I would not be surprised if social planning to raise happiness levels eventually meets a similar fate.

Planners are faced with the challenge of evidence that individual freedom is important to life satisfaction.  On that basis, it seems reasonable to predict that people will tend to become increasingly discontented as social planners intensify their efforts to make them happier.

Unfortunately, the introduction to the report has side-tracked me from considering the main content. People who might be interested in my views on the other chapters have probably stopped reading already. In case anyone is still reading, however, I will add some brief comments.

For the most part, the report equates ‘happiness’ with subjective well-being. It focuses on subjective well-being measures based on questions about happiness and life satisfaction. The authors seem to have in mind that those two questions should form the basis of happiness measurement systems. (The Bhutan case study is an exception. Objective measures of well-being are included in the measurement of GNH in Bhutan along with subjective measures.)

The report contains interesting information on the distribution of happiness in different countries as well as on average levels of happiness. The information on the distribution of happiness suggests to me that great caution is required in interpreting average happiness levels (whether mean, median or mode) as indicators of national happiness. This is particularly so in Latin American and African countries where inequality of happiness is relatively high.

The focus of the report on subjective well-being seems to me to be a weakness, despite its recognition that happiness measurement is part of a larger effort to understand well-being. This weakness is particularly evident when the report comes to making suggestions about policy priorities. It is apparent in that section that the authors were unable to confine themselves to findings arising from subjective well-being research. For example, the report states that a decent education for all is essential. Few would argue with that, but the research findings reported suggest that education makes a contribution to life satisfaction only through its effects on income.

In my view the methodology for measuring well-being should recognize all the factors that people consider to impinge on the opportunities available to them to live the kinds of lives they want to live. It seems likely that many people would consider education to affect those opportunities in ways that are not accounted for by either income or life satisfaction. Similarly, are other factors that contribute to the opportunities for people to live the lives they want to live, including health and the state of the environment, are probably not adequately accounted for by measures of subjective well-being.

Postscript:
Jim Belshaw has made the additional point, in the comments below and on his blog, that when you measure something there is a great temptation to focus on improving 'performance' as measured. Extending this reasoning, if happiness measures focus on contentment one might therefore expect government policies to focus to a greater extent on making people feel content - for example, by viewing ambition as a mental health problem and making medications freely available to treat it.

Is Enlightenment humanism a coherent world view?

‘The reason so many violent institutions succumbed within so short a span of time was that the arguments that slew them belong to a coherent philosophy that emerged during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. The ideas of thinkers like Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Locke, David Hume, Mary Astell, Kant, Beccaria, Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton and John Stuart Mill coalesced into a worldview that we can call Enlightenment humanism.’

The quote is from Steven Pinker’s book, ‘The Better Angels of our Nature: Why violence has declined’, 2011, p 180. I am only half-way through reading the book, but I am becoming bored with the chapter on ‘the long peace’, so I will comment on this aspect now.

John Gray’s response to the quoted passage is that Pinker has listed ‘highly disparate thinkers, and it is far from clear that any coherent philosophy could have “coalesced” from their often incompatible ideas’.  On the face of it, Gray would appear to be correct. In his explanation following the quote Pinker makes matters worse, in my view, by equating Enlightenment humanism with classical liberalism.

Friedrich Hayek’s classification of liberals into British (classical liberal) and French (constructivist rationalist) varieties is helpful in this context. Classical liberals retained strong respect for traditions and institutions that had spontaneously evolved, including respect for individual rights. By contrast, rationalistic liberals made strong assumptions about the powers of human reason and sought to construct a utopia in which economic and social outcomes would conform to the will of the majority.

Hobbes and Descartes helped to provide the intellectual foundation for the views of Voltaire, Rousseau and Condorcet, which led to the French Revolution, the development of socialist ideology, liberal progressivism and even neoconservatism. (See Troy Camplin’s recent discussion of how neoconservatism can be linked to Continental enlightenment thinking.) There are also several other people on Pinker’s list, including Jefferson and J S Mill, who were strongly influenced by Continental rationalistic thinking.

