A Basic Lesson in Economics

What I Believe, Part One

I've had a number of people tell me I should start a blog.  I don't know if that's a good reason to actually start a blog, but I do a lot of thinking and it would be useful to nail down some of these thoughts.  Inviting comment from others is a good next step. I plan to discuss many topics here, so the first thing I want to do is lay out exactly how I look at the world.

First, I took the title for this blog from a series of books that were a great influence on me at a young age.  I just wish the original author actually applied some of the ideals from those books in his own life.

The most important thing to remember is that we all have some basic structure we apply to the world and what we expect from it.  Philosophy calls this worldview or paradigm or Weltanschauung, if you're feeling fancy (it's just worldview in German). It's the basis of any philosophy because it defines what you think the universe looks like and the rules you think it operates under.  There are a lot of fancy names for different paradigms, but ultimately, I'm a materialist. This world we can see and hear and smell and touch and taste is most likely all there is. I say “most likely” because if I can't experience it (actually or hypothetically) or measure its effects in some way, I can't say whether or not it's real. I won't argue whether there is or isn't a god, as I have no evidence to present one way or another, and I need something more than anecdotes to go by.  God, if he or she or it or they exist, works in the world through the established laws of physics and the actions of believers. I don't blame any supposed creator for natural disasters because the incredibly complex system that is the universe has to follow the rules, and those rules do not always work in our favor. We're pretty lucky that life exists, and incredibly lucky that intelligent life exists. Earthquakes and tornados are just something you have to put up with.

There's only one thing I take on faith, and that's free will.  Philosophically and biologically, there are some substantial arguments that free will is an illusion, but I choose to believe in it.  Otherwise, there isn't much of a point, is there? The idea that we have choice, that we have some sort of hand in our ultimate fate, is the only thing that gets me out of bed most mornings.  

I don't plan to discuss a lot of philosophy here on a regular basis.  I'm not an academic, and I don't want to spread poor understanding of philosophy to confuse things.  However, there is a particular philosophy that informs how I work in the world, and how I judge the people and events around me.  I'm a Kantian. Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who formulated the categorical imperative. The general idea is that any rule one makes should be able to be applied universally, meaning everyone can use it as a guide to how they interact with others.  Here's the three basic ideas behind it:

1. Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
2. Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.
3. Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.

The important thing is that any rule you make for your own behavior should be made as if everyone were going to abide by that rule, and you should always treat people, including yourself and others, as if they had the same intrinsic worth as intelligent free willed beings.  To paraphrase another very wise man, “Evil starts with treating people as things.”