The truth is out there

The botanist tries to understand trees by studying cells. That works well, but the tree has a purpose over and above the purposes of the individual cells.

In human societies, genes make the man, and men make the nation, but the mechanism is not understood. If you randomly replace genes, the man will malfunction, and if you randomly replace men, the nation will malfunction.

California is a state that once had a healthy middle class, but it is being re-populated with foreigners, and is devolving into rich and poor classes. The rich are profiting from the modern equivalent of the slave trade, and the state has lost its sense of purpose as the modern robber barons have sold out.

Economics has long used the metaphor of the “invisible hand” to describe markets. When scrutinizing individual trades, free markets in economic goods and services look like just businessmen making a few bucks for their own personal purposes. In the large, markets appear to have a purpose, guided by an invisible hand toward efficiency.

Likewise, gases look like just random motion at the molecular level. No purpose is evident, except that the molecules just want to be free like the businessman just wants to make a buck. On a larger scale, gases seem to have purposes of filling the available volume and reaching thermal equilibrium.

We have pretty good theories for how markets and gases reach equilibriums, so we ought to be able to explain how individual human consciousness can contribute to a collective social purpose.

Human social purpose appears to operate on multiple scales. At the molecular level, there are DNA SNPs that correlate with personality. At a larger scale, there is neuron function in the brain. Then there is the individual, the family, the community, and the nation.

A popular TV show in the 1990s was The X-Files. It featured FBI agents pursuing unusual cases. A recurring theme was that Earth was dominated by secretive elites that had sold out to extraterrestrial colonists. It was as if we were ruled by lizard people with a doomsday plan.

The show was a subtle way of addressing the disconnect between the purposes of our leaders and our citizens. Our money and our constitution are under the control of unelected elites, and Europeans have also ceded power to unelected bureaucrats. Our major news media falls into line with their agenda, and so does Hollywood entertainment.

We have unelected judges who are dictating who can get married, and who can enter the USA. Their reasoning shows no respect for common social purposes that have been accepted for centuries. They pretend that the issue is the individual rights of those most directly affected by the orders, while they ignore the much broader and more important questions about what is beneficial or detrimental to the interests of the nation. They are sabotaging what could be crucial to the human spirit.

Our society had a sense of noble purpose when it was known as Christendom, or Western Civilization. Now these terms seem quaint, as our leftist elites hate what our society once stood for. I don’t think that they are lizard people conspiring with space aliens, as that would be the rich explanation. It is more likely that they have just lost their souls.