Achievement and Potential

by Conroy

Usain Bolt - the fastest man in the world?

On Sunday evening at London’s Olympic Stadium Usain Bolt electrified the packed stands as he surged ahead of the world’s best sprinters to win the 100 meter dash in Olympic record time¹. He flashed over those 100 meters in little more than 9.6 seconds, an average speed of more than 23 miles per hour. For this feat Bolt gets to keep his unofficial moniker as the “fastest man in the world”, a title he first earned at the Beijing Olympics four years ago. And it’s a pretty cool title – the fastest man in the world – maybe the most elemental distinction an athlete can have. But is it true, is Usain Bolt really the fastest man in the world?

I use a timely and prominent Olympics example to illustrate a theme that has always interested me, the connection between achievement and potential. This connection carries beyond sport to all aspects of human endeavor, but let me go back to Bolt to better demonstrate what I mean.

Consider two questions:

• Is there someone in the world who could go out to the track today and beat Bolt? 
• Or, is there someone who, given the proper time and training and preparation, could run faster than Bolt?

The first question is easier to address, and the likely answer is no. I suppose it’s possible that on some sun-swept Caribbean island or some American college track a man is consistently running 100 meter times at world record pace, but I highly doubt it. Anyone who is actually running world-class fast would be noticed (talent attracts attention) and then be funneled into a running program, onto a team, and find their way into competition. And to run that fast you really can’t toil on your own. Training and coaching are certainly needed to perform near the limits of human ability. No one today can challenge Bolt except for the men he raced against in these Olympics and none of them has ever run as fast as he did Sunday night².

The second question is far stickier though, and it gets more to the core of my thinking. No one has ever run faster than Usain Bolt, but does that mean that no one could? There are over seven billion people in the world, is even just one of them capable of beating Bolt? Do they have the physical make-up, the raw talent, the potential to be better? Perhaps these men (or women) have found their way into another sport like soccer or football³, or maybe they live in places or under circumstances that haven’t allowed them to develop their innate physical abilities, or maybe they’ve been unlucky and gotten sick or injured or even died without being able to explore their full potential. When you consider the question in this context doesn’t it seem reasonable or even likely to think that there’s someone out there in the wide world other than Bolt who could be the true fastest man in the world? And think about this, there were three men from Jamaica in the 100 meter final. That country has long been a hotbed for sprinters, but are all the world’s fastest men really found on this tiny impoverished island nation of less than three million people?⁴

So hopefully you see where I’m coming from. We view the results of the 100 meter dash, note the record times and correctly say that Bolt is the fastest man who’s ever tried to be the fastest man. He’s the embodiment of a very basic and universal expression of athletic achievement (all of us with two working legs have tried to run as fast as we could run on at least a few occasions). But who’s to say he’s the full realization of human potential? And that leads to a broader discussion.

What Is and What Never Was
Step away from sports and think of greater achievers, like the revered scientists or artists throughout history; Newton or Shakespeare are two of the more prominent examples. Newton may be the greatest scientist of all time. Among other things he described the principal of gravitation and his three laws of motion, invented calculus and other mathematical forms, and wrote one of the canonical works of western scientific thought with the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica⁵. He was by any measure a mind of the first rank and his accumulated work has strongly influenced scientific thought and the advancement of science for the last three hundred years. The world is a better place because of Newton’s intellectual contributions.

Shakespeare is widely regarded as the world’s greatest dramatist and his work is still celebrated and performed by all cultures and in all major languages. Shakespeare is widely credited with expanding and enriching the English language and his myriad neologisms pepper our everyday speech⁶.  If you believe as I do that only the artist can really express what it is to be human, then few can hold a higher place in our understanding of mankind. And indeed, perhaps no artists is held in higher esteem or has been more influential in world literature than Shakespeare.

But in the light of these accomplishments I’ll offer a counter-factual: what if Newton of Shakespeare never lived? Or what if they never devoted themselves to their genius? What if Newton had focused on alchemy and Shakespeare had never left his wife and young children in Stratford?

I think in many ways we live in a world with the belief that talent will rise to the top, that genius will be expressed, that the greatest minds will find their outlet and reach their full potential. That a Newton or Einstein will always find the truth in the universe, that a Shakespeare or Joyce will always capture the essence of the world with their words, that a Beethoven will pull glorious harmony out of the vibrating air, or that a Usain Bolt will find his way to the track. But while I’d like to believe that, I just can’t see the world as that simple. There just isn’t such inevitability to human life. Shakespeare lived in an era where the plague ravaged London. What if he had contracted the disease and died long before he completed his greatest plays?⁷ What if Beethoven had decided to stop creating music when he started losing his hearing? Or what if, say, a teenage Roger Federer had decided to concentrate on soccer instead of tennis?

