Seek Earned Criticism

 

A general piece of wisdom that’s been popularly suggested over the decades is  “Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from”.

In most cases, this will serve you well. Think about it; if you wouldn’t trust someone’s advice - because they lack expertise, wisdom, or good judgment - then why let their criticism affect you? Being discerning in accepting criticism helps filter out noise and focus on feedback from credible sources.

However, like most good bits of wisdom, it’s rarely absolute - even people you don’t respect or trust might occasionally have valid criticisms or nuggets of wisdom from which you can benefit from hearing. Don’t take advice from x about y, where x is someone who is frequently wrong about y – is good advice. But x might be occasionally right about z, so be careful not to miss valuable insights.

All that said, if you are the sort of person who is sensitive to criticism, prone to self-doubt or easily discouraged, then it’s prudent not to be bothered or upset by criticism from people who haven’t earned the right to offer it. Sometimes good criticism can emerge spontaneously, almost accidentally, with some insight that transcends the reputation of the character. But by and large, good criticism requires wisdom, knowledge and discernment - so be careful not to get derailed or disheartened by unearned and unjustified criticism from those who haven’t demonstrated the credibility to give it.

20 Albums That Influenced Me

 

About 5 years ago, I partook in the fun social media post-a-thon “20 albums over 20 days that have influenced me in some way”. One popped up on my memories the other day, so I thought I’d compile them into one list for a blog post. These were submitted in no particular critical order.

Day 1 - Astral Weeks by Van Morrison
One of the finest journeys in musical album history – a gorgeous, mystical blend of folk, jazz, and soul, with poetic and introspective lyrics, all projected by Van Morrison’s stunning voice.

Day 2 - The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths
A marvellous exploration of British melancholy, wit, and post-punk energy, all in one. Morrissey’s sardonic lyrics and jangly guitars from Johnny Marr make this an album that’s both intelligent and emotionally raw. The album is a masterclass in creating beautifully tragic songs that still feel empowering. ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ is pure sonic brilliance, and in ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ we have one of the best anthems of the 1980s.

Day 3 - Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd
A masterpiece that redefined the concept of the album as an immersive experience. And the 12 minutes of ‘Time’ segueing into ‘Great Gig In The Sky’ is probably my favourite 12 minutes on any album ever. Their follow up album Wish You Were Here is equally as good, as is ‘Echoes’ from the previous album Meddle. Some of the best rock music ever written.

 Day 4 - Freak Out by Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention
This is a brilliant, raw, acerbic antidote to the soppy, superficial   flower-power bubblegum love songs being churned out around that time! In 1966 nobody was prepared for an album like this - not even the The Beatles or Bob Dylan ventured that far into this kind of courageous, counter-cultural sonic expressionism and intelligent parody of the musical establishment.

Day 5 - Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan
This isn't just the album that got me into great music, I think it got me into music full stop - it made me appreciate the album as a work of art, not just as a set of songs with a few singles and the rest as filler. Amazing that this was released in 1965, before any of the other truly great albums - it is the first album in rock history that creates its own little sub-universe and draws the listener into it. Without it, there'd be no Revolver or Sgt. Pepper, no Electric Ladyland, no Ziggy Stardust and no Dark Side of the Moon.

Day 6 - Hounds of Love by Kate Bush
The eighties killed off many great seventies artists, but thankfully Kate Bush wasn’t one of them. Side one is the most familiar, with the terrific hit singles ‘Running Up That Hill’, ‘Big Sky’, the title track and ‘Cloudbusting’. But it’s the conceptual innovation on side two that’s probably the strongest, with a terrific series of songs about a woman going mad in her own seclusion. And yet the astounding 'Hello Earth' near the end is probably Kate's equivalent of Hamlet being "bounded in a nutshell and counting himself a king of infinite space" - knowing there is always hope when we have thoughts and dreams. Very apt for a time like this!

Day 7 - OK Computer by Radiohead
More than any other, this album taught me about music as a 'grower'. When I first heard OK Computer, it came across as a difficult listen. It was a sonic trip that sounded like it was made in outer space, but I admired it more than I liked it. But after about 15 or 20 listens, it began to grow on me, and it started to sound more and more like a friend than an acquaintance. That, I realised, is the multi-layered brilliance of the songs - they have depth; they grow into the listener's cognisance like acorns grow into trees; and they sound fresher with every listen. A remarkable achievement!

Day 8 - Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys
There are days when I think this is the best album ever made (although I think those days would be more numerous if Brian Wilson hadn't made the big mistake of leaving Good Vibrations off the album). This album, like all great pop albums, sounds amazing when you first hear it, but it never stops sounding amazing with repeated listens! An album that exhilarates you the first time you hear it, but still seems to grow with every listen is a truly rare and wonderful thing - and Pet Sounds encapsulates that sentiment more than just about any album. 

Day 9 - Can't Buy A Thrill by Steely Dan
Possibly the most underrated band in the world. With Steely Dan you get an agglomeration of most of the other greats rolled into one; The incisiveness of Dylan; the wit of Lennon; the slick polish of Pink Floyd; the melodiousness of Genesis; and the sumptuousness of Frank Zappa. They get everything right on this album, and on their follow up Countdown To Ecstasy, which is nearly as good, but not quite.

Day 10 - Hunky Dory by David Bowie
In truth, apart from Lodger, I could have picked any of Bowie's greats as my choice - from Hunky Dory through to Scary Monsters - depending on my mood and what I'm looking for.  I think that's probably what makes that Bowie period so special - so many great albums that are so good for so many diverse reasons.  

Day 11 - Blue by Joni Mitchell
Amazing! One of the most beautifully honest and emotionally deep albums I've ever heard. And there is an ineffable quality to Joni Mitchell that's not immediately obvious to fathom, in that she doesn't have a classically great voice, but when you combine that voice with those profound lyrics and the exquisite music, it has a combined quality that's hard to beat. I think it's because she uses her voice so magnificently in making it sound like a musical instrument.

Day 12 - Forever Changes by Love
Almost nobody has even heard of this band, yet in 1967 they made one of the best albums in the history of popular music. I saw them live when they came to Norwich, and it was the best gig I've ever experienced.

