ABC of Politics: Tribes

We moderns like to think that we have grown out of tribalism, the way of primitive society. But according to CR Hallpike tribalism is new, dating from the time when humans started to live in towns where they no longer knew everyone.

And the idea that anyone has "grown out of" tribalism is absurd.

Back in the day, humans identified with their kindred, the people they knew that were related to them by blood. But as society has grown in scale humans have started to fake it; we imagine that we are related and are kin to the people around us, by virtue of our common membership in a clan or tribe or nation.

I say that all such identities are fake, an imagined kindred of "people like me." I call this "fake tribalism," an imagined community of kindred that is practiced in all societies larger than one of actual kinship where everyone knows everyone and everyone knows one's blood relationship to everyone.

But why do people create these imagined tribes? I say that every tribe is the expression of the eternal brotherhood of the men who fought to create the tribe and won.

This is most blazingly obvious in the dominant fake tribe of our time, the "nation," which is the tribe of the middle class.

Almost every nation in our time is the product of a victorious war that melded the men of the victorious army into a new fake tribe of a nation.

What made the United States into a nation was its revolutionary war against Britain. What made Britain into a nation was its Second Hundred Years War against France that ended on the battlefield of Waterloo. What made Germany into a nation was Bismarck's three cunning wars, against Denmark, Austria, and France, that conned the various independent states of the Holy Roman Empire into sending soldiers to fight for Bismarck, and thus for the subsequent united German nation.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent the young men of the Great Depression to fight Nazis in Europe and Japanese in the Pacific. After the glorious victory, the United States was united for a generation, until the youngsters born to the wives of the returning heroes grew up and rebelled against their fathers.

And what of the tribe of progressives the world over that are soldiers of activism, devoted to bending the arc of history towards justice?

The problem with the current crop of multinational organizations is that they are not brotherhoods of warriors bonding with each other in a fight to defend the homeland from aggressors. They are just privileged earls and barons watching their sons set lances against each other in knightly tournaments of activism. The only way to create a global tribe would be to fight an Earthly war of survival against an alien invasion from outer space, in which the surviving space warriors would form a new fake tribe of the heroes that saved the world.

ABC of Politics: Layers

We should make things as simple as possible, but no simpler, as Albert Einstein didn't quite say. But what about human society? Can this unimaginably complex emergent phenomenon be simplified?

Maybe, maybe not. But we humans do it anyway; it is our way of trying to understand and deal with the world of other people.

The simplest thing is to divide the world into "us" and "them," friends and enemies, and this is what politics does. But if we want to get beyond simple binaries and the war of all against all, or at least the binary of my people against your people, or the Hunger Games binary of Capitol against the Districts, we must make the world a little less simple.

Most students of human society have divided it, like Gaul, into three parts. For George Orwell it was Inner Party, Outer Party, and Proles. For Marx it was Communists, Bourgeoisie, and Proletarians. For Tolkien it was Elves, Hobbits, and Dwarves. For the Vikings it was Earls, Peasants, and Thralls  (or slaves). For Curtis Yarvin it is Gentry, Commoners, and Clients.

I have joined this three-layer parade with my reductive Three Peoples theory. I submit it as an honest attempt to simplify human society as much as possible, but no further.

I propose that there are three kinds of people in the world:

People of the Subordinate Self Call them slaves, serfs, workers, clients, marginalized, oppressed: these are people that do not experience "agency." They are go-along-to-get-along people, villagers under the thumb of the big man, the serfs of the feudal lord, the factory workers of the corporate behemoth, the ward heelers of the precinct captain, aspiring rappers dealing drugs for the urban gang.  They attach themselves to a powerful patron in return for scraps from the lordly table.

People of the Responsible Self Call them commoners, citizens, middling sorts, "deplorables," these are people that believe they can understand the world according to already established rules and have a responsibility to do something about it. These are people that follow the rules, go to work, and obey the law.

People of the Creative Self These are people that want to live a creative life, maybe as a writer, an artist, a videographer, an activist, a revolutionary. They don't want to follow the rules, they want to discover new rules. They don't want just to go to work, they want to reinvent work. They don't just obey the laws; they want to make new ones. 

I got the idea of the Responsible Self from Robert Bellah in his "Evolution of Religion." I got the idea of the Creative Self from Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class.

