The False Affirmation Trap

 

Famously, when a woman in the UK asks, "Do I look good in this dress?", it’s deemed to be an emotionally charged question with implied expectations that hinder the honesty of the answer. It’s similar to when a male asks his chum “Do you think my new girlfriend is good looking?”, and if he thinks ‘no’, he’s in trouble. 😀

Emotionally charged questions with implied expectations are difficult for society because they promote dishonesty or false reassurance, which means it becomes harder to know what people honestly think and believe.

This is another reason why the widespread assault on free speech is so damaging to society. When people are reluctant to say what they honestly think or believe, for fear of reprisal or backlash, they start to say what they think society expects them to say, and the truth of what people really think gets lost in a morass of lies, dishonest consensus, and social performance.

Assaults on free speech become assaults on truthseeking, honesty and integrity.

Monday Odds & Ends: Facebook Memories

 

I've noticed something odd about Facebook memories – you know, those memories of past posts that pop up every day when you log in. The memories it offers me are but a fraction of potential memories it could offer me. I’m sure you are constantly aghast at how frequently scintillating my daily posts are, but there was at least as much, probably more, scintillation between, say, 2009-2016, and Facebook almost never offers any of that content in the memories. The memories it offers are primarily posts between 2022-2024, and the occasional select one from the distant past. There would be lots that would be worth re-sharing from the aforementioned older period, that friends I’ve acquired in the past 10 years probably haven’t seen, but Facebook hardly ever offers any of them on the daily memories.

I wonder if it’s to do with contemporary algorithms being very selective about what it offers for sharing. Because currently it’s barely scratching the surface.

 

On 'Divine Hiddenness'

 

The concept of ‘Divine hiddenness’ is regularly cited as one of the strongest arguments against God’s existence. It’s a term coined by the philosopher J.L. Schellenberg, in which he asked why God is not more evident or obvious, especially to people who are open to belief. If a perfectly loving God exists, then God would want to be in a relationship with all people, he posits. There are people who he claims are "nonresistant nonbelievers" - those who are open to believing in God and would enter a relationship if they could, but don’t believe due to lack of evidence or divine presence. Schellenberg concluded that a perfectly loving God would not allow nonresistant non-belief, and therefore He probably doesn’t exist.

One of the subsidiary themes in my book The Genius of the Invisible God is along almost opposite lines – that a key part of the genius of God’s cosmic narrative is that He remained so invisible or hidden in so much of creation, and that it is for our benefit that He does. While the book doesn’t directly address the ‘Divine hiddenness’ contention (I hadn't heard of it when I wrote the book in 2012) – it indirectly turns the objection on its head by showing how we should be thankful for any hiddenness God chose to exercise on creation. Or to put it this way, people talk about God not making His existence more obvious, but I don’t see it that way. Through Christ, God voluntarily enters the world to suffer and die for the sake of everyone, and then leaves His Holy Spirit so that those who believe in Jesus as Lord can have an intimate relationship with Him.

Perhaps those who don’t think God has made Himself more obvious are not thinking the right way about what He HAS done, and continues to do. Through the Incarnation, God has made an impression on the world that will last for as long as human civilisation. Think about what it’s like when a charity worker in the UK leaves their comfortable, affluent lifestyle and goes across the world to a region in a country that is mired in poverty and hardship. Through their support, grace, kindness and generosity, and through the relationships they build, they leave a legacy that far outlives their stay in the region. In fact, in some profound sense, the deepest connections last for as long as time is recorded.

I think that’s what God is like in relation to how the power of the cross endures, and how Christ's Incarnation, scripture and the Holy Spirit provide and equip us with everything we need to know who God is, to have a relationship with Him, and to counter the issue of Divine hiddenness.

Bad Soiled In Good

 

It’s good to remember that false beliefs tend to be nested in many more true beliefs and good intentions – a bit like how a rotten seed is buried in rich, fertile soil under a blooming garden - which I think persuades people who hold them that their false belief isn’t wrong, or it enables them to suppress their doubts about the false belief.

For example, the false belief of young earth creationism is nested in a sincere and noble desire to honour sacred texts, to protect the world from people trying to pull Christians away from the faith, and the need to respect Christian tradition. Climate Alarmism is nested in the virtue of responsible stewardship, real concerns about environmental degradation, animal welfare, good-faith concern for future generations, distrust of institutional power and irresponsibility, and a sense of ethical responsibility to act. And socialism is nested in the desire for a less unequal world, concern for the underdog, compassion for the disadvantaged, that sort of thing. Even the extreme nationalist views  are nested in some very human and often well-meaning concerns, like the desire for belonging, the need for cultural continuity, the fear of losing identity in a rapidly globalising world, alertness to the problems of uncontrolled immigration, nostalgia for historical communities, all encased in a protective impulse to preserve language, tradition, a sense of rootedness, and so forth.

Rotten seeds buried in the otherwise rich, fertile gardens of the mind are easily disregarded by those in whom they are planted, especially while looking at the iridescent bloom of the sun-baked lilies and the climbing jasmine.

But that’s not quite the full picture either, because there are also the perverse incentives, self-serving instincts, socio-cultural pressures, and the tangle of faulty reasoning that guide the hand which plants the rotten seeds - sometimes knowingly, sometimes not. At the risk of a further stretch of the analogy, these seeds are often disguised as compost, offered by well-meaning neighbours, or sold by bad actor merchants with something to gain at the buyers’ expense.

Which is why the work of tending to our own intellectual garden is an essential, continual work in progress – aided by the trowel of open, rational enquiry, the pollination of dialogue, the water of truthseeking, and the sunlight of humility.

The Trouble With The BBC's Literary Adaptations

My wife and I are in a season of watching BBC TV adaptations of great literary works. The works of Eliot, Tolstoy, Austen, Hardy and Dickens have graced our TV screen in recent weeks, and they make for pleasant viewing. And as a funny aside, when we moved in, we named every room in our house after great authors or scientists, with 4 of the above 5 each proudly bearing a sign - all except poor Tolstoy, who has yet to find a room. But while watching the TV adaptation of Middlemarch, I sensed more and more of an issue I have with these dramatisations – they are so far removed from the written content of the book that their viewing is at best a pale imitation of the terrific works of literature they claim to represent.