Day 13 - The Notorious Byrd Brothers by The Byrds
I almost can't choose between The Notorious Byrd Brothers and Younger Than Yesterday the year before, but the former just grabs it on account that it doesn't have the dreadful Mind Gardens on it. Other than that aberration, this is almost perfect pop music! But it's so much more than that - because when you think of the connective chain, six degrees of separation-style, that began with The Byrds, it's incredible what a panoply of great music emerged. I mean, you have all those terrific Byrds albums, at least one really good solo album each from Gene Clark, Gram Parsons and David Crosby; then there is The Flying Burrito Brothers created by two former Byrds; and of course we have Crosby, Stills and Nash (and later Neil Young), from which we get the link to Buffalo Springfield (Stills), The Hollies (Nash) and later Manassas (Stills), and a whole catalogue of brilliant Neil Young solo albums, and several decent solos from Steven Stills too.

That is a *lot* of good music!

Day 14 - Automatic For The People by R.E.M
More than any other music, R.E.M's albums in the nineties remind me of my important friendships - the created experiences of what we used to call 'making future memories now'. Smell is the sense most closely linked with memory, but sound can elicit nostalgia in a way that even the olfactory senses are too low-resolution to touch - and this album is so very precious to me. I think this beautiful album is R.E.M's high point on what has been a fabulous career. Here they substitute the trademark guitar sounds of their eighties material for the lush string arrangements and a greater acoustic feel, and they've never been more profound, sincere and evocative than right here.

Day 15 - Let It Come Down by Spiritualized
There's a mystery attached to Spiritualized: how can a band this good be so under-appreciated by the masses? Sure, without Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and The Velvet Underground there wouldn't be a Spiritualized of this calibre, but even so, few bands in the history of rock music have been able to create the combination of melodic electricity and profound delicate beauty as Spiritualized. Their lack of adulation is one of the cosmic musical solecisms that needs redressing. But in addition, there's a further mystery within the mystery, because even those who do give Spiritualized their worthy regard always seem to vaunt their inferior (but still excellent) preceding albums Lazer Guided Melodies and Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space over this one. The reality is, Let It Come Down, with its 110 piece choir/orchestra and the sonic depth of its guitars, brass and piano is one of the most gorgeous, soulful, deeply meaningful works in rock history.

Day 16 - After The Gold Rush by Neil Young 
Can't not have a Neil Young album in this list - he's terrific. Short and sweet.

Day 17 - In The Court Of The Crimson King by King Crimson
If Tony Iommi sired a love child with Sandy Denny, and that child grew up to read Coleridge and learned to play the flute and mellotron, and they all formed a band, this is what they’d produce. This album is like the musical equivalent of a brain probe that traverses the rich gamut of order and disorder deep in the sub-ducts of personality, where we humans are so much better and so much worse than we can imagine. The contrast from track 1 to track 2 is like going from Charles Manson to Paul McCartney – you almost can’t believe it’s the same album. It’s Iago and Desdemona inside the same cranium. And if you have the software, trim down Moonchild to just the first 4 and a half minutes, and you'll have chopped off the only boring bit, leaving yourself a near-flawless prog rock masterpiece

Day 18 - Transformer by Lou Reed
Not as seminal as The Velvet Underground & Nico, but everyone needs a lost weekend-kind of an album, where we have nostalgia for the old days of Jack Daniel’s, cigarettes, wimmin and the nightlife - and this album is mine. Equally I’m so glad those days have passed – but I’ll always have the enchantment of memory, and this music best encapsulates that reminiscence. This isn’t glam rock, but it’s certainly decadent rock-cabaret. Yet despite the hedonism, there are few moments in music that are more beautiful than the last 45 seconds of Perfect Day, with Mick Ronson’s glorious string arrangements and piano. 

Day 19 - The Beatles
It's impossible for me to single out one Beatles album, as they all mean so much to me. I know you understand, because, let's be honest, what these guys did was quite remarkable: it takes some special ability and creativity to make a series of albums like these that pushed the boundaries of musical innovation further and further away from the competition, yet still remained wholly commercially appealing to every kind of demographic. Dylan, Hendrix, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin - they all enchanted subsections of their potential target listeners at the expense of others - whereas The Beatles charmed everyone in a feat of intelligent populism that seems highly unlikely to be emulated ever again. There are no other albums in the world quite of this magnitude, whereby the music satisfies an almost impossible triumvirate: 

1) Of being able to be carefully absorbed on the stereo, with the listener concentrating on every note as they become immersed in the album as a work of art operating from within its own little sub-universe. 

2) As background music while they do other things like work or entertain guests. 

3) Or as a hit factory, where most of the songs on every album are indelibly stamped in the public psyche as singalongs in the car, in pubs, at parties, etc.

 It takes some kind of brilliance to achieve all three of those qualities on one album – but the Beatles managed it at least five times in one decade, so I'm picking them all!

Day 20 - Tigerlily by Natalie Merchant
One positive thing about relationships from yesteryear is that the good music survives long after the romantic residue has gone back to the dust. A past girlfriend of nearly 20 years ago had this terrific album by Natalie Merchant, and I thought it so good that I immediately went on to play.com (remember that website?) and bought her entire back catalogue, and ditto the 10,000 Maniacs (her antecedent band). It’s one of the most impressive back catalogues, yet so rarely appreciated as much as it deserves. Just listen to a song like The Letter – at just 2 minutes 12 it perfectly captures sentiments we’ve all felt, with the most beautiful simplicity, you wonder why no one has ever written it before.

The Maze and the Watchtower: Seeing Beyond the Illusion

 

Irrespective of whether I like someone or how I feel about people as individuals, when it comes to most of their highly partisan left or right-wing political views, beliefs or rhetoric I encounter, I simply do not trust the conclusions they draw or the reasoning they attempt to employ to get them there. I believe that some highly partisan political commentators have good intentions, but I have little confidence in their ability to discover that they are part of a large, complex game of power, manipulation, deceit, and self-serving narratives designed to obscure the truth.

First, here’s an important preliminary quote from a recent Blog post about why politicians lie way more than you think:

"There are generally two ways to lie. One type of lie is called suggestio falsi, which is the suggestion of something which is untrue or deliberately telling an untruth – such as about where you were last night, about breaking something and blaming someone else, about not being at an event you claimed you attended, and so forth. The other type of lie is called a suppressio veri type of lie, which is concealment of truth – such as failing to disclose conflicts of interest, ignoring information about negative consequences, not revealing the true costs of policies, and so forth. Because suppressio veri lies are less blatant and slipperier due to the ambiguity of what they omit, they are harder to directly confront, more widespread, and therefore the most insidious and destructive kind of lies told in society. And they are mostly the kind of lies that underpin the political system – they are habitual tools of manipulation that erode trust and exploit people's assumptions, allowing politicians to shape narratives and control perceptions without outright fabricating facts. In the way that politicians craft the squalid art of omission and indirect duplicity, it could be argued that they, and the media that amplifies and legitimises their distortions, are society's biggest liars."