In medieval times, England's King Alfred divided the world into "those who pray, those who fight, those who work." This is similar to the three French Estates, with the First Estate the clergy, the Second Estate the nobles, and the Third Estate the peasants and burghers. There is, in addition, the three-layer theory of Allyship currently popular among our lefty friends. In this world the evolved and activist Allies are fighting for the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors. It is clearly an update of Marx's three layers of Communists, Bourgeoisie, and Proletarians. But notice that both the Allyship narrative and Marx collapse the three layers into two.Allies and Oppressed Peoples are united as one against the White Oppressors. Communists and Proletarians are united as one against the Bourgeoisie. I maintain that this collapse is reactionary, a step back to the primitive.

But things don't have to be that serious. I have proposed a three layer system of Snobs, Schmucks, and Scum. A less insulting version is to think of society as composed of Somebodies, Anybodies, and Nobodies. You may think of today's America as composed of Anti-Americans, Americans, and Emerging Americans; I couldn't possibly comment.

Let us not insult Richard Wagner by omitting his three-layer theory. He divided the world of The Ring into gods, humans, and Nibelungs.

Of course, the world is much more complicated than a mere three layers. Yet most of the time most people have difficulty imagining anyone different from themselves as anything but an enemy, in a crude "us" and "them" approach to life, religion, and politics. So a Three Peoples theory is one step up from crudity, from the war of "us" against "them." And there is another thing, suggested by Ken Wilber in his analysis of developmental psychology as applied to human consciousness. He proposes that anyone in a particular "level" will regard people in a lower "level" as delta-minus morons, and people in a higher "level" as madmen.

The most obvious use of this Three Layer concept is as a way to understand our modern politics, which always seems to be based upon an over/under coalition between the highest Layer and the lowest Layer against the Middle Layer. In the current Allyship narrative, the Allies of the ruling class fight for the Oppressed Peoples of the lower class against the White Oppressors of the middle class. Or, using Yarvin's three layers, the educated-class Gentry combine with their underclass Clients against the middle-class Commoners.

I have come to believe that the modern over/under politics is a recipe for conflict. The three-layer world of noble, commoner, and serf of the olden time sets up a world of established hierarchy, and hierarchy, according to Jordan B. Peterson and his lobster notion, is Nature's way of reducing violence. Thus it is not surprising that the leftist politics inspired by Marx -- to replace peaceful hierarchy with a fight for equality by collapsing the Three Layers of educated, middling, and underling into an us-against-them binary of allies and oppressed against white oppressors -- is a recipe for killing fields.

The Three Layers notion also allows us to understand the emerging populist nationalisms in the United States and in Europe. The populist movements are all associations of ordinary middle-class people fighting back against the over/under coalition that dominated politics during the last century when the working class had the votes to empower the educated class to use the political system to reward the workers with programs and benefits and reward itself with power, with sinecures, and with pensions. The ordinary middle class is emerging as a political force because it is now the largest sector of society, if it chooses to use its numbers in the political arena.

The populist nationalisms of the present day are thus an inner-outer politics, of "us," the middle class against the enemy, the "them," of uppers and downers. Because "there is no politics without an enemy."

Maybe after it is all over we can return to a peaceful hierarchy, like the lobsters.

ABC of Politics: Honor

When Alexander Hamilton agreed to a duel with Aaron Burr, his reason was that, as a General in the US armed forces, he had to have a reputation for courage.

Among men, according to James Bowman in Honor: A History, honor is the reputation for courage. Among women, honor is the reputation for chastity. I believe that male courage is to be understood not just as physical courage, but the moral courage to do the hard thing. I believe that female courage is to be understood not primarily as sexual chastity, but in being "practically perfect in every way."

Now, I believe that the male concept of honor spawns two cultures: the first is the Culture of Courage; the second is a reflection of the Culture of Courage, the Culture of Insult. A man can demonstrate his courage by his fearless actions, that "boldly did outdare / The dangers of the time." Or he can engage in friendly insult with his fellow men, preferably during a friendly mutual consumption of adult beverages.

For women the female culture of honor spawns two cultures: the first is the Culture of Kindness; the second is the Culture of Complaint. A woman can demonstrate to the world her pure femininity by a constant life of kindness. Or she can advertise the lack of kindness in others by constant complaining. George Eliot in Adam Bede suggests that the Culture of Complaint is in fact a desire to be "soothed."

You can see the application of this in the world of politics. The male politician always needs to advertise his courage, his determination to fight for his nation, or for some particular group of voters: "Fighting for Seniors." He can choose either the high road of the Culture of Courage, just demonstrating to the world his courageous nobility, or he can get down and dirty with the Culture of Insult and deploy pejoratives like racist, sexist, or homophobe.

