As I got my wood furnace started this morning and settled down to reading more of “The Road to Serfdom” by F.A. Hayek; I was amazed as always about how old the battle between current conservative and liberal thought in all its various and conflicting (nameologies) has been going on.
In other words whatever you label individual freedom vs society’s freedom, the argument has been going on for a long, long time. Hayek for example writing as late as the 1940’s looks at the liberalism of England as the method best suited for the expression of individual freedom vs the “Conservative” state run life of Nazi Germany. The terms today seem reversed.
The constant flux in the meaning of the words conservative and liberal seem to belie the underlying truth of the eternal conflict between the Individual and collective. As long as people must live in the society of others the success of that society will be measured by the mixture of both and not the supremacy of either.
The part of Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” that I read was all about how the corporate monopolists and the Unionist were on the same page as far as limiting Individual Freedom in favor of a top down government run, centrally planned society. I was struck of Hayek’s prescience about how the scientific and intellectual communities were so easily made a tool of the State. He also alluded to how those individualists who differed in view were arrogantly dismissed and not let into the clique of the prevailing thought. How later they would be hounded down, imprisoned and later executed. The dot of today between the words such as accepted scientific theory or scientific consensus and the shunning of those not believing in such for example in regards to global warming was connected.
As I returned upstairs to my computer and started going through my emails; I opened one by Amazon about their sale of nonfiction books which got my attention. Scrolling and reading through the list there were several titles which intrigued me. They were about the brain and how it worked and about unique individuals. I then went to the Amazon site for each and read the parts of the book they will let you read to whet the appetite. Most of the titles were pretty simple and or backwards to what I wanted to study. But it was in this effort that I read some of a book about “outliers” which was simply about individuals who stood out from their surroundings. The author went on to explain why. People such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Gordie Howe. Simply stated the book was trying to make the case that these standouts were simply using their abilities as best they could but that they were more a product of their environment and time than what they possessed as individuals.
At this I was disappointed; this was not what I was looking for. However one of the “Outliers” the book mentioned was Chris Langan. I had never heard of him. I believe he is still alive. The book said he was the smartest person alive. I googled and looked at Wikipedia which confirmed the accolades heaped upon this person within the book.
Mr. Langan came from a broken marriage, the mother had four boys and each from a different father. They were dirt poor and ostracized by the different communities they were forced to continually move to. The eclectic nature of Chris appealed to me. He self taught himself the sciences, was a bouncer of repute in several bars, and all around studied anything that interested him.
Langan’s genius is where he and I part. He for example got a 100% on the SATs, and his IQ was over 200. He as I said taught himself in High school and would only show up for the tests which he invariably got 100%. He then went to college on a scholarship from which he dropped out because he thought he was teaching the teachers more than vice versa. He was probably right.
He also has come up with his unifying theory he calls the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe which I can only grasp the basis of, which says the Universe was created by God and all the rules physics etc along with it and it is our God given intellect that we have which creates the realities we see and deal with.
The “outlier” book from which I found Langan was of the opinion his genius was wasted because he lacked the social skills necessary to make it in a University setting. This seemed to be against the whole idea of the term Outliers. The book in my opinion would have been more aptly named “The Top People of the Pyramid and how to get there”
The refreshing thing I found out through this email and some study was that there were indeed brilliant people that believed in God and Creationism. The fact that they were shunned by society in no way lessens their achievements. In fact it was ironic that Galileo was also mentioned in the book because while he was following the progression of the science of the time he too was shunned by the prevailing scientific community. Curious Albert Einstein was not even in the book. Must be because he failed to graduate highschool. Lol
The last email I read was by Newt Gingrich titled “What the Battle of the Crater Means Today”
The first line was as follows;
{When our Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence that it was a "self-evident" truth that "all men are created equal," endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," they enshrined those words as an eternal principle for which the war for liberty would be fought.}
The dots were being connected alright, along a Godly line.
From the morning to 11am I went from Hayek to Langan to Gingrich. My journey went from an anti collectivist anti Nazi economic genius to a certified scientific genius supporting creationism to a former Speaker of the House and supporter of God as one of our most important beliefs in the founding of our country.
It is along this path of dots connected by people I admire that I travel.
It is this free use of my God given gifts that spur me on to continue fighting the battle against Individual freedom through overreaching bigness of government, labor, business and politics.
Some would say I wasted this beautiful autumn morning, I think not. Now up and out into this glorious day.
BTW I did finish cutting my wood for the winter last weekend
Regards, Live Dangerously Be A (Current) Conservative.