Now, I don’t like to be overly-bivalent in my analyses of societal phenomena, as I prefer a more sophisticated, nuanced analysis that considers a wider range of perspectives and complexities. But to the greatest degree, I really do think society is made up of two groups of people; those who have figured out what the system is like, and those who remain in its thrall. I acknowledge that this comes in degrees, but only up to a point – the reality is, once you’ve sussed out the trick and seen through the illusion, you can never unsee it. I think of it as being like a maze and a watchtower. Most politicians, most of the media, and the public who’ve bought into it all, from whatever side of the political spectrum they happen to place themselves, are controlled by strings inside a complicated maze, being guided through its dead ends and wrong turns, relying on signs of manipulation placed within the maze to have them believe they’ve been directed through their own volition and competence.

Those enlightened few who can see the maze from the watchtower can see the bigger picture; they can see the extent to which those inside the maze are bought cheaply to protect the interests of those who pull their strings, where their outcomes are frequently aligned with the agendas of their funding sources and political thrall. I’d actually go so far as to say that virtually everyone who is pushing for some kind of left or right wing political agenda, party political partisans, tribal in-group mentalities, so-called social justice warrior narratives, wokeism, identity politics, or culture war distractions, has been bought or compromised in some way, and they unknowingly serve the very power structures they would vehemently oppose if they could see beyond the snare.

Within the maze, there is a ladder leading up the watchtower – it’s the ladder of authentic, uncompromised truthseeking – but few dare to grasp its rungs. Many don't even see it is there, or don't recognise it for what it is, because it looks like too much hard work to reach. And the watchtower at the top of the ladder is not one small, isolated viewpoint - it is a vast, elevated expanse of interconnected insights - a profound vantage of extraordinary clarity, where the exposed realities of the intricate web of power, manipulation, ideology, and human susceptibility converges into a comprehensive awakening. From this grand perspective, the maze below is revealed in its entirety, and the forces that shape and direct it become unmistakably clear.

And it's important to remember both the conditions under which one finds oneself stuck in the maze, and the plight of being trapped there. Residents are contending with the elephant and the rider problem (see Haidt) - where they are driven by the emotional elephant, and where emotions frequently take the lead and steer our rationality, not the other way around, with the rational mind struggling to justify decisions made impulsively by the emotional mind. Instead of rationality guiding emotions, it often serves as a tool to justify what the emotional elephant has already decided. Furthermore, they are also contending with the fact that there is a divide between left and right wing ideologies that is often deeper than mere social influence, and how much the left and right are genetically predisposed to their beliefs, as differences in moral priorities appear to have a heritable component, where genetics predisposes people to certain orientations and beliefs. Add to that the fact that online content algorithms amplify this effect by feeding them material that aligns with their preexisting views.

As they consume content that supports their biases, they are pushed further into ideological silos, deepening the divisions within the maze and making the ladder of truthseeking even harder to recognise. These predispose them further to actively seek out views and content that already align with what they believe, where they search for mirrors that reflect and reinforce their own biases, and gravitate toward views that validate their existing beliefs, leaving them trapped in a cycle of confirmation bias and self-reassurance. And to entrench them further, tribalism fosters loyalty to one’s "side" - whether political, social, or cultural – often at the cost of critical thinking. Running around the maze, they seek to defend their group’s beliefs and narratives, not because they’ve diligently critically evaluated them, but because dissent feels like a betrayal of their identity. 

Moreover, the maze amplifies their illusion of competence - the Dunning-Kruger effect - where they overestimate their understanding of complex issues, and mistakenly feel more informed than they actually are, emboldened to make confident assertions while ignoring the limits of their knowledge. And as those pulling their strings tug a bit harder, they remain subliminally motivated by fear and in the shadows of the maze, while all the time believing they are a force for good, acting with near moral certainty, convinced of their own righteousness even as they unknowingly perpetuate the very dynamics that keep them imprisoned. They remain fully sold on the labyrinth’s paths; blind to the watchtower, they embrace their imprisonment with the zeal of willing convicts.

I think most individuals are trapped in the maze, navigating its endless twists and turns without ever questioning its design. A smaller minority have begun their ascent, partway up the ladder of truthseeking, striving to rise above the confusion. And then there are the rare few who have reached the watchtower – where, through a determined effort to learn the truth, they are elevated to a level where they can see the maze for what it truly is and understand the forces that shape it.

Net Zero: Created By Madness For Madness

 

You know by now what I think of Net Zero – it has been “one of the most widespread Dunning-Kruger ‘Mount stupid’ delusions ever wrought on modern societies” - and it’s good to see that Kemi Badenoch wants to do away with it – and probably deserves to win the next election on that alone. 

She is right to call out its adverse effects on living standards, and the ridiculous financial burden of Net Zero policies on UK citizens, particularly in the energy sector. The UK’s artificially hasty push towards renewable sources, coupled with a failure to develop domestic fossil fuel resources, has resulted in some of the highest energy prices globally, and it is rightly making British folk mad with indignation. Because of politicians’ short-sighted economics and preening attempts at virtue-signalling, UK citizens are saddled with rising household inflation and escalating industrial production costs, leading to accelerated deindustrialisation, and bigger consumer struggles to make ends meet. The UK deserves better.

That the UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves refers to climate policy as the "economic opportunity of the century," merely keeps reaffirming the same mistakes and the same painful realisations that most politicians do not understand basic economics (see my Green/Environmentalism side bar for much more on this). One of the main things they don’t get is that jobs are a cost, not a benefit – in other words, labour is an input, not an output. If something requires more labour to produce, it means fewer resources are available for other productive uses. Moreover, if government mandates force businesses and households to invest in expensive, less efficient green technologies, and pay more for their goods as consumers, this diverts resources away from other sectors of the economy, which are classic misallocation and inefficiency errors in economics. A true economic opportunity reduces costs and increases productivity, and Net Zero policies do precisely the opposite.

Knowledge of price theory brings the basic understanding that prices reflect scarcity and consumer preferences. If renewable energy was as efficient and cost-effective as politicians claim, it would outcompete fossil fuels without such radical government intervention. In reality, subsidies, mandates, and regulations artificially distort prices, creating hidden costs that mostly go under the public's radar. Higher energy prices raise production costs across all industries, leading to reduced competitiveness and real income losses for consumers. And government-driven investment in green industries often crowds out private sector investment in more productive activities, leading to a lower return on capital. And, to rub salt in the wounds, the precipitous transition to Net Zero increases costs for businesses, who then pass these onto consumers, which further erodes purchasing power.