But for women politicians things are more complicated. She must seem to be courageous, yet not aggressively so, and she must combine kindness as a Lady Bountiful with the tough feminist carapace of complaint against the monstrosity of male privilege. And there is always her secret weapon, that a woman's tears always win against a man.

ABC of Politics: Activism

Back in the day, I had never really thought much about "activism." I knew about it, disliked it, but had never tried to understand it. It was a political "ism" that belonged to the left-wing world -- as are many isms. It was a foreign country and was no concern of mine. But one day a friend told me that she was quitting her corporate job in order to go back to school and become an activist. She had always wanted to "get into activism."

One can ignore the madness of strangers, but a friend one has to try to understand.

Why would a educated woman in mid-life want to get into activism? It was not because she wanted to rebel, I decided, but because she wanted to conform; she wanted to be the best person she could be, and that, she believed, meant activism. I suspect that her yearning was a consequence of the fact that today's youngsters are taught, from kindergarten through graduate school, to believe that political activism is the highest and noblest form of life.

After years of investigation I have come to believe that today's Activism Culture is very similar to the Medieval Romance culture of the olden time. That is to say that I believe it to be a ruling-class conceit, a form of high-class virtue-signaling.

Why do we teach our children to become political activists? It is a long story.

Politics, according to Nazi Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political, is the distinction between friend and enemy. Simply put, according to neo-monarchist Curtis Yarvin, "there is no politics without an enemy." Or, I would say, the more politics the more enemies.

Now back in the good old days every human community was surrounded by enemies, and it was the job of the men to put a stop to any dawn raids that might be visited upon the community. So, back in the day, political activists were border warriors defending the community against the enemy. 

Later on, in England, King Alfred was sorely tried by various Danes that liked to come a-viking to loot the Wessex villages of grain and silver and sell the women and children as slaves. Looters and slavers as enemies.

Later on, wars developed into high-toned arguments about dynastic succession: the Wars of the Roses. Rival lords as enemies.

Then there came a change: the age of religious wars: Puritans against Cavaliers. The Thirty Years War of 1618-48. And the Protestant Dutch invaded England in 1688 to create a counter-force against Catholic France. Rival religions as enemies.

But then there was Frederick the Great. He may have been an Enlightenment intellectual, but his conquest of Silesia was reactionary: back to simple loot and plunder. Silesia was much richer than the sandy Brandenburg lands around Berlin that he had inherited from his father. Think of the revenues!

Next we get to the French Revolution. It ended up in a Reign of Terror, but it began with an Assembly of Notables -- princes of the blood, archbishops, dukes, marquises and counts -- proposing fairly sensible revisions of the tax system. Then came the men that made the French Revolution a revolution, the Mirabeaus, the Marats, the Robespierres, ideological activists punishing moderates for their moderation with a bit of regicide on the side. And there was no war at all until the peasant revolt against the revolution in the Vendée. The French Revolution was an ideological war, with the old regime, the moderates, or anyone, as enemy.

There is no politics without an enemy. So, as society has changed and politics has changed, the enemy has changed. In our day, we are no longer surrounded by enemy Vikings and looters, but we are still surrounded by enemies. The US Pentagon just announced that climate change and China are both "security threats." The Biden administration early on advertised its determination to tackle the two existential threats of climate change and systemic racism. There is no politics without an enemy.

China? Climate change? Systemic racism? Of course. Each one is an existential threat, an enemy to our way of life, experts agree. If those enemies didn't exist there wouldn't be a need for a government to protect us from anything. No enemy? No need for a government? Fuggedaboutit.

If the foregoing has not persuaded you about the change in political enemies since the good old days of the dawn raid, there is another "tell" that might convince you to believe that the enemies problem has changed in recent times. The "tell" is that our modern ruling class in the developed countries is not a warrior class but an educated class. A warrior class is the ruling class you want when you need to fight military wars to protect the homeland from Vikings, Goths and Vandals. But what is the point of an educated ruling class? What wars would it be needed to fight?

Test Question: What is the difference between a warrior ruling class and an educated ruling class? Explain.

The answer is obvious. Our modern ruling class fights ideological wars, as Robespierre and his ilk did in the Reign of Terror and Virtue. In World War I we were fighting against the horror of old-school Teutonic emperors with stupid mustaches and with knightly stars on their chests; in World War II against the monstrosity of fascism and another mustache; in the Cold War against the horror of Communism and Stalin's mustache. And in the War on Terror? Mullahs with beards.

