I’ve always taken the Libertarian Political Compass to be a bit interesting, like fortune cookies and tarot readings. Along with other tests like MBTI and IQ tests, it feels like it might be useful. In fact, it is. It facilitates signals tribal affiliation. Whenever I take the test, I always trend to the lower-left corner, so I can smugly reaffirm my Leftist leanings—if you interpret leanings as up against the wall and on the floor.
When I commented on a forum that I felt that (presuming the X-Y axes of this scale without even mentioning it) Liberals and Conservatives in the United States are each Right of Centre and Conservative—they just want to Conserve different things, someone replied with a link to this video by Halim Alrah. Whilst I won’t comment on his class materialism claim—at least not now—, I do feel it makes me not only double down on my claim but to toss more into the Conservative bucket list.
Besides noting that each aspect is defined in the abstract, he tacitly makes a point with which I agree: all professional and most amateur politics are Conservative: Conservatives want to conserve the 1950s; Liberals want to conserve the 1960s and some of the 1930s and ’40s; Leftist Marxists want to conserve the missed opportunities of the 19-teens, and I suppose the Progressives want to conserve the 19-teens as well. Bully!
all professional and most amateur politics are Conservative
Politics are inherently backwards-looking and fraught with appeals to tradition, each cherry-picking which traditional narrative fits their bill whilst suffering from selective blindness in areas that didn’t quite work out or fit the narrative. Or they want to cash in a mulligan and try again. Or they feel with 20/20 hindsight, they can Groundhog Day the hell out of it. In some hundreds of generations, we’ll be bound to get it right. Even Libertarians and Anarchists cling to ideas of the past. As I’ve mentioned before, I am an anarchosyndicalist, and though that has never been instantiated to scale, it is nonetheless an idea almost two hundred years old. Hardly novel.
I am not a traditionalist, but neither I am not claiming that every tradition is rubbish. But what worked in the past may not actually work in the present or in the future. As the title of a book that I am fond of reminds us, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, so these political armchair quarterbacks are operating on bad assumptions. All are operating on nostalgia and historical reconstructions of what might have been. Perhaps they excel at Risk or Sid Meyer’s Civilisation. Whatever the mindset, it’s taking a rearview mirrored approach.
So, what’s in a name anyway? If Conservatism doesn’t denote anything and only connotes a bunch of old white guys as a synonym for Tories in the UK and Republicans in the US; and where the Republicans and Democrats could both merge into a single Oligarchy Party (or Kleptocratic Party depending on one’s mood)?
In the end, we need a new way to describe the political sphere if we wish to promote discussion and build alliances, but perhaps that’s never been the goal.
That was the response to my question regarding the police presence yesterday.
EDIT: Some in the community have arranged a memorial for Gary.
In Memorium
I live in an economically depressed community. Swathes of addicted streetwalkers to the south and crack and smack street dealers to the north. Between these bookends are some dozen or more churches and me. Adjacent to me is an abandoned church, a haven for the doubly disenfranchised homeless in the community.
Gary didn’t make it to Christmas. Perhaps I saw him around the neighbourhood, but I didn’t know Gary by name.
“It doesn’t sound like it ended well,” said I. “I think it was frostbite,” he continued.
I find it difficult to believe it was frostbite, but I’m no expert. It barely gets below freezing in this part of the country, but it did last night. Does anyone remember the Valley Forge of American history?
“He had no place to go. They wouldn’t let him in the shelter because he drinks.”
This is Tough Love™ in action. Hate the sin. Fuck the sinner. Another victim of the system and of morality vis-à-vis Virtue Signalling.
In the words from the first Home Alone instalment: Merry Christmas, you filthy animal.
Foucault should be a reminder that the culture wars are not new and post-truth can’t exist because there was never a truth at the start. This is similar to Latour’s question asking if we’ve ever been modern. And the answer remains ‘no’. There is no post-truth as there is no post-modern as each of these is predicated on a fantastical claim. Many humans defend the notion of truth, but they are fighting windmills.
“We are therefore at war with one another; a battlefront runs through the whole of society, continuously and permanently, and it is this battlefront that puts us all on one side or the other. There is no such thing as a neutral subject. We are all inevitably someone’s adversary.”