If Rachel Reeves really did want to pursue the true "economic opportunity of the century", she would pursue policies that lower costs, improve efficiency, and allow freer markets to converge upon the best solutions without so much government misallocations. Instead of Net Zero mandates, a market-driven approach - where innovations emerge based on actual consumer demand and price signals - would be far more beneficial. Instead, politicians are merely shifting costs and distorting markets.

I know some will allude to precautionary mindfulness around market failure, and state-based initiatives to jumpstart technological innovation, but these pale in comparison to the superior efficiency, adaptability, and wealth creation of market-based approaches. The counterarguments are the exception not the rule. Market failures are rare and trivial in comparison to government failures, which are frequent and more destructive. Real economic opportunity and, in fact, greener societies, come from increasing efficiency and productivity, not artificially inflating employment in sectors that only exist due to subsidies, regulations and political posturing.

The Mental Health Dilemma

 

There is an "overdiagnosis" of mental health conditions, says Health Secretary Wes Streeting, where Generation Z are giving up on work, a new study suggests, with almost four in ten considering leaving their job and ending up on benefits, and many people already in that situation. We all probably know quite a few people who are playing the system; people who don’t work and probably could work, where the state is funding their lifestyle; and we all probably know people who are too unwell to work, and rely on justified welfare support, and are not getting anything like the support they need. Blanket solutions are problematic here, as every situation is a case by case.

The overdiagnosis issue is a complex matter to solve, because what we have here is a Type 1 and Type 2 error problem. A Type 1 error occurs when a diagnosis wrongly identifies someone as having a mental health disorder deeming them unfit for work, when they really could and should be working. And a Type 2 error occurs when there is a failure to identify a mental health disorder that is actually present.

By and large, the UK is a very risk-averse, interferingly cautious society, where we’d rather be awash with Type 1 errors to guard against Type 2 errors – that is, by analogy, we’d rather let off ten guilty people than see one innocent person go to jail (see my Blog post on Blackstone’s ratio). Type 1 errors are becoming ever-more predominate in many areas of society – from trans issues, to online censorship, to climate change policy, to free speech impediments, to race, equality and diversity policies -  and it seems clear that we are probably predisposing ourselves to increased Type 1 errors occurring in the domain of mental health, which are highly likely to be far more numerous than Type 2 errors. Additionally, because it’s both empirically harder and riskier to fail to diagnose a mental health disorder, or accuse someone of exaggerating a disorder, or suggest that their troubles could be overcome with more personal responsibility, we’d expect Type 1 errors to dominate.

If too many people are wrongly classified as unable to work, the results will be a shrinking workforce, higher welfare costs, lower productivity, and a greater burden on taxpayers. Some are saying we’ve already reached that point, and things are destined to get far worse if this continues. 

I don’t claim to have easy answers to these highly complex problems – but it’s certainly something that a nation shouldn’t be afraid of addressing, because the long-term consequences of this could be severe - not just in terms of economic stagnation and an overburdened welfare state, but also in how we perceive work, personal responsibility, and resilience. Ironically, of course, failing to address an overabundance of Type 1 errors by erring too heavily on the side of caution can itself be an example of the very same Type 1 error under examination. It's a feedback loop where the excessive risk aversion perpetuates the very problem it seeks to prevent. A Type 1 error of Type 1 errors.

Further Reading: Exploring Mental Health

See What's Happening

 

What I’m going to say is expressed in very simple prose, but I suspect only a minority of people who are like me - smart, good looking, socially urbane 😃 - will fully get this. Until, that is, a time when virtually everyone has no choice but to get this.

So, Trump won in America, and in the UK, it is predicted that Reform UK will be the largest political party by membership this summer. The woke left hasn’t woken up (no pun intended) to the fact they are largely to blame for this. Biden was beyond awful; years of the woke, left wing Tories were a disaster; and now the UK faces even gloomier years under Keir Starmer’s Labour - a party even more dreadful in its woke policies and censorious mentality. It is difficult to find many who welcome this prospect. Most people clearly don’t like woke nonsense, and those who think they do are either absurd people who think they are its main beneficiaries, or people who are oblivious to the societal harms it inflicts.

Of course, the headline-grabbing woke stuff is an easy target – but woke’s main harms are more widely and more thinly dispersed in the form of bureaucratic overreach, cultural self-censorship, divisive identity politics, institutional groupthink, and mass resentment in its true victims across the nation. I’ve talked about the last four before in blog posts, so here I want to address bureaucratic overreach, because that is the silent, most insidious force that quietly infiltrates every level of society and undermines real progress and freedoms. And while I’m not a fan of all the purported solutions being offered as a reaction to this plight, you’re not paying enough attention if you don’t realise that many of the most hated figures (Trump, Farage, Musk, etc) are a direct result of millions of people being utterly fed up with woke, with bureaucratic overreach, and with left wing politicians’ attempts to nannify, infantilise, control every aspect of individual and societal autonomy, and, of course, extract ever more money from the public through taxes and regulations to pay for things that most people don’t want and would never vote for if they had the chance.

Up until recently, you could think of the political situation a little like bacteria and human bodies. The bacteria in human bodies have a short life span compared with their hosts, and are driven by evolutionary forces to cooperate for their shared benefit. Because numerous generations of these microorganisms rely on human survival, a disease that kills its host would not be selected for in a long percentage game, because the evolutionary optimisation is for bacteria to sustain themselves by feeding on humans while inflicting minimal harm. Analogically, you could say politicians behave in a similar way regarding what they can get away with to serve their own ends (dictators even more so). Too much duress on the population and they face a civil resistance, or even a Hobbesian collapse of society – so they aim to act with as much self-interest as possible without killing the host organism (the electorate), so to speak.

What’s happening now is that the balance in this relationship has been so heavily disturbed that large swathes of the population have simply had enough. Enough of being lied to, patronised and extorted. Just as an overgrowth of harmful bacteria can overwhelm the body's defences, the political class in the UK appears to be pushing the limits of what the public will tolerate, extracting ever more from the system while offering less in return. Decades of short-termism, self-preservation, and opportunism have weakened trust, not just in mainstream parties, but in the nature of political governance itself, much like an immune system worn down by repeated infections.

I don’t know whether there will be enough momentum to radically change the way governance is manifested, or whether this period will just turn out to be a slightly extreme iteration of the cycles of political pendulum swings we’ve seen time and time again. But I feel fairly certain that the widespread discontent is real, and that something will eventually give way to a new political paradigm. Whether by reform or rupture remains to be seen – but pay close attention to what is going on, and I predict it will become more and more evident.