Would A N Whitehead have agreed with Pinker that Enlightenment humanism constituted a coherent world view? I raise the question because my last post was about Whitehead’s book, ‘Adventures of Ideas’. In fact, Whitehead’s seems to be more guilty than Pinker of lumping classical liberals and rationalistic liberals together. He presented Adam Smith as ‘a typical figure of the 18^th century enlightenment’ and emphasized the links between the intellectual life of Scotland and France. He also emphasized the influence of Continental enlightenment thinking on America’s founding fathers by suggesting that the ‘mentality’ of people like Jefferson and Franklin, was French. Whitehead argued that while many factors contributed to the change from a presupposition of slavery to a presupposition of freedom, the ‘chief factor’ was ‘the sceptical, humanitarian movement of the eighteenth century, of which Voltaire and Rousseau were among the chief exponents, and the French Revolution the culmination’ (p 22).

Pinker has a very different view of the French Revolution. He sees it as a catastrophe and a departure from ‘the Enlightenment script’. He suggests that the French philosophes from whom the revolutionaries drew their main inspiration were intellectual lightweights. He argues that the American Revolution was more successful because the founders were products not just of the Enlightenment but of the English civilizing process promoting self-control and cooperation. They were very conscious of the limitations of human nature and sought to devise a system of government that would counteract the temptation of leaders to abuse their power.

In considering whether there is any sense in which Pinker could be correct to view Enlightenment humanism as a coherent world view I think it is important to consider the context in which he makes that claim. He is writing about a market place of ideas, with many new books emerging and being discussed. At the same time, the rise of cosmopolitan cities helped to bring people and ideas together. He implies that when a large enough community of free agents confers on how a society should run its affairs, it is likely that some kind of consensus will emerge.

I think Pinker would be on much stronger ground in claiming the emergence of a more general consensus supporting Enlightenment humanism among leaders of political opinion, rather than the existence of a coherent philosophy shared by a group of intellectuals. While the classical liberals would probably have seen little merit in the views of the rationalistic liberals, and vice versa, many leaders of political opinion would have seen varying degrees of merit in different viewpoints and would have sought to reconcile and assimilate them in developing their own views.

Intellectual leaders can also have an important influence on public opinion. It seems to me that J S Mill was correct in his view that the civilizing process led to the growing power of public opinion which in turn would lead to democratic political reforms. (I discussed his reasons on this blog a couple of years ago.) Mill was particularly concerned about the influence of universities on public opinion and advocated reforms that would enable universities to become bastions of Enlightenment humanism.

Over time, it seems to me that the values espoused by Enlightenment humanism have developed the status of a coherent world view in the democracies that is often, but not always, supported by public opinion. The process seems to be one in which disparate political philosophies, often going back centuries, act as tributaries to the broad streams of thought that flow into the rivers of public opinion. Enlightenment humanism is one of those broad streams of thought. The colour of the water in the streams and the rivers changes over time, depending on relative contributions from the different tributaries.

Postscript:
Jim Belshaw has commented and provided further discussion of the concepts of progress and civilization on his blog. Troy Camplin has provided references below to other posts in which he has discussed the influence of different philosophies on current political beliefs.

Could civilization be maintained without progress?

A couple of weeks ago I quoted Friedrich Hayek: ‘In one sense, civilization is progress and progress is civilization’. Hayek provided a Cf reference to J S Mill’s ‘Representative Government’, but I don’t think the connection between civilization and ongoing progress comes through nearly as strongly in anything Mill wrote as in Alfred North Whitehead’s book ‘Adventures of Ideas’, published in1933.

I was prompted to take a look at Whitehead’s book by a recent comment by Jim Belshaw that Whitehead had an enormous influence on his thinking as a young man because he seemed to show a process of change in which combinations of ideas could, with time, create civilisation (Personal Reflections blog, March 31). Since then I have seen several other favourable references to Whitehead, including in Frederick Turner’s book, ‘Culture of Hope’, discussed recently on this blog.