In these culture wars, each side is fighting for its version of the truth. The truth of rights and freedoms and the correct construct of societies. But there is not one culture war. There are myriad culture wars, and there are few opportunities to be allied across all of these dimensions with another person. For the congruent dimensions, one needs to operate in the mode of the enemy of my enemy is my friend whilst deciding how to ally on other disagreed dimensions later.
But never forget that the wars are intentional. They are a feature of the system of normalisation, not a bug. More importantly, don’t think for a moment that your truth is the truth. The same goes for your adversary.
If anything showcases how nonsensical the concept of justice is, just look at the Rittenhouse trial in the United States. Ultimately, justice is about perception. In a textbook, a bad person does something bad, and a process ritual is performed by judges and juries to divine the otherwise obvious badness, and the bad person is brought to justice. In the extended version, they learn the error of their ways and reintegrate into society and live happily ever after.
In reality, this is all bollox. Good and bad are subjective and contextual. But this post isn’t about that. It’s about the charade of justice. In the case of the Rittenhouse trial-slash-debacle, Kyle Rittenhouse shot some people and killed them. Whilst he is being charged with murder, some people view him as a hero—the good man with a gun rather than a vigilante.
Given these perspectives, whether justice is served is a matter of your starting perspective. People in the United States are generally divided on some fundamental political stands, and this predictably colours individual perspectives.
In the Bible, Christians are taught the story of King Solomon, wherein two women each claim a child as their own. Solomon suggests that they cut the child in half and by doing so, he reveals the true mother by judging their responses.
Spoiler Alert: I am only pretty sure that Solomon wouldn’t have followed through on his twisted joke.
This Bible story is part of the Western legal canon and teaches the impartiality of judges and some practical wisdom, but then we remember that it’s just a story.
Returning to Rittenhouse, irrespective of whether justice ends up being served is basically a coin toss. If you have been following the proceedings, you’ll notice that the pack is being stacked in his favour and the dice are weighted and the coin is biased.
Personally, I think the guy is an ass-hat. I feel that anyone who carries a weapon has anger and compensation issues. And if he wasn’t there in the first place, none of this would have unfolded as it did. I am a conscientious objector and believe this is precisely why the Second Amendment of the US Constitution relates to a well-regulated militia and not some pizza-faced wanker.
If he is judged not guilty, people like me will viscerally feel that justice is a sham. Obviously, I already maintain that opinion, but other people still believe in justice and Santa Claus. If he is judged guilty and gets a suitable sentence—another subjective constituent of justice—, then the other cohort feels that justice was not served.
One could argue, as Christians do, that God is the final arbiter of justice. Someone has to be, right? It also reminds us not to judge—probably because we’re not very good at it—, so there’s that, too.
I hold my original stance: justice is just another vapid weasel word.
I was engaged in an online conversation where the participants were anti-Postmodern—one person in particular.
The conversation hinged on democracy. My postition remained that it is not a particularly functional form of government and tends toward mediocracy and oligarchy, neither of which is very appealing. At least oligarchy accrues benefits to the oligarchs. If you happen to be one, good on you. Mediocracy benefits no one in particular.
Cutting to the chase, I was basically accused of revealing the soft underbelly of democracy—hence the relationship to the Emperor’s New Clothes. Some Moderns such as this chap osensibly understand that Democracy is a specious proposition. His defence is basically ‘don’t point it out because that would ruin everything’. I was the kid who told your kid there is no Santa Claus. Oh, the horrors. Ignorance is indeed bliss.
Besides the connection to the Emporer’s New Clothes, is reminds me of a Woody Allen joke: The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.
The essence of the experience is bad, and yet some complain that there’s not enough. Yes, the emporer is naked, but the emporer is us, and we don’t want to know. Or, don’t embarrass the emporer. If he’s OK, just let him be. No use in pointing out his shortcomings.
In any case, the critique turned from my perspective is wrong to “Shht. Don’t tell anyone.”
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
Ronald Reagan
This sentence just crossed my mind. People of a certain age may remember film actor Ronald Reagan’s quip: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help. Libertarians seem to be enamoured by this. Perhaps smug captures it better. For them, this is about the ineptness of government, that bloated bureaucracy that couldn’t get it right if it tried, and certainly not efficiently. If the government comes a knocking, view it as you do with stranger danger: Don’t get in the van with the guy with the puppy and candy. I get it. But let’s shift perspective to see how it renders from a different perspective.