Triune Love

 

Let me tell you my belief about the triune nature of love (from my book on love). There are perhaps three elements to successful romantic love; passion, depth and security. Passion is the fervour that characterises the emotional energy behind love, and this is often stirred early on, and should continue to intensify in a healthy union with God at the heart. Depth is that adventure of intimacy, closeness and understanding that augments over time, and continues to bring beloveds towards an ever more intimate connection - with each other, and with God. And security is to passion and depth as wisdom is to knowledge and reason – it is the trust and confidence in the union that has been established over time, creating something so well rooted in God that beloveds are, as the Lord says, inseparable (Matthew 19:6), perhaps like a large oak tree is inseparable from its roots as a live organism.

Passion can arrive quickly between two beloveds, but depth and security take time. Passion might be thought of as the desire for the beloved in totality, and the establishment of a commitment to each other. Beloveds’ personalities become intimately connected, and this starts to deepen further, where each becomes the central part of the other’s priorities under God, establishing a secure union under God’s providence and blessing.

Deep Genesis

 

Before eating the fruit, Adam and Eve were in a state of innocence. They knew only good, as they lived in harmony with God and creation. When they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened, and they realised they are naked, and they hid because they were afraid and ashamed. Eating the fruit gave them experiential knowledge of evil, which included shame, guilt, and separation from God.

This is obviously a very deep story, that can be unpacked for days without reaching the bottom. You may wonder how the historical writer could have thought so deeply about the human condition, but that’s not quite the right question, because the story is more than just the work of a single writer (as all stories are, to some extent), it is a symbol of aggregated evolved wisdom passed on throughout the ages. That’s why I think it’s imprudent to try to impute a single meaning to the story, because it is profound enough to contain multi-layered meanings.

In part, it conveys the truth that, in eating from the tree, Adam and Eve sought to define good and evil on their own terms, rather than relying on God's definition. In part, it conveys the truth that irresponsible autonomy as an attempt to usurp God's authority leads to the disruption of the created order. In part, it conveys the wisdom that eating from the tree made them aware of another deep truth; that badness was not just to be found in the snake (in the evil ‘out there’) but deep in our own hearts (‘in there’). In part, it speaks profound wisdom about the consequences of disobedience to divine authority, the consequences of being able to resist temptation, and about the nature of free will and responsibility. And, lastly, it conveys the most powerful truth of all; that choosing self over God is the greatest act of folly an individual can commit, because if we are not on the right path with God, we are not ultimately on the right path in any area of our life.

This is deep storytelling, containing multi-layered levels of wisdom that speaks profound truths about every human that has ever lived – and that is no trivial thing.

On Critical Thinking Part II: Sssshh......It's What They Don't Say

 

In addition to my previous blog post on Four Steps To Sharpen Your Critical Thinking, here’s some guidance on spotting the underlying mistake that most commentators make when they get an argument bang wrong. It’s a form of reasoning, a category of pseudoscience, where what is left out is just as important as what is included – and if what is left out was included in the argument, the argument would be undermined. This observation is as old as the hills; the Socratic method of dialectical questioning focused on, among other things, exposing what was not being considered in an argument, revealing hidden assumptions or contradictions, and was developed further in many subsequent philosophers’ work, especially Mill and Popper. Mill argued that strong reasoning requires considering all relevant causes and counterarguments, not just selective evidence, and Popper famously highlighted how scientific reasoning depends on looking for what might falsify a theory, not just what supports it.

But despite this understanding being as old as the hills, it remains one of the most common problems with arguments made in the mainstream ideological movements, where selective reasoning fuels misguided conclusions. Let me offer examples of what I mean when I identify where what is left out is just as important as what is included – and if what is left out is included in the argument, the argument would be undermined.

People will make an argument that says “If X believes Y, then Z must follow.” But clearly, X might actually believe something more nuanced than just Y leading to Z. There is a misrepresentation of X’s position. Therefore, if we accurately included what X truly believes, the argument would show that the conclusion Z doesn't necessarily follow from Y, as X might support a different conclusion or qualification. Here’s another one; people will make an observation of a small sample (X and Y), leading to a conclusion about the whole set (Z). What’s omitted is that the sample is too small or unrepresentative of the entire set of Z. Clearly, if we included a larger, more representative sample of Z, the conclusion drawn from X and Y would likely be invalidated because the generalisation would not hold for all of Z. Another common mistake; "X happened before Y, so X must have caused Y." What’s omitted in that case is the consideration that Z (another cause) might be influencing Y. If Z (another factor) were included, it would show that the correlation between X and Y does not imply causation.

If you’re partial to a game of bulls**t bingo, you can spot these all day long; some more examples would be; either X or Y must be true; X is true because of Y; Y is true because of X; since we cannot demonstrate X, we must conclude Y, etc - the list goes on. It’s painfully easy to see how this plays out in the real life nonsense spoken by – to take my frequent standard examples – creationists, socialists and climate alarmists.

Climate alarmists often argue, “If carbon emissions continue to rise, then global catastrophe must follow.” But this ignores the possibility that technological advancements (Z), such as carbon capture, nuclear energy, and climate adaptation strategies, will mitigate the effects of emissions. If these factors were included, the argument would be less fatalistic, and a more nuanced discussion about solutions would emerge. Similarly, socialists may claim, “Capitalism causes inequality, so socialism must be the solution.” This argument fails to consider other variables (Z), such as natural power laws, revealed preferences, political corruption, regulatory inefficiencies, and socio-cultural factors, which contribute to inequality. If these additional factors were acknowledged, it would become clear that socialism would not justifiably resolve disparities. Creationists frequently argue, “There are gaps in the fossil record, so evolution must be false.” This omits the fact that an incomplete fossil record is expected due to geological processes (Z), and that many transitional fossils do exist but are selectively ignored. If this missing evidence were included, the argument against transitional fossils would collapse.

These patterns of selective reasoning appear repeatedly, where what is left out is just as revealing as what is included, and we could go on and on naming more of them. It’s also amusing to me how extreme erroneous beliefs in one category feed into the acceptance or rejection of extreme erroneous beliefs in another category – like how most climate alarmists are socialist because it’s many of the same errors repeated, how most creationists often won’t accept climate alarmism because of their fundamentalist religious conservatism, and how many liberal socialists reject the rigidly conversative nature of creationism, that sort of thing – you can observe how clusters of beliefs converge in a kind of ideological package deal, but that’s material in past blogs, so I won’t elaborate on that any further here. 