When watching Middlemarch, I noticed that the adaptation rarely uses George Eliot’s actual words - and for a novel so dependent on its narrator's wise, ironic and deeply humane voice, that absence leaves a noticeable gap. I’d put Middlemarch up there with the greatest ever literary works – and reading Middlemarch is a profound experience in large part because of the way George Eliot guides us through the inner lives of her characters as the narrator. Her narration offers one of the broadest insights of the multiple characters you will ever read, often pausing the story to reflect on human nature, morality, and the quiet dignity of ordinary lives. Without this voice, the drama lacks much of the book’s power, because it is devoid of the means to convey Eliot’s brilliant, intricate and meditative prose. 

Much of the book’s brilliance lies in inviting the reader to bathe in superb long sentences, philosophical digressions, and subtle ironies - none of which fit easily into the rhythms of spoken dialogue. I suspect the BBC thought that adapting Middlemarch faithfully would mean laying out the story in psychologically sophisticated voiceover narration and long cerebral speeches that might alienate modern viewers – but if they were prepared to sacrifice that, then it’s no longer authentic Middlemarch, it’s just a fairly decent TV period drama.

I felt the same about the adaptations of Jane Austen’s works. Her novels are also rich with irony, wit, and precise social observation, much of which lies not in what her characters say, but in what the narrator says about them. Austen’s tone is also difficult to capture without quoting her directly – and the adaptations we watched (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion) kind of…kind of… preserve the broad strokes of her stories and the charm of her characters, and with great casts of actors too, but they lose the razor-sharp narrative voice that gives Austen’s work its enduring brilliance.

I find there’s a slightly different problem with the Dickens TV adaptations. Dickens was a master of theatrical dialogue and memorable caricature, and much of his writing does lend itself to performance. But I found his adaptations often underplayed his darker satire, his biting political commentary, the fierce sense of justice conveyed with such energy and invention, and the rhythm and richness of his prose.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sympathetic that it’s difficult to adapt novels like the above without flattening some of their depth, but I lament the fact that these adaptations feel like a sketch of something much fuller – so brutally stripped of the artistry, rhythm, and soul that made the original profound. It must be a deliberate decision on the part of the creators – but it’s a bit like listening to a symphony through our 20 year old Honda’s car speakers, where the melody remains, but the nuance, texture, and emotional resonance are muffled and diminished. 

The Primary Reason People Don't Believe

 

We can dance around the numerous reasons people give for claiming not to believe in God, and rejecting Christianity for reasons x, y, and z. But I have a more compelling claim - one that 25+ years of discussing faith with sceptics has taught me: it's that the primary reason people reject Christianity is much simpler at its base. It's because they don't want to believe.

When you observe people, you can begin to identify algorithmic heuristics, which are a deep kind of pattern recognition around belief systems - especially the hidden motivations or psychological undercurrents beneath surface-level reasons. Once you've established this framework for a particular trait or pattern, you can apply it more broadly across a spectrum of claims, especially in empirically intractable subjects like religion, politics, economics and social commentary.

For Christians, I'd say the most useful heuristic that reveals a core resistance is this. I believe that if we could drill down right into the heart of why unbelievers are not Christian - the real reasons apart from what people claim on the surface - we would find that they are driven by what I think is the fundamental resistance to Christianity; that those who do not believe do not want to believe, but either can't admit this is the case, or can't recognise why it's the case.

When you hear the reasons why people say they don’t believe, they are mostly disguised intellectual or emotional coverings for a deeper unwillingness to believe. To truly engage with their resistance, you must discern why they don’t want to believe, and what lies beneath that reluctance.

I believe that is one of the primary insights that can equip both the Christian who wants to be a faithful and insightful witness, and the unbeliever who is honest enough to ask themselves why they currently might not want to believe. This is because one of the most profound insights of self-reflection in this matter involves attempting to recognise in ourselves; firstly, why we don't want to believe; secondly, how we determine what we want; and thirdly, what that lack of want is really disguising, or what concern or anxiety is it safeguarding, or what inconvenient need for change it is prolonging, or what short-term need it is fulfilling, or what particular superficial freedom it is shielding, and so forth. Get to the root of why an individual doesn't want to believe, and the rest is extraneous to the argument.

Abundance Begins With Gratitude For What We Have

 

I’m writing a book on gratitude, because gratitude is one of the superpowers of psychological and emotional well-being. As we grow wiser, we become more aware of one of life’s profound truths: the more we cherish what we have, the more satisfying, fulfilling, and abundant our life becomes. Conversely, the more we dwell on our struggles - on what we lack or have yet to achieve - the more life seems to withhold from us. When our attention is fixed on what’s missing, we compromise the ability to fully appreciate and enjoy our blessings.

But it gets even better, because the more we value what we already have, the more life seems to give. Gratitude doesn’t just deepen our appreciation for what’s already ours - the important people in our lives, our achievements, talents, possessions, memories, etc - it opens the door to obtaining more of what’s absent, and increases the chances of us receiving it.

Carrier Off Course With Cause

 

Standard variants of the Cosmological Argument are built on this syllogism:

P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause other than itself.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: Therefore, the universe has a cause other than itself.

Christians who understand the essential two category distinctions, God (uncaused, necessary Being) and creation (caused, contingent things - basically, everything that isn’t God), accept the Cosmological Argument is correct in some form, but I think it’s better to have ‘creation’ in the premises not ‘universe’, in case God’s creative dispensations extend beyond this universe. So, an improvement is:

P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause other than itself.
P2: Creation began to exist.
C: Therefore, creation has a cause other than itself.

A Being powerful enough to bring all of creation into existence is the necessary, uncaused, eternal cause traditionally understood as God, who has made Himself personally knowable in Christ.

Recently, atheist Richard Carrier tried to offer a fundamental issue with the Cosmological Argument, where he says:

“Everything that begins to exist has a cause other than itself” is literally logically impossible. Why? Because “Everything” includes all laws of physics. Causality is a law of physics. Therefore it is logically impossible for any law of causality to apply before that law of causality even exists. The first premise is therefore logically necessarily false. Not just probably false. It is necessarily false. It can never be the case that “everything” that begins to exist has a cause. Nor can “physical reality” be an exception-case to “everything”. Those are part of the contents of what is beginning in “the universe began to exist” and therefore cannot exist before that so as to cause it. Causal laws cannot exist before causal laws exist.”

There are two main things wrong with Carrier’s assertion – one is a philosophical error, and the other is a category definition problem that is already negated if we use ‘creation’ in the premises’ not ‘universe’. The philosophical error is in stating that “causality is a physical law, so it can’t apply before physical laws exist” – because causality is not only a physical law, it is a metaphysical proposition that’s fundamental to reality itself. Carrier’s confusion, which is a popular one, rests on the mistaken assumption that the only things that exist are physical things, which is fundamentally wrong (see my mathematics blogs in the tab here for more on why this is the case). The premise “Everything that begins to exist has a cause” is about ontological dependence, not merely physical cause-effect relationships governed by physics – which are only a subset of all of reality. Moreover, it doesn’t make sense to talk of ‘before’ except in the physical sense (as time is intrinsically linked to space, as per the spacetime of modern physics), so God bringing creation into being is not temporal causality in the sense that a physical human might imagine.