‘Adventures of Ideas’ is largely about the link between civilization and progress (even though the word ‘progress’ doesn’t actually appear in the index). The following quote seems to me to capture the essence of that link as perceived by A N Whitehead:

‘The history of ideas is a history of mistakes. But through all mistakes it is also the history of the gradual purification of conduct. When there is progress in the development of favourable order, we find conduct protected from relapse into brutalization by the increasing agency of ideas consciously entertained. In this way Plato is justified in his saying. The creation of the world – that is to say, the world of civilized order – is the victory of persuasion over force’. (p 25)

At one point, Whitehead defines civilization as ‘the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness’. He suggests that ‘recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals’. He views commerce, broadly defined, as an important example of intercourse between individuals and social groups that takes place by persuasion rather than by force.

Later in the book, Whitehead presents a more complex definition of civilization: ‘that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace’. (p 274) He views the fine arts as an important element of civilization, but (unlike Kenneth Clark in his famous TV series) he makes clear that civilization is more than appreciation of the fine arts.

   

By peace, Whitehead means ‘a quality of mind steady in its reliance that fine action is treasured in the nature of things’. In his later explanation he suggests that the concept of peace that he is looking for is a ‘Harmony of Harmonies, which shall bind together the other four qualities, so as to exclude from our notion of civilization the restless egotism with which they have often in fact been pursued’. It is clear from his subsequent explanation that he is referring to an inner peace that involves a surpassing of personal interest.

Where does goodness fit into Whitehead’s concept of civilization? Is a civilized person a good person? Is a civilized society a good society? He doesn’t seem to answer these questions explicitly. He rejects the idea that the arts should strive for goodness as well as truth and beauty, but in viewing civilization as a process involving ‘the gradual purification of conduct’ he must see a civilized society as being in the process of becoming good, or better.

If there is any point in this discussion where it might be appropriate for me to mention my irritation at Whitehead’s writing style, it is here. Many passages in the book are full of mind-numbing sequences of capitalized words that seem to me to hinder rather than to help understanding of the ideas being presented. For example:

‘The attainment of Truth belongs to the essence of Peace. By this is meant, that the intuition constituting the realization of Peace has its objective that Harmony whose interconnections involve Truth. A defect in Truth is a limitation to Harmony. There can be no secure efficacy in the Beauty which hides within itself the dislocations of falsehood’. 

The author might mean that truth-seeking promotes inner peace, and vice versa. But he could be attempting to convey deeper thoughts. Who knows?

Now, back to Progress! In my view the most important contribution of Whitehead’s book is his explanation that Adventure is integral to civilization.  Whitehead argues that no static maintenance of perfection is possible:

 ‘Thus in every civilization we see at its culmination a large measure of realization of a certain type of perfection. … The culmination can maintain itself at its height so long as fresh experimentation within the type is possible. But when these minor variations are exhausted, one of two things must happen. Perhaps the society in question lacks creative force. Staleness then sets in. Repetition produces a gradual lowering of vivid appreciation. Convention dominates. A learned orthodoxy suppresses adventure. … There remains the show of civilization without any of its realities.

There is an alternative to this slow decline. … In that case a quick period of transition may set in, which may or may not be accompanied by dislocations that involve widespread unhappiness. … These quick transitions are only possible when thought has run ahead of realization. … The world dreams of things to come and then in due season arouses itself to their realization’. (p 277 – 279)

Whitehead emphasized the importance of liberty of thought and action to the ‘upward adventure of life on this Earth’.

At the end of the book, Whitehead suggests that the concept of civilization remains inherently incomplete. He seems to be suggesting that advancing civilizations must continually re-define the concept for themselves. In that regard, it is interesting to speculate whether Alfred North Whitehead would define the characteristics of civilization differently today, in the light of changes that have occurred in the last 80 years. My guess is that he would, perhaps, feel inclined to put greater emphasis on the importance of loving kindness and reverence for life in all its forms.

Are the arts a force for progress or do they just reflect contemporary society?

As I begin to attempt to answer this question, I wonder whether it might not be too silly to consider seriously. First there is the problem of making broad generalizations about the arts. It is possible that some components of the arts to be a force for progress whilst others promote regress.  Then there is the possibility that just by reflecting society the arts could be a force for progress. Even offensive and grotesque examples of punk art – which seem to reflect some of the worst characteristics of the societies we live in - might provoke some people to contemplate whether it might be possible to build better societies. Negative actions sometimes provoke positive reactions.

