The Big Jigsaw Puzzle

This is about a jigsaw puzzle. A big jigsaw puzzle. THE big jigsaw puzzle.

You know the deal when you bring a jigsaw puzzle home from the shop. It comes in a box, with a picture on the lid. You of course assume that the picture on the lid is what you get when you put all of the pieces together correctly. You assume that the factory put the right pieces in the right box. And if it says: "6000 piece puzzle" on the lid, you expect that there will be 6000 pieces in the box. No more, no less. One of each. No duplicates.

But this is about a more interesting puzzle than that. Much more interesting. This is about a puzzle with no box and only a very old lid that is alleged was just painted by some ignorant old Uncle called Moses a long time ago and that the puzzle never originally belong with it. The puzzle has missing pieces (though huge numbers of pieces have recently been found) and duplicate pieces. There are lots of tricky pieces that look like one part of a picture and turn out later to be a completely different part of the picture. And you have to scour the earth for the pieces, like some kind of strange treasure hunt. The pieces are all over the place. Some are in particularly difficult to find places, like deep underground, or even out in space. The good thing is that everyone in the family knew the rules for what constitutes a puzzle piece, and the rules for how to find the pieces. Puzzle-building really took off after Uncle Francis (from the Bacon branch of the family) wrote those rules down in the 1600s. If someone doesn't accept these rules, then they aren't allowed to contribute pieces or join in the puzzle-making efforts. One great thing about the commonly-agreed rules is that far-flung relatives can collect pieces from all over the world, bring them to the shared box and join in with working on the puzzle, even if they speak other languages.

Everyone in the family also agreed that, in the end, the pieces can only make one picture. But while the puzzle is being assembled, they need not all necessarily agree on exactly what the picture is or what each part of it looks like precisely. They might have different ideas of suggestions about which pieces fit where, and how they fit together, and what each part of the picture looks like. Still, some people think it helps to have common agreement on what the big picture looks like, although the details of any given part may be disputed.

Part of the challenge is that a lot of the pieces can be fitted together in more than one way, but only one of those ways is correct. So, when trying to fit the pieces together, it might be possible to assemble a part of the picture incorrectly. But, as more new pieces are found, an incorrect part tends to become more and more infeasible. It starts colliding with other parts that seem to have been correctly assembled. If the problem part isn't changed, the part that is wrong will clog up the whole picture-solving enterprise. If parts that are right are changed to accommodate parts that are wrong, the problem just gets worse. That's what happened to Uncle Plato and Uncel Aristotle's part of the picture with the earth in the centre of things. Uncle Ptolemy and lots of other Greek uncles all thought that part of the picture was right and got their way for a long time. Of course, they kept fiddling with it as people brought new puzzle pieces in. But that section of the picture had to be pulled apart and rebuilt in 1543 when our Polish Uncle Nicolaus (Copernicus) brought in some new puzzle pieces that showed that our really old Greek Uncle Pythagoras had the right idea way back.

So, once an error is recognised, the puzzle-builders need to agree to pull apart the problem area of the picture and to try to rebuild it in another way, so that it fits with the other parts that seem to be right. There more of this pulling apart and rebuilding than you might think, but the pulling apart seems to happen only in short bursts very occasionally, with lots of steady piece-collecting and puzzle building going on in between.

This is a really big puzzle. It's so big that the family has been working on it for hundreds of years, passing it down from generation generation. Every so often a cranky old uncle comes in, or sometimes a clever young cousin, possibly with a bag full of new pieces, or maybe just a few pieces and a head full of ideas, and tries to tell everyone that they've got the picture completely wrong. Like when old Uncle Comte (from the de Buffon branch of the family) came along in 1774 and told us "No, no, no. This isn't a 6000-piece jigsaw puzzle. It's a 75,000-piece jigsaw puzzle!"

Uncle Charles (of the Lyell branch) came along in in 1830 and tried to tell us that it was an infinite-piece puzzle. What was he thinking? Of course, we didn't believe him. Later, some clever cousins did some mysterious mathematics using the pieces we had on the table and reckoned this was somewhere between a 100 million-piece puzzle and a several billion piece puzzle.

Then another Uncle Charles (Darwin) came back from a big sailing trip to some islands off South America with another bag of puzzle pieces and lots of great stories. In 1859 he told us that his new-found puzzle pieces proved that the old puzzle box-lid picture of the Bible creation story and the Noah's Flood story was all wrong. This multi-million (or multi-billion!) piece puzzle was of a completely different picture altogether.

Most of the family was still rather skeptical of all this, but in the end enough family members who decided that they had authority were convinced, and so all the pieces of the picture got pulled apart and spread really far apart. Of course, this meant lot of sketching in the gaps between pieces, and lots of hand-waving and fascinating story-telling. the big spreading also meant the puzzle wouldn't fit on the family dining table anymore. It got moved to a big warehouse with specialist equipment, which was locked and guarded by serious-looking people who called it a 'laboratory'. Some were in white coats and some in black gowns. Family members who still suspected it still might be a 6000-piece puzzle after all became less and less welcome at the lab.