Secondly, my replacing “universe” with “creation” in the premise already addresses Carrier’s objection in a few ways. Creation is metaphysically broader than the physical universe, as “creation” means all contingent reality - not just physical entities or laws. The cause of creation is not limited to physical laws, and the cause that brings creation into existence isn’t subject to physical laws like causality. Replacing ‘universe’ with ‘creation’ grounds causality itself, and no longer remains limited by it. Talking about “creation” rather than “universe,” allows for an atemporal or transcendent cause, which is essential when you realise that time and causality are also created realities.

The claim “Everything that begins to exist has a cause other than itself is literally logically impossible” is false under the above terms, where ‘creation’ replaces ‘universe’ in the syllogism. But if we are just talking about the physical universe – a long-standing matter of discussion in philosophy and cosmology – then applying the standard notion of causality to the origin of the entire physical universe when you think the only things that exist a physical is also problematic. What makes it most problematic is if you make the error in thinking that the only things that exist are physical, which is one of the many limitations of the philosophy of naturalism. 

The Psychology of Thinking Israel is Committing Genocide

Do you think Israel is currently committing genocide in the Middle East? I don’t, but I can see from social media activity that many people do. If you’re one of them, then I’d encourage you to consider why it is you think that. In a moment, I’ll explain why I don’t believe Israel is committing genocide, but before I do, I think there are principally four reasons why someone might be under the misapprehension that Israel is committing genocide - and they range from very bad to bad. I’ll list them hierarchically, from very bad to bad. 

1)    Malicious intent: The individual is blatantly anti-Israel (maybe in some cases hatefully anti-Semitic), and will accuse Israel of genocide reflexively, regardless of facts or definitions, as a way of demonising the state. 

2)    Ideological thrall: The individual holds a rigid, extreme leftist ideological worldview - often aligned with radical activist frameworks – and prejudice against Israel serves their own tribal bias, political agenda, virtue signalling and attention-seeking – all feeding into their overly-simplistic narrative of oppressed vs. oppressor. 

3)    Susceptibility to manipulation: The individual lacks the knowledge and awareness of context that would disavow them of the notion that Israel is committing genocide, and is ripe for manipulation. 

4)    Open to disinformation: The individual has been swayed by the biased reporting and bad actors in society to believe Israel is committing genocide. They have become understandably emotionally overwhelmed by images of suffering and death, and are mistaking visceral outrage for informed judgment. 

Each individual who believes that Israel is committing genocide will fall into one, some, or all of those categories. For example, Greta Thunberg probably falls into categories 1, 2 and 3 – or just 2 and 3 if you’re feeling generous (she is probably too ideologically entrenched to be in 4), so does Roger Waters. Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway, Owen Jones, and countless other politicians and media figures fall into category 2 (often 2 and 3). Category 3 is bursting at the seams with celebrities and lesser known bourgeois leftist dilettantes in artisanal sunglasses, and so is category 4, where you’ll also find a wide range of people, from gentle, well-meaning Methodist septuagenarians, to teenage keyboard warriors who aren’t yet old enough to shave, to some dear personal friends who I love and respect immensely.  

The commonality in categories 1-3 (but especially categories 1-2), is not just misinformation, but a profound psychological need; to employ simplistic black vs. white logic, to feel morally superior, to divest oneself of internal personal criticism and responsibility, and to belong to a self-congratulatory cause bigger than oneself. If you’re weak in ways that the world needs you to be strong, then this kind of in-group ideology is very seductive. And a surefire way to tell that this is the case is to see how easy it is to predict the other things people in that ideology believe. In a game of collectivist mime troupe bingo, the squares would be filled with similarly predictable dogmas - climate hysteria, ‘eat the rich’ socialism, woke platitudes, no-platforming, performative solidarity rituals - all delivered with the same sanctimonious tone. The commonality in category 4 is primarily the need to locate moral clarity in a morally and socially complex world, and to resolve emotional discomfort with simple, righteous certainty. To be fair, the latter is, in many cases, a humble fault, but in reaching for moral simplicity, many end up embracing a fiction that feels emotionally satisfying, but collapses under the weight of evidence and reason.

Designer Outrage
One more point on the psychology, then we’ll move on to the proposition in question. Here's a provocative but truthful statement. If you’re in categories 1 and 2 (and sometimes 3) and accuse Israel of genocide, but stay silent on Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and other regional actors who openly call for Israel's destruction, then you're not standing for justice - you're showing everyone that you're, at best, guilty of being manipulated by perversely partisan media sources, and at worst, just an anti-Israel hypocrite, not to be taken in the least bit seriously. In fact, in the latter case, your selectivity is bordering on an anti-semitic weaponisation of language to legitimise your narrow, unbalanced tribalism.

And if you're in the former group, didn't you ever stop to wonder why the people who like to claim 'genocide' for Israel are completely silent on their enemies who actually do wish genocide on Israel? Surely you must have been just a little bit curious about the motives behind this blatant inconsistency? I'm not even commenting at this stage about whether it's fair to accuse Israel of 'genocide'. At this point, I'm merely pointing out the absurd hypocrisy that plagues our society - that even if you do think Israel is behaving awfully, staying completely silent on even more awful behaviour in surrounding regions is preposterous, making you look weak and incompetent. Unless the selective silence is because manipulative sources have convinced you that these Islamic perpetrators of murder, rape, violence, suppression of freedom and human rights abuses are not so bad after all - but that is just as preposterous, and makes you look just as weak and incompetent.

It's the same sort of incongruity we've seen with contemporary feminism for years – feminists such as the woeful Ash Sarkar, Kate Smurthwaite, Grace Blakeley, etc - they'll willingly stand in a safe capital city, holding a megaphone, screaming about "patriarchy" and "toxic masculinity", angry that some people are upset about the rights of the foetus, or that more CEOs are men than women, but they'll never raise an eyebrow about Islam's toxic effects on women, with grooming gangs, repression of rights, sexual inequality, hijabs, honour killings, forced marriages and the oppressive nature of Sharia law towards the female sex. I call this Designer Outrage.