Did Newton have any equals that history never knew?

Questioning what could have happened or what never was doesn’t really get you anywhere. But I come back to my central curiosity. Humans in the last 10,000 plus years of civilization have made tremendous advancements as a species (mindboggling really). Whether it’s minor accomplishments like a sporting landmark, major scientific breakthroughs that have given rise to life-improving technological change, or soul-enhancing artistic expression, our achievements are breathtaking. But what have we missed, what hasn’t happened? What Ulysses or Hamlet will we never get to read because the authors never got to express their thoughts? What life-advancing medical breakthroughs have we not been able to enjoy because a would-be doctor never found their way to medicine? (Maybe we’d already have the cure for the common cold.) What jaw-dropping athletic feat have I never witnessed because the player never took the field?

No one can say, but I’m certain that in a world full of human achievement there is profusion of unrealized potential. I can’t help but marvel at the strides we’ve taken and look forward excitedly to what tomorrow brings, but I also can’t help but wonder about at all the genius and great accomplishment that we’ll never know we’ve missed.  We call Usain Bolt the fastest man in the world, but I can’t help but wonder who out there might make even the mighty Bolt look second best.

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NOTES:

1. Usain Bolt won his second 100 meter gold medal in an Olympic record time of 9.63 seconds. This bested his Beijing gold medal, and previous Olympic record, time of 9.69 seconds. His winning time was the second fastest in history to his own world record time of 9.58 seconds set in 2009 in Berlin. In total he owns the four fastest official 100 meter times in history.

2. In addition to Bolt, the 100 meter final included the next three fastest men in history, Tyson Gay of the U.S. and Johan Blake and Asafa Powell of Jamaica. Not to mention the American champion and 2004 Olympic gold medalist Justin Gatlin.

3. American football.

4. Jamaicans have owned the 100 meter record since 2005, when Asafa Powell ran 9.77 seconds. Powell subsequently lowered the record to 9.74 seconds before Bolt entered the stage.

5. He was also a theologian and alchemist, and interesting man whose preoccupations included rational and groundbreaking scientific thought, deep religious fervor, and a belief in the occult.

6. Such as: all’s well that ends well, bated breath, be-all and the end-all, break the ice, dead as a doornail, every dog will have its day, forever and a day, foregone conclusion, heart of gold, in my heart of hearts, in my mind’s eye, laughing stock, love is blind, neither rhyme nor reason, one fell swoop, own flesh and blood, what’s past is prologue, pomp and circumstance, salad days, sea change, sound and fury, this mortal coil, wear my heart upon my sleeve, and the world’s my oyster.

7.Or died in his youth like his own son Hamnet.

The God Particle

by Conroy

Part of the 17-mile-long LHC particle accelerator

Late last year there was breathless excitement within the physics community as several experiments conducted by CERN [1] at the Large Hadron Collider [2] under Geneva seemed to hint at the presence of a fundamental, and as yet entirely theoretical, particle: the Higgs boson. What is this particle and why did these experiments so energize physicists? The short, simple answer is that the Higgs boson is the particle associated with the Higgs field, which is hypothesized to be a ubiquitous quantum “field”. Think of it as a force or condition throughout all of space that matter interacts with. It is theorized that Higgs bosons interact with other fundamental particles (electrons, quarks, etc.) to give them mass. If detected, the Higgs boson would further validate the so called Standard Model of particle physics, one of the core theories of how the universe (the fundamental particles and forces) is structured.

The news from CERN quickly spread to the general news media and Newsweek jumped to exclaim on a cover headline that the experiments hinted at, “The Meaning of the Universe.” Other publications picked up on the Higgs boson’s nickname as “the God particle”. These headlines and reactions create the impression that this discovery, if confirmed [3], would explain many of the remaining questions in theoretical physics and provide the answers to those eternal questions that have puzzled mankind for millennia. So would it?

The Profound Questions
The Higgs boson would explain why particular particles have a specific mass. Mass is a fundamental feature of matter and explaining how mass “works” would be a tremendous breakthrough. The results would also be important in the understanding of mass-less particles like photons. But the discovery would hardly answer the even more fundamental questions about the nature of the universe, such as:

• What is the universe?
• Where did it come from?
• Why does it have the structure and forces that it does?
• Is there anything outside of the universe?
• What is the universe’s fate?

