Posted by
Xavier Cougat on Friday, March 06, 2009 2:47:37 PM
When you think about it, socialism is doomed to fail because it is contradicted by Nature, Herself. Consider our Universe. Its very essence is expansive. Out of the Void, Reality as we know it began as a mind-numbingly dense singularity which exploded with ferocity in a miniscule fraction of a nanosecond. That Reality has been expanding and evolving ever since with gleeful abandon, freely introducing novelty after novelty, ever unfolding into an extravagant plenitude. Twenty-first century scientists are still discovering literally thousands of new species that were unknown before. Astrophysics continues to reveal new planets and galaxies, new mysterious and wondrous members of our Universe.
Nature, “red in tooth and claw”, is also a messy business. That is the cost of Her freedom to experiment between the poles of contingency and necessity. There are inevitably winners and losers. Progress is the product of a winnowing process where the inadaptable fall by the way. Better patterns and ideas slowly, surely and painfully emerge.
Statism stands in contradistinction to Nature. Its pull is inward. It seeks to consolidate, to draw power and life to a concentrated point. Life must be controlled and dictated by Committee. To realize its Utopian Dream, statism must necessarily be at odds with Nature and Reality. Through sheer engineering and the hubris of the human intellect it seeks to reorder the World, eclipsing Nature’s own way of producing freedom and life. In the end, Man’s audacity to change Reality is suffocating and brings about a static uniform death to spontaneity, uniqueness, exceptionalism and singular achievement.
A decade ago, Kevin Kelly authored a fascinating book, Out Of Control, which “chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the robust adaptability and autonomy of living organisms [like bees in their hives or colonizing ants] becomes the new model for human-made systems” (like the Internet, for example). “The old [model] of mechanistic, top-down control is” passé. “In software, in animation, in programmed trading on the global stock market, we have already built systems that approach the complexity of nature, neo-biological systems that run on self-replication, limited self-repair, mild evolution, partial learning and self-governance beyond the reach of humans …” As Mr. Kelly proclaims, “No one can be in control—and it’s better that way”.
There’s a reason why socialism and other more virulent forms of totalitarianism have always failed historically. In a fallen world, capitalism may not be perfect. But it will always be preferable to the well-intentioned but inevitably disastrous decisions made by some central politburo’s tinkerers.
Our Universe, with its unique processes and laws, is the one that was spoken into existence by God Almighty. Until the New Heaven and a perfected New Earth descend, we’re stuck with it. Railing against it will only result in human tragedy.