Category Archives: Philosophical and speculative

A Carr bomb in Israel

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I went into a second hand book shop at lunch and saw a copy of Australia’s Most Deadly Snakes and I immediately thought of Bob Carr. I then opened the book and the page I turned to showed a Red-Bellied Black Snake and again thought of Bob Carr. This particular snake can apparently be found in the swamplands of Eastern New South Wales, about which it said that when cornered behaves in a way that is mostly bluff, and I again for some reason thought of Bob Carr.

Why I kept thinking about Bob Carr I am not too sure, but perhaps it is because he has decided he no longer wishes to support Israel in its existential fight against its relentless and well-funded enemies and instead now supports Hamas. And perhaps it is also because on Sunday I went to see a documentary at the Jewish Film Festival – which I recommend to no one if they would like their peace of mind left undisturbed – that dealt with the efforts made to create a film record of the Nazi concentration camps just after they were overrun by the allies in 1945. I thought I had seen it all, but I hadn’t seen anything. I could only barely get through a documentary about the recording of the victims. An hour and a half of an actual film record could be watched by no one, at least no one with a human soul. No film was released at the time anyway because the British government preferred not to encourage anyone to support the Jews trying to get to Palestine, their entry being at the time blocked by the British. The thousands of feet of film was therefore simply left in storage until now. Must have been an early incarnation of Bob Carr who made the decision.

Meanwhile, Israel is filled with people who either were in those camps or are descendants of people who were in those camps. No one has persecuted Muslims for a thousand years, other than other Muslims. Jews have not been so lucky. Their memories are very real of just what might happen if they let their guard down even for a moment. Carr is worried that the Israelis have been building housing in Jerusalem in which people can live, both Arab and Jew. What a tragedy that must be. No modern atrocity can stand comparison with such actions. Good to see Bob Carr again on the side of the angels.

But here is part of the back story. The UN gave the Jews a bit of land in a decision in 1947. Not a lot. If left in peace in their own designated area, it might have come to not much more than the size of Singapore and Hong Kong in total together, most of it desert. But Arab armies attacked from the south, north and east in 1948 with the specific intent of killing every Jew they could while driving into exile those who survived. Nevertheless, the Jews were not overrun and when all the dust had settled, ended up with a larger piece of territory than they had originally been allocated. And this they defended when they were attacked in 1967, also by armies that had they prevailed, would have murdered every Jew they could. But again, the Jews prevailed and again they ended up with more territory than they originally had held, including the old city of Jerusalem.

Although Bob Carr is too stupid to understand this, there are reasons for the Israelis not to trust their Arab neighbours. Carr also does not seem to understand that the Israelis are intending to stay right where they are until some kind of settlement is reached to divide the area up into permanent borders. In the meantime, since the only policy Hamas seems to have is to drive the Israelis into the sea and kill every single Jew they can, we will have to wait until there is a more accommodating negotiating partner. In the meantime, whatever lack of progress there seems to be towards a final settlement, if one were to apportion blame, would be around 95% on the Arab side and 5% on the Israeli.

Now I can agree that the Jews who settled in this land – a land in which Jews have lived continuously without interruption for the past three thousand years – might have chosen somewhere else to go after the war. There are so many places that undoubtedly would have welcomed the millions of impoverished Jewish refugees who were desperate to find a place to settle in quiet and peace. Perhaps they could have found just such a place in one of the old and civilised states of Europe, perhaps the birthplace of Beethoven and Wagner (no doubt amongst your favourites, Bob), and would have found a home amongst people who would have welcomed them and taken them in and who the Jews knew they could trust and with whom they could live in perfect security. Why did the Jews not seek such a place of refuge, do you think, you big stupid ignorant fool? Sounds pretty good to you, I suppose, you dimwitted jerk of a supposed student of history as you are. Why didn’t the Jews do that?

