All Thoughts Being Equal

I. There's been a subtle confluence of things in my mind recently, so I might as well tighten up the loose connections and write about them. And if it's disjointed, well, so it goes. First, I'm reading through Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature , a deeply interesting book with a few intriguing flaws. One of them is his section on modern art, whose crisis he attributes to the modernist-postmodernist (hereafter, MoPoMo) denial of human nature. Specifically, he cites research to suggest that humans have an innate, if rudimentary, aesthetic sense, that MoPoMo art explicitly rejects and that's why most people hate it: Postmodernists were even more dismissive. Beauty, they said, consists of arbitrary standards dictated by an elite. Having watched more than a few episodes of Art21 , I can tentatively confirm that a lot of postmodern artists are self-important hacks, but then again I think all artistic movements feel like a he...

Chesterton : In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. Sun Tzu , The Art of War : It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every...