Israel Is Not Committing Genocide
I’ve pointed out the hypocrisy of those claiming Israel is committing genocide, while remaining silent on even worse regional actors surrounding them. For those attempting a more balanced view, but still holding the view that Israel is committing genocide, let's consider that claim a bit further. I share some of the public criticisms of much of Israel's conduct towards the Palestinians, but I also believe that throwing around the word 'genocide' to describe Israel's actions isn't just factually wrong - it's a lazy distortion of what the term means. Genocide refers to the intentional extermination of a people. Misusing the language of atrocity trivialises actual genocides - like the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, or the Armenian genocide. It's not just bad history; it's offensive to actual victims of genocide whose families were actually targeted for eradication (in actual fact, as the Jews were in the Holocaust, and like they still are now by murderous ideologues in surrounding Islamic nations).

Too many people are cunning, slippery, or merely sloppy in their use of the word 'genocide' - because genocide means actions committed with the specific intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The intent element is crucial, and it's disingenuous to ignore it. Israel's actions, while far from perfect, are undertaken against the continued regional threat of perpetrators who wish to wipe them off the map - fanatical enemies whose tactics are to use Palestinian civilians (and hospitals, for example) as fodder for their murderous aims. What's ironic is that Hamas - who wish to exterminate the Jews, and openly say so - are the ones with genocidal desires, but the same people are silent about this.

While it's appropriate to scrutinise Israel's conduct, failure to recognise the existential threats it faces is failure to engage in the subject appropriately. Hamas explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, as do the leaders in Iran. The October 7th massacre was not only a military operation; it involved targeted killing of civilians, torture, and rape - acts of terrorism driven by genocidal rhetoric. Hamas embeds itself among civilians, uses hospitals and schools for weapons storage, and prevents civilians from evacuating - both to shield fighters and to use civilian casualties as propaganda. This squalid tactic complicates Israel's military response and raises the civilian toll in a tragic environment.

It's hard to deny that some of Israel's responses have been heavy-handed, maybe even excessive, and even, in isolated incidents a shocking mirror image of those who want to destroy them. But if you're going to measure excess, you should at least understand what that means in this context. Try imagining what it's like attempting to govern a country continually under existential threat from some of the most wicked and morally devoid Islamic fundamentalist groups on the planet - a country that continually lives in self-defense against an adversary that openly calls for its destruction, and will use any tactic necessary to achieve its aims. It's difficult to imagine a country not acting excessively under those conditions - these are extreme acts of self-preservation, where Gazans are also many of the most innocent victims of this complex, harrowing situation.

So, I'd really encourage you to not use the word 'genocide' when describing Israel’s predicament - especially as they are a people who have themselves experienced one of the worst genocides in human history, and certainly the most systematically executed, and still carry the scars today. Words like "genocide" carry historical trauma and legal implications - and misusing language dilutes meaning and compromises the full truth and can blind us to the real moral and legal complexities at hand. Criticising Israel's military actions is one thing - but calling it ‘genocide’ undermines credibility, and perversely distracts from both the complexity of the situation, and the real goals of groups like Hamas and Iran, who do actually commit egregious violations of international law that are much more like genocide than what Israel is doing.

Change Your Mind

A healthy mind is one that can embrace change when there is good reason to. Be wary of people who show you that they are so rooted in a viewpoint or belief system that you know there is almost zero chance that they will change their mind. In fact, it’s almost a form of self-dehumanisation, which I’ll explain. We know how hard it is for people to change their mind generally, even in light of new evidence that should prompt them. And this barrier and the intransigence is exacerbated when the individual in question is a public figure whose status, reputation and income depends on holding those views. You know the sort of people I mean – I’m thinking of people like (to name just four) Richard Dawkins, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Ham and Greta Thunberg (although her condition seems to have other factors).

For those who have a lot riding on it, there are three fundamental costs. The first is that changing your mind requires you to admit not only that you were mistaken but that you were unreliable or defective about how you drew your conclusions. The second is that it often alienates the very audience or community that supported or elevated you in the first place. The third is that it can kind of feel like a partial death of self – a minor dismantling of part of who you are, which could even provoke a deep, destabilising crisis of meaning.

Wrapped up in that triumvirate cost package is the potential for economic cost (loss of income), loss of future opportunity in that particular niche, accusations of betraying the tribe, selling out, giving ammunition to "the other side”, and exposure to personal weakness and vulnerability that will likely be disconcerting. It’s no wonder changing one’s mind brings such a sense of foreboding, but the inability to do so is far worse.

I said that inability to change one's mind is a form of self-dehumanisation – and this is because it robs oneself of the most valuable human qualities. Although individuals caught in this trap are usually unaware of the damage it’s doing - it brings about a fundamental surrender of core human capacities, like truthseeking, curiosity, growth, and adaptive intelligence that are so vital to human well-being. In one sense, to cling rigidly to a belief when there is every reason to change your mind on it is to reject the very faculties that distinguish us from machines or ideologies. A person who refuses to revise their worldview effectively reduces themselves to a kind of deterministic script with a predictable output, and somewhat ceases to be a fully living mind. That’s why it’s a form of self-dehumanisation – it’s the wanton trading of the richness of human fluidity and potential adventure of truthseeking for the sterile comfort of conformity, dwelling in the realm of a parochial illusion. We don't just close our minds when we are unwilling or unable to change them - we abandon a part of our humanity, and taint the rich potential of our own evolving selves.

Perseverance, Character & Hope

 

Every day one can read a Bible passage, or even a line, and continually uncover profound ways it can be transformative for any individual. Here’s a good case in point – a Bible verse from my reading this morning.

“And we boast or rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Romans 5:2-4

We are going to endure suffering and challenges in the world, but we must persevere because we should really want this kind of character of which Paul speaks, for it is the only true source of hope. In the context of Romans 5:3–4, the "hope" referred to is not some vague desire for a low-probability event to happen, it is a profound and enduring confidence in God's promises and the ultimate fulfilment of His plan for humanity – so there is no better or truer definition of what we should hope for than this hope. Here, hope is a confident expectation rooted in trusting God. Our suffering produces perseverance, which makes us steadfastness and resilient, and this shapes our character. And it is through this character that we can withstand life’s challenges, draw on God’s strength, and live a hopeful life in Christ.

Let me reiterate, we should want this kind of character, because it gradually shapes us into the people the world needs, and into the individuals we should desire to be, because it is what we were Divinely created to become. The converse of that is to live like Mathieu Delarue, a character from Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel The Age of Reason. Reflecting on the existentialist theme of wasted potential, regret, and the realisation that time has passed without having truly lived, he says:

“I have led a toothless life, he thought. A toothless life. I have never bitten into anything. I was waiting. I was reserving myself for later on - and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone."