Let’s come back to these.

Everything to (Practically) Nothing

The Milky Way

There’s a terrific website – scaleofuniverse.com – that provides an interactive depiction of the size of the universe and everything in it. It’s a way to conceptualize just how inconceivably vast the totality of the universe is, and how absurdly infinitesimal are its fundamental parts. Let’s take a quick scan of this reality. Make a fist and stare at it, image it is the entire universe and you’re looking at it like God:

• Our universe is estimated to be 93 billion light years across. Light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, would take 93 billion years to cover the current expanse of the universe.
• We can observe about 14 billion of these light years, the approximate time that light has had to travel since time began (14 billion years ago, give or take). The universe inflated faster than light a short time after the Big Bang.
• We zoom way way in to our galaxy, the Milky Way, one out of hundreds of billions, and a mere 120,000 light years across, 0.0000086 times the distance of the observable universe.
• We focus further, much further, to our solar system, which including the Oort Cloud, is 0.15 light years across, 1.5 trillion kilometers, or 0.0000013 times the distance of the whole Milky Way.
• We continue closer and see the dim Sun from Pluto, nearly six billion kilometers distant, 0.004 times the diameter of the Oort Cloud.
• We pass Jupiter, 800 million kilometers from the Sun, 0.125 times the distance from Pluto to the Sun.
• We see the Sun, shining nuclear-bomb bright, one star out of hundreds of billions in our galaxy, nearly 1.4 million kilometers across, 0.0018 the distance to Jupiter.
• We close in on the Earth, one planet of likely hundreds of billions in the Milky Way, almost 13,000 kilometers in diameter, just a spec compared to the Sun.
• We see China spread 4,000 kilometers across the Earth’s surface.
• We see Mount Everest standing nearly 9 kilometers tall.
• We see a man standing on the summit, less than 2 meters (6 feet) tall.
• He steps on a snowflake a centimeter (.01 meters) across.
• And wishes on an eyelash 0.1 millimeters (.0001 meters) thick, just about as thin as the human eye can detect.
• His heart vigorously pumps blood through his veins and he rapidly exhales moist air, red blood cells and air droplets, both about 0.00001 meters across.
• The moisture includes water molecules 0.0000000003 (3x10^-10) meters across.
• Each molecule includes two hydrogen atoms, each just 0.00000000003 (3x10^-11) meters across.
• The nucleus of those atoms is 0.00000000000001 (1x10^-14) meters across.
• The proton inside the nucleus is 0.000000000000001 (1x10^-15) meters across.
• The quarks [4] inside the proton (and the electron circling the nucleus) are 0.000000000000000001 (1x10^-18) meters across.
• Preons, the building blocks of quarks are 0.000000000000000000001 (1x10^-21) meters across.
• Neutrinos, the ghostly particles the fly virtually untouched through all of matter are smaller yet, just 0.000000000000000000000001 (1x10^-24) meters across.
• And finally to the smallest of the smallest, the theoretical strings and Plank length (the “minimum” length of anything) at 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 (1x10^-35) meters across.

I doubt the human mind can truly conceptualize the size of anything on scales larger than the solar system or smaller than a cell (I can’t anyway). We can see the Sun and have sent space probes past Pluto. We can see the thickness of a piece of paper and understand its even smaller constituent parts. Yet the great unanswered questions lie beyond these narrow boundaries of observation and intuition.

Getting Old

by Conroy

Jeanne Calment - the oldest person on record (122 yrs.)

What if we never had to get old? A couple of days ago I kept encountering this theme. First, there was a minor headline on the cover of this past week’s edition of The Economist that hinted at an answer to this most captivating of questions. I was immediately intrigued and excitedly flipped through the magazine to find the article. My mind was alive with thoughts of about staying forever young, about immortality. Alas, and not surprisingly despite my silly reaction, the article related emerging science that promised considerably less.

Read the article for the specific details, but experiments in mice have shown that counteracting certain genes in cells that have reached their biological age limit can check some of the deterioration associated with aging. Someday, it is hoped, these types of approaches could be used to ease the effects of senescence in humans. I hope, for not entirely selfish reasons, someday comes sooner rather than later.

Then, by sheer coincidence, I was re-reading a portion of James Joyce’s Ulysses – searching for a remembered (different) passage – when I rediscovered the following paragraphs (it’s a longish excerpt, but worth it [1]):

What spectacle confronted them when they, from the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by passage from the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit. [2]

With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his companion of various constellations?

Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipent lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Major) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of so called fixed stars, in reality evermoving from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.

And then by further coincidence, I flipped on the television and caught the very end of Rocky III, where in a more succinct and less inflated way than Joyce, Apollo Creed [3] says to Rocky, in a fleeting reflective aside about the waning of his once overwhelming physical skills:

"You know Stallion?  It's too bad we gotta get old."

 
And so my mind settled on the sad fact of getting old and mortality. Happy thoughts, I know, but ones we’re all apt to brood over from time to time.

Senescence
I’m 31-years-old, and I still throb with the vigor of youth [4]. But in the coming years the signs of aging are going to appear. We all know these signs: decreasing speed, dexterity, and reaction time; graying hair; balding (for men); wrinkles; weight gain; loss of muscle mass and bone density; lower sex drive; flagging energy; arthritis; deteriorating vision and hearing; loss of collagen that makes your skin all droopy and inelastic; age spots; age-related illnesses like heart disease; memory loss, and maybe dementia. Just think of your grandparents. Nothing that you look forward to, all things you want to delay as long as possible. It’s not a pretty picture. Just compare the following two photographs.

 Robert Redford in his early 30s

 Robert Redford in his mid-70s












(Of course I’m planning (read: hoping) to age well, like Paul Newman or Cary Grant. No one has actually laughed when I’ve suggested this, which is nice of them.)

And then somewhere along the arc of aging, we die. Aging and death are cruel facts, especially for intelligent life. It’s cruel that humans can witness our senescence and contemplate our physical demise. But, contemplation is the first step to understanding, which is where we stand; there are several theories about why we age:

Hidden Success

by Conroy

Bill Gates - an example of traditional success

I'd like to talk about an insight I had about the nature of success. Traditionally, we think of success as the fulfillment of some goal in the immediate sense or achievement of a desired social status in the broader context. We assign objective measures like wealth, fame, professional achievement. If I asked you to name the most successful people in the world, who would flash into your mind? President Obama, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey seem like good examples. Why pick these people? Their immense public achievements; they have reached a level of esteem, fame, wealth, and professional achievement that we find admirable. Looking at our own lives we see those around us with the high-paying jobs, those with important professional responsibilities, those with impressive material possessions, those that we respect for their competence, intelligence, and charisma. Surely these are measures of success.

But what else makes up "success"?

I would suggest there are less obvious measures that are of profound value. I wrote about this recently, but how about the happy marriage?  Happy is the key and hard to measure, but I would say that a happy marriage not only improves the lives of husband and wife, but provides a substantial foundation for the well-being of that couple's children. If one of society's greatest challenges is getting young people through adolescence ready to join the "real" world, then what better start than under a happy marriage? And in that same vein, how about being a good parent? Providing the care, love, and guidance that can help children become well-adjusted adults. Someone once told me that the most important job a person will ever have is being a parent. That's not a hollow statement, we all know children whose lives as been damaged, sometimes irrevocably, from neglectful parenting.

Good parenting - a hidden success

How about the value of charity? Giving one's time, money, effort to others, especially others in need, must improve our world. Isn't responsible altruism a mark of success? More broadly, charity in its widest context, that of a loving kindness toward others, was described by Saint Paul as the greatest of all virtues. Certainly anyone who can embody even a portion of this virtue is a success. It sounds simple, but how many people do you know who can follow Henry James’ dictum: “three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind”?

How about being a loyal and dependable friend? Maintaining long-standing relationships, being there for others in good times and bad?

Perhaps you could term these as "selfless" measures of success and the more traditional forms noted above as "selfish" measures of success.

I believe an evolved individual must be both selfish and selfless; responsible to yourself and to others around you. As I’ve written, the great achievements in human history and the upward arc of humanity are the result of the selfish impulse, measured in selfish success. This must be so. But as throughout history we have slowly and painfully learned to function as a community, and are still struggling, surely we must recognize the vital importance of selfless acts, measured in selfless success.

Who do you know that is a selfless success? I count myself fortunate to know many successes of this type: my parents, my girlfriend, many of my friends. I’m a better person for it, and hopefully I can learn from their example.

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In Woody Allen’s excellent movie Crimes and Misdemeanors, there is a character of a sleazy and shallow television executive played by Alan Alda. He’s a bad human being, but he’s been immensely successful in his career. In the end he wins the girl, wealth, and the esteem of those around him. He epitomizes that reality that our society seems to value selfish success over all other behavior. We lavish attention on celebrities, athletes, business leaders, and politicians. These people gain fame and wealth, are idolized and too often viewed as role models and even “heroes”.