Of course, we moderns like to sneer at the dynastic wars of the old kings and princes and the religious wars of the 17th century. But is there anything more contemptible than the ideological world wars of the 20th century and the ideological civil wars of the 21st century? And don't get me started on our current Wars of the Wokies that began in the USA and is spreading throughout the mind-world of the West.

I repeat: politics always needs an enemy, and it is the particular talent of an educated class to be able to call up an ideological enemy from the vasty deep on demand. Yes, but what enemy?

Perfectly simple. The ideological enemy of today's ruling class is the ordinary middle class, people that we might call yeomen or commoners. This is a necessary consequence of the over/under political formula that has inspired today's ruling class ever since Rousseau invented it in his Discourse on Inequality and Marx supercharged it in The Communist Manifesto. Our rulers experience themselves as the noble protectors of the lower class against the dawn raid of the bourgeoisie. In the Ally narrative, the rulers are the allies of the "oppressed peoples" and fight the "white oppressors."

There is a difference between olden times and today. The old nobility was a nobility of blood; the new nobility is a nobility of education, of selective college, and credential. In the high Middle Ages the king and his nobles were warriors. In high modernity the leaders of the intellectual class were revolutionaries. But you can see that nothing has changed: the key to any ruling class is its self-perceived specialness.

Every ruling class needs a self-congratulating narrative, especially when it is in decline.

In the Autumn of the Middle Ages the ruling class fell deeply in love with the medieval romance -- stirring tales of knightly virtue, damsels in distress and Holy Grails -- to enjoy before the blazing fire of an evening in the castle keep. Of course, these late feudal nobles were not saintly knights shepherding pilgrims to the Holy Land; they were just powerful men looking after No. 1. But it was their conceit to think of themselves as soldiers of Christ searching for the lost Holy Grail from the Last Supper. They needed something that would make them feel special.

Why should things be any different in the Autumn of the Administrative State? Today's stirring tales of activism are merely the modern version of the medieval romance, putting lipstick on the pig of ideological warfare, elevating the sordid loot and plunder of the modern state into a sacred reparation to peoples oppressed since the dawn of time. Activists are the noble knights -- or at least aspiring squires -- of the ruling class, ideologically setting forth from their NGO castles every morning sans peur et sans reproche to rescue victims in distress from the bigotry and violent extremism of the middle class.

More than that, the activism concept answers a real social need for our well-born youth. In any society it is a real challenge for the child of a wealthy or high-status parent to find a métier that accords with her noble status. In our age the problem is bigger than in the Middle Ages, because children don't automatically inherit the status of their parents. For instance, Stanley and Danko in The Millionaire Next Door asked: how does a millionaire mom raise her children? Not to go into business, because of the risk of failure. Instead she raises her children to the high-status and well-paid professions of medicine and law. That was then; this is now, and the most prestigious of today's professions is surely activism. Our universities teach activism as they once taught theology to well-born youngsters fated to become priests in the state established church, and our billionaires fund activism. Activism is a way of acquiring high moral status in a society ruled by an educated elite.

One question that still troubles me: what on Earth did Richard Wagner think he was doing in the middle of the 19th century with all his medieval-romance operas about swan knights and Grails and Teutonic myths?

Ruling classes like to flatter themselves, because the reality of political power is not very pleasant -- since politics is about the enemy. The feudal lords of the Middle Ages were the original robber barons, not noble knights. Today's activists are the bribed apologists of today's ruling class, not dedicated monks of truth and justice. We can tell that as we look back on the riots of the US 2020 election season. Our rulers seemed to be quite untroubled by the riots staged by the activists of Black Lives Matter and AntiFa. But they were deeply offended by teenager Kyle Rittenhouse battling the Kenosha rioters in August 2020 and the Capitol Hill riot of January 6, 2021. The lesson is obvious. Left-wing activists are tolerated by the regime; their riots are judged to be "mostly peaceful protests." Right-wing activists are not even rioters; they are "armed insurrectionists."

For us, the medieval romances and Wagner's operas are delightful entertainment. And there is nothing more delightful than watching Shakespeare's Harry Percy and Prince Hal duke it out at the battle of Shrewsbury.