We’ve seen that when the doyens of pseudoscience try to sell their snake oil, you can spot their deception or blatant mistakes by looking at the content of their propositions and the omissions, as I did in the above examples. But you can also observe it in how they conduct themselves in speech or writing. For example, scratch the surface of what they say or write, and you’ll see attempts at argumentation when they are little more than sparsely educated in the full complexities of the subject under discussion. You’ll see they’ve frequently made no attempt to comprehend if what they are citing is offering the full suite of material that would change the very argument they are making. You’ll see them accepting literally any proposition that aligns with what they want to be true, and either rejecting it or being unaware of propositions that undermine their position. You’ll see entire arguments based on not knowing the very basic things about science, economics, epistemology, logic or human history, where cherry picked data is pliably absorbed into their extant tribalistic confirmation biases. You’ll see fabricated and distorted propositions being passed off as science, economics or morality that actually gets these disciplines blatantly wrong. You’ll see them attacking straw men and in their place building an ideological fiction tailored to how they merely think the reality presents or how they want it to. You’ll see propositions that are devoid of even the basic consultation with experts in the field, or that consist of material that has skewed the material of the experts to fit their own narrative.

For them, reality is whatever they think it is without informed justification, or what they want it to be without critical accountability. And, as we’ve seen, a large part of this deception or ignorance is underwritten by this key error in critical thinking; not merely in what is included in an argument or purported evidence but in what is left out or omitted. The essence of critical thinking involves looking at what is missing in an argument, as the omission of relevant data or alternative explanations can be just as misleading as presenting false information. The reason this tactic is so widespread is because it’s harder to deceive people with outright, blatant lies than it is with half-truths or substandard selective viewpoints. If the truth is north, many of the successful deceptions that gain widespread traction are north-west or north-east, not south.

Politicians probably do this most of all – and with such readiness that politics has really become the world’s greatest performance scam. Politicians don’t get everything wrong, of course, but even what they get right is absent key evidence, arguments or explanations that would alter the argument being made. It’s usually what they don’t say that matters most – most politicians are either masters of selective reasoning, carefully curating information to craft narratives that serve their interests, or they say things that are evidently substandard but align with what the majority of their party voters want to believe – so get away with it in either case.

All that is to say, if my Four Steps To Sharpen Your Critical Thinking was offered to help individuals who wish to… er….sharpen their critical thinking, this blog post invites readers to be alert to when others are misleading by ignoring that which is not being addressed or explained, and where crucial evidence or perspective is being left out that would invariably change the conclusion.

Ratio of Suffering to Eternity

 

Published earlier today on Network Norfolk:

First, a brief disclaimer; this intention of this article is not to explore the deep topic of the growth that comes from suffering - I have lots of material on that in my other blogs - this is more of a niche article in response to sceptics who say they can't believe in a God who allows so much suffering. Therefore, the narrowness is somewhat deliberate in that regard, and shouldn't be seen to contradict the truths about growth and transformation through suffering.

If you were offered three seconds of pain in exchange for 100 years of bliss - filled with joy, security, pleasure, and contentment - you’d likely take the deal without hesitation. The offer seems almost absurd in its generosity. And yet, the span of a human life, with all its joys and struggles, is even more fleeting compared to the infinite glory of eternity than three seconds compared to a century.

The promise of eternal bliss in Heaven doesn’t scrub out the intensity of the suffering we face (although God’s peace and comfort is profound throughout), but if, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:17, “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all”, then even the instant we step into eternity and become aware of our Heavenly state in the presence of God will astronomically eclipse the whole totality of our earthy hardships.

For we have to conceive that the good and the joy we find in God’s presence, His love and His glory will be so astoundingly good beyond what we can currently imagine that it will utterly redefine our understanding of the creation story, rendering even the greatest earthly suffering insignificant in comparison.

I think the above is both comprehensive from a rational and logical perspective, but also modestly understated from an experiential and spiritual perspective. Because the corollary of the above is that every day we live our lives with the potential awareness and available joy that our Creator God is more awesome and more for us than we can possibly comprehend. And that His plan for those who love Him and seek a deeper relationship with Him is so much greater than what we could hope, that it should transform how we approach each moment, filling even the ordinary with a profound sense of purpose and wonder, knowing that our ultimate destiny far surpasses anything we can currently imagine or hope to experience.

The Art of Fulfilment

 

There’s an interesting human phenomenon that one could associate with writing (or music, filmmaking, painting, even sport), whereby there would be dissatisfaction in each element of the whole, but in their combination, they create a sense of integrated fulfilment that none of the constituents could deliver alone. If a writer couldn’t write at all, they’d be dissatisfied; if they could write, but no one would ever read their outputs, they’d be dissatisfied; and if they couldn’t write, but they were magically given all the spoils of having books to their name (and the money, fanhood, critical esteem that goes with being a best-selling author), they’d still be dissatisfied.

Each constituent point is desired, but inextricably connected to the other two. In isolation, there is not full satisfaction in the writing, or in the having written, or in any recognition divorced from the reality of those things – it’s like we create or produce or explore to pursue an end destination, only to find that it’s the interplay of creation, acknowledgment, and an extended sense of artistic accomplishment that gives our pursuits the full suite of meaning and purpose.

The Narcissus Paradox: Suffering Through Excessive Self-Focus

 

I’d say one of the most interesting things Jordan Peterson has said is that “self-consciousness is so tightly associated with suffering that they're not conceptually distinguishable”, and that “the more you think about yourself the more miserable you are”. I think the topic raised here is very interesting, and would be even more compelling with the right amount of nuance, because it’s true that self-consciousness is associated with suffering in some cases, and thinking about yourself more can easily lead to increased negative emotion. But it depends on HOW one is thinking about oneself. Excessive self-focus and unhealthy self-centred preoccupations at the expense of thinking of others are expected to cause increased unhappiness, depression and anxiety, because it’s a terrible way to live. On the other hand, thinking about ourselves in terms of constructive self-awareness and active self-improvement, in a balanced way, is mostly beneficial.

I think it’s worth exploring the former – that excessive self-focus and unhealthy self-centred preoccupations at the expense of thinking of others makes us miserable – because it’s one of the fundamental truths about human nature, that it’s psychologically impoverishing being the primary objects of our own attention. You can see in people who live this way that their life becomes little more than an echo chamber of dissatisfaction – it breeds disconnection from reality and from others, and eventually one’s whole sense of meaning becomes distorted out of shape.

