Voluntaryism for Kids: Making Education Peaceful

*Originally written 06/19/2016*

Many of my views on education and child-rearing stem from my adherence to the philosophy of voluntaryism, which is the belief that all human associations should be voluntary. The guiding principle of libertarianism, the Non-Aggression Principle (don’t initiate violence against peaceful people), is derived from voluntaryism but is not quite as pure. A discussion of these two moral codes and the differences between them is not the purpose of this essay. Still, it must be pointed out that those ignorant of libertarian theory often accuse (anarcho-)libertarians of being anti-law, disciples of chaos, when, in fact, we wholeheartedly support exactly one law, and its derivatives: that, so much as possible, all human interactions must be voluntary. We therefore support laws against murder, rape, and theft, but we also oppose laws that force employers to pay certain wages or prevent individuals from using their property as they wish. Libertarians recognize that the majority of current laws and government actions violate voluntaryism (or the non-aggression principle), and, therefore, oppose government as it currently exists. But it would be a mistake to then conclude that we are against any and all laws and law-enforcement agencies. 

Anyway, the things about moral principles is that they should be universal. It would be the height of hypocrisy to demand for the principles of voluntaryism to apply to ourselves without applying them to everyone else as well. This includes children. In fact, I would say that if it is wrong to coerce and oppress other adults, it is doubly wrong to coerce and oppress children, for they have not the power to resist our use of force. 

As a voluntaryist, then, it is my belief that we should not force children to do things that they don’t want to do. A brief moment of reflection will reveal how drastic the implications of such a policy would be, as, currently, most of a child’s life is dominated by things that they don’t want to do. The most blatant example, of course, is school itself. The institution of public schooling, with its compulsory attendance laws, is, in fact, a vast system of incarceration. Under this current system countless millions of children are forced into its unpromising halls and classrooms. Such an environment fosters widespread unhappiness, discontent, and rebellion from our nation’s youth. Despite its claims, school does not enlighten children with useful knowledge so much as drown them in untold misery. If we care about our children, this draconian practice must end. 

How can we accomplish this? Quite obviously, we can simply decide to stop forcing children to do anything that they don’t want to do. For example, when I’m teaching Sunday School and a child isn’t cooperating, I sometimes ask him to leave. There’s nothing mean about it; he’s distracting everyone else from learning, so I can’t let him stay, but I make sure that he knows that I’m not angry and that he’s welcome back whenever he decides that he wants to cooperate and do what everyone else is doing. I try to make it clear that he’s not being punished because he’s not doing what I want him to do; he’s being released because he doesn’t want to do what we’re doing. Eventually, he’ll come back, apologize, and rejoin the activities. Unfortunately, schools can’t do this because of compulsory attendance laws, so teachers resort to coercion and oppression to keep control of their too-large classes. Saddled with more kids than they can handle, teachers create an environment where children must always obey what the teacher orders and ask permission to do anything else.

[Similarly, the development of EMC2 has, since my tenure, focused on adapting the program to the individual student and on fostering a radical level of respect for each student. My own kids get to go one step further with me: they have no grades, and they’re not required to do any assignments on the class syllabus. Noah doesn’t write journals, Jonah doesn’t even have a website, and that’s okay. What’s most important to me is that the students be in charge, for I believe that will lead to the most growth. But, also, because I cannot, as a voluntaryist, justify any other type of relationship.]

The key, then, is to abolish compulsory attendance laws, and, more generally, the compulsory nature of school itself and make school truly voluntary. Not only is this a moral imperative, but such a practice would reduce many of the behavioral issues that seem to necessitate the use of coercion in schools. I think that most small children know how to behave and be nice; their bad behavior comes from being trapped in an oppressive environment. I think that most bad behavior comes from children who want to end the social interaction that they’re engaged in but don’t know how or, more likely, aren’t allowed to. It’s their instinctual, unrefined resistance to involuntary association. Moreover, if schools were voluntary, children would only come to class when they wanted to learn, and then the oppressive environment wouldn’t be necessary to control them. They wouldn’t need to be controlled because they would be the ones who wanted to do the class activity. They would be customers, not prisoners.

Ultimately, however, we must remove the government from the education system. The fact that government controls the schools means that there can be no substantive experimentation or competition or flexibility in serving the children most effectively. As long as the State, that institution with a monopoly on force, runs the schools, the ultimate decision-making with regards to the child’s education will be made by someone other than the child, thereby oppressing the child. Like everything else it does, the State educates through the use of force, and if anyone believes that violence is the best method for improving our children, they are profoundly misguided. Thankfully, there are peaceful alternatives, and it is time, for the sake of our children and for the sake of our conscience, for us to embrace voluntaryism and pursue these peaceful methods of education.

