The Cycles of Thought

Milton Friedman wrote in his foreword to the 1994 edition of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom that, as we have come full circle back to the same issues that Hayek addressed in 1944 when he wrote the book, someone ought to address the questions of why we keep returning to the emotional thinking that leads us to believe that economic planning can work, and why intellectuals tend to be some of the most emotional of thinkers. The question of intellectuals is very interesting, and I’ve heard a few ideas that make some sense, but I won’t address that question here. I want to theorize on why we keep cycling our thought processes, why the political motions go in waves.

I know that liberals consider themselves intelligent and logical, but since history shows the massive failure of social engineering, it is impossible to be both logical and not see the correlation. Most liberals can acknowledge the fact that they think with their hearts, that they think the way they do because they care. The intellectuals of the left actually believe themselves capable of successful social engineering, which is either megalomania (they think where all others have failed they will succeed… it can’t be the theory, it makes too much sense) or ignorance (could they really not know/believe the massive failures of past Marxism?), but either way it’s wishful thinking. But since Marxist socioeconomic policy has failed everywhere it is tried, it must be concluded that proponents of such policy do so solely on emotional grounds.

Since the founding of our nation, there were many emotional thinkers who tried to change the system to “help” other people (mostly themselves). But the vast majority of the nation was on board with the principles of freedom on which it was founded. It lasted for decades, but things started to change as the issue of slavery became more debated, and that became one of the first waves of emotional politics (not that the freeing of slaves was bad, but you’ll need to study the real history to get the full picture, not the liberal interpretation of history taught in schools). After Lincoln, with exception of a couple of spurts of emotional ideas here and there, things went back to normal, up to the turn of the 20th century. German philosophy of social engineering grew more and more popular, and we had a huge wave of progressive thought that gave us Social Security, Welfare, and the progressive income tax. This thought lasted the duration of the Great Depression, until, with the war against the Germans (and their Marxist ideology), and the final ending of the Depression, most of the thought returned to the logical principles of freedom that produced a historically unprecedented economic growth. While the emotion based theories and philosophies never really went away, they lost most of their momentum, and the nation returned to a mostly logical track. There were waves back and forth, every decade or so, from there on out. Notable was Jimmy Carter’s presidency, which found difficulty handling the recession of the time, then Reagan’s policies restored economic stability and growth to the nation. Logical thought reigned supreme for the next several years with small swings back toward the emotional side in the next decades. Then we were attacked in 2001 and we became united in emotion again, culminating ultimately in the election of our current president, the most emotional and illogical president since FDR.

So why the ups and downs, the political shifts from right to left and left to right? Why is one generation more conservative and the next more liberal?

There must be a factor of independence and individualism in it. “I’m smarter/better than my parents and their generation, and I don’t follow their outdated philosophy.” But it’s more than that. There’s an actual socioeconomic cycle, which, I believe, John Adams put forth unknowingly:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

The importance of certain fields of study fluctuate with its demand. As the fields of business, science and engineering grow, the economy booms with innovation and technology. With the economic growth, and the increased wealth of society, demand grows for the subtler pleasures of culture, the arts and entertainment. The transfer of study to these more dramatic and creative fields in order to meet the demand causes a glut of emotional thought, a shift of thought to more illogical reasoning. As this shift occurs, economic growth stagnates. This is both because the growth of economically productive fields slows as the growth of service industries accelerates, and because political thought during the emotional periods tends to be extremely economically damaging.

With the economic stagnation, discord and anger result in a reconsideration of philosophies, and the independent voter who last voted for the liberal leader realizes the logical fallacy, and turns back to reason. The politics are restructured, the demand for the productive fields again grows, and the cycle continues.

John Adams just failed to complete the cycle: “And once their children’s focus on painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain leads to economic crisis, their children must again study politics and war.”

Is there an escape? Can we break the cycle? No, the cycle is natural and necessary. You can’t break it without economic planning, which we’ve already noted does not work. But we can reduce the depth of the economic crises that occur at the end of the cycle. The Founding Fathers were successful for a time in minimizing these busts. How? The Constitution.