This quote reflects the stark realisation of a life unfulfilled due to inaction and perpetual postponement. Sartre uses the metaphor of "teeth" to signify vitality, agency, and the capacity to engage with life's challenges and joys. To live a "toothless life" is to avoid biting into the raw substance of existence, choosing instead to wait for an undefined future that never arrives. The discovery that one's "teeth have gone" is a moment of anguish - a confrontation with the irrevocable passage of time and the wasted potential of one's freedom. It is a poignant reminder that existence demands engagement now, because uncourageous inaction and disengagement is the silent thief of authenticity, meaning and, ultimately, our Divine calling.

Be Wary Of The Fashionable Outcry

 

Published earlier on Network Norfolk - sharing here too:

Here is a brilliant passage from C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters that speaks as much about today as when it was written:
 
“We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under. Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm; a century later, when we are really making them all Byronic and drunk with emotion, the fashionable outcry is directed against the dangers of the mere “understanding”. Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey."  C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
 
Today’s misdirected cultural trends are classic cases of directing the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger, especially compared to salvation matters. Society is awash with top-down manipulations – from the mainstream media, social media, political parties and large-scale institutions - showing how priorities can be manipulated away from seeking Christ and desiring a relationship with Him. 
 
The psychological trickery is all well-established in the literature – and it’s a heady mix of accidental or inadvertent spillover effects and deliberately orchestrated manipulation. Instead of addressing the biggest concerns facing a generation, people are made to obsess over less relevant or even comparably harmless issues (in the long run). For example, a society that's grown indifferent and apathetic is warned against being too passionate or enthusiastic; a culture spiralling into moral recklessness is warned against being too rigid or judgmental, that sort of thing. This is why, in encouraging the junior devil to “fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic”, Lewis points out the danger of confusing virtue with vice’s adjacent.
 
There are plenty of these psychological tricks designed to get people to defend a value that masks a growing problem. Like how tolerance and inclusivity are being used not to protect genuine diversity, but to silence moral conviction; like how authenticity and self-expression are widely championed as virtues, but are often tools for justifying self-indulgence, pride, or a refusal to take responsibility; like how community is used as a synonym for exclusive tribalism; and like how scientific and technological progress often masks prideful secularism.
 
Lewis exposes this whipsawing effect brilliantly, "Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm." Each generation’s moral panic is inversely related to its real failing; when people are emotionally cold, they’re warned about being too emotional; when people are selfish and hedonistic, they’re warned about being too strict or puritanical; when people are drifting toward tyranny, freedom and liberty are painted as dangerous, that sort of thing. This creates a fairground mirror image of reality, where society chases the wrong demons and ignores the spiritual antidotes, as the rot sets in.
 
I believe all this is a subtle form of spiritual warfare and psychological manipulation employed by the enemy and his influencers - channelling the energy of conscience away from truth and toward distraction. Because in many cases, and especially in places where God is not at the top of the hierarchy of priorities, I believe the greatest danger is not the vices many are obsessing over - it's the ones being ignored.
 
I’m glad to hear there may be a Christian revival on the way, because in many places in today's UK culture, instead of confronting the deep spiritual need for Christ and the call to live out genuine Christian responsibility, many are consumed by lesser political, social and ideological concerns that, while not inherently wrong and are certainly worthwhile, become idols when they displace the centrality of the gospel.
 
It must be Christ at the top, then pray He’ll equip us to help solve problems in the world. By fixating on issues that feel urgent but are ultimately peripheral, people neglect their deepest need – relationship or reconciliation with God and the daily obedience that flows from that relationship.
 
Just as C.S. Lewis warned, society runs about with fire extinguishers during a flood, passionately opposing dangers they’re not actually at risk of, while ignoring the real and present threat of spiritual apathy and worldliness. This misdirection keeps hearts far from Christ, all under the illusion of moral seriousness and societal progress – and this generation should be on guard against this spiritual deception and psychological cheat. Even the best virtues must be protected against this idolatry, for as de Rougemont warns us, “Love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god.”

You Were Not Harmed By The Distant Past

 

Many people seem to be filled with discord about events and circumstances in history that happened long before they were born. Perhaps the most (in)famous is the call for slavery reparations, alongside behaviour conducted during the British Empire, and things of that nature. Now, it’s true that not everything about our human past, including the British Empire, was rosy (welcome to humanity), and it’s also true that some things that happened in the distant past decades before you were born could go on to have some effect on your family’s current situation. But in virtually every other sense that’s conceivable to you, things that happened in the distant past, decades before you were born, have caused you no personal harm at all. In fact, it’s difficult to think of anything that happened before your parents were born that had any discernible harm to you, alive today – and even more so if you understand that you have a lot of control regarding how you reflect on such events.

Yet, strangely, society is awash with people who are convinced that the distant past is responsible for all sorts of their perceived woes, victim status and injustices. If you choose to focus on the distant past in this way, you are likely to be ensnared by a very unhelpful narcissism, attention-seeking and victim-mentality that is impeding your chance of being the person you could be.  

If that’s you, not only should you desist from all this regretful preoccupation, in actual fact, I think it’s highly probable – given the socio-cultural butterfly effect and the fragility of causal chains – that if history hadn’t happened exactly as it did, you wouldn’t be here to think about it. Such is the precarious contingency on which the precise historical narrative rests, that if you altered any of the small details, it would have such a profound knock-on effect that everything about the present would look different, and you wouldn’t have been born. Even if you don’t buy the proposition at that level of tiny detail (and I think you should), certainly if any past event significant enough to be retained in your historical knowledge had not occurred, the specific combination of genetic material that led to you or me would not exist. Therefore, strange as it may seem, you cannot claim to have been harmed by past significant events because their absence would preclude your existence altogether.

One issue you may have with the above is past harms, like historical institutional racism, that might have brought systemic disadvantages affecting a group (black people, for example) due to historical injustices. But strangely enough – although past injustices should serve as a catalyst for us to not repeat such mistakes, and to treat each other as well as we can, for you to retain the argument that you’ve been personally harmed by the distant past, there must be a coherent scenario in which you could possibly exist in a better state due to that injustice not occurring - and there isn’t one. That is, even if a past group was systematically disadvantaged, individual members of that group today would not exist but for the specific combination of genetic material that led to their birth, and the unique history that led to their parents’ sexual union. Thus, the claim of personal harm or entitlement to feel individual harm is undermined by the argument of non-identity without such a past, and that many seemingly obvious present individual harms are not harms at all if the alternative is individual non-existence.