J36 - On School Shootings

In politics, there is something called a “one-issue voter.” This is someone who decides among political candidates based on their position on one particular issue. Sometimes this issue is taxes; some people will always just vote for lower taxes. Other times, this issue is abortion; some people will always choose the pro-life candidate. I don’t really vote, but I think that one could call me a “one-issue person.” And that one issue, for me, is children. I do oppose higher taxes. but that’s because it impoverishes the world of tomorrow, which my children will inhabit. I do oppose war, but that’s because wars kill children. And the activities to which I have devoted my life are ones which enrich the lives of children and students. I teach Sunday School, not because I believe in any of my church’s teachings, but because I want to work with the kids and make sure they enjoy their time in the building. I taught economics on the collegiate level not only because I was passionate about economics, but because I wanted to help kids understand the life-changing subject. I worked in the General Counsel’s office of the SUNY Research Foundation because I wanted to help enrich the educational experience of SUNY students. I coach gymnastics for young children weekly because I enjoy seeing the little kids have fun and grow. And, of course, I dedicate an enormous part of my time to the EMC2 program, where many of the students would be startled to realize the extent of my affection for and commitment to them. There is little I wouldn’t do for them. I could keep going here, and talk about the little girl I taught how to walk, or the daycare I helped manage, or my tutoring, or my babysitting, or my insistence on donating only to charities that support children, but hopefully it is clear how much of my life has been dedicated to doing good things for kids. 

So, as you can imagine, news of a child massacre is particularly devastating to me. It is difficult for me to put into words the overwhelming rage and grief that I felt in response to the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School last week. I could spend several paragraphs here trying to describe it, but I think this unnecessary, given the fact that you, my dear reader, no doubt felt something similar. So, I’ll confine myself here to the academic task of discussing the event in terms of my theory of being human, perhaps speculate a bit about its cause, and then comment on the response I’ve seen from the nation.

First, I want to make the controversial assertion that the gunman’s actions were not “mindless” or “crazy” or “irrational.” If we define rationality loosely, as the application of means in ways that the acting individual believes will bring about the attainment of his chosen ends, then the shooter’s actions are every bit as rational as mine are when I’m baking cookies. Given his ends, one may conclude that his means were not appropriate. Or, one could conclude that his ends were repugnant and unjustifiable. But the process, the thinking process, is essentially the same in this murdering individual as in the victims who tried to escape him. Which means, I believe, that we can come to understand this individual’s thinking process. We might not agree with his reasoning, and we might find the task distasteful, but it is possible to see the purpose-driven causal chain that his mind constructed, and to question why it was made the way that it was. That is, we can ask and answer why he did what he did. This is not something that I believe many have done in response to this particular shooting.

Now, a slight digression that is relevant to my theory but not to this event. Man lives in a world of scarcity, and much of his mental and physical energy is dedicated to acquiring additional means, thus loosening the restraints scarcity imposes on his ability to attain his chosen ends. There are essentially two ways in which one can acquire these means, productively and parasitically. That is, in a society such as ours, one can cooperate with other people in the division of labor to transform resources into more and better goods capable of satisfying various wants, or he can take such goods from others who have peacefully produced them. This antisocial route to increased wealth can appear relatively attractive, so long as one can get away with the crime. Regardless, this choice is always present to the individual living in society. He can choose peaceful cooperation, or he can choose violent expropriation. As always, the individual will choose whichever route he believes to be most advantageous to himself. His actions will have consequences beyond himself, namely on the people he chooses to victimize or not, but also on everyone else as he contributes to the uncertainty of the future’s security. Widespread crime diverts resources into crime prevention and protective measures, and it increases the present-orientedness of people (goods should be consumed today, or else they might be stolen in the night). If the violence becomes too prevalent, society itself will disintegrate. However, for any one individual, the wider consequences of his actions are unlikely to have any major significance on society at large, and, no matter the consequences, the individual is likely to consider only the consequences for himself in his decision. That is, considerations of the implications of his actions on others will not likely enter his thoughts as he makes this choice. A key to a flourishing society, therefore, is a mechanism by which the costs of antisocial behavior are felt by the acting individual, either through a legal system that holds individuals accountable for the effects their actions have on others, or through a moral system that influences the choice an individual makes by making treating other people well an end in and of itself, or through an educational system that influences the choice of means an individual chooses in the pursuit of his ends and helps him see the consequences of his actions.