If I asked you to pick one form of success for yourself, selfish or selfless, which would it be?

Hope and Disappointment

by Conroy

Forgive me some philosophical musings, but a couple of recent events have rekindled a line of thinking.

[Note an important caveat, the following post is based mostly on my thoughts and observations, not from my experience. This is a critical distinction.]

Ten days ago, to modest fanfare, Prince William, the future King of England, married Kate Middleton. Yesterday, another celebrity couple's marriage all but ended when Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver announced their separation. They have been married for 25 years.

On reading the news today, I couldn't help but contrast these two marriages because it brings up a central dilemma that has dominated my adult thinking: how can you be sure that a marriage will succeed? I've never been married, so I can't attempt to answer that question. And I won't write about what I don't know. Instead, think about all the hoopla surrounding the Royal Wedding.

I'm sure much of the attention in Britain and the rest of the world is the result of the princess/fairy tale nature of this type of (rare) wedding, but that aside, in many ways this event differs only in scale from most other weddings. After all, weddings are accompanied by large celebrations. Perhaps the largest celebrations the bride and groom will ever experience. I see weddings as an occasion for celebration because the wedding, representing the marriage, is a great symbol of hope. As I've written before, hope is that intrinsic human ability to see better for the future. Marriage at it's core is about hope. The belief that you have found lasting love, happiness, and companionship in someone else. That there is someone you can share your life with. That your marriage will succeed.

Divorce is the opposite; a disappointment, indeed the greatest of disappointments.The realization that love, happiness, companionship do not last forever. I choose my words carefully here, divorce isn't the greatest tragedy, worse things can happen, the death of a loved one for instance, but I doubt anything can ever be as disappointing.

I find it deeply unsettling that such antithetical perspectives, the highest hope and the deepest disappointment, are so intimately attached to marriage. Most of the people we know are, have been, or will be married at some point. And we all know marriages that have failed. What does this teach us? What guarantees are there that a happy wedding day won't lead to a discouraging split? Surely, relationships are doomed without dedication, work, loyalty, trust, and many other similar behaviors and attitudes. But is that enough?

By most estimates,  somewhere between 40% and half of American marriages end in divorce. One could reasonably assume that a sizable proportion (10-20%?) of those marriages that don't end in divorce would be described by one or both spouses as unsatisfying for one reason or another. So half or more of marriages fail. That's a depressing statistic.

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Nevertheless, I'll get married. I have hope that marriage can succeed (I only have to look to my parents for the finest exemplar of marital achievement). The same hope that captivated the world watching William and Kate. Disappointments like divorce are part of life, but they can't, and more accurately, they won't stop us from reaching for the better.

A Special Place - Supplement

by Conroy

One of my favorite writers, Gregg Easterbrook, included a discussion of the size and composition of the universe in his most recent Tuesday Morning Quaterback column. It's under the "A Cosmic Thought" header at the end of the column. I'm highlighting it here because Easterbrook provides (an unintentionally timely) different take on how we may view the vastness and age of the universe, one that may give readers an interesting counterpoint.

I quote:
"To us, the universe seems immensely old; compared to itself, the cosmos glistens with the dew of morning. The present universe might exist hundreds of billions of years, if not forever. Creation contains at least 100 billion galaxies and far more stars than there are grains of sand. Don't let this make you feel small. Quite the contrary; it should make you feel important. Life is what grants the immensity of the universe meaning. Who can say what the purpose of the cosmic enterprise might be?"

I agree that merely being able to ponder the fact of existence and the reality of the universe speaks to the remarkable intelligence and curiosity of mankind. As Easterbrook eloquently notes, we cannot know the "purpose of the cosmic enterprise". However, is it too much to admit our apparent minuteness in the scheme of existence, and does that have to be a source of disappointment?

Post Number 3: A Special Place

by Conroy

This is my final post of three that outlines my personal philosophy, or as I've noted in both previous posts, my non-philosophy on man and the universe we inhabit. This post outlines my views about nature and the universe. Links to the first two posts on the nature of man and the purpose of society are provided here:

Post Number 1: The Start
Post Number 2: Smoothed Edges

The greatest achievement of humanity has certainly been our remarkable ability to (1) continually explore and better understand how the universe is composed and how it works, and (2) utilize that knowledge to facilitate the breathtaking explosion of technology. It is the continuous (and accelerating) improvements in technology more than any other human activity that has improved the lives of individual people and buttresses the belief that the future will be even better. Evolving technology, like all other human activities comes with negatives, think pollution or the ability to destroy our society through nuclear apocalypse, but all-in-all, technological development is the great success story of history.