So look Bob, we can all sympathise with the Palestinian people whose misfortune is to be cursed with such stupid and obtuse leaders – people similar to yourself, no doubt – who are unwilling to allow peace in their land. I was not a great sympathiser with Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, but I warmed to her unwavering personal support for Israel that was only overridden by you and that fellow dimwit Tanya and no doubt others who travel under Labor Party colours. I have followed your career and you have not made a single correct judgement in your entire political career on anything significant, not as Premier, not as foreign minister nor in your new role as an envoy of the Middle East. Your consistency in stupidity is astonishing, but at least it is consistent.

Why the Republicans won big

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The Democrats have been colossal failures in producing anything remotely like a decent governing principle. They have run against market principles since the very start of the twentieth century and have been the party of redistribution during the whole period. They were also the party of segregation which gave them a solid south until the 1970s and then became the inheritors of the various forms of ethnic vote, basing their appeal on huge welfare payments that keep millions out of any serious need to work for a living. And finally, and by no means the least of the differences, has been the Democrat role in politicising the sexual revolution, with the only freedom Democrats absolutely stand for is the right to have sexual relations without any state restrictions. Combined with no-fault divorce, it is the policy of full sexual irresponsibility with no serious commitment required.

The result is a constituency with no core set of beliefs but which manages to pull together winning coalitions during elections as much as it ruins the nation. The actual indifference of Democrats to the welfare of those who vote for it is hidden behind a pretence of concern. But who cares? Just pass over the loot.

Obama was the epitome of all of this, and reliably. The left expects its leaders to lie about things that would cost too many votes to say out loud so they understood exactly what Obama really stood for.

But then there was the Obola virus and all was blown away.

It was not so much the probability of an epidemic which was small, but the sheer negligence finally got to people. It’s one thing to get an Obamaphone, it is quite another to have your life put at risk by a lackadaisical approach to public health. Everyone could personalise the problem. No one could be certain that they were safe. And they wanted the government to do everything in its power to reduce the risk.

But while the issue is ephemeral, the possibility that the change is indelible is genuine. You can depend on the Democrats to keep you poor, exploited and ground down by circumstance. They not only cause these problems, they benefit from the problems they cause and make worse. People are beginning to understand.

We shall see. But the death of the welfarist policies that are sinking the US is an outcome surely to be hoped for. It turns out that the greatest danger to any politician is to have Obama on your side (see Morsi for Exhibit A). He is the worst carrier of the Obola virus which hopefully is now under control, being eradicated and quarantined to a few large-city locations on the east and west coast of the US.

If the planet’s warming, why is it getting colder?

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There’s more to global temperatures than atmospheric carbon. An interesting story today on January in November: Arctic blast to hit USA. It’s been a pretty miserable spring in these here parts as well, but this is the US in late autumn:

Snow will accompany the frigid air in areas including the northern Rockies, northern Plains and upper Midwest. Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, Mich., could be the cities that see the most snow, the Weather Channel predicts.

“It looks like winter’s starting early,” Oravec said.

The Plains, western Great Lakes and Upper and mid-Mississippi Valleys will see high temperatures 10 to 30 degrees below average by Monday and Tuesday, the Weather Channel predicts.

Cities such as Minneapolis, Chicago and St. Louis will endure the worst cold as high temperatures reach only the 30s, said Alex Sosnowski, AccuWeather meteorologist.

Highs may struggle to top the freezing mark in the Twin Cities for several days, and strong winds will add to the wintry feel.

Though the heart of the cold air will be anchored over the northern Plains and Midwest, by late in the week, some of the chilly air will reach the East Coast and South, though it will be lessened by that time.

It’s just the weather, of course, but eventually the weather is the climate. No one can know what the weather will be like over the next decade but why leave global cooling out of your range of possibilities? As I discussed here, if the planet is warming, it will be a minor problem. If it is is cooling, it will be a catastrophe.

Step into my parlour said the spider to the fly and let me give you some advice

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From Brett Stevens at Amerika:

Liberalism wishes total death on all conservatives. We are what stands in their way but, even worse, we do not validate their viewpoint. That means that we can potentially puncture the bubble of illusion in which they exist, which they want us to subsidize through socialism lite in the form of subsidies.

