December 26, 2005
Contemplating a snowflake stimulates Steve Horwitz at History News Network to express his frustration at the odurate inconsistency of some of his intelligent peers.
My fervent wish for the 21st century is that more smart and caring people can begin to see and appreciate "social snowflakes." People who are so willing to accept the existence and beauty (and benevolence!) of undesigned order in the natural world should be more willing to open themselves to the possibility that there are processes of undesigned order at work in the social world too.
In connection with the conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy of an acquaintance, Robert Godwin, of One Cosmos under God (the brilliant book and popular blog) writes offline, reminiscent of G.K. Chesterton on democracy including our ancestors:
I'm reading an interesting book called The Wisdom of Crowds, with a lot of counter-intuitive insights that are causing me to rethink a thing or two. In short, the group of Christians that preceded us may know much more than any single Christian can ever know. There's not just safety in numbers, but profound wisdom in them... Still percolating... Will be the subject offorthcoming posts...
Our thoughts are less measured. A good portion of those who declare their loyalty to the rubric of "sustainability" seem tone-deaf to the sustainability of social systems. Unintended consequences are frustrating enough. But predictable destructive outcomes, pursued against protest in the name of ideology, are worse. As Mark Shea is fond of saying, the history of mankind is littered with the broken bones of the foreseeably disastrous trajectory of a Clueless Two-Step:
1. What could it hurt?
[later:]
2. How could we have known?
Or, in Horwitz' terms,
These people know that no one can make a snowflake, but seem blind to the fact that much of the innocent blood that was spilled in the last century was because too many people thought they could intelligently design the social world. Not repeating those mistakes will require a renewed aesthetic appreciation of, and deep desire to understand, the awesome beauty and complexity of the undesigned order of "social snowflakes."
Snowflake and link via Marginal Revolution.
Very well put by you, Horwitz, Shea, and GKC, and may I offer you, Dilys, a humble St. Stephen's Day hand of friendship.
Posted by: Richard Lawrence Cohen | December 26, 2005 at 07:54 PM
Doesn't take a saint's day -- Happy remaining Holidays, and New Year!
Posted by: dilys | December 26, 2005 at 08:03 PM