To be clear, we can all see that some historical injustices have created slight systemic disadvantages - such as wealth gaps and educational disparities - that persist today in certain regions, where individuals could claim that they are still enduring the consequences of institutionalised disadvantage. And this does mean that some individuals have to work harder to seize opportunities, to break through barriers and to address their consequences. But since your existence is contingent on the very events you claim harmed you, and since harm requires a comparison to a revisionist, counterfactual state where you exist in better conditions, do you really want to live a life where you’re constantly burdened, upset, defined, and limited by your interpretation of the past? A much more fulfilling path is to live with wonder and gratitude for your improbable existence, to rise above any inherited hardship, and to shape a life that is grounded not in grievance, but in growth, positive agency, and the exhilaration of personal responsibility that aims to make your part of the world a better place.

Rethinking the LGBTQ ‘Community’

The LGBTQ acronym is not only careless in falsely imputing a community to one that barely exists*, it’s even stranger because when you break down the components, you’ll actually find there is quite a lot of division between the Ls, Gs, Bs, Ts, and the Qs

I actually have quite a bit of experience of Ls, Gs and Bs, as a former girlfriend of mine from about 20 years ago had a gay brother, a gay lodger and a gay best friend (all different people 😊), so you can imagine how many Ls, Gs and Bs I met on the party scene in the duration of our relationship. Being the social dynamo, compassionate and caring fellow that I am, I got to know many of my girlfriend’s friends and social acquaintances pretty well. And they constituted a fairly broad cross-section of what people would now call the ‘LGBTQ community’. But not only is it remiss, in my view, to lump them all together in a carelessly formulated acronym, I think it rather deindividuates the people the acronym is trying to collectively categorise (as most group labels of this kind do).

There are, of course, exceptions – and I’m sure there are many individuals who find succour in associating themselves with such a group. But a lot of the attribution is by people outside the group who find it convenient to impute group labels to diverse individuals. And in actual fact, most people of any sex, skin colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so forth thrive by being engaged with primarily at the individual level, where any group to which they happen to belong is extremely tangential to their own identity as an individual.

Furthermore, there is actually more division within those groups than you may realise. Many gay individuals do not want to be defined so prominently by their sexuality - they are citizens first, with diverse experiences, professions, backgrounds, and identities. Many gay and lesbian individuals certainly don’t like the Pride spectacle which flaunts sexuality, hedonism, and sometimes promiscuity in everyone’s face. Lesbians are by and large very different from gay men, with sometimes conflicting objectives. Bisexuality is often frowned upon by both gay people and lesbians. And the so-called trans incentives often run counter to gays’ and lesbians’ perceived rights (and those of women generally) when biological males try to identify as female. The media frequently reports on a growing schism, among older Gs and Ls and younger trans-inclusive activists. And this has produced the inevitable subsidiary divergence, with those claiming that sexual orientation is based on fixed, biological sex, and those in gender identity ideology asserting that sex is fluid, socially constructed, or irrelevant. Further, some so-called trans activists argue among the ‘community’ that refusing to date or sleep with so-called trans people is transphobic.

The upshot is, once you dig deeper, you’ll find the so-called LGBTQ community is rife with discord and varying beliefs and objectives, and replete with a strong desire not to be homogenised or dehumanised through recourse to an arbitrary acronym. All that is not to deny that people you’d place in the LGBTQ group have faced overlapping challenges, like legal discrimination, social ostracism, and difficulties with identity. But pick any group – white teenagers, black primary school teachers, young fathers, Irish Catholics, manual workers, nurses, and so forth, and you’ll be able to find overlapping challenges they’ve faced, without creating a coalition of convenience, driven by ideological incentives, hasty attributions, political lobbying, and corporate branding. 

*Further reading: Last year I wrote a blog post called Bogus Communities, pointing out the human tendency to insert the word ‘community’ after an adjective, acronym or slogan to fraudulently impute shared views and beliefs among a group of people who are only tenuously connected.

 

The Thing We Have Most in Common

 

We have a sloppy tendency to lump people into groups: white people, black people, gay, straight, immigrants, indigenous people, and so forth, as though people in those groups have the most in common by virtue of being labelled that way. But that’s generally false or overstated. Assuming no prohibitive language barriers, then from my experience of people, the factor that most determines what they have in common is not skin colour, ethnicity or sexuality, it is their level of education. 

People functioning and performing at a similar educational level have shared frameworks that far exceed other commonalities. A highly educated black woman and a highly educated white man usually have more in common than a highly educated black woman and a very uneducated black woman. Education often gives people a more common vocabulary, worldview, and analytical approach. Education also often determines which media, literature, and historical frameworks people are familiar with, as these become influential points of connection. Also, many social behaviours, expectations, and conversational styles tend to be shaped by education, which makes interactions more fluid within similar levels. And also, education strongly influences income level, job type, and social mobility – which, of course, affects social circles, lifestyle, housing, health, and community involvement.

There are exceptions, of course – people with similar levels of education can have different upbringings and values, different temperaments and worldviews – but I think education is one of the strongest predictors of shared worldview, especially in modern societies, as it most heavily intersects with other deep influences like communication, values, culture, family, and class.

What God Knows

 

Even though I can’t even know 0.000001% of 1% of what it’s like to be God, I do get intrigued sometimes by peculiarities understood through my limited, finite human brain. For example, God is omniscient, omnipotent and a perfect Being – so what does that mean in terms of some of the supposed limitations of mathematics, logic and information? For example, we know that there cannot be a set of all truths (especially in mathematics or logic), because Tarski proved that truth cannot be defined within the same language in which the statements are expressed. Suppose you try to form a set of all true sentences in a formal system (like arithmetic). Then you would need a truth predicate that determines whether a sentence is true – and such a truth predicate cannot be defined within the same system - it leads to contradictions, like the liar paradox.

Ok, so, I actually don’t think that is a wholly unsolvable problem in this context, as I explained in this blog post. It says more about our own human limitations. But I do not know what a set of all truths could mean for God, because if each set of truths entails further propositions about those truths, then a set of truths is a problematic concept, even if presumably this must be contained in God’s mind somehow. This recursive, self-expanding structure creates an essential tension in the idea of omniscience when it's imagined in my limited human logic, but perhaps that’s because semantic hierarchies are also a phenomenon attached to being human. I don’t know what it means for God to know a set of all truths that entail no further propositions or any kind of semantic hierarchy. This process isn't set-like - it seems more like a dynamically unfolding, internally structured totality – at which point, we humans cannot compute it.