With that it mind, conservatives would have to be mentally broken — and many are — to trust anything the leftist establishment tells us “in our best interests.” This is advice from an enemy, and any sane person expects that the enemy will give us advice that is convenient for that enemy, or in other words, leads to our downfall and the victory of the enemy. Their words are poison disguised as “helpfulness,” or what they call a “concern troll” on the internet.

The actuality of the mid-term elections is that conservatives won by plugging their pragmatic platform: reduce government, restore social order and values, keep the military strong and reverse course from the socialist paradise of the Obamanauts. In other words, eternal conservative values geared toward the founding group and majority of Americans.

Of course the left wants us to disregard this knowledge, and many conservatives do, too. It is easier to win elections by waving the WE’RE NOT DEMOCRATS flag and collecting votes. Easier = higher margins, greater reliability. But if conservatives do not get a handle on the ongoing American disaster soon, they will be eliminated.

[Via Captain Capitalism]

Preserving the right to defend ourselves against our enemies

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On November 25, 1994 Isaiah Berlin was given an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Toronto for which he prepared what he called a “short credo”. Read it all. It is about is protecting ourselves from the enemies of our civilisation and the kinds of things we may need to do. Some of these enemies possess the potential to wield immense power in combination with a conviction that they are not only irrefutably right but that this certainty gives them the right to do whatever it takes to prevail. So far as they are concerned, the future of mankind is dependent on understanding whatever it is they believe. They will therefore do whatever it takes to make their own views ascendant. Recognise the type? Any current examples around? Free and unfettered speech for them and those who sympathise?

Here is part of what Isaiah Berlin had to say at the end of a long life thinking about these and other similar questions. He was thinking about a European menace that had come with The Enlightenment (so-called) which led to many a totalitarian ideology. Today it is a more ancient enemy of free thought that is the problem. And to tell the truth, with ISIS and its offshoots, it is hard to see that they are trying to do me or anyone else any good. Berlin may thus be even farther away from explaining the nature of the problem we face than he could have known. I don’t quite see the benefit to the people whose heads they cut off nor to anyone else. This is part of what Berlin wrote:

If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used — if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any.

Nothing about our current marauders reminds me in any way of people who are looking for “a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society”. They merely look like the return of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. The overlay of bringing any kind of virtue to the world is not credible. They could not possibly even believe it themselves. That our own crew of leftist misfits and psychopaths give them cover is part of what Berlin was originally referring to when his thoughts only ranged as far as Lenin and Pol Pot. ISIS is a different world. So what should be done? How are we to protect ourselves from such evil? Here’s his advice:

I am afraid I have no dramatic answer to offer: only that if these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion. My point is that some values clash: the ends pursued by human beings are all generated by our common nature, but their pursuit has to be to some degree controlled — liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I repeat, may not be fully compatible with each other, nor are liberty, equality, and fraternity.

So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only too well that this is not a flag under which idealistic and enthusiastic young men and women may wish to march — it seems too tame, too reasonable, too bourgeois, it does not engage the generous emotions. But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants — not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction.

We are able to talk to each other because we are, for the most part, bourgeoise and therefore prone to compromise while recognising the need to trade off parts of one desired outcome for others which compete and get in the way of each other. This is the world we live in, will always live in. There are people who would impose their wills on us if they could and literally by the sword and armed might. If you think you can compromise with such savagery you are wrong. They must be fought every inch of the way. Speaking for myself, I will not put our civilisation, my civilisation, at supreme risk to preserve some individual principle such as the right to say whatever I want whenever I want no matter what harm it may do to myself, my family, my friends, my country and my way of life. Berlin thought he saw a better world coming but he hadn’t seen what we have.

I am glad that you to whom I speak will see the twenty-first century, which I feel sure can be only a better time for mankind than my terrible century has been. I congratulate you on your good fortune; I regret that I shall not see this brighter future, which I am convinced is coming.