Mises believed that the task of economics was to demonstrate whether the means chosen by individuals and policy makers were appropriate for the attainment of the actors’ given ends. He believed that all of the mistakes made by government were results of ignorance and misunderstanding about the economic ramifications of the policies chosen. If the politicians could just understand that the minimum wage actually hurts poor workers, they wouldn’t raise it. Similarly, if individuals understood that the short-term gains in wealth from acts of violence would inevitably be outweighed by the costs of a loss of the peace, they would not choose to act criminally. Mises referred to the harmony of the “rightly understood” interests [long-term interests]. He was a firm advocate for peace among men, because he saw that it was through peace that the long-term interests of everyone, increased wealth and happiness, were achieved through peaceful cooperation in society. It was just a matter of making everyone see this reality. [Rothbard pointed out that this idea of the harmony of interests assumed that people were not interested in hurting other people. That is, if an individual saw violence as an end in and of itself, then his interests could not be harmonized with those of others, who sought peace. I’m not going to really consider here the situation of someone who sees violence as an end rather than a means. I believe these people are actually quite rare, and, moreover, I believe that the only effective response to their existence is their removal from society.]

Now, assuming that the gunman’s goal was not violence itself, it was also clearly not his goal to acquire more resources and become wealthier in the strict sense of the phrase. But he did have a purpose in doing what he did, an end that he was trying to attain. And he believed that this end could more properly be attained through violent means, rather than peaceful ones. As an individualist, I do not attribute the shooter’s action to anyone but himself. There is no blood on lawmakers’ hands, as many have alleged. But I certainly think that it could be argued that society had its own, distinct, failure. I’m not talking about government law enforcement’s utter failure to protect these children, although why anyone would think government should be responsible for public safety in 2018 continues to baffle me. [The aftermath of horrible incidents like this usually contain a call for more resources to be devoted to the failed government agency. This seems rather odd, rewarding the people who failed. In any context other than government, I think the absurdity would be apparent. The sensible response is to fire this failed agency, and hire a new one.] Instead, I’m talking about the failure of our society to sufficiently bind the killer in the social nexus such that he would not choose such a course of action as he did. Human nature tends toward society, and society tends towards a social nature and social action. That there are individuals who see such dramatic violence as a proper action is an indication, in my view, of a breakdown in societal bonds that should have bound those individuals. As we continue looking for ways to prevent events like this, we should remain cognizant of society’s role in producing the perpetrator of the tragedy. This attack is devastating not only because it resulted in 17 deaths, but because it demonstrates that we live in a society where such an attack can occur.

Because this journal is already going to be longer than it should be, I won’t delve too deeply into why I think society failed, what structural features of our current society might have generated these impulses in the shooter. Suffice to say that, looking around, I see division everywhere, with an intensity that is sickening. There is clear bias and antagonism in every single news story (except, to some degree, the business section...thank goodness that the market can still provide an oasis of sanity). Everyone is protesting something, minorities compete for the title of most oppressed, the government acts belligerently towards all foreign nations, Americans are generally distrustful of foreigners (the leftists of Russians, the right-wingers of Mexicans and Chinese), social media is full of arguments (or, rather, declarations and then exchanges of insults in the comment sections), and, with increased intensity in response to this shooting, but preceding it, loud calls for restricting the rights of others. Everything, and I mean everything, has become so politicized; it invades our entertainment, too, coloring our advertisements, movies, and even sports. Politics, contrary to what the children learn in their unsafe indoctrination camps, is not a mechanism for consensus, but a tool of warfare. A democracy is and must always be oppression by the majority. And as government expands, and more of our lives become subject to politics, it is ever more important to gain and retain majority status. Anyone who is not like you is the enemy, because they might vote a different way. Actions that seem obviously antisocial suddenly become acceptable if committed for the cause of ensuring that your views remain controlling. You can justify such actions by believing that society would be harmed to a much greater extent if other policies were to replace your own. In sum, as society moves away from the market, with its division of labor based on cooperation, to government-based “solutions,” based on opposition and enforced through coercion, we become less social, and certainly less peaceful. Actions like shooting children no longer seem beyond the realm of possibility; after all, this is war.

There is a more scientific (read: economic) explanation for the breakdown of society.  I don’t want to get into that here. But I do want to stress that this problem stems from a breakdown in general social relations. Often, these aggressors are portrayed as having a history as loners. That is, they are isolated from the embrace of society. As society becomes less embracive, we might expect more loners and thus more aggressors. 