Let’s start from the start with a small disclaimer. I am not an apologist for government. In fact, I am not a fan of bureaucracy. One of the more successful propaganda-slash-marketing campaign in the sphere of public opinion is that private enterprise is somehow superior in all manners to the public version. Let’s be clear here. If one is making sweeping generalisations, then start here. All bureaucracies are created equal.
Echoing Tolstoy, “Bureaucracies are all alike; every bureaucracy is unhappy in its own way.” I may have misremembered how this opening line goes. Poor Anna. Let’s keep going. Government bureaucracy is no better or worse than corporate bureaucracy. There is no correlation. For every efficient corporation—not a thing, but bear with me—there is an efficient government agency—also not a thing, so, I think you’re realising my point. Bureaucracies are practically by definition recipes for mediocrity. They are meant to produce repeatable processes at scale. They aren’t designed to be innovative or nimble, although you can buy many books and training materials on how to achieve this if you’ve got nothing better to do with your money. Let’s return to the main concept: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.
I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.
What’s the problem with this? We need to ask, why has the government shown up at our doorstep, to begin with. The answer, private markets have failed. There is a hole in the social fabric. Perhaps the private sector does provide the needed good or service, but it is clearly not affordable. Hence the hole. Clearly, the private sector has dropped the ball. So when the government attempts to intervene, the response is to cry foul. “Those people can’t afford to pay for a solution, so they shouldn’t get one. Perhaps those people should work harder or get more job training so they can afford to pay us.”
“What? Urgent medical care, you say? They should have thought ahead.”
“What’s that? She’s an infant? I suppose she should have picked different parents who thought ahead. Why do people reproduce when they can’t afford to raise a child in the first place. There ought to be a law.”
And so it goes.
Not only doesn’t the private sector not want to serve a population if it can’t profit. It’s decided that if it can’t profit from a person in a circumstance, then that person doesn’t deserve assistance. Even shoddy assistance as is suggested by the quote.
I recall another adage: something is better than nothing.
But there is more to this than meets the eye. The unstated objection is that government will provide the good or service, and it will be as good if not better than the private sector offering and it will cost less to provide. This would reveal the private sector apologists to be the charlatans they are. I am not claiming that this is some foregone conclusion. But it’s an eventuality the private sectorists don’t want exposed.
A prime example of this is the provision of healthcare and insurance. The world over provides these services cheaper and with superior health outcomes, and yet a common refrain by profit mongers is that you don’t want those other services with better health outcomes, not only provided for a lower cost, but also provided for a lower cost to you.
There is nothing inherent in this quote about the government being here to help that it is attempting to supplant some successful private sector business model.
“Why don’t we get into the yacht-building business?”
When government intervenes, it is usually due to market failure. So then why do we so often see the government trying to intervene? Availability bias aside, it’s because the market fails often, so the government has to play MacGyver time and time again. Markets are fragile. Capitalism is fragile.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics relates to entropy. Capitalism and market systems are not self-sustaining. Entropy consistently dissipates energy in these systems, hence economic busts. This isn’t even addressing the issue of misappropriation of resources from this system, which only serves to exacerbate and accelerate this natural decline. If external capital weren’t injected into this system, it would have collapsed under its own weight ages ago.
As a parting shot, it’s interesting to me that for a cohort loathing government assistance, these same blokes seem to have their hands out begging, or at least accepting, this same government assistance. The help the eschew on behalf of others is often welcomed with open arms. Where I come from, we call this hypocrisy. Hypocrisy Now. I’ve got an idea for a film.
Is organised government already on the same downward spiral as organised religion?
Faith in government is low. Without exception, the system has weakened and is clearly broken. The same power corruption that is bringing down organised religion is weighing heavy on governments.
In the US, Canada, and the UK, governments have become polarising entities, and most participants don’t even try to practise statesmanship. Perhaps not the governments, per se, but the forces trying to wrest control. It’s usually us versus them. This has been going on for about half a century and accelerating. Regarding religion, we hear many say they are spiritual or have faith, but they eschew the structure of religion. What is the parallel for government?