But the melodrama of modern activism is not so funny. For it is based on a lie, that modern society does not care about the travails of the oppressed, and that the only way for the voice of the oppressed to be heard is through the intercession of well-born activists. Not at all. Our era is remarkably sensitive to the cry of the oppressed, beginning not later than the Duke of Wellington persuading the British House of Lords to pass the great Reform Bill of 1832 that broadened the franchise to include small landowners, tenant farmers and shopkeepers.

Indeed, the concurrence between the medieval romance and the modern activist romance is telling. It is telling us that the present age, in which all good people are devoted to digging out oppression wherever it can be found, is in its autumn. Just as aristocrats down the ages sported the stars and crosses of various orders of chivalry on their chests, so do our modern aristocrats sport their NGO exploits on their college applications and resumes.

Politics needs an enemy. But a ruling class also needs to believe it is doing good.

ABC of Politics: Blame

I was reading a piece by a friend mourning how politicians never admit they are wrong. And that set me to thinking. Why not? Why don't politicians admit when they are wrong? I realize that politicians are not like ordinary people that can just say, sorry, I screwed up. Not that anyone ever likes to admit being wrong or take the blame.

It's obvious really.

It starts with this: there is no politics without an enemy. The corollary is that a politician is always fighting an enemy. And when you are fighting an enemy you are in a battle of life and death. You cannot just say: "aw shucks, we screwed up."

If something goes wrong with the Emperor of China, it is said that he has lost the Mandate of Heaven. So it's the end of him, the end of his dynasty, and a Time of Troubles until the next emperor appears and crowns himself with the Mandate of Heaven.

Put it this way: Imagine that President Roosevelt had said, on December 8, 1941, that "gee fellas, we really screwed up the intelligence, allowing a Japanese naval fleet to steam half way across the Pacific and attack our naval base at Pearl Harbor. Better luck next time." If he had done that he would have had to resign.

No, instead President Roosevelt rallied America to arms, starting with: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941— a date which will live. In infamy." And went on to win the biggest war in world history. That's how a political leader acts. That's how a political leader must act.

But most questions in this life are not a matter of life and death. But still, a politician never admits a mistake, and never takes the blame.

So the question becomes: what questions should come under the care of politics, given that politics requires an enemy, and treats every issue as a matter of life and death?

Or to put the issue another way, when we consider the question of an enemy, there is the fact of conflict, extending "to the real possibility of physical killing", according to Carl Schmitt. Just who among the people with whom we interact deserve to be named and treated as enemies?

Or suppose that we have misinterpreted someone else's action as an act of malevolence, when it was just an act of selfishness?

And that is the key to the question of why a politician can never admit a mistake and stay in office. Because politics is about the enemy, and action against the enemy involves the possibility of conflict and "the real possibility of physical killing," a mistake in politics is always colored by the possibility of killing someone that didn't deserve to be killed, or "one of ours" being killed for nothing.

If a politician identifies an enemy and it turns out that the so-called enemy is really our friend, then the politician is a monster.

If a politician sends our young men out against the enemy, and it turns out it was all a mistake, then that politician is a monster.

If a politician sends our young men out against the enemy, and the enemy beats them, then the politician is a monster.

So, a politician can never admit a mistake and take the blame. Because if he has made a mistake he is a monster.

And he is history.

So, politics should only be involved in issues where the leader cannot admit to being wrong, because the issue is a matter of life and death about which we must fight to the death right now or get annihilated, where doing nothing and making a mistake amounts to the same thing: oblivion.

Everything else we should resolve in a free and good-natured discussion of the issues among equals.

Self-Creating Universe 8: Making Sense of Life

Clarke develops the idea of emergentism as a worldview, in the sense of the German notion of Weltanshauung, a narrative, or "conceptual scheme," that attempts to bring the aspects of existence into a unifed story about the meaning of life, and to rediscover the sense of the sacred in a reintegration of the art and humanities with the sciences. 

But what do we value most in life: what do we regard as sacred. For Clarke, the emergentism that understands 'human persons as agents and self-creators is a reflection  of the sacredness of nature itself as a self-organizing, self-creating cosmos". It re-enchants the disenchanted universe of the old materialist-mechanical model. Instead of the pessimism of Christianity and Sin and the Fall, we can take heart in a view of "this emergent world of unending creativity as sacred" with the idea of "God" as our name for creativity in nature. But what of destruction and death? There is a a complementarity between creation and destruction, and the notion that we fight against violence and evil is a sign of "moral and religious emergence."