Paradoxically, it is only through positive outward focus – on God, on others, on love, on grace, on gratitude, on kindness, on purpose, on meaning, on beauty, etc – that we get to truly find ourselves in the process, and tap in to the riches that life has to offer.

On Forgiveness

When we act well, we tend to be acting more responsibly and with greater reasoning; and when we act badly, we tend to be acting less responsibly and with less good reasoning. Acting well usually means something like doing good, reasoning competently, believing a true thing, making the world a slightly better place through some action, that sort of thing. Acting badly usually means doing something ignoble, reasoning incompetently, believing a false thing, making the world a slightly worse place through some action, that sort of thing.

What the above means is that by a small margin we are more responsible for the good we do than the bad we do, because we were on better form and reasoning better when we did the good thing than the bad thing. You know what I mean, I think; when Jill spent some time and effort working out how to help the local charity shop arrange its window display, she acted better than Jack, who acted impulsively in a moment of anger and smashed the window with a brick - but she also acted more responsibly and with better reasoning. Good acts usually require careful thought and good reasoning, though they can arise from well-formed character and instinctive virtue - whereas acting impulsively, in haste, is usually the precursor to bad actions (there are, of course, plenty of exceptions in both cases - but the rule of thumb holds).

And on those times when you acted less well than you hoped, you yourself know that you weren't at your best, and that if only we could see what was going on inside you, and have full access to the struggles within your soul, we'd be very forgiving. Well, it's great that that is what God is like, and probably why He created a world in which we are encouraged to forgive easily and be circumspect in judging others.

Let's Be Honest: Charles Manson is Shallow and Dull

 

“How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints.”
C.S. Lewis

That insightful observation from C.S. Lewis came to my mind about halfway through watching Chaos: The Manson Murders on Netflix. I’ve also seen several of Manson’s prison interviews on YouTube, and thought the same thing each time – behind the curtain of his dreadful legacy, as an individual, this guy wreaks of monotony.  Manson’s name is synonymous with manipulation, violence, and the horrifying murders carried out by his so-called "family” of easily brainwashed cult members. Yet, despite the seemingly endless fascination with Manson, especially in the media and pop culture, there's a striking truth when you actually listen to him speak. Despite his bombastic delivery, and obvious twisted narcissism and absurd self-delusions, he is almost entirely devoid of anything remotely smart, insightful or interesting to say (as are, unsurprisingly, the individuals who made up his cult). 

I’m saying this about Manson because it’s generally a good insight about similar figures like him. Behind the mask, we find a very insipid character, whose power wasn’t derived from any remarkable intelligence or charm, but from a carefully cultivated aura of mystery and control over very pliable followers. His speech is often disjointed, filled with rambling, incoherent phrases that sound more like a string of non sequiturs than any profound wisdom. Any philosophies or insights he claims to have are really a sad and pathetic mix of paranoid delusions, racial conspiracies, and half-baked ideas about societal upheaval.

Sure, we are talking about one of the most notorious events in 20^th Century America. But absurdly, very interesting events like this do not mean that Manson himself is a very interesting person with interesting things to say. When stripped of the myth and spectacle, he was little more than a manipulative man who used fear, confusion, and his faux-charisma to exploit vulnerable individuals. Behind all that, his nature is that of a dull, self-absorbed man whose ideas were far from revolutionary, and his supposed “charisma” was more about creating an illusion that is only likely to be persuasive to disillusioned, insecure, easily manipulated young people who are even less interesting than Manson.

When you watch Manson carefully, and look closely at his demeanour and facial expressions during interviews, you are observing a man who, in my view, knows full well how unenlightened he is, especially when he’s in the presence of smart, competent interviews. This is a man who knows his own façade – painfully aware that he is not a visionary leader.

In the end, the real irony is that truly bad people - the ones who inspire fear, revulsion, or even fascination - are often the most mundane. Their evil isn’t the result of genius or depth, but of repetition, pettiness, and an inability to create anything of real value, relying on deception rather than originality. Meanwhile, good people - those who create, inspire, and uplift - are usually the ones who live the most interesting lives and have the most interesting things to say. They challenge the world, push boundaries in meaningful ways, and leave behind legacies that enrich rather than destroy. On this, just as on most things, C.S. Lewis was right; the most profound stories don’t belong to the tyrants and the ignoble manipulators; they belong to those who found the courage to be good – those who dared to build instead of tear down.

Don't Forget To Love Yourself

Christ’s Golden Rule is “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 7:12)

It’s true that we should treat others as well as we wish to be treated, but this taps into an even more profound truth. If we should treat others as well as we wish to be treated, then we should treat ourselves as well as we should wish others treat us – and further, we should treat ourselves and others with the standard we would hope reflects God’s standard of perfect love. And the same applies to the other great commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” (Mark 12:31) – we must also love ourselves as we love our neighbour, otherwise we might not treat ourselves as well as we need or deserve.

And all that is bootstrapped with the primary instruction: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Mark 12:30). This commandment comes first because our love for God is the foundation of everything else. If we do not love God fully, our love for ourselves and others becomes misaligned. Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means we get to see ourselves as He sees us - as infinitely valuable, worthy of love, and made in His image. And this enables us to treat others and ourselves with the same grace, patience, and kindness that God extends to us – because we sense a shared unity in understanding how infinitely loved and valuable we all are.

The reason Christ says about love God and love neighbour that “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” is because we can’t truly live if we don’t love God, and nor can we love ourselves if we don’t love Him first. And if we can’t love ourselves properly, we can’t love others properly either. This is the only Divine equation that fulfils the design of love: 

❤️ Love God > Love Yourself > Love Others ❤️

By loving God first, we receive the true measure of love - one that is holy, pure, and self-giving. That love then teaches us how to love ourselves in a healthy, godly way. And from that place of wholeness, we can truly love others as ourselves - reflecting God’s Divine love in our relationships.

 

Owning Our Preferences

 

One of the big factors behind social, political and domestic division is the habitual mistake of confusing correct policy with preferences – that is, people are constantly asserting something as being the right way things should be done when all they are really revealing is a personal preference. For example, environmentalists declare moral outrage when green space is proposed as a good site for a road or industrial estate; socialists declare injustice when a favoured domestic business is not protected from foreign competition, northerners cry outrage at lack of investment in their regions compared with the south, that sort of thing. But while these propositions do involve value judgements, they are not implicitly moral considerations, they merely convey preferences about how money and resources are allocated.