Now, for solutions, and my second controversial statement in this journal. The part of “gun violence” that makes it evil is the “violence,” not the “gun.” Carrying a gun through a school without hurting anyone could not be considered an evil act (unless you’ve been more-than-usually brainwashed by the anti-gun media). On the other hand, stabbing more than a dozen students to death with a knife would undoubtedly be considered evil (perhaps more so than killing them with a gun). So, the part of this event that makes it horrible and cries out for action is not the use of a gun, but the violence itself. It’s the killing that’s the problem here. So I think the massive response to this tragedy that is focusing on gun control is rather confused. The goal should not be to reduce the prevalence of guns in the community, but to reduce the prevalence of violence in the community. 

In response to pretty much everything, I usually stress the need to ask more questions. “Answers should not be given until questions have been asked.” After this event last week, everyone jumped immediately to answers: the left to gun control as the solution, and the right to treating mental illness and the need for increased law enforcement. And I think that if they had all just engaged in some critical thinking, they might have seen the truth set out in the last paragraph. An unusual brain is no more evil than an inanimate gun. It is the violence that is the issue. It is the violence that must be prevented. Additionally, in response to events like this, I usually recommend waiting for emotion to die down, so that solutions can be crafted by reason, not emotion. There has been a lot of admiration expressed for the nature of the response to this particular shooting, which has been more organized and much louder than in the past. A lot of people think that this is a good thing, since it is more likely to lead to change. But who stops to ask the questions “What change? Who’s change? Is this change appropriate or not? What even happened here, and why?” I strongly believe that the people making the most noise right now, "making their voices heard," have not engaged in a cold, rational deliberation on this issue, have not engaged in the questioning, arguing, and critical thinking necessary for clear thought, and have not embraced the intellectual humility necessary to entertain other points of view. Indeed, many of them seem to base their assertions on their experiential authority, like the post-modernists, as if being in the same building as a shooter makes their arguments for more gun control any more legitimate or more objectively true. As a result, I tend to dismiss them. They’re reacting, not thinking. That’s not to say that there are not some engaging in these stricter, more rational discussions and coming to similar conclusions as the children calling for action. But these other people are rare, and their more rigorous arguments are often drowned out by the noise created by everyone else. This noise, and the calls for more of it, may very well be leading us in the wrong direction. Indeed, I rather suspect that this is the case, though perhaps not in the way you might think.

As I discussed above, I think that a peaceful society acts as something of a positive feedback loop, and that instances of tremendous violence are evidence of a breakdown in the system somewhere. The solution, therefore, would seem to be something (or many things) that would tend to cultivate a more peaceful society. I think that the best way to respond to any situation is to become better, to learn and grow. The problem here is hate and division and alienation and violence. We should respond with love and unity and community and peace. This is kind of the opposite of how most have been reacting. The left wants to use the coercive power of the government to eliminate the rights of 40% of the country, and to take that 40%’s private property away. The right wants to use the coercive power of the government to fill our schools with more guns, and perhaps lock up/drug people whose brains work a little bit differently. Neither of these solutions seem to lead to a more peaceful, cooperative society. But, more fundamentally, I think that both views are misguided in that they are looking for a political solution. Because, as I discussed above, politics is divisive. Take a quick look at Twitter if you don’t believe me. There is so much anger and hate and vitriol involved in every political debate. Pursuing more politics in response to this shooting will, in fact, deepen and intensify the divisions and conflicts in our society. And that’s the opposite of what we should be doing. Moreover, choosing a government solution seems rather unreasonable, as the government can only adopt one solution for all of us. We don’t know whether this chosen solution will work, or whether it would be the most effective solution, and the odds of it being so seem rather unlikely, given sheer probability, not to mention the corrupting and warping influence of the compromising political process. It would seem that, if we were really serious about saving lives, we would allow the market to try every possible solution, and every combination of preventative measures, to determine which is most effective. I am not entirely sure what the best solution to this problem of school shootings is, but I am fairly certain that forcing one possible solution on everyone [another act of violence on a society already fraught with it] is not a reasonable course of action for finding it. So, a government solution seems to come with higher costs than benefits. Instead of screaming for a bunch of politicians to fix this problem for us with whatever one solution they manage to come up with, let us all do our own part to prevent violence in our schools. Let us all try our own solutions; let us all try to cultivate a society of peace; let us all try to love each other just a little bit more.