The point I was trying to get at when I posed the question was whether there is a strong component of the arts at present that is likely to be viewed in future as a force for the progress of culture - in the same way, for example, as we now view Shakespeare’s plays, the music of Mozart and Beethoven and the impressionist art of Monet and Renoir. And, if such a force exists, what might cause us to recognize it as a force for progress? What is it that has led us to regard the great historical achievements in literature, music and art as progress? Do we accept such developments as progress merely because the most powerful influences on our own personal development – including our parents, teachers and peers - cultivated our taste for them? If so, doesn’t that imply that we have to concede the possibility that one day a high proportion of the world’s population might come to regard the advent of punk art as a positive force for progress?

It seems to me that the best way to escape despair about current trends in the arts is to find criteria that developments could reasonably be expected to meet if they are to be viewed as progress. Frederick Turner’s book, ‘The Culture of Hope’ (1995) seems highly relevant in this context.

Turner nominates beauty as the test of all ideas:

‘In the absence of the deep test of beauty, by which all true scientists and philosophers assay their ideas, cognition is increasingly arbitrary in its conclusions, the search for truth is bereft of its compass, and the connection between human beings and the rest of nature begins to get lost.  … Without beauty, the difference between good and evil comes to be defined in terms of the avoidance of pain and the maximization of comfort. I think we are still aware that a human being whose sole desire is a state of painless comfort is scarcely a human being at all, since we ban the drugs that can induce such a state, but we are in danger of forgetting the intellectual or moral or perceptual beauty that might make someone choose the pain and struggle and deprivation of discovery, heroic charity, and art’.

In my view, this passage claims too much for beauty. We don’t actually need to apply a test of beauty in the search for truth and goodness. We test claims regarding the advance of scientific knowledge by confronting them with evidence. We assess claims regarding the ethical merits of changes in social norms in terms of whether or not they are good for the members of the societies concerned.

Yet, there must be a close relationship between beauty, truth and goodness. It makes sense to think of truth as having the quality of ‘epistemological beauty’ and goodness to have the quality of ‘ethical beauty’. The meaning which the author attaches to beauty comes through clearly in the passage in which he describes his personal experience as a teacher of karate and literature. He notes that young karate students begin to shift from the self-esteem ethic they learn at school and attain greater humility and confidence as they adopt ‘the pure pursuit of good karate form’. Similarly, the allegiance of literature students shifts from their own psychological comfort to the poem they are working on as they come to understand when ‘a rhyme is forced or a line stumbles’. Turner makes the point very well that as a ‘as a culture we are stunningly ignorant about beauty’.

It seems to me that Turner also has a strong response to the view that beauty exists solely in the eye of the beholder. Although recognition of beauty emerges from the neurobiology of the individual, the findings of scientific research suggest that it exists as a reward for ‘the recognition and creation of certain complex, organized and unified patterns – patterns traditionally known a beautiful’. Turner points out that beauty is a natural pleasure and intuition possessed by all humans which is activated, sensitized and deepened by culture.

It is not possible in the space I am allowing myself here to do justice to Turner’s concept of social progress and the role that may be played by the arts in reconnecting with science and improving our understanding of beauty and its links with acceptance of shame. The flavour of what he is suggesting is that progress involves ‘continuation of the natural evolution of the universe in a new, swifter and deeper way, through the cooperation of human beings with the rest of nature, bringing conscious intention and organized creativity to the aid of natural variation and selection’.

The arts are certainly a force for progress insofar as they promote changes that meet the test of beauty. It seems to me, however, that beauty is not the only relevant test. When I ask myself whether Adrian Bejan’s constructal law would shed any light progress in the arts (see a recent post for relevant links) the answer I come up with is that the function of the arts is primarily to facilitate flows of communications about the feelings and insights of the artist. In this context, progress occurs as the flows generate shape and structure which make communication more effective.

It is easy to identify artistic endeavours that are destined to fail because they generate resistance rather than facilitate flow. For example, self-respecting humans do not willingly subject themselves to communications that are insulting or degrading.