Maybe this means that the idea of a set of all truths is a human limitation not a Divine reality. Sets are static mathematical objects, but God must be a unified act of understanding where He intuits all relations and truths simultaneously. I suppose it’s a bit like trying to write a complete dictionary, but for every definition, you also have to include; 1) the fact that it’s a definition, 2) the implications of its use, 3) the relationships it has with every other definition, and 4) the meanings of those implications… it would loop back and extend outward endlessly. Maybe that’s what such a dictionary would be like for God, but obviously even more complex than mere words.

And, next, what about Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, which shows that for any sufficiently powerful, consistent formal system (like Peano Arithmetic), there are true statements about natural numbers that cannot be proven within the system. So even we try to gather all provable truths, we miss some that are true but unprovable. Therefore, even the idea of a set of all provable truths doesn’t capture all truths. Or consider Russell’s Paradox - the set of all sets that do not contain themselves, which leads to contradiction. A universal set (the set of all sets) is not allowed in standard set theory because it also leads to paradoxes. Moreover, the set of all true sentences in arithmetic is not recursively enumerable, because there’s no algorithm that can list all and only the true statements, even in principle. This again means the "set of all truths" isn't just seemingly impossible to construct, it’s not even properly definable.

With God’s omniscient mind, does He know all truths, or only all knowable truths? I assume there is nothing God doesn’t know, although His truths have to remain within the internal consistency of their own logic – so He can’t create a rock so heavy He can’t lift, because that’s just a human nonsense, just as it would be if I said, “My dog is half past three steps into next week”. For us, the set of all truths is not well-defined or not formally capturable - but again, that is presumably a human problem connected to being human (like cause and effect), not a God problem connected to being God.

Consequently, we’re left with what we kind of know already – that God's knowledge must transcend formal systems, and He must know truths that no human language or formal system can express, which means the human mind reaches the level of analysis here where it goes blank. The way I picture it is like light before it breaks into colours. In a sense that we might be able to sparsely capture for our own illustration, what we call "truths" are to God as colours are to unbroken light: distinctions that arise only when unity is filtered through the prism of human limitation, but still absolutely glorious for our having done so.

The Negativity Threshold

 

In the book Getting The Love You Want, by clinical therapists Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly, the authors suggest that marriages can only thrive when both beloveds consciously work to get rid of all negativity. One of the key concepts in this generally excellent book is that individuals often bring unresolved emotional wounds from childhood into their romantic relationships, which can manifest as negativity in communication or behaviour. It’s true that by actively addressing and healing these wounds, partners can create a healthier and more fulfilling relationship.

But the idea that beloveds should consciously work to get rid of all negativity has potential downsides if taken too rigidly, and these seem to go unnoticed in the authors’ work here. The benefits of reducing negativity are obvious; it reduces hostility, resentment, defensiveness and contempt; and it fosters a safer, emotionally secure environment. But there are costs too, especially if negativity is merely suppressed, because it usually won’t go away – it will manifest stronger further down the line.

It will also impair healthy conflict, which is necessary for growth. If couples avoid expressing frustration or disagreement to maintain a "negativity-free" relationship, they will inevitably sidestep important conversations that would lead to deeper understanding when negotiated sufficiently.

And we also have to consider that negativity in healthy amounts is a reality of being human, and a key part of authenticity in relationships. Trading off helpful negativity for the purposes of total abolition is not going to foster an authentic relationship, because there are going to be some negative things about growing together in marriage. The bridge to mutual transformation involves constructively navigating negativity.

Clearly, it's both unhealthy and unrealistic to eliminate all negativity. A more sustainable approach is to manage negativity in a constructive way - acknowledging difficult emotions, expressing concerns respectfully, finding solutions together, and turning negotiations into opportunities for deeper connection rather than sources of disconnection.

I personally do endeavour to remove most negativity from relationships - I much prefer a positive, encouraging, hopeful dynamic in relationships. But it's important to understand that just because a small amount of negativity has to be encouraged as one of the essential tools for transformations - both personally and relationally - we mustn’t be complacent about its detrimental effects on marriages. You can think of it a little like salt on your vegetables; a pinch will bring out flavours that otherwise remain blander, but as soon as it's applied in excess it will spoil the whole meal. I'll explain what I think are the benefits of a pinch of negativity, both from an epistemological perspective and a psychological one.

From an epistemological perspective, healthy negativity is a necessary part of the process of knowledge and growth. The very nature of understanding and learning involves questioning, challenging, and sometimes even rejecting previous assumptions. In relationships, it is through confronting difficult emotions and challenging our perspectives that we grow closer and develop deeper mutual understanding. When partners are able to engage with the "negative" aspects of themselves and their relationship - be it frustration, disappointment, or disagreement - they are engaging in a vital cognitive process that allows them to redefine their relationship and evolve together. This active confrontation of tension, rather than the suppression of it, invites important learning and deeper connection.

And from a psychological perspective, healthy negativity plays a crucial role in emotional regulation and psychological resilience. Healthy negative emotions like frustration or anger can serve as signals, pointing us toward areas that need attention or adjustment. When managed appropriately, these feelings offer a route to catharsis and emotional release, fostering emotional intimacy when expressed and understood. As I said above, suppressing negativity doesn’t resolve the underlying issues - it simply buries them, allowing them to resurface in more damaging ways later on. It's psychology 101. By acknowledging and processing difficult emotions, partners open up pathways to healing and genuine connection. This process of emotional integration - transforming negativity into insight - creates a stronger bond and greater psychological safety.

Furthermore, on top of all the above, I believe the danger of telling couples to eradicate all negativity is that they will also feel more pessimistic about themselves and their relationship when it inevitably keep materialising. What beloveds should instead understand, and be encouraged by, is that when negativity is used as a tool for growth, with beloveds in full truthseekng mode, it can strengthen the foundation and resilience of the relationship itself, forging deeper mutual trust and respect than its suppression would ever cultivate or allow.

Efficient Use Of Knowledge

It would be remiss here if we didn't elaborate on yesterday’s blog post The inefficiency Trap and tailor the content to one of the most important works in the whole of economics - Hayek's The Use of Knowledge in Society, which is the most natural bedfellow to the inefficiency trap. This essential work by Hayek is a foundational essay in economic and political philosophy. It challenges the idea that central planning can efficiently allocate resources, and argues that the real economic problem is not just resource allocation but the efficient use of dispersed knowledge.

Hayek makes the case that decentralised decision-making through market processes is superior to central planning because it best utilises the knowledge that exists in society. His argument emphasises the role of prices as a communication mechanism that helps coordinate economic activity without requiring any single individual or entity to possess all relevant information. This is standard economic fayre now, and has been for many decades, but it's important to acknowledge how innovative this work was in its day, and how influential it has gone on to be.