J35 - Tracing The Theory

Based on the last journal, you might expect this journal to be dealing with some depressing aspect of human nature and the human experience. And, indeed, I have another journal draft just a page-break away that discusses school shootings that will be forthcoming soon. [I’m also working on a journal that applies the idea of the intellectual division of labor to education (which might end up being a supplemental piece), a journal on “the Singularity” that the AI community anticipates and how the limitations of the human mind shape that debate, and a supplemental post on relationships between teachers and students. I should also write something about humanity and comedy, so as to address Noah’s topic, but I’m awaiting inspiration there.] However, before we get to that, I wanted to trace out my theory of being human. While I believe it is implicit through my work thus far, I want to explicate it a bit and put it in order so that I can properly organize my final product. I’m going to begin clarifying my concepts here in this journal, so it might not comport perfectly to the rest of my past writings.

Here, on this site, I have stressed that what makes human beings different is our reason. I have usually described this reason as man’s ability to imagine, choose, and act rationally for the attainment of ends. I have also said that this reason is inseparably tied to the phenomenon of society, and I have mentioned that the idea of reason throughout the history of thought is one of a relational concept. I want to clarify this here, bring all of these concepts together. I will then proceed to step-by-step trace my theory of being human from this central idea of reason in ever-widening circles to capture the full nature and experience of man (as much as I’m able).

I think that what really distinguishes human beings from all other creatures is our imaginations, our ability to see things unseen, our capacity to invent and design and creatively problem solve. And I think that reason is, perhaps, merely the ability to follow a causal chain out of sight. That is, to abstract from the here-and-now and think through chains of reasoning to foresee the effects of present action, or to see what present action is required to attain certain future effects. To see what is unseen, of course, requires imagination. A dog can know that sitting in response to a command will likely result in a treat. But he does not wonder why. He does not trace the causal chain beyond the present moment. He can’t. One may say that he doesn’t have the context or higher reasoning necessary to understand that we are training him to behave in certain ways so as to be more comfortable having him around, etc., but really he just can’t imagine it. He cannot see what is unseen. Human beings can conceptualize phenomenon beyond our experience and reduce complex phenomenon to simpler relationships that can be subjected to logical manipulation and lead to greater understanding. We can imagine a triangle as an abstract concept, rather than as the triangular shape before us. And, more significantly for economics, man can imagine alternative future states that will bring him different levels of satisfaction. All animals do what they think is best for themselves; that very base rational action is not unique to humans. Deciding what is best for us, that is unique to us. Animals live in the moment and respond to what is seen; humans see what is unseen and act to bring it into sight. So imagination sets us apart. Causal relationships, abstract concepts, true phenomenon...these all exist whether we recognize and understand them or not. But we need imagination to see them, and only we possess this imagination.

The most fundamental and significant manifestation of this imagination-enabled reason is the recognition of the benefits of the division of labor. As I explained in...some journal or another, two elements lead to the formation and maintenance of society: the greater productivity of the division of labor, and the recognition of this fact. The greater productivity of the division of labor is a law of nature and logic, embodied most famously in the Ricardian law of comparative cost, and most completely in Mises’s law of association. But man alone, out of all the creatures on the Earth, recognized this law and took advantage of it. It seems obvious to us, now, to see the benefits of the division of labor. Actually, given the current popular policies of many governments throughout the world, this may not be true. But, even if all humans understood comparative advantage, such understanding would still be a very rare phenomenon. It was a tremendously difficult chain of reasoning to grasp, and perhaps the greatest feat of mankind. It certainly distinguishes us, and has allowed us to further distinguish ourselves, from the other inhabitants of our planet.

The tremendous benefits of the division of labor are realized through the development of a market economy. For the market to function effectively and generate increased wealth for its participants, it requires an atmosphere of relative peace and a respect for property rights. To encourage these elements, other social institutions are developed, such as law and religion and family. Additionally, as the division of labor intensifies and expands, each individual’s role becomes more specialized. The individual becomes one-sided, highly skilled in one task and rather helpless in all the others. He becomes more and more a part of the whole. At the same time, an intensifying and expanding division of labor indicates capital accumulation and advanced production processes, which means that there is an increased amount of wealth available to each individual with which the individual may attain his own subjective ends. That is, man becomes more and more able to express his individuality and shape his environment to suit his preferences and desires better. There’s an interesting tension here that is, in fact, no tension, but it should be explained more in the final product. Additionally, any intensification or expansion of the division of labor beyond the most basic level requires a medium of exchange, and eventually a common commodity money, which makes possible the rational action of man and the universe-altering flourishment of civilization. Therefore, I want my final product to include a discussion of the price system [and, new to this project, a discussion of the structure of production and its significance) and the relationship between economic calculation and human action. 