It is also possible to identify other developments in the arts that represent progress because they contribute to better communication between the artist and the audience. For example, I think Nicola Moir’s painting ‘The in-between space’, reproduced below, is successful in conveying the authors message that ‘everyday’ landmarks of the suburbs such as telegraph poles, road signs etc. can look beautiful.  Nicola has stated that her intention is ‘to inspire the viewer to stop in their city, look around it and appreciate it’.

Postscript:
Troy Camplin has posted a response on his Austrian Economics and Literature site.

How much willpower do we want to exercise?

Where does a person get the willpower to read a book with the title, ‘Willpower: Rediscovering our Greatest Strength’? A book with such a title could not help reminding readers of their past failures in exercise of willpower. However, I didn’t find the book by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney an ordeal to read. Rather than making me feel more guilty, the book left me feeling that some of my past failures might perhaps be understandable under the circumstances.

The authors discuss research findings which suggest that in the short term an individual’s willpower is limited and is depleted by exertion. When your willpower is depleted you are more likely to become frustrated and to act impulsively. This means that the best time to make changes in your life is when there are few other demands being made on you, so you can allocate most willpower to the task.

The book provides some good advice about how to deal with procrastination and the anxiety that can be associated with it. For example, once you make a definite plan to do the things that you have been procrastinating about, you will stop fretting about them. If you find yourself procrastinating by substituting other activities for the activity that should have highest priority, try the ‘nothing’ alternative. Set aside time to be spent either on the high priority activity or doing nothing.

The book also has good advice on how to deal with temptations. Postponement can work better than trying to deny yourself altogether. Where necessary, use pre-commitment. Set bright lines – clear unmistakeable boundaries that you expect your future self to respect. Monitor performance regularly and don’t forget to reward yourself for reaching goals.

One of the points that came through to me in the book is how careful we need to be in making judgements about the ability of other people to exercise willpower. For example, the book suggests that it is often a mistake to attribute obesity to lack of willpower. Paradoxically, many people who are over-weight or obese have in the past exercised a great deal of willpower in following crash diets that have resulted in rapid weight loss. The problem is that when subjected to diets that simulate the effects of famine, human bodies tend to respond by holding on to every fat cell they can.

My main reason for reading the book – apart from the feeling that my own willpower could do with some improvement – was to see what light it sheds on arguments for government interventions to remove temptations that are bad for individual health and well-being. This issue is not discussed directly but, as the subtitle implies, the book argues strongly that individuals have the potential to exercise a great deal of self-control if they know how and want to do so.

This raises the question of how much self-control each of us wants to exercise over our impulses. While reading the book I found myself thinking that I don’t actually want to remove from my life all temptations for impulsive behaviour that I might later regret. I feel that I may obtain some satisfaction from leaving myself somewhat vulnerable to impulsiveness. For example, while I accept that there would probably be health benefits in restricting my (already moderate) alcohol intake to one glass of wine per day, that is a bright line that I don’t want to draw – at least, not yet!

I suspect that a lot of other people think as I do about such matters. We feel that it is appropriate for the control we exercise over ourselves to be somewhat lenient. Some of the boundaries we set are deliberately flexible, for example with allowances for special occasions. We don’t want our lives to be totally governed by bright lines. The last thing we want is a paternalistic government that seeks to help us by taking the temptations out of our lives.
Paternalists tend to respond: ‘It's not about you. Our aim is to help vulnerable people’.  

So why don’t they help vulnerable people to develop the inner strength they need to deal with their addictions and leave the rest of us to run our own lives for ourselves?

Should the 'constructal law' restore our faith in progress?

‘Everything that moves, whether animate or inanimate, is a flow system. All flow systems generate shape and structure in time to facilitate this movement across a landscape filled with resistance (for example, friction). The designs we see in nature are not the result of chance. They arise naturally, spontaneously, because they enhance access to flow in time.’

The quote is a statement of Adrian Bejan’s ‘constructal law’ and is from ‘Design in Nature, How the constructal law governs evolution in biology, physics, technology and social organization’ (2012, p 3). Bejan, a professor of mechanical engineering, has co-authored the book with Peder Zane, an assistant professor of communications.