Consequently, one of the best pieces of wisdom we can learn is to be alert to when we are dealing with preferences and not axiomatic truths, empirical facts or moral propositions. In formal economic terms, a preference is the order that an individual gives to two or more options based on their relative utility. With two considerations, x and y, it will be the case that x is preferred to y, or y is preferred to x, or x and y are preferred equally (this can be measured using an indifference curve, which is a line on a graph showing all the combinations of two goods that give an individual equal utility ). X and y can relate to pretty much anything it is possible to prefer over something else (pieces of fruit, places to go on holiday, online or in-person banking, you name it) – and those preferences are dynamical too (they can change according to context).

Understanding this, and mindfulness of straying from its wisdom, are important home truths that can help bless a marriage too, because if a couple doesn't understand or acknowledge when their views are really preferences, there can be contention that doesn't get negotiated properly.

On Trying To Master Love

To master anything - a musical instrument, a sport, running a business, etc - we're going to require a lot of essential qualities: learning, commitment, devotion to the task, resilience, patience, humility and passion. It must be a continuous effort and a journey of growth. We need to be disciplined in staying present and deeply engaged with the task, we need the ability to immerse ourselves in the activity, and the discernment to understand that progress is gradual and requires enduring setbacks or periods of slow improvement as part of the journey toward mastery.

Trying to master love and being the best beloved are no different – they both take all of those things, but they require understanding something else too. Just as we don't become happy by trying to be happy, or original by trying to be original, we don't master love by trying to master love. You know that what causes happiness is not trying to be happy, it is through cultivating a particular mindset, attitude, and way of being. Happiness should not be pursued as a destination, but as a by-product of seeking truth and goodness. When chased directly, it remains elusive, like someone who seeks wealth for its own sake never truly enjoys its value. True happiness emerges through noble pursuits like kindness, courage, and personal responsibility, not as an end in itself.

Similarly, the journey to mastering love (and being the best beloved) is not an attempt to try to master love, it is the attempt to master the qualities that prioritise, nurture and sustain love - such as truthfulness, trust, self-awareness, honesty, patience, empathy, generosity, kindness, vulnerability and respect. Like any art or discipline, love is a by-product of living with Divine intention, cultivating virtues that support its growth. We don't master love by trying to master it, but by fostering the qualities that enable love to grow and thrive. Love flourishes when we focus not on the intrinsic mastery, but on the process of becoming the kind of person capable of being a continual blessing for your beloved.

 

Trade Makes Us Better People

You may have come across a social experiment called The Ultimatum Game. In this game player A (Jack) is given some money, say £50, and asked how much, if any, he proposes to offer to player B (Jill). Jill can accept or reject Jack's offer - but if she rejects it, neither of them gets anything. If Jack and Jill were rational income-maximisers, Jack would offer just £1 and Jill would accept it, because 1 free pound is better than nothing. But this very rarely happens, because humans are not rational income-maximisers.

Having a voracious appetite for fairness, the Jills of this world often reject free money from the Jacks of this world if the offers are not perceived to be an equitable distribution of the £50. Such sensibilities play out more broadly in society, which is why there is a correlation between trade and fairness. This was demonstrated in an interesting study from Herb Gintis that I read about in Matt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist:

"People in fifteen mostly small-scale tribal societies were enticed to play the Ultimatum Game. Those societies with the least experience of dealing with outsiders were the most hard-hearted, ungenerous and narrowly ‘rational’. Machiguenga slash-and-burn farmers from the Amazon most often offered just 15 per cent of the sum to their co-subjects, and in all but one cases, the second player accepted. Likewise, a Hadza hunter-gatherer from Tanzania usually makes a very small offer and experiences few rejections.

On the other hand, players from those societies that are most integrated into modern markets, such as the Orma nomads of Kenya or the Achuar subsistence gardeners of Ecuador, will usually offer half the money just as a Western undergraduate would. The whale-hunting Lamalera of the island of Lembata in Indonesia, who need to coordinate large teams of strangers on hunts, offer on average 58 per cent – as if investing the windfall in acquiring new obligations. Much the same happens in two New Guinea tribes, the Au and Gnau, whose members often make ‘hyper-fair’ offers and yet see them rejected: in such cultures, gifts can be a burden to the receiver because they carry an obligation to reciprocate.”

“The lesson of this study is that, on the whole, having to deal with strangers teaches you to be polite to them, and that in order for such generosity to emerge, costly punishment of selfishness may be necessary. Rejecting the offer is costly for the second player, but he reckons it is worth it to teach the first player a lesson. The argument is not that exchange teaches people to be kind; it is that exchange teaches people to recognise their enlightened self-interest lies in seeking cooperation. Here, then, lies a clue to the unique human attribute of being able to deal with strangers, to extend the division of labour to include even your enemies.”

As well as the progression-explosion of individual well-being and higher standard of living that capitalism has bestowed upon us, it's also essential to note how good capitalism has been and continues to be for the collective benefits of human society, not just in more than material gains, but in corporate kindness too. A society that relies on trade relies on cooperation, respect, fairness, justice and mutual toleration - the whole edifice depends on it. The free exchange of goods, services and ideas does not just make us materially better off, it makes us nicer, more respectful, more tolerant people to be around too - and those collective benefits play out in our living in all-round better societies.

And the kinds of society we have created through increased trade are uniquely human too. In the animal kingdom there are all kinds of cooperation and collaboration within a species - between other primates, between ants, between lions, between wolves, between elephants, between bees, between birds - you name it. But as a rule, cooperation and collaboration between unrelated strangers seems to not occur very often in the rest of the animal kingdom - there are almost no cases of unconnected animals involved in mutually beneficial transactions in the humans are when we trade. There is even a ratchet-type pattern of trade occurring with the development of farming in various countries independently at different times in history when the right conditions were met - Peru first, then China, then Mexico, then North America and Africa, and then Europe.

Perhaps my favourite example of the joy of trade is when I buy an Indian takeaway. People with whom I have little in common cook incredibly tasty food that I value much more than the money I pay to consume it. At the same time, I help the people that sell to me to make a living, and both agents are made better off. In feeding me, the proprietors get to feed their family too. And this extends right across the marketplace.

We are all making each other better off by trade. We are contributing to a nicer, safer, more respectful, more tolerant society, in which our own personal pursuits are helping enrich total strangers too - and when aggregated, it is sufficient to make everyone in that society richer and more prosperous.

Commerce has done more to combat racism, sexism, and unfair discrimination of any kind, and the alleviation of poverty for billions, than any government program. How bizarre then that we live in an age in which trade has done more than anything else to tackle poverty, hardship, injustice, corruption, prejudice, bigotry and disunity, yet the generation that has been the biggest beneficiaries are the most vociferous opponents of it in history.