Its easy to support the concept of government—or at least of governance—and still complain about the particular instantiation: Trump’s Republicanism is good, but Biden’s Democracy is bad, and vice versa. But I’ll argue that organised government as an institution is as fatally flawed as organised religion.
organised government as an institution is as fatally flawed as organised religion
Government participation like that of religion attracts sociopaths and power-mongers. Are there acceptions. Yes. Are these people corruptable? Yes. Do the become corrupted? Some. Many simply become complacent.
In religion, some defend that they are spiritual but not religious. In politics, we have quasi- and pseudo- anarchists and Libertarians who just haven’t yet realised the source of their malaise, so they tilt Quixotically.
People haven’t quite sussed it out and can’t really seem to put their collective fingers on it, but it’s not governance most of us don’t like, it’s the misuse and abuse of power—as rendered by the NASCAR-themed political meme.
In the current environment, it’s ‘the other party’ that’s the problem. I hope that as with religion, we’ll see a turning point where people realise that it’s the system, the organisation, that’s the problem, not some aspect of it. It’s not a few bad apples. Like in a Stephen King novel, it’s the barrel that’s possessed. That barrel is the system.
I can’t count how many times I’ve seen takes on this equality versus equity meme. One appeared on by LinkedIn feed this morning and I wanted to comment. I thought I’d have posted on this before and wanted to link to it. If I did, I couldn’t find it, so here’s a fresh accounting. I searched Google for the original image and cobbled together my own versions, if only for visual continuity.
L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Social Equality vs. Equity Meme
The meme renders something like this:
There are two frames being compared—equality and equity. In both, we see three people trying to view an event, but a barrier obstructs their view. The people are of different heights—tall, medium, and short—, metaphorically representing some intitial social status.
In one we see a representation of equality. In the spirit of equality, each person has one crate upon which to stand. This represents equality of condition. Each person is ensured to start the game on equal social footing. At a glance, it’s easy to discern that this intervention allows two of the people to see the event but leaves one of the three at a disadvantage and unable to view.
In the other, we see a representation of equity. In this frame, we see the same three people and a redistribution of the three crates. Equity is more in tune with equality of opportunity if not of outcomes. The taller person who had been standing on a crate had no need for it as he was tall enough to see over the barrier without it. The mid-size person, who could see the event with the crate but not without it, retained the crate. The shortest person was given the crate from the tallest person, now standing on a stack of two. The result is that each of the three people can now view the event unimpeded.
This comparison is such a nice conversation starter. It’s a hot button topic for some—and I’ll get to that presently. For me, it illustrates the concept of framing. There are several things left out of frame—at least one literally. In this meme, we are given a binary frame, but we can pull the shot back and there’s a third option: egality. This term has fallen out of favour in English, but the French retain it—égalité. In this frame, there is no need for crates, and the plank barrier is replaced by a chain-link fence.
Social Equality
Yet there’s the matter of metanarrative device. Why should there be any barrier? Why focus on these three in the foreground? Do the seated people represent the haves and those standing represent the have-nots? Might we interpret this as bourgeois versus proletariat with the focus on the struggle between the prols distracting from the broader issue? —being further distracted by the circus event? Have we lost the forest for the trees?
As it happens, people along the way have inserted their own social commentary through like-memes. I’ve similarly reconstructed these.
Societal Common Ground
In the beginning there are no crates. They are simply a device. At the start, only the tallest person can see over the barrier. At some point three crates appear ex nihilo and each person obtains one as depicted in the equality of condition frame, which leaves one of our participants better off and the other in no different of a social status, though a bit off the ground in the event of flash flooding. Small wins.
Past Burdens and Generational Wealth Transfer
Some shared the opinion that at least we all start on common ground, and yet others—likely Left- or Liberal-leaning—propose that some people start in a hole. Others might have noted that whilst some start out in a hole others start out with inherited boxes—or houses or networks—showcasing the transfer of generational wealth . Another might be able to view if there was a crate available. Given the negative starting place, the third would likely require three boxes to be on par to view, so even a redistribution of the three boxes would be insufficient.
For my first diversion, I’d like to spend a few moments defending a common response for the Right and Libertarians. Firstly, no one who supports this level-setting is suggesting that the advantaged be put into a hole like the disadvantaged. Nor is anyone asking for The Prince and the Pauper treatment where they trade places. This is a silly attempt at a strawman attack. Secondly, in a similar vein, no one is asking for the best off to relinquish everything and now be unable to see whilst the meek inherit the earth. As if that could ever happen.