Well if such a future is coming, it is not coming yet. In the meantime, we must do what we can to preserve this way of life that if snuffed out as so many wish to do will not soon return. It is up to us, we who are alive today, to defend the freedoms we inherited, which, as always, requires us to balance each of our rights against others of our rights to preserve what we have. If our enemies prevail, no one will be talking about preserving our rights for a very long time to come.

John Stuart Mill on the role of the state in the prevention of harm to others

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This is John Stuart Mill on the basic principle of a free society found in his On Liberty:

“The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” [My bolding]

I have an article at Quadrant Online on The Right and Will to Defend Ourselves. What do I think of the state taking strong measures to protect us from the harm that others wish to do. I am all for it. There is no single simple overriding principle that is the final arbiter in what actions a state may take to protect me from the harm others wish to do. Here is Isaiah Berlin, whom I quote in the article, discussing the same thing:

If these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion.

My point is that some values clash: the ends pursued by human beings are all generated by our common nature, but their pursuit has to be to some degree controlled — liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I repeat, may not be fully compatible with each other, nor are liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Berlin not only understood Mill perfectly well, that would be where he would have found his own principle first stated. Minority opinion is one thing which must be protected to the ends of the earth; the call to murder one’s fellow citizens is quite another thing altogether.

The non-existent moral authority assumed by the left

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Stacy McCain on the assumed moral authority of spokespersons from the left:

The Left loves nothing more than to arrogate to themselves a pretended authority to speak on behalf of alleged victims of oppression. Covering themselves in secondhand martyrdom, figuratively brandishing the victim’s corpse as a shield against criticism, leftists start playing the Grand Inquistor, demanding that we respond according to the script. . . .

Because the vast majority of people never realize that they were programmed by skillful indoctrinators, as Buckley put it, they can’t figure out what’s really happening in these ginned-up media controversies. Well, everybody is against racism, sexism and homophobia. Nobody is in favor of “police brutality.” Nobody is pro-pollution or pro-poverty or pro-rape. So why do we find ourselves constantly subjected to these moralistic lectures, as if we need to be told for the umpteenth time how dreadfully oppressive our society is? The Daily Atrocity Parade in the liberal media is a continuation of the cultural Marxism programming everybody got in the Government Youth Indoctrination Centers euphemistically known as “public schools,” and we are supposed to react like Pavlov’s dog: “Racism! Sexism! Poverty! Global Warming! Vote for the Left!

Here are the list of questions Andrew Breitbart put together that should be put to those who assume such moral authority who are in every respect absolutely nobodies so far as having any right to lecture anyone else about their ethical failings:

Who appointed you as Grand Inquisitor?

What is the basis of your authority to interrogate me about this? What difference does my opinion make?

When were you elected as Our Moral Superior?

Where do you get the idea that I’m obliged to cooperate in this transparent political “gotcha” game you’re paying?

Why is it necessary that I answer your questions?

How much are you being paid to do this?

What empty windbags these representatives of the left actually are. We do need to begin striking back.

Chesterton’s fence

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From the writings of G.K. Chesterton, some uncommonly good sense that will always be lost on anyone to whom this is addressed:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

Giving the game away on the left’s views on inequality

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I wrote on Ha-Joon Chang yesterday about his ignorant views on Say’s Law. Now let me turn to his views on inequality which have such a bizarre quality to them that it quite takes the breath away. Chang starts with a joke although it is a joke I don’t think he quite gets.

The peasant Ivan is jealous of his rival Boris, because Boris has a goat. A fairy comes along and offers Ivan a single wish. What does he wish for? That Boris’s goat should drop dead. (p 317)

But to Chang this is only a quasi-joke. It is more a tale of reality from which we should learn. Here’s the section heading that comes immediately after the above:

Ivan is not alone – the pursuit of equality as a driver of human history

And if you think he is being ironic in thinking this is a proper illustrative example of the ethic of equity, it is not in the slightest way part of his nature. He actually thinks that wanting what others have even if they worked for it and you haven’t is reasonable. He thinks it is reasonable for someone to prefer both peasants to be in misery when only one was before. Look what he writes:

Ivan is not alone. In Korea, there is a saying that you get a bellyache when your cousin buys a plot of land. And I am sure many readers know similar jokes or proverbs about people becoming irrationally jealous with other people doing better.