A basic point that the authors are making is that it is no accident that treelike patterns emerge throughout nature, e.g. trees, river systems, lightning bolts, blood capillaries and dendrites of neurons in brains. The treelike pattern is an effective design for facilitating flows – both from areas to points (as in the flow of water through the root system of a tree to its trunk) and from points to areas (as in the flow of water from the trunk of a tree to its leaves).

When I began to read the book I felt as though I had always believed that the design of flow systems in nature would evolve to facilitate the flow of the stuff that is flowing through them. It seemed intuitively obvious that that should be so, even though I could not claim to have thought much about the matter previously. (In fact, insofar as I had previously thought about it I would probably have been inclined to the view that the evolution of design in nature must be largely random because it is largely a consequence of random events.) After reading a few pages of the book, the main question in my mind was how the authors would justify the claim in the sub-title that the constructal law governs the evolution of technology and social organization as well as natural phenomena.

It seems to me that the authors’ application of the constructal law to technology and social organization is analogous to the application of the theory of evolution to economics (evolutionary economics) and culture (e.g. Hayek’s theory of group selection). The flow perspective actually helps to promote an understanding of social evolutionary processes as being about much more than just survival of the fittest – whether in terms of crude social Darwinism, or more sophisticated concepts relating to survival of ideas, firms, forms of economic and social organization, and social norms.

In my view the authors make a strong case that the accumulation of scientific knowledge can be viewed as a process in which the stuff that is flowing (new ideas) determines design (the organization of knowledge). In their words:

‘Indeed, all the great discoveries, from Newton’s laws of motion to the laws of thermodynamics, didn’t just tell us something new, they organized and streamlined our knowledge’.

The authors explain that scientific discoveries allow disorganized pieces of empirical information to be replaced by summarizing statements (laws). They suggest:

‘A hierarchy of statements emerges naturally because it facilitates the flow of information. It is an expression of the never-ending struggle of all flow systems to design and re-design themselves’ (p 163).

The application of the constructal law to social organization provides insights similar to those provides by the ‘new institutional economics’.  Institutional designs tend to evolve to facilitate transactions – i.e. to reduce transactions costs (which are analogous to friction in physical systems). Unfortunately, the authors don’t provide an explicit discussion of path dependency – in particular the potential for some societies to remain locked in to inferior institutions involving high transactions costs and poor social outcomes. Perhaps a flow perspective provides us with greater grounds for optimism that all people suffering under inferior institutions will eventually obtain the freedom they need to better their condition.

So, should the constructal law restore our faith in progress? The constructal law has not changed my view that it is better to think in terms of conditions for progress than faith in progress (see my last post). We can only be optimistic about progress if conditions are favourable. It makes more sense to ask whether the constructal law provides grounds for greater optimism than to ask whether it should restore our faith in progress. It seems to me that the constructal law provides an appropriately optimistic frame of reference for thinking about progress. Progress isn’t inevitable, but we have strong grounds to view it as a natural or normal phenomenon.

Postscript:
Adrian Bejan has responded as follows:

'Thank you very much for reading our book Design in Nature and writing about it.

I can respond to your call for "how the authors would justify the claim in the sub-title that the constructal law governs the evolution of technology and social organization as well as natural phenomena".

This is actually discussed in ch. 10, and it pivots on Fig. 57. The long version of this response is in the review article published last fall in Physics of Life Reviews (read the comments on Figs. 1, 5, and 20-24.

In our book Design in Nature, the justification is best illustrated by the story of how nature (not man) invented the wheel (Ch.4). Technology is all the contrivances that we make and attach to ourselves to in order to move farther, faster, more efficiently, and for longer (i.e. to live longer). This is no different than the morphological changes that stick as the river basin evolves

So, everything that looks good and we adopt and we acquire is helpful in this constructal flow direction, which is for the whole to flow more easily.. It sounds simple, and it is. Think about the evolution of the technology for power generation, for example. The same with transportation technology, science, language, communications, and currency, and bank tellers, and English as the global language. They all help us go with the flow.'

The article to which Professor Bejan refers in Physics of Life Reviews is also available at the constructal theory web site.