The Three Rules of Believing
April 12, 2022
By NZB3
“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.” Hermann Hesse, in this quote, didn’t need to tell us that the most trivial-fool-business-gold-pleasure-world is that of the politician. Prime among politicians in New Zealand, quite literally, is Jacinda Ardern.
Watching Newshub’s AM show yesterday morning we were treated to another Ardern interview with host Ryan Bridge. Another example of Ardern spinning wildly and pumping the airwaves with the second, foolery and triviality, side of Hesse’s ledger. There’s a cycle in New Zealand history of rising crime and rising Honor Culture that I have been remarking about for some time as getting more acute. Gang warfare, ram raids, assaults, robbery, attacks, and a police force that can’t keep up¹ are the substance of the cycle we are in and Ardern seemed to know that. Her Police Minister, Munokoa Poto Williams, however, appears to be on record for denial of that in the House and Ryan wanted Ardern to explain it.
Instead, and as per usual, the Prime Minister smiled and talked over her interviewer offering distractions and diversions and saying multiple times of Williams’ comment in the House that she was there herself at the time. So what? Why say a thing like that? It reminds me of people I meet who often substitute an argument for the statement that they have read a book about the topic or passed a course on it or hold a degree. My response is always the same: “Good, then your answer should be very excellent. Can I have it now please?” Ryan’s Game Theory tree seems to be to let the PM come on his show and talk over him over and over and, in the long run, loose the charm game. Ardern’s strategy seems to be to win every battle. At the end of the Decision Tree Ryan will start to win but perhaps when that starts happening Ardern will stop playing by quitting the interviews just as she had done with Mike Hosking’s show. Dodgeball is her End Game.
This passing situation with Ardern, Williams, and Bridge is a reasonable jumping off point to explore an idea I’ve been having about the philosophy of belief itself. We can answer the question as to why Ardern and many others respond to questions about values by telling us ‘I was there’ or ‘I have qualifications’ or name-dropping someone important or by making statements about their own reputation. They have been media trained to do what Hermann Hesse detests. To spin. To confuse with noise and triviality. Many of them have a degree in the subject (which is misleadingly titled as a ‘Communication Degree’) or employ half a dozen people who do. Why? Because it works. It is pragmatic. We, the people, fall for it and eat it up. Our appetite for being duped is higher than it is for truth. If a ‘leader’ actually answered a question we would be upset and dispose of them so they don’t. We can be more exact about this by walking this idea through the theory of money.
The Definition of Money
As every high school economics student is taught in New Zealand schools the basic definition of money has three parts.
- Money is a medium of exchange
- Money is a unit of account
- Money is a store of value
Very few of us regard money deeply enough to care about it being a store of value. We no more ask what this paper represents as a store of value than we care about the minute spirals on our fiat currency visible under a magnifying glass. Is it backed by silver and gold? Is it based on the promises of Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson? Is money made of chocolate? Few ask. Few care about money as a store of value.
What the majority of people, pragmatic people, think about money revolves around Rule 1 and Rule 2. In short, they believe that it works. They see everyone else using it. Money worked yesterday so they’ll take it today with the expectation of using it tomorrow. This is called Inductive Reasoning. The fallacy of Inductive Reasoning is shown in the example of crossing the street without looking both ways first. If you are not run down by a car then Inductive Reasoning informs you that what you did works and you can keep on doing it time after time. But if you are crossing a busy road and your money is made out of chocolate it’s only luck that keeps you from taking a bad hit.
New Zealand’s economy is indeed based on masses of deliberately ignorant people who have no regard for money as a store of value. Not caring about sound money is part and parcel of not caring about the left side of Hermann Hesse’s ledger just as much as it makes a Pied Piper of Lies out of anyone who wants to succeed in New Zealand politics. The shock of inflation, recession, bursting bubbles, housing crisis, etc. are the only thing that will bring the ignorant people back down to Earth. Meanwhile, they ask for more money printing and minimum wage lifts and a universal basic income along with other ignorant ideas.
This fallacy isn’t just a failure in our economic education. How deep this fallacy goes surpasses economics and goes right to the heart of our epistemology; Our very theory of knowledge. Now you’ll see why people like Ardern don’t offer ideas that are a store of value even when they are directly asked for it.
The Definition of Belief
“Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important.” – Thomas Sowell
The quantum of the ridiculous, as Thomas Sowell refers to it in his quote above, relies on the third rule of money. An idea or belief is ridiculous or impossible based on its objective value. If an idea, even an idea written down on a bit of paper that has MONEY written alongside it in big important letters, does not represent a store of value then it has no value. Whoever relies on such ideas and tries to use them is not in contact with reality. They’re trying to eat poison instead of food or drive nails with a banana rather than a hammer or go bungee jumping with metal chain instead of rubber; They’re going to fail and get hurt.
Ah, but ideas (including money) that fail on Rule 3 might pass on Rules 1 and 2. And idea might not be true but it can still be used as a medium of exchange and/or a unit of account. The Prime Minister uses ideas as a unit of account when she deploys her reputation or personality or body language. It’s also called political capital. Ardern doesn’t need to provide ideas of value if she can instead communicate and express the idea that she enjoys a high and healthy estimate of holistic worth given to her by we the people. A Rule 1 based question, then, need only be turned by the ‘communicator’ into a Rule 3 based answer.