Some people were overly optimistic—presumably representing the ‘if some is good, more must be better’ contingent. Why don’t we give everyone two boxes? Aside from the fact that only three are necessary for everyone to view the event, there was no mention where the original three crates came from let alone these additional three. I suppose they might have fashioned them from the fence. Who knows? But this leads us into contributions from the advocates of Capitalism.
Capitalism: Libertarian Vantage
Let’s chalk this up to the Right can’t meme syndrome. To this cohort, Capitalism is the solution. In fact, there will be more crates than one could possibly use. A rising tide rises all boats—and crates. None are left behind. In fact, this is what Capitalism is known for. Of course, this suffers from several cognitive biases: survivorship, selection and availability. But who’s really counting?
For this less fond of Capitalism, this illustrates excess and waste. We needed three crates, yet we produce over thirty. Moreover, these less-fond likely also notice a capital distribution challenge with Capitalism.
Capitalism: Democratic Vantage
The prevailing view by one cohort is that some of the excess crates ‘owned’ by the tallest person should be redistributed whilst the polar perspective holds that this person ‘earned’ those crates and is entitles to keep them. And why can’t that woman just hold her child so he can see? Don’t get me started.
Capitalism for Sale
You really do have to love Capitalists. The solution is always ‘you just have to pay for it. Duh’. Without going too far off track, many of these people—likely vastly most of them—can’t afford what they want, yet they stand by this mechanism.
Socialism Kills
Some people who despise Socialism have a rather macabre perspective on how socialism operates. To them, equality can only be acheived via some Harrison Bergeron mechanism—primarily because they choose not to distinguish between social and physical equality. And maybe they are simply sadistic and enjoy watching people suffer.
My personal favourite is the one for liberation.
Liberation is Liberating
We don’t need no fences. No barriers. No boundaries. Sit on the boxes. Fill them with food for the hungry.
But in the end, if all you are fighting for is free access to cricket matches and other circus events, you aren’t really liberated anyway. You are the slave that Rousseau wrote about, ‘Man is born free but everywhere is in chains’.
Disclaimer: For the record, I have been using the term, Capitalism idiomatically equivalent to a market economy because Americans just don’t want to separate them. I think they feel that if they can pretend they are the same, that criticising Capitalism would be tantamount to criticising market economics. This is wrong on so many levels, but, at least in North America, the terms are inextricable. The fact that Capitalism is a means of production, and the other is a distribution mechanism, people—from syndicalists and worker coöperatives to Mercantilists, tradesmen, and craft-workers—could choose to distribute goods and services through a market system without consequence. It’s not even worth expending a breath. Even English dictionaries have given up and conflated the concepts. Economic textbooks are the last bastion of academic sanity.
« Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried. »
— Winston Churchill
Those of us in the West defending Capital-D Democracy with passion know this quote by Winston Churchill. We accept the inherent frailties in the system of Democracy because at least we get to participate. The sentiment generally follows a path of (1) it’s not perfect, but it’s the best we have, and (2) if we could have a benevolent dictator, things would be so much easier to tidy up around the edges—only we can’t trust the succession of the benevolent dictator; (3) a Republic is Democracy levelled up. This solves many of the weaknesses of Democracy. Plato said that Socrates said so. So it must be true. Always trust men in togas.
Let’s unwind this ball of twine. Taking the quote in context, Churchill had just been voted out as Prime Minister so he was feeling a bit of a sting of democracy in action. He was being conciliatory whilst attempting to euphemise his sour grapes sentiment.
At a casino, the odds are stacked against you. As with casinos, you can raise your fist and rail at the casino for not making you better off exiting the system than when you entered it, but everyone will tell you that you should have known better. Some will encourage you with ‘Better luck next time’. Casinos and Democracy alike, if you are relying on luck for positive outcomes, you may need to consider taking another look.
At the start, Democracy is untenable even in a classroom textbook context with no frictions. At any scale, it can’t yield optimal results. What this means is that even if Democracy was operated with the precision of dispassionate AI logic, it would still be suboptimal. By extension, this means that outcomes move from suboptimal to less than mediocre when we add humans and emotions to the equation. On top of all this, what it is that we are optimising compounds these challenges. Coming to accord here is paramount. In American baseball lets consider this to be strike three.