The only way to prevent devastating crises such as the one we’re now experiencing from becoming regular occurrences at the end of each cycle is to minimize the political impact. The rebalance must occur, and, while it does, the economy will slow. But the “slowing” becomes “falling” when combined with emotional political policy, unfounded in logic and reason, which burdens the economy with unnecessary weights. This is what happened in the Great Depression. We must strip the power of politicians from impacting the economic cycle, for they are ultimately destined, at the end of the cycle, to govern with emotion rather than reason, and this at exactly the most inconvenient time when the economy is poised for difficult rebalance. This is what the Constitution was designed to do. It’s time we cut government back to the size it was intended to have.

Judging A Book By Its Cover

A few weeks ago, a thought dawned on me that I found quite interesting. We talk of our outward appearances as inward reflections of an individual. We, in almost the same breath, also urge each other to avoid judgment of others from said appearances. But I realized, as I passed a mirror, that we have come to incorrect conclusions of the psychological intent of style. Our appearance is not a reflection of an individual, but rather a projection of how that individual wishes to be seen.

I have a friend at work who occasionally asks me for style advice. She even dragged me to help her pick out glasses. She doesn’t have a style for herself. It was my style that she was trying to appeal to. She wanted to know what I thought looked good.

I often ask my girlfriend what I should do with my hair. If she has an opinion on the matter (which is rare), I follow it. When I received clothes for Christmas, I even noted to my mom (the giver of said gift) that they were of a style that my girlfriend would appreciate. Did I think they looked good? Sure. But I only think so because I think it will look good to other people, particularly her.

In other words, our image is actually designed by those whom we are trying to impress. It is they for whom we dress. It’s for them that we spend time styling our hair and painting our faces. How often do you see yourself in a day? When you do, do you care? When you know that you won’t leave your house and won’t see a soul for the entire day, do you still spend the same amount of time on your style? Most people I know, including myself, stay in their comfortable pajamas, showering only when their own body odor and filth becomes uncomfortable to themselves. You simply don’t care what you look like. Even those who, we joke, are in love with themselves, are not actually in love with themselves (or their image), but rather are extremely pleased and confidant in the way they think they project to their target audience.

Thus, our style is much more accurately a reflection of the people we admire and respect rather than who we are. Of course, they are correlated in that we typically strive to be like those whom we admire. But the distinction is important. Often times there is a miscorrelation, and the two don’t match very well. For example, some may dress relatively well in order to win companionship, after which goal is achieved their interest in style is reduced. In many cases, we don’t admire people for their appearance, or opinion thereof, and thus we do not care about our physical projection to them.

We see it in the personalities across the spectrum. Jocks dress in athletic garb, not so they can join a pickup game than might just break out in the middle of the day, but because that’s the style of their jock friends. Girls tend to care very much about how attractive they are to boys in addition to how their girl friends see them, thus they spend a lot of time, money, and even discomfort for their appearance. Those we would classify as nerds tend to admire those who would respect them for intelligence far more than appearance. Thus they seem oblivious to style completely. Those who claim independence and non-conformity typically conform to a style that is widely accepted by other supposed non-conformists.

Our appearance also reflects how much weight we put on the opinions of others. Some people care little of what others think. These are the true individualists of style, and tend to look rather ridiculous at times. Others care a great deal, and spend a lot of time and effort trying to look just as they ought. Most of us have a range of influences, from wives or girlfriends, who typically have a great deal of influence, to close friends, who also tend to have strong sway, to professional peers, whom we’re often trying to impress, to strangers we often pass by, whom we either try to blend in with to not draw unwanted attention or intentionally clash with to draw attention, depending on our personality.

When we balance the weight we give to each of our influences, the sum total is our reflection of style. We can tell a lot from a person’s appearance. It just isn’t what we typically think we can tell from it.

Judge a book by its cover? No, that’s not what the book is about. The cover's just there to attract readership.