It cannot be forgotten, in all this talk of reason and imagination and society and markets, what man’s reality is. Man lives in a world of ever-present scarcity. There are simply not enough means to be utilized for the attainment of every end an individual desires. Indeed, the human mind is incapable of even imagining a contrary state of affairs. The purpose of reason, and society, and the market, is to aid man in his struggle against the scarcity he faces. They are all tools for the satisfaction of his wants. But, as is true of all actions of man living in a world of scarcity, every choice necessarily involves a renunciation. To choose some ends, such as the increased material wealth generated by an advanced division of labor, means that some other ends, such as the ability to yield to one’s carnal and violent impulses, must be abandoned. Moreover, while the division of labor and society, over time, yield unmatched benefits for everyone, in the short run there is a temptation to disregard its required norms of conduct and to act outside of the market, i.e., through the use of force, to increase one’s personal wealth and satisfaction at the expense of others. This temptation is also supported by the game-theory dilemma wherein one individual’s disregard of social norms is not enough to really impact the flow of benefits from society, but if everyone disregarded these norms the society would collapse. So, there are choices, difficult choices, that need to be made in order to live in a society, and these choices need to be confronted and reaffirmed daily. Sometimes, the tradeoff is not worth it for the individual, and he descends into a fit of anti-social behavior. This can take the form of just being nasty to the people around you, to hurting people through private crime, to the institution of predatory governments. More fundamentally, this struggle to choose social over anti-social behavior is something that we all go through all the time, and it is significant in that it has effects on other people as well as ourselves. That is, choosing between ice cream and cookies for dessert does contribute to the demands for each product in the market nexus, but for the most part its effect is personal. Choosing between peaceful or violent resolution of a disagreement, on the other hand, can have implications for the entire social fabric which sustains the lives and livelihoods of every human being. An examination of this dilemma and the consequences of the choices made must be included in my theory of being human.

Additionally, while humans are unique in that we shape our environments to suit ourselves better, we are still products of our environment. We start from the world we find ourselves in, and make our valuations and choices and plans based on the data currently available to us. The satisfaction of some wants leads to the development of new wants. The changing environment around us changes the nature of some of our wants. As basic survival becomes more assured, less energy and focus need be paid to finding food and building shelter, leaving more energy for the attainment of higher ends, such as developing medications and inventing new therapies. We find ourselves in a world where, based on the level of capital accumulation we’ve achieved, 16-year-olds cultivate their efforts to obtaining a driver’s license and getting a car. We find ourselves in a world where, based on the advanced division of labor and the material wealth it creates, people are often more concerned with the quality of their relationships than almost anything else. So much of being human is simply adapting to the world we find ourselves in, a product of other men, and our attempt to change it for ourselves. But we ourselves are products of the world we’ve built. I might even argue that we’ve escaped evolution, in that now we turn to technology to equip us to face and conquer whatever environment we find ourselves in. And this world we’ve created, a product of the fact that we shape the world to suit ourselves rather than shape ourselves to suit the world, has in turn shaped us. We have recently, through the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, reached a level of cognition and progress and advancement and scholarship and production never before even imagined. And as our environment has changed, so have we. Less effort need be spent on maintaining our physical constitution; the preeminence of the mind is one of the distinguishing characteristic of our age. We now love, because we have that luxury to create such connections with other people. We are a gentler race now, civilized by civilization itself. This phenomenon must be incorporated into a theory of being human.

Finally, I really want to draw in the idea of education. What is education’s purpose, if not to prepare us for our (human) lives? So, I think that the idea of education is very much wrapped up in the question of what do we want to be? What do we want the world to look like, and what role do we want to play in that world, and what must be done to bring this envisioned world into reality? Whatever we teach our kids reflects the vision of the future that we have for them. But, this necessarily puts us into conflict with the vision of the future that they have for themselves. And, furthermore, I think that education is a uniquely human phenomenon and that we can incorporate so much of human nature and human experience into a truly human education. “The method of schooling is its only real content.” What lessons from the market and society and world we’ve built will be incorporate into our education of the next generation of our species, who we’ve essentially built this world for? This is still fuzzy for me, and maybe instead of trying to fit education into my theory of being human piece I should just try to fit some of my theory of being human into my education piece. But, as mentioned above, I’m playing with the idea of how the theory of the intellectual division of labor could apply to education, and I’m thinking about the type of relationships through which education can occur successfully. In other words, I think I see a lot of connections between my theory of being human and my theory of education. Like, the schooling system represents the height of mankind’s conceit in designing the future. But education represents man’s acknowledgements of his shortcomings and his hope for a future that is not only unseen, but which he will never personally see. In that sense, then, I think it might just represent the very essence of humanity. 