Ask Ardern a direct Rule 3 question about facts and she’ll bend it into one about Rule 2: How likable she is, what fine ear ornaments, what a kindly tone, what an understanding smile. She was there. Sowell’s very intelligent and highly educated people feel special and important so nobody cares that Rule 3 has been broken: Utterances of no value or even the absence of value is of no importance. No matter how ridiculous the predicament we are putting ourselves in by neglecting Rule 3 we’ll go right ahead and do it anyway. This is the same thing as accepting ideas have value because they are delivered by a man in a suit driving an expensive car or by a beautiful woman who is apparently attracted to you. Note how often we let those interviewed not answer Rule 3 factual values questions put to them so long as they offer instead some Rule 1 and/or Rule 2 content. We demand it, they supply it; They get away with it constantly.
Rule 1 is that belief itself is a medium of exchange and that it, in the corrupt society, also succeeds Rule 3 for importance. Ridiculous ideas right now spend like money and you (and your Prime Minister) can open doors or have them shut in your face by your willingness and ability to use them. This, in extremis, is Clown World: Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Maoris know best, For Ukrane, Equal Pay for Women, Masks protect us from COVID, Jabs protect us from COVID, Ivermectin doesn’t, hydroxychloroquine cannot, Global Warming bad: the world is on fire, Carbon Credits good, coal bad, renewable energy good, men are women, violence is bad if toward women…
As for me and a minority of other people, frequently Libertarian people, I insist that my money and beliefs are all sound. Even as a kid I would clap or not clap independently of everyone else in an audience based on my own approval or disapproval of what we were being shown. I would consistently refuse to write the ‘correct’ answer on a test even if it meant failing and write down what I thought the answer was even though I always knew full well I would be punished for it. Most New Zealanders go with the flow and embrace the medium of exchange or even unit of account aspect of any interaction. They say and do and even believe things not because they are true but because it means being included and/or not excluded. As Sowell says, they feel special and important. They get social and commercial access by speaking the right Current Thing password of the moment. They can pass an exam with an A+ by studying what their professor wants to hear and writing that down. To a world of people that does this the person who insists on Rule 3 authenticity seems like a stranger from another plant or another time. While I think I’m holding on to the integrity, the one society pays lip service to, against huge odds, the conformity are confused. Doesn’t he understand he could get those marks too? Doesn’t he understand he could get the job or keep the job or be accepted to the party or the honors program if he’d just say the current thing and salute the current cloth? From the point of view that Hesse and Sowell are despairing of a person who refuses to surrender Rule 3 must appear to be on some part of the autism spectrum.
American Pragmatism
I’ll go even further. The American Pragmatism I’ve written about before is largely owed to William James (image, right.) Even thinkers with admirable conclusions such as Stefan Molyneux and Jordan Peterson are following in the footsteps of William James and John Dewey when they formalise the American insistence to let Rule 3 go and instead revolve their lives around Rules 1 and 2 when it comes to belief. James specifically wrote books about employing beliefs as tokens because they work- they open doors, they stop you being exiled, they let you pass school exams. Not because they are true but because they are accepted currency.
James said things such as: “Our obligation to seek truth is part of our general obligation to do what pays.” and “We cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it.” and “If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.” They are the same things I hear Molyneux and Peterson say. American Culture has increasingly taken the world over and exacerbated New Zealand’s acceptance of the ridiculous and superficial. That is why a propagandist who rules by Rule 1 & 2 was quickly promoted to leader and elected our Prime Minister. The two men who see things a different way, Hesse and Sowell, come from outside of this American tradition. Hesse is continental, Sowell grew up essentially antebellum or at least outside of Anglo-American thought.
Despite breaking away from Britain and dominating the West might it not be that North Americans remain a cultural colony after all? All their history they revolve around an orbit of epistemological premises that Rule 1 and Rule 2 will do and Rule 3 can be neglected entirely. That left Britain and Europe to carry the can for Rule 3 by doing the hard yards, solving gritty problems, making contact with reality. America could simply buy up the results of the hard work done by the Rule 3 following West or indeed buy up their intellectuals and ship them over the Atlantic. They certainly did that. Austrian Economics was imported as was nuclear physics and…come to think of it what has an American actually invented rather than imported and financed and mass produced? Not much. They rely on Rule 3 nations for their supply and give no thanks.
The world is in crisis when this modern Rome becomes so successful that the other nations stop thanklessly carrying the weight of the Pragmatists and decide to join them. We in the West are now in a Clown World scenario of quickly shifting fake money and fake ideas that we must consider a medium of exchange and a unit of account. It must be hard to keep up for some of these clowns. What are we for today? What are we against? Who do we hate? What’s the Current Thing? Will I still have a job if the Old Current Thing stops and I’m still wearing the T-shirt? Am I eating the right thing and driving the right thing and watching the right thing and smoking the right thing to fit in and what’s it going to be tomorrow? The acceleration is becoming blinding. Must make them very anxious.
Certainly the crash is coming. A new era of authenticity will rise. Americans can grow up. We can stop copying them. A Prime Minister will answer the (actual) question and we will (actually) let her.
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1. Hence their escalation of physical capital over human capital. Ref. 2002: Policepersons, AHNZ and Ref. image above, right.
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