So what about this proverbial benevolent dictator. This actually adds nothing to the equation. If the ideas of the dictator happen to align with everything our hearts desire as individuals, it does nothing to the dissenters. They are left in the same position, which is to say disenfranchised—effectively outvoted. If we are the dissenters, thus we are disenfranchised. Not that we will have been enfranchised in any case, but our desires will remain as unmanifest as if we had lost the vote.
A Republican construction, not the trademark, circle-R, Republicans, who are the Tories of the United States of America. Let Freedom ring, and don’t tread on me Republicans. These follow the Platonic franchise. This Republican construction merely kicks the tin up the alley. We’ve got fewer voters with the same suboptimal outcomes, but now we’ve exacerbated it with principle-agency problems. Not only might one’s vote not be heard, but this agent may have secured office on the promise of delivering our wants only to take the ball and run with it in another direction. Off the playground. No universal healthcare for you lot. Yoink!
In the end, Democracy offers nothing but hope. Pandora’s box hope and empty promises. It’s a specious proposition of smoke and mirrors. And to be honest it’s more smoke than mirrors. Echoing the words of a wise poet, and the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls.
So, wait. What do I mean by mathematically untenable? Kenneth Arrow demonstrated that no voting systems, whether in theory or in practice, will yield optimal results. Again, this is before humans are introduced into the equation. No form, whether all or nothing, instant run-off, proportional, ranked, and so on. There’s simply no way. With as few as 3 voters and 3 initiatives, voting fails. Add voters and initiatives and it fails harder. Add human voters and it fails miserably. Many of us rail at the candidates and aspects of the system such as disenfranchisement and gerrymandering, but it had already failed prior to this. We’ve been sold a bill of goods, and the contents are rotten.
In closing, my point is that Democracy is over-sold. It’s hype appealing to emotion. We’ve got illusions of self and personal agency intertwined with illusions of control. And it is used to lull people into believing they have an impact. Instead, they complain when things don’t quite work out. A near-perfect analogy is railing at the casino when you don’t get the payout you had expected. Or that lottery ticket. It’s not that Democracy is a bad system. It’s just not all it’s cracked up to be.
And it’s not like you are being over-billed and getting ninety-nine per cent of what you bargained for. You are more likely getting less than half, and the rest is filler. You are paying for filet mignon, and you are getting bologna. You’d not accept that outcome at a restaurant, yet with Democracy, the best one can defend is that it’s imperfect.
And do politicians exploit these at every opportunity? No, as hard as they try, they miss some opportunities to exploit, but they are yet another nail in the coffin of the dream of democracy.
Much of jurisprudence is based on logic founded on faulty premises of regurgitated theological concepts shrouded in naturalistic theory and pseudoscience. This is not about the defund the police social trend of 2020. This is to say that the justice system is smoke and mirrors writ large. It’s ostensibly built on anachronistic concepts such as volition, evil, soul, blame, and forgiveness that should be tossed into the dustbin of history along with phrenology, humours, and will.
The titleof this post is taken from Robert Spapolsky’s proposed chapter concept for Behave, published in 2017, where until now, it’s languished on my Want to Read list, having entered via the vector of my interest in behavioural economics. Chapter 16 was eventually published with the title of Biology, the Criminal Justice System, and (Oh, Why Not?) Free Will.
I’ve been writing for years about the nonesensical attachment to these notions, so it gives me comfort in solidarity to discover others who share, at least to some degree my perspective, knowing, of course, that this doesn’t make this perspective any more correct.
To be fair, I’ve held a low opinion of so-called justice (and government) systems pretty much since I was taught about them almost 50 years ago. In the US, much teaching is really propagandising about how fair these systems are and how peers and reasonable persons concepts make is superior. In my mind, those were the being failings. Later, when I hopped onto my language insufficiency bandwagon, it only fell apart more. Kafka’s The Trial represents the internal workings of most justice systems than the logic and reason of propogated but proponants.
Stopping here. Much to do. I recommend reading Behave. If you’ve read it, I’d love to see what you thought about it.
Philosophics 