However, what our scientific exploration and higher technology has not been able to solve - and does not seem destined to solve - is the answer to some fundamental questions; including these, which most intrigue me:

• Where did the universe and everything in it come from?
• How is the universe evolving and what is its "ultimate" fate?
• Why is the universe composed of the "stuff" in it?
• Why is the universe governed by the few physical laws that we've observed?
• Why did life develop out of this universe?
• Why are we mortal?

Law & Morality - The Man Responds

In his most recent post, Conroy responds to my assertion that law and morality are not co-extensive. He helps to clarify the relationship, makes some excellent points, and raises several fascinating issues. Here is my response:

First, it is true that adultery is not always immoral. The same can be said of killing, lying, and stealing. I would add, though, that the word "adultery" carries a negative connotation and a presumption that the exceptions mentioned by Conroy don't apply. In an open marriage, for instance, I doubt either spouse would describe their behavior as "adulterous," and independent observers may or may not agree. Consider the difference between the terms "murder" and "killing." "Murder" is an unjustified killing, by definition. According to the predominate moral code of our society, murder is immoral, but killing need not be: self-defense is not immoral. The term "adultery," like "murder," implies wrongfulness—in this case, deceit, infidelity, "cheating." People might choose a different  term to describe extra-marital sex in the examples that Conroy raises. The more neutral term "extra-marital sex" is an example; perhaps "swinging" for an open marriage would be another. It's also important to note that some cultures regard the act or practice of adultery as more or less immoral than others, which supports Conroy's point.

Law & Morality - Counter-Point

by Conroy

I felt compelled to respond to The Man's latest post where he argued that the law and morality are not co-extensive. Instead, the two systems can be modeled as a venn diagram where there is some overlap between what acts are covered by law and what acts (and attitudes) are covered by morality, and some exclusive regions of both, actions that are immoral but legal and actions that are moral but illegal. The Man's conclusion is that law and morality while addressing many of the same activities, are very different systems. I'd like to explore this argument further.

Post Number 2: Smoothed Edges

by Conroy

In my first post on this blog I presented my broad views of man, listing what I consider to be ten fundamental characteristics of our species as individuals. I promised to follow-up with two additional posts noting my views on society and the universe, respectively. Together, I intend for these three posts to constitute a personal philosophy (or as I prefer to term it a non-philosophy) about man and this world.

For this post about society, consider these song lyrics:

"...and when you're no longer searching for beauty or love / just some kind of life with the edges taken off / When you can't even define what you're frightened of / this song will be here..." - from the song "The Fear" off of the album This is Hardcore by Pulp.

This song, penned by the highly literate Jarvis Cocker and set to an off-key and eerie guitar line, is about an individual's choice in approaching the challenges of the world, but I think we can expand the point to encapsulate society: our collective attempt to take the edges off of life.

I have eschewed the Top 10 list format of the fist post in favor of a catechism, reducing the long, rich history of man and the complex, widely-varied institutions and achievements of our species to one desired outcome - taking the edges off of life.

What do you mean by taking the edges off of life?
The universe is indifferent to life in general and humankind in particular. If God exists, he isn't an active force in our universe (there will be more on this critical perspective of mine in my future post about the universe). All we can say is that life exists, and we exist. But critically, the life of the individual is temporary, we are all mortal. We will all die one day. Some of us will die young, some will die painfully, some will live to be old, some will experience many great things. There are none among us who can know what might lie beyond death, if anything at all. As a result, we have a fundamental desire to live. However, living can be hard.

What a Piece of Work is Man

by Baxter Radcliff, aka "The Man"

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" - Hamlet, Act II, scene ii.

In reading through Conroy's fascinating list, I was reminded of Hamlet's speech, reproduced above, which greatly exaggerates the scope of human nature—and in the process ignores, denies, or contradicts the view that man is a constrained animal, which is Conroy's view as well as my own. Yet in one fell swoop it ironically demonstrates our self-interest (the important question for Hamlet is: what about me?); our false beliefs concerning our own capacities and limitations; our ability to suffer, especially from feelings of alienation; the fact that emotion can overwhelm our understandings; and, of course, our love of beauty. Despite my affection for the romantic idealism of Hamlet's speech, I believe that we may be the "paragon of animals," but we are far closer to the ape than the angel. And it is our peculiar curse to know it.