How does emergentism speak to the moral life, about "the good life, about ethical principles, about human morality, about rights and wrongs, justice, honesty, and compassion?" Clarke proposes to develop an "autopoietic ethics," self-generating and self-developing. If human life is self-creative, so then can human ethics.

But does that pitch humans into nihilism, where everything is permitted? Clarke thinks not, asserting that even traditions developed with God's authority "we are still the creators and interpreters" of God's authority. We do not become altruistic by "learning rules or commandments... but by becoming altruistic persons". It presupposes a "long and often agonized 'conversation of mankind', an "ever-developing "communicative rationality." Is this just egoistic "self-realization"? Clarke thinks not; we are social beings in a network of interdependence genuine self-realization means the self-realization of all beings. However, this is not easy, as the critics of both Marxist equality and liberal freedom demonstrate. Perhaps the Green philosophy, with its vision of "close affinity with the natural world" is a better approach, with "adaptive, self-regulating systems" rather than command-and-control. But does this approach extend beyond the human species? Yes, but not too far. Clarke feels that his approach to morality aligns with Buddhism and the Tao.

Now Clarke moves on from the moral life to the spiritual life. What does that mean in an emergent philosophy?

Next: Emerging Futures.

Self-Creating Universe 7: Making Sense of Human Nature

How do we understand human nature, our "being-in-the-world from an emergentist perspective"? And that obviously, has to do with our notion of human consciousness, and our notion of human "freedom." The idea is to get beyond the old question of free will vs. determinism. Can emergentism throw new light upon human "free will?" Clarke proposes to develop a model to understand human action "as a natural, albeit non-reductive, emergent phenomenon."

Clarke proposes to develop his idea based upon the notion of human agency, that humans make choices in the world not just consciously, but "in terms of our biological inheritances, languages, social customs, and external circumstances and demands." And, human agency is understood "not only   in personal terms but as a collective process... as nations, tribes, families, businesses, or teams."

We humans like to think of ourselves as special, but Clarke identifies agency-like behavior in almost all living things. Thus the idea of "protoagency" in living things as basic as "a bacterium swimming up a glucose gradient" that seems to "act on [its] own behalf and [is] able to detect and respond appropriately to both nutrients and threats". Thus agency could be an emergent property of living things that becomes more complex with more complex living things.

Clarke does not want to think of agency or free-will as "random and unpredictable" but rather as "the production of order by means of human agency, individual and collective."

But how does agency work, since agency is a top-level property of living things, while science generally likes to explain the complex in terms of the less complex? The answer is to assume that emergence works from the top-down as well as the bottom-up. This applies at the social level too: it is not possible to understand the operation of society purely from the behavior of individuals. Society clearly affects individuals. This "downward causation" also applies to the mind-body question. Mind and body must be connected and mind must have an influence on body.

In understanding the behavior of a human agent... we need to take into account different levels of understanding -- physical , biological, psychological, and spiritual.

Yet we are also an unity "in which these different levels overlap."

So Clarke proposes a view that "one level of phenomena or type of property... is dependent upon another level... while at the same time not being reducible to it." And that applies to the interdependence of mind and matter. 

Another vexed question is the question of "purpose," that seems obvious in a world created by God, but problematic in an naturalist presumption. Clarke thinks it is better to talk about "function" rather than "purpose." And the same applies to the notion of "progress." Clarke decides to reject a teleological tending towards some "ideal goal" while accepting that there seems to be, in the emergent understanding of the universe, some sort of "urge to create" that seems to move towards "more diverse, complex and self-ordered beings."

And then there is the question of morality. Is morality, and our understanding of morality, progressing? And does the concern about violence, "our horror of wars," and "famine, disease, poverty and injustice" might be regarded as "indications of moral and religious emergence." On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe, as with Kant, it helps "to proceed as if something has a purpose" even if it doesn't.

How about extending purpose and functions to values? Wittgenstein says that the world is the totality of facts; Sartre says that values are a creation of our "subjective conscious freedom;" Whatbout the "fact-value" debate? Can we achieve a "naturalization of ethics?"

There is Darwin proposing that pre-human species display a kind of "protomorality." Others show that many animal species have a sense of fairness, empathy, and help others in distress. And there seems to be an evolution in this, not just from apes to humans, but also within the human species, as in the evolution of the common law, that combined a connection with tradition with "constant reflection and adaptation." There seems to be a kind of creatvie emergent order, where values are concerned.

Next: Making Sense of Life.