So, my final product will pretty much follow the path set forth above, but with more explanation and clarity and development. Hopefully it's clear how each step considered necessarily leads to the next one. The final product will make that integration more obvious. Then, if I am so inclined, I will attempt to briefly show how all the other EMC2 projects are related to this theory of mine. My hope is that I can give my students something to help them understand the world better, and their role in it.

J34 - Plans For Moving Forward

With the completion of this Journal, I will have written and published more than 76,000 words on this website over the past nine months. This sum is undoubtedly more than what was required of me over the course of my entire undergraduate career. This colossal feat, which even someone as prolific as I can be very proud of, along with the fact that the end of the year is bearing down on me with increasing speed, leads me to consider what the rest of the year and the end of this project will look like for me. I have enough base material, I believe, to support a final product, and I have barely enough time, I believe, to complete one if I start right now. So, I want this journal to serve as a look ahead and as a way for me to think through the path ahead of me.

First, I want to list out the limitations on my time that will inhibit my efforts to create a final product. Looking at my law school obligations, I have a number of big research papers (essentially academic journal articles) due this semester, one related to the Court of Appeals, one about Higher Education Law, and one about Judicial Language and Environmentalism. If I sit down and just do them, they shouldn’t take a tremendous amount of time, but it will take some time to find such opportunities. You see, I work best with large blocks of time. So, I could probably bang out the Court of Appeals paper in two 12-hour sessions. But if I only get 3-hour blocks in which to work, it would probably take me far more than eight of them to do the same work. So, for all these papers, and for my final product, I will need some large swaths of free time. This means that whenever these opportunities arise, there will be a lot of competition for them. Additionally, I’m working as a Research Assistant this semester to Professor Bonventre, and so I’ll need to find time to subedit and redline two of his papers this semester, too. It feels like a tremendous amount of work ahead of me, and it is, but I know from experience that it is possible. Still, in considering my plans for the end of the year, these other obligations must be kept in mind if I want to be at all realistic.

Second, I want to explain where I see the rest of my project going for the rest of the year. Because while I’m working on this final product, I still have 16 more journals to write, as well as my supplementary postings (two supplements for every three journals). The EMC2 kids are required to write 50 journals for their projects. Technically, this will be my 57th posting, but only my 34th journal. I’ve relaxed the standardized curriculum for at least my own students, and I’ve taken advantage of this flexibility to pretty much stop doing SDAs in my own project, but journals have always been my own feature of the course, and I would be remiss if I didn’t meet the magic number. Now, I think that the core of my theory has already been sketched out in my 76,000 words, especially since my topic change and the more focused journals which have accompanied it. Reading some of my most recent journals about morality and education, which were so long as to necessarily brush upon numerous other topics, I caught glimpses of an integrated theory present. Which tells me that my Theory of Being Human does exist, but I think it needs a lot of refinement and elucidation and extrapolation. This will be a task for my final product. But, my point is that the core of my theory exists, and therefore work on the final product can begin. But there must be, and is, other issues that can be addressed in my remaining journals. Thus far, my project has focused pretty heavily on reason and economics and the glories of the human mind. I think that, for the remainder of my project, I want to explore the darker, more primal, elements of humanity. Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Love is not an entirely rational phenomenon, I think [in the strict sense of the word rational]. And yet it is one the defining experiences of the human life and something that almost everyone strives after. It deserves to be addressed, I think. But yesterday was also a day during which yet another school shooting occurred. For all this talk of reason and man’s ability to build a better world, it is undeniable that we still live in a very troubled world, and that man can easily tend towards depravity as well as sublimity. This, too, must be addressed by any proper theory of being human.