The truth is, we live in a world of limited resources—a constrained world. These limitations include our mental resources, our ability to acquire and process information. Our faculties are not infinite. These also include our social resources, our network of friends and family. We depend on others, and yet at the same time our social lives are riven with strife, for conflict is ubiquitous, not only in our social lives but in the natural world. Learning to understand and successfully manage conflict is therefore a worthy subject and one I intend to grapple with from time to time here on this blog. I may also take up the sword now and again myself, in order to cut down spurious, erroneous, or misleading arguments.

When I'm not brandishing my sword, I will discuss on occasion some fundamental game-theoretic concepts, which provide a structured way of thinking about conflict and a strategy. These concepts can help us understand non-obvious truths about the world. Sometimes, for example, the rational pursuit of self-interest can do damage to the broader society. The prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons provide patterns that can help us think about such situations. I may also discuss the methods by which legal structures attempt to correct and mitigate the weaknesses of human nature for the greater good; and how certain legal structures fail to do so. Sometimes, however, it is not social structures, but our own misjudgments that lead us astray. Fortunately, an awareness of certain well-studied cognitive defects may help us to reduce the number of our misjudgments. I will discuss these defects and how we can attempt to conquer them.

In any event, through posting to this blog I hope to learn a great deal from our readers, from Conroy, and ultimately from myself—for one of the benefits of maintaining a blog (I believe) is the self-knowledge that the act of writing gives to us, as we attempt the difficult task of composing our thoughts and responding to our most thoughtful critics. I look forward to posting again soon...

Post Number 1: The Start

by Conroy

Welcome to our blog! I should start by addressing two of your burning questions: Who am I and why am I writing (and hoping you'll be reading further)? The answer to the first question can be found in my bio, which is helpfully posted on our home page. The answer to the second question is harder to articulate. I can only guarantee the following - this blog will be home to the greatest writing; most original, groundbreaking insights; brilliantly entertaining repartee between its two creators, Conroy and The Man (aka Baxter Radcliff); and the timeless power of genius...okay, perhaps I indulge in hyperbole.

What I can promise is the energy of two men inspired by the complexity and variety of this universe and hungry to express that interest to our readers. We will cover topics from the esoteric to the mundane, but always with enthusiasm. We appreciate your patronage and hope you will respond with comments; I'm looking forward from this beginning. Baxter has prepared a welcome of his own, so please check out his inaugural post.

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I decided to tackle a big subject with this first post: the nature of mankind. Pretty ambitious huh? Well, despite the grandiose statements above, I claim no original insights on this topic. Instead, I rely on the coherent ideas of brilliant thinkers coupled with my personal experiences and observations. This is the first of three companion posts. The second and third will be posted in the Autumn, and will explain my views on society and the natural world. Together (I hope) they will comprise a personal philosophy (or non-philosophy) that will explain my views of the universe and identify my perspectives, prejudices, and attitudes. Views that I hope will be consistent through all of my posts no matter the subject matter.

I'll present my understanding of mankind through what will be a recurring format, a top 10 list. I will use this format frequently because, to be frank, I like making and reading lists. Perhaps lists are one small way I create simplicity and order out of an ultra-complex reality. I've listed here in my standard 10 to 1 order, but in this case the number does not equate to a value. These are ten key aspects of mankind - the "very clever ape" as Baxter would say - and they all carry, if not equal, significant weight.

My beliefs stem from a conviction that man is fundamentally imperfect, or to use Thomas Sowell's term, man is constrained. I hardly think you'll get much argument from theologians or scientists on this point, but where my thinking, and that of other "constrained" believers diverges from so many other philosophers and social commentators is an acceptance of man's imperfections as intrinsic and uncorrectable. I could go on and on discussing this fascinating topic, but for now that's enough background on my perspective. On to the list:

10. Adaptation - we are the end products of evolution (so far), of the wide variety of life that has been naturally selected for survival. In a word, we know how to adapt to our surroundings and circumstances. Technological progress has removed much of the need to adapt to the vagaries of the natural world (at least for blog writers and readers), but we still must adapt to the social world that we inhabit. Most of us do this successfully and with little thinking. How many different roles do you inhabit? Husband/wife, father/mother, son/daughter, sibling, friend, boss/employee, lover, stranger. For each of these roles we take on different attitudes, act different, talk different...we adapt as needed to get by.