Big puzzles are obviously more important than small puzzles, so money forcibly collected from family members started being given to the big puzzle-building project, whether the contributing family members liked it or not. Then these self-appointed guardians of the big puzzle started quietly changing the rules. For example, they stopped taking notice of the old rules for what constitutes a puzzle piece and started treating sections between pieces or even way outside pieces, which they had drawn-in by hand, as if they were puzzle pieces. Then, if anyone collected some puzzle pieces that made the drawn-in bits look wrong, or threatened to require a change in a major part of the picture, they were just throw those troublesome pieces to one side, as if they didn't belong to the picture at all!

More recently, they also started making up spurious new rules. For example, they said no-one is allowed to look at the picture on the old box lid when working on the puzzle, because they said it might not be the right picture. (They also said rude things about old Uncle Moses, or that his painting was actually a more recent work by a team of clever forgers). Then they went even further and said that it is against the puzzle-making rules to look at the box-lid picture, which they said proves that the box-lid picture is not the right picture. They also said that, since in the end the puzzle pieces can only make one correct picture, therefore the multi-billion piece picture of a magic self-generating system that they were working on must be the right picture, so everyone must agree to it.

Of course, a few brave family members pointed out that Uncle Francis would have laughed at these spurious new rulesm which are each an obvious non-sequitur. But the guardians said "Boo-hoo to old Latin logic that's out of date" and became very bossy. They said they had enough numbers to keep out anyone who disagreed with them or their new puzzle-building rules, so get with it or get another job, pal. Sadly, some family members were intimidated by this and fell into line, but not all did.

These days you're not allowed in to the lab and you're certainly not allowed to talk to the kids unless you've been peered at by the right people from inside to make sure you believe that this really is a multi-billion piece puzzle picture of a magic self-generating system that we have here. If anyone gets in who doesn't believe that, or if they change their mind after they have been inside for a while and looked at the pieces closely, then they are peered at again intrusively before being rudely and unceremoniously kicked out.

Well, this jigsaw puzzle has become such an enormous family squabble in recent decades! Actually, the people inside the lab don't like the idea that we are all part of one family. Silly monkeys! They get dreadfully upset if anyone mentions super-great grandpa Noah, or ultra-great grandpa Adam. They get especially upset if anyone mentions the family resemblance and suggests that they themselves are really just like old ultra-great grandpa Adam or ultra-great Grandma Eve after all. Actually, they get so upset trying to disown their ancestors, that they start behaving just like they really are descended from them, getting all tricky and evasive. It's hard to hide the old family likeness!

Of course, any mention of ultra-great grandpa Adam really gets up the noses of the special people in the lab (and the guides who run the children's tours). You see, it reminds them of Adam's Father. And they definitely don't want to have anything to do with Him! They consider Him to be a rotten old spoil sport. As far as they are concerned, He doesn't exist. They even go so far as to say, that it is impossible to build jigsaw puzzles if you think He exists! (Another spurious new rule). Come to think of it, the whole point of the magic multi-billion piece jigsaw of the self-generating picture seems to be a frenzied attempt to prove to themselves He doesn't exist. It doesn't matter how roughly they force together pieces that obviously don't fit together, or how many free-hand sketches or hand-waving stories they need to make up to fill in the vast gaps between the pieces, as long as the picture keeps convincing them that He is not their Father, they are happy to keep beavering away.

Any family members who recognise their First Father are regarded with extreme suspicion. The guardians will let them in, as long as they agree to pretend that He is not their Father while they are inside working on the puzzle. Some agree to this treacherous double life, because, after all, working on the big puzzle does pay reasonably well.

Despite all this, there are still a few hardy advocates around of the old 6,000-piece puzzle. More than you might think, actually. A few decades ago some of them even started collecting their own puzzle pieces (trying their best to stick to Uncle Francis' good old rules), looking at copies of other puzzle pieces that have been taken inside the lab, dusting off the old discarded box-lid picture and trying to put together the 6000-piece jigsaw. There are several various projects of this type. The picture may vary between them, but the basic elements are the same.

The folks in the lab working on the magic multi-billion piece picture of the self-generating system (and their bewigged friends outside) are doing everything they can to stop anyone telling the young children that there are serious people working on 6000-piece puzzles. We wouldn't want any impressionable young family members getting involved in that dangerous game! The thought of letting the children choose which puzzle they think presents a more persuasive picture is just too much. They just might find it a convincing picture!

Libertarianism and Islamofascism

Libertarianism -- not to be confused with genuine classical liberalism -- will be destroyed by Fascist Islamism one way or the other. Either the majority of voters in the West will see it for what it is and reject it or Islamists will use it for what it's worth, (using the camouflage of Multiculturalism) and then seek to conquer those societies once they are in a position of strength.

By the 1980s, most Americans understood that libertarianism (embodied in the social democratic humanist parties of the West) was a dead end. Australians 'got it' in the 1990s. The British are just now showing signs of getting it. Continental Europe shows few signs of getting it, at least not Old Europe. She will probably be crying out for America to save her at some point. Again.