I have written before, in my Journal on Hurricanes and the Function of Prices, of the depression that can often accompany an understanding of economic problems. I wrote there that I have, for the most part, escaped this depression. This is not entirely true. I have not escaped so much as I every day fight it off. Because I, too, better even then my already-cynical economics students, see how society is sweeping towards the abyss. The layman believes that society is engaged in constant, assured, progressive advancement. It is left to the discerning economist (or historian or philosopher) to see the truth: that there is progress, and everywhere a rejection of it. There is Uber, and anti-Uber legislation. There is cryptocurrency, and calls for its banning. There is a right to free speech, and riots on college campuses that make dialogue impossible. There are scientific and philosophic advancements in books and articles published daily, and a shocking lack of interest in them. This is an interesting problem. It’s not exactly that society is finding it difficult to progress; society is blatantly hostile to progress. The reason for this is not all that mysterious, to the discerning economist. I see it, I know how it could be fixed, but I find myself powerless to do so. And I know I’m not alone in this. Mises, in his memoirs, wrote about the hopelessness that overcame so many of the great minds in Europe before World War I as they foresaw the calamity that was coming. Mises himself experienced this despair: “From time to time I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and point policy in the right direction….I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.”

I have striven, in my academic work, to always maintain a positive attitude. I present the truth, as I see it. I don’t really discuss the theories of others. I operate under certain assumptions that not all of my readers may agree with because I don’t want to muddy my work with quarreling or give my opponents too much space in my own papers. I do answer their claims, of course, but always indirectly, through a positive presentation of my own arguments or a clarification of the issue. Additionally, while it is no secret that I am an anarchist and a student of the Austrian School of Economics, I’ve never tried to explicitly convert any of my students to my view of things. I answer questions honestly, and that can quickly reveal some of my more unpopular views, but I don’t present these views for the purpose of making them my audience’s. I remain committed to always presenting the truth, but in my students and colleagues I only encourage an ability to recognize error. It is my hope that truth will speak for itself, if people can recognize it. It is not my job to obnoxiously force my views on everyone else, much less the people I have influence over. 

I don’t know if this positive attitude is right or wrong, effective or ineffective. I suppose there is still some part of me that believes that people can be good and rational and that there is hope for humanity. Other parts of me believe the opposite. But I don’t know that I could have operated any other way. I made a choice, very explicitly, many years ago, to be positive. I don’t want to spend my time refuting old fallacies and arguing with people. I want to build something better and think progressively. Yes, I, like every other economist, have offered my own refutation of the minimum wage. But, for the most part, I don’t see my work as contributing to a debate, but as contributing to a climb towards something better. And I think that, if it was anything else, I wouldn’t be nearly as prolific and clear-thinking and effective and influential as I am. I think that if I succumbed to the temptation to brawl in the mud with everyone else, I would never make any theoretical advancements. But, more than that, I don’t know that I would be able to escape the intellectual’s depression, discussed above, if every day I dealt only with the ignorance and errors of others. 

So, for the most part, I prefer to talk about the market rather than the government. I prefer to talk about education, rather than schools. I prefer to talk about reason rather than violence. I prefer to talk about ideas rather than the messiness of real life. This doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the government, the schools, the violence, or the messiness, that I don’t recognize their significance and see how they influence the issues I’m addressing. I am fully cognizant of the fact that there's always another side to the coin, and I'm often just as familiar with that other side.  I just can’t bring myself to talk about evil all day long instead of good. I think this tendency of mine has been evident throughout my project. And I think that, if I’m going to address the darker parts of humanity, I need to change this habit. I need to consider and discuss the evils of society explicitly. And I’m not exactly looking forward to that, to be honest. But I hope to find a way to do so that manages to maintain some semblance of a positive attitude, or at least keeps me from crying myself to sleep every night. However, I can’t choose positivity over truth. So dark journals lay ahead.

Finally, what will my final product actually be? It’s going to be a writing piece, obviously. I’m actually going to be working on two pieces simultaneously. One I’ve already started, on education. This has been a key issue for me for a very long time, and I’ve done a lot of reading and writing on the subject. EMC2 itself a product of this thinking of mine, and being more involved with the program this year, as well as Jonah’s project, has inspired me to fully elucidate my full philosophy of education. And, depending on if I have time, I’ll try to integrate this philosophy into a narrative of my experience with EMC2. That will be a pretty significant piece. The other piece will, of course, be my theory of being human. As I said above, I believe the core of the theory has already been fleshed out, to be supplemented by the remaining journals, but it requires much refinement and integration. I want this piece to serve as the first part of a book that I might put together over the summer or next year, wherein I apply the theory to various issues and topics. The book might be called Purpose: A Theory of Being Human. Together, I expect the two pieces to exceed 30,000 words, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll find a way to put the two together into a grander project. I had a flash of insight that this might be possible, but the thought was gone as soon as it came, so I’ll have to wait and see if it returns while I work on the two. Regardless, both of these pieces are extremely important to me, and I hope I can do them justice.