9. Social Dependence - it makes sense that we adapt to our social surroundings so well because ultimately we are social beings that need other people. We need others because the world is too tough for us to get by on our own. We need others to share thoughts, share experiences, share emotions. We need others to really be alive. Love, friendship, companionship, all are manifestations of our need for other people. Think of Tom Hanks' character in the movie Cast Away. As the character, Chuck, intimates after he is rescued. He was already dead on the island...you would be too if left alone.

8. Misjudgment - it's probably a good thing that we are social creatures because even the most brilliant of our species just can't know all that much very deeply. For example, Sir Isaac Newton perhaps the greatest physicist of history, and a man who revolutionized our understanding of the universe was also an ardent believer in alchemy. On that subject he was as dumb as the rest of us. Too often we come to terms with our world by developing models, simplifications, theories, that give order to the complexity. Man has a tendency to draw conclusions from woefully inadequate data, we develop explanations for events and behavior with tenuous logic and little information. In a word we misjudge. We do this all the time and on so many subjects, from the large natural phenomena (think climate change) to everyday life (the crime we see on the local news). And what's more, we often do it arrogantly. How many pet theories and hasty explanations have you concocted for your day-to-day life and the events you're exposed to in the larger world?

7. Beauty - perhaps a manifestation of our tendency toward misjudgment is our attraction to beauty. I'll avoid a nebulous definition and just write that you know beauty when you see it. And when you see it, you cannot resist it. We melt before beauty, sexual beauty, natural beauty, artistic beauty. More than anything, we trust beauty. Men will lust forever over beautiful women, we are enchanted by a beautiful landscape, we will fawn over the majestic creations of other men. We have developed countless reasons to explain our attraction, to justify our attraction, but our response to beauty seems something deeper than these rationalizations.

6. Our Nature - one of my great beliefs is that our genetics and early life experiences (up to and perhaps through part of adolescence) form our personal nature. Like concrete, once set our nature cannot be changed. That's why we develop so many of the same patterns in our personal relationships, persist in behaviors that we don't like, settle into bad habits that are hard to break. Sure we can make changes in our lives, and perhaps a rare person does experience a sea change, but in general, we revert to our nature: a cheater will always cheat, a liar will always lie, someone betrayed will have difficulty with trust, someone kind will be kind no matter how much ignored, and someone optimistic will see the bright side no matter the disaster.

5. The Passions Rule - I want to challenge my readers to find the origin of this expression. The power of passion makes a farce of logical, rational man. We are ruled absolutely by our emotions. We may not always act on them, but anger, lust, love, joy, fear are the powerful feelings that can drive us to act rashly, foolishly, wrongly, violently, but also courageously, fervidly, devotedly. They can result in the worst aspects of our species - our ability to hurt others, and the best - our ability to love others. In the end the passions are what we live for.

4.Will to Power - but beyond the passions we have a drive to improve or increase ourselves. We are impelled to what Nietzsche termed the "Will to Power". In a simplified explanation, one more amenable to my intellect than Nietzsche's, this is our drive to realize our potential, to expand our abilities, knowledge, and influence. The will to power drives our acquisitiveness in all forms, and can only be checked by the will to power of others. For lack of a better term, those with greater achievements have a greater will to power, but big or small it's there in all of us.

3. Hope Springs Eternal - mankind has a remarkable resiliency. In the face of the largest setbacks we are still able to imagine a more successful future. Even the greatest cynics hope for a better tomorrow. My favorite example, because it's obvious and most of us have experienced it, is the broken heart. The broken-hearted will look again for love, no matter how painful the break. Our ability to move on, even when an event or circumstance deeply affects us, is intrinsically human.

2. Grass is Always Greener - perhaps a dark cousin of hope is our tendency to imagine things better than what we have. If better exists then better can be possessed. This view tends to be coupled by dissatisfaction with what we do have. Reality is rarely as colorful as imagination. How many good things (marriages, jobs, friendships, projects) have been lost in the search for something better. As John Fowles wrote in The French Lieutenant's Woman, "There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive." [Italics is mine.]

1. Self-interest - and most fundamentally, we are driven by self-interest. That's why we look around for something better. Self-interest makes sense from a biological, evolutionary perspective. The great achievements in human history and the upward arc of humanity are the result of the selfish impulse, measured in what I term selfish success (esteem, fame, wealth, professional achievement). This must be so. Still, self-interest can be a great evil. Self-interest can lead us to abandon or betray those we love. Self-interest must at times result in hurting others. Self-interest, like so much else in our nature is a good and bad.

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That's all for now. Look for a new post soon. Take care.