We have established in previous journals that human beings are different than all other creatures because humans alone imagine different possible worlds, choose the one they consider to be the most favorable, and act to bring that world into existence. As Alex remarked in his latest journal (which is beautiful, by the way), “we are the bright spot in an otherwise dark universe,” because we alone are creators in the universe, “for creation of the most meaningful kind only stems from the purely human ability to envision a better world, and then make it the real world.” In my own work I have labelled this defining feature of man “reason.” Reason, man’s ability to imagine, choose, and act rationally, is man’s greatest weapon against a world of scarcity and has allowed us to reach a state of existence far greater than that of any lesser species. Still, the question remains: what makes this faculty of reason possible? Why do we possess it and no other species?
The tackling of this question is rather timely, as both Alex and Feb have recently written journals touching upon it. According to Alex, it is the complexity of the human mind that has created this sentience and ability to act with purpose. There’s definitely something to this: obviously, whatever we are must be allowed by the limitations of our biology. But it’s important to note that we are, indeed, more than our biology. The biology provides the bare bones of our existence. But the flesh, the life we live, is provided by external sources, by the data and experiences impressed upon our biology by our environments. We are born into societies with existing knowledge, norms, practices, cultures, methods, etc., and are raised in these societies so as to become assimilated to them. Man, in the course of his development, becomes “one-sided” as he adjusts to a specialized role in the division of labor that he finds himself in. He becomes part of a whole. His thoughts are not entirely his own, and it is these thoughts that drive his behavior. Biology, therefore, cannot explain all that man is.
In the course of this journal, however, Alex acknowledges this by arguing that we should be moral to our fellow human beings because of the potential they have to contribute to our lives, complex beings that they are. This insight, in turn, inspired Feb to share a similar revelation she had last year studying the structure of the brain. In her latest journal, she elaborated on the fact that the power of the brain lies in the connections between the neurons. Neurons are indeed amazingly complex cells, but the nature of their connections to one another (which are really just empty spaces through which chemical signals are transmitted) allow the brain to be more than the sum of its parts. In this way, Feb is trying to explain how the complexity of our minds manifests itself as the rational creatures we are today. The magic happens in the empty spaces between the individual parts. She uses this analogy to argue that we humans need to make connections with each other, since this will lead to a product that is exponentially greater than anything we could create on our own.
Now, I am loathe to draw analogies too strongly between biology and society, as such analogies are wont to cause confusion for those without a clear grasp of both subjects, but I think Feb and Alex are onto something great, here, and I’d like to draw it out a little bit more.
As I discussed in the first part of this piece, in Journal 25, man is not only the rational animal, but also the social animal, for “the development of human reason and human society are one and the same process.” As I established in Journal 24, what makes humans different is not the complexity of our minds, but that we possess reason, the ability to think and act purposefully to change our environment to suit ourselves better. Our biology makes this possible, but it is not sufficient to cause it: rationality would be impossible in isolation. As Journal 25 hopefully made clear, human beings are what we are because of our association with other human beings. Feb’s and Alex’s recent journals confirm this. Society is the outcome of a rational decision by human beings to work together peacefully and thereby take advantage of the increased productivity of the division of labor, but it is this cooperation in society that allows us to act rationally. Man emerged from his evolutionary prehistory as a social, no less than rational, creature.
As I explained in Journal 25, this dependence of rationality on association with others is partially due to the fact that the higher productivity of the division of labor allows man an opportunity to actually exercise his reason and, as Alex describes it, create a new and better world. But there is more to it than that. The nature of man is informed by being a part of society, a society that is more than the sum of its parts. The key to understanding the power of society lies, like it does in the brain, in the empty spaces between individuals. Man’s ability to change the world is not just strengthened by the contributions of other complex beings, as Alex posits; man’s ability to change the world is made possible by the existence of a society generated by the connections between many cooperating individuals.
Now, it’s important to realize that all social phenomenon can be traced back to individual decisions and actions of individual human beings. “There are no mysterious mechanical forces; there is only the human will to remove uneasiness.” I am not saying that society is some super-being composed of individual humans like the brain is composed of individual neurons. (See why I hate biological/social analogies?) However, the individual choices and actions of individual human beings, more specifically acts of exchange (the fundamental social relation), generate a price structure, which is a genuinely social phenomenon in the sense that every individual contributes to its formation, and yet it represents more than any particular individual’s contribution. It is the existence of a price system, which appears to the individual as a given, that allows man to act rationally and successfully to change the world.
The purpose of every human action is to survive and thrive in a world of scarcity. As I explained in my first SDA, this purposive striving after ends with scarce means gives rise to the market, “the foremost social body.” The establishment of society was a purposeful action to take advantage of the higher productivity of the division of labor, a choice to peacefully cooperate to increase the production of economic goods. The fundamental form of society, therefore, is the market economy. Everything else we associate with the concept of society developed afterwards, atop the fundamental economic relation. We choose societies because they are more economical; they provide for the satisfaction of ends which we could not achieve on our own. If societies did not provide this, then we would not live in them. They do, however, fulfill this purpose, through the operation of the market. It is the market that permits the development and persistence of a social order. Furthermore, the market “puts the whole social system in order and provides it with sense and meaning,” through the generation of a price system.
It is the price system, a structure of given relations within an economy, that makes the market successful by allowing the development of economic calculation. Without economic calculation, individuals would be unable to evaluate the outcomes of their actions, and would therefore be unable to determine whether their actions were truly economical. The market, and therefore society, is impossible without calculation-informed action. “Where there are no money prices there are no such things as economic quantities….There is no means for man to find out what kind of action would best serve his endeavors to remove his uneasiness as far as possible.” My first SDA delves into the function of economic calculation with some more detail, but suffice to say that the development and persistence of civilization depends on the ability of man to reduce all economic means to a common unit of measurement and to arithmetically compute the most economic use of those means.
Economic calculation is a nuanced subject. It is a very difficult concept to understand, especially at such a fundamental level as I’m trying to use it at (which is a shame, since it is so important to understand). I won’t spend more time developing the idea any further here, however, because it’s not totally necessary for my point. For a more thorough elucidation of the topic, please see the works of Ludwig von Mises, especially Human Action, chapter 13. It should be clear, though, that it is economic calculation that makes possible the existence of social production processes. That is, it is the price system and economic calculation which allow men to actually realize the increased productivity of the division of labor. It is economic calculation, then, which renders the division of labor (and society) advantageous to acting man. And it is society, the collective efforts of many men integrated into a complex division of labor, which has transformed the world into one tremendously more fitting to man. An individual could not have so transformed the world on his own. Society enables man to be and do more than his biology would otherwise allow.
Man is a product of his biology. But he is also a product of his environment. What sets man apart is that he himself has produced his environment to suit himself better, and continues to further improve this environment. He therefore changes himself. But his ability to do so is dependent on the efforts of other men to change the world with him, and the ideas and choices and actions of these other men also inform the shape of the new world and therefore the man who lives in it. This is what makes man what he is. Man alone is no man. Society allows man to be the rational actor that he is, one who imagines and chooses and acts to change the world, and society provides the resources man needs to effect the changes he desires. Without society, man cannot be a creator, cannot be a bright spot in a dark universe. Man is different because he is rational; he is rational because he is social.
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