Libertarians seem blithely unaware that, while the Islamists might rant against the infidel Jews and 'Crusaders' in the internet video preambles to their murders and massacres, they have nothing but utter contempt for the moral philosophy of libertarianism, which inclines strongly to atheism. The libertarians' naivete in this regard seems to be a product of their own generally hostile disposition towards Christianity and the State of Israel, if not towards Christians and Jews personally. This hostility has apparently blinded them to the fascist nature of Islamism.

The fascination of the Left for power figures of the Fascist right is a thing to behold. There is a strange revulsion-attraction to Nationalsozialism: International Socialism's bastard progeny. The news footage of Tony Benn perched on the edge of his chair like an adoring schoolboy in rapt attention on a visit to Saddam Hussein in his last months of power as the Americans planned his removal remains etched on my memory. (Baathism is a secular Arab manifestation of fascist ideology).

Expect no thanks from the Libertarians to the true defenders of freedom when they are saved from this new Islamofascist enemy.

Prohibition

Every thing which is moral evil, and is detrimental to the interests of society, is not, therefore, properly punishable by society (e. g., prodigality, indolence, gluttony, drunkenness).
...
It is not the business of society to keep a man from injuring himself, but from injuring others. As to his personal interests he is his own master.

- R. L. Dabney, Systematic Theology, Chapter 48, Religious Liberty and Church and State.

These quotes are part of Dabney's argument that force (exercised by the State) is no remedy to the crime of heresy. But the principle itself applies more broadly.

One of the clearest examples today of disregard for the principle of the proper role of the State is the prohibition of mind-altering substances or narcotics. This disastrous policy and the enforcement of it, is led by America (who after her experience of 1920-33 she should know better), but is practically universal around the world.

Thus has the State usurped the role of the family.

The object of the family as to children is to promote their whole welfare. The object of civil government is simply the protection of temporal rights against aggression, foreign or domestic.

- R. L. Dabney, ibid.

In usurping the role of the family, the State practically becomes the family, thereby visiting upon us a measure of the evils of Communism. The State-as-family has become increasingly evident in Mr Blair's New Labour Britain.

Immediately following the above quote, Dabney continues:

But this is just the view which all claimants for high powers in governments deny. Like Mr. Gladstone, they claim that the proper view of government is, that it is an association intended to take in hand all the interests and welfare of human beings, of every kind; everything in which man is interested, and in which combination can aid in success, is the proper end of human government. It is to Pan: The total human association. Now, the plain answers to this are three: the Bible says the contrary. Rom.13:4. It is utterly impracticable; for, by the necessary imperfection of human nature, an agency which is best adapted to one function must be worst adapted to others; and an association which should do every thing, would be sure to do all in the worst possible manner. But last, and chiefly; if this is true; then there cannot be any other association of human beings, except as it is a part and creature of the State. There is no Church. The State is the Church, and ecclesiastical persons and assemblies are but magistrates engaged in one part of their functions. There is no such thing as the family, an independent, original institution of divine appointment. The parent is but the delegate of the government, and when he applies the birch to the child, it is in fact, by State authority! All combinations, to trade, to do banking business, to teach, to preach, to navigate, to buy pictures, to nurse the sick, to mine, etc., etc., are parts and creatures of the State! Or if it be said that the State, though it has the right to do every thing, is not bound to do every thing, unless she finds it convenient and advantageous, then the ethical argument is relinquished; and the ground of expediency assumed ...

Again, the argument here is against Establishmentarianism. However, the parallels are clear. In assuming parental responsibility for all individuals, children and adults and getting into the business of trying to stop a man from injuring himself, the State has become the family.

Tragically, the outcome has been disastrous. Prohibition has caused an increase in the use and abuse of the very substances it has sought to eliminate (because addiction to substances made artifically expensive by prohibition creates an incentive to 'push' and deal). Prohibition has caused a significant increase in prostitution (to finance personal addiction to substances made artifically expensive by prohibition) and in recent times thereby fuelled the transmission of AIDS and other serious infectious diseases. Prohibition has caused a significant increase in acquisitive crime, much of it violent, which all responsible members of society are forced to finance, through their property insurance policies. Prohibition has indirectly fuelled military conflict in some of the poorest countries of the world (profits, artificially inflated by prohibition, from the illegal trade in narcotics have become probably the most convenient means to finance trade in illegal arms).

In short, the policy of narcotics prohibition has not only been a far greater failure than the earlier policy of alcohol prohibition in the United States, but, far from reducing the sum of human misery, it has greatly increased it.

The general availability of narcotics is a perhaps a dreadful thing. But the effects of their prohibition is far, far worse. America's prohibition experiment in the 1920s failed miserably. The world's late 20th century narcotics prohibition experiment has failed even more miserably and on an even more spectacular scale. To expect different effects from the same set of causes and initial conditions is known as madness.

The State makes a dreadful parent.