Hayek helped challenge the traditional economic problem as framed in classical and neoclassical economics. One of the main issues in economics is how to efficiently allocate scarce resources among competing uses. But we cannot, of course, assume that all relevant information about available resources and technological possibilities is already given to a central planner or decision-maker. In reality, as Hayek argued, knowledge is fragmented and dispersed among individuals - and the key challenge is how to make use of this scattered information effectively.

So, Hayek talked about the role of decentralisation in knowledge utilisation, and he distinguishes between two types of knowledge:

Scientific Knowledge - this includes general rules, principles, and data that can be formally studied and documented.

Local and Tacit Knowledge - this consists of specific, often unarticulated knowledge possessed by individuals, such as an entrepreneur's awareness of local supply constraints or a worker's skills acquired through experience.

The big limitation of central planning is that the planners cannot effectively capture and utilise local and tacit knowledge. The challenge is how to coordinate this dispersed knowledge in a way that leads to efficient economic outcomes. Hayek argues that decentralised decision-making is the only practical way to make use of dispersed knowledge. When decisions are made at the local level by individuals who have first-hand knowledge of their specific circumstances, the economy as a whole can adjust dynamically to changing conditions.

On top of that, one of Hayek's most important contributions is his explanation of how the price system functions as a communication mechanism. Prices convey crucial information about the relative scarcity of goods and services. When a resource becomes scarcer, its price rises, signalling producers to conserve it and consumers to use less of it. Conversely, if supply increases or demand falls, prices drop, signalling increased availability. Each individual reacts to price signals based on their local knowledge and needs. This allows the economy to coordinate millions of independent decisions without any centralised control. This spontaneous order, or 'catallaxy' as Hayek calls it, emerges naturally from market interactions.

Moreover, markets not only distribute existing knowledge, they also help generate new knowledge. Entrepreneurs experiment with different products, production techniques, and business models. When some strategies prove successful, they are imitated and refined, leading to continuous economic innovation and progress. Central planning can stifle this discovery process because it does not allow for optimal decentralised experimentation. As we know from our own successive government top-down failings, over-interference means resources are allocated based on short-sighted directives rather than market signals, leading to inefficiencies, shortages, and surpluses.

Of course, while most of us don't advocate for a completely laissez-faire economy, we can all heed warnings from sound economic principles against excessive government control - especially around price theory; knowing that policies that interfere with the price mechanism - such as price controls, excessive regulations, and subsidies - distort information flow and lead to inefficiencies. This is obvious even to most laypeople with a basic grasp of economics - but the application of the use of knowledge in society is perhaps less obvious, but just as vital a thing to understand.

In the notion of spontaneous order - the idea that complex social and economic systems mostly evolve naturally without central design - economies function best when individuals are free to act on their knowledge and incentives. To that end, Hayek's work The Use of Knowledge in Society remains one of the most profound economic works in demonstrating that the key economic challenge is not merely resource allocation, but the utilisation of dispersed and tacit knowledge. The market system, through the price mechanism, most efficiently coordinates this knowledge - and that is just as important as efficiently allocating resources, because the two go hand in hand.

The Inefficiency Trap

 

There's a classic Econ 101 brainteaser often posed in introductory economics courses (I think I saw it first in Steve Landsburg's work), which I won't quote verbatim, but it's along these lines:

Question: Suppose apples are produced by a competitive industry, while pears are provided by a monopolist. Coincidentally, they both sell for the same price, and you would be equally happy with either. If you care about conserving societal resources, which should you buy?

Answer: You should buy the apple if you care about economic efficiency and conserving societal resources. In a perfectly competitive market, firms produce up to the point where price equals marginal cost (P = MC). This means that the price of an apple reflects the true societal cost of the resources required to produce it.

I hope that makes sense because, by contrast, a monopolist typically restricts output and sets a price above marginal cost (P > MC). This results in underproduction - some consumers who would have been willing to buy at a price above MC are unable to do so, leading to deadweight loss. This artificial scarcity means society is not producing as much as it efficiently could, making the monopoly inefficient from a resource allocation perspective.

Since the price of an apple equals its marginal cost, choosing an apple means you are participating in a market that operates efficiently, ensuring that goods are produced at the optimal level. By contrast, choosing a pear supports a monopolistic market structure that produces inefficiently low quantities, reinforcing the misallocation of resources. Thus, if your goal is to align your purchasing decision with economic efficiency and the best use of societal resources, you should buy the apple.

At first glance, the idea that a seller in a competitive market sells at a price equal to marginal cost (P = MC) does seem counterintuitive - it almost sounds as if they are only breaking even on the last unit produced. However, there's more to the story, because we are considering average cost as well as marginal cost. Marginal cost is the cost of producing one additional unit, but average cost is the total cost (including fixed costs) divided by the number of units produced. In a perfectly competitive market, the price is typically equal to both marginal cost and the minimum average cost in the long run. This ensures that firms cover all costs, including fixed costs, and earn a normal profit, which is the minimum return necessary to keep a business operating in the industry.

That's also why, in the long run, in a market-friendly industry with no barrier to entry or excessive regulations, competitive firms earn this normal profit but not excessive profits, because competition drives prices down to the level of average cost, but not below it. Incidentally, it also shows the foolishness of the statement 'people before profits', to which I can refer you in past blogs (see here and here).

The fact that it's usually better to consume from a competitive industry than a monopoly (natural monopolies sometimes excepted) also shows why it's usually better for the market to provide goods and services than the state. Markets are competitive industries but governments are monopolies. In competitive markets, firms must minimise costs and innovate to survive. This tends to allocate resources efficiently, leading to lower prices and better quality for consumers. Competitive markets produce goods where the price reflects the true societal cost of resources, ensuring that production aligns closely with consumer preferences. And markets tend to adjust quickly to changes in demand or supply, as firms compete to attract customers and maximise profits.

Governments, which are de facto monopolies, usually lack incentives to innovate or reduce costs because they do not face direct competition. And government-provided goods and services usually do not reflect true marginal costs, due to subsidies, taxes, or inefficiencies - meaning an almost inevitable over- or under-consumption of resources.

In his famous dictum, The Four Ways to Spend Money, Milton Friedman outlined the perennial problems of governments spending someone else's money on someone else - the typically least efficient way that money is spent. It's obviously not the case that markets are always preferred over governments in every sector - but politicians are primed to put their own interests first, which means the probability of inefficiency and bad value for money increases. I'll elaborate on that in tomorrow's blog post.