The pursuit of equality is a very natural human emotion and has been a powerful driver of human history. Equality was one of the ideals of the French Revolution, one of whose most famous mottos was ‘Liberté, égalité fraternité ou la mort’ (liberty, fraternity, brotherhood or death).

Although I have seldom come across such a repulsive sentiment stated in such an open way, what is startling is that he gives the socialist game away although in such a sordid fashion that it is almost too bizarre to realise he doesn’t understand what he has said. The others will have to get to him before he reveals too much more. It will have to be explained to him that one is supposed to seek equality because of one’s love of mankind, so that others can share the wealth, not because one is worm-eaten, bitter and envious when it is discovered that someone has more than you do, if only slightly more. He has actually spoken truly, has stated the socialist creed in all its fulness, but it is nevertheless astonishing to see it stated in print by one of the left’s leading lights.

He even goes on to sneer at this famous statement from Milton Friedman which I would have thought was almost a truism:

Most economic fallacies derive from … the tendency to assume there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. (p 319 – his ellipsis)

This is, Chang says, an example of the belief in “trickle-down” economics, that the productive getting richer by producing things others want to buy helps the poor become better off by selling them what they would otherwise never be able to have.

And this is a man whose specialty is a development economist. If he doesn’t know that the rest of us only because reasonably well off because a few people have become wealthy by inventing products and producing them at affordable prices, he will do only harm in any country he is asked to provide advice. A world authority and at Cambridge yet (but then again, so was Keynes) he seems oblivious to the source of wealth, to why we are all immeasurably richer today than a century ago. An absolute clown but a perfect representation of the belief system of the left.

Dealing with the inflexible grip of an intolerant orthodoxy

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This was a note posted to the Societies for the History of Economics three days ago.

The Guardian, Tuesday 21 October 2014

Ha-Joon Chang powerfully argues the case that it was “an economic fairytale” which “led Britain to stagnation” (Opinion, 20 October). It may be added that our universities bear a heavy responsibility for this situation. Certainly, it cannot be denied that the fairytale paradigm (“supply-and-demand”, competition in the market, and all the rest of it) can be applied to any economic issue. The point, however, is that the currently dominant adherents of this approach deny that any other approach can even claim to be economics at all; indeed, adherents of other schools of thought have very largely been purged from our university economics departments.

Proponents of the fairytale justify this stranglehold by claiming that all former insights into the economy that have stood the test of time have now been incorporated into their own – narrowly quantitative – “modelling” framework: thus, Keynes’s discussions of uncertainty are reduced to “models” of expectations, Hayek’s alternative to neoclassicism into models of “price messages”, Marx’s heritage into models of inequality, Ricardo’s into “rent-seeking”, and so on. Consequently, so the argument goes, there is no longer any basis for the claim that there are different schools of thought in economics. There is only one.

It is the inflexible grip of this intolerant orthodoxy on university economics departments which has so signally distanced academic economics from engagement in discussion and debate outside the academic arena, much of which is directed towards questioning its fairytales. It is, by the same token, very encouraging that students who reject their approach have in the past year or more been reintroducing into university economics departments the kind of vibrant debate which ought to lie at the heart of academic life.

Dr Hugh Goodacre

Member of the academic board, University College London

I could not have agreed more so this was the reply I posted today:

I left Hugh Goodacre’s interesting post alone for the last few days to see if anyone else were interested. Apparently not, but I am. He made two points. First that the monopoly position of the economic mainstream, which he described as “this intolerant orthodoxy”, needs to be confronted so that other approaches to thinking about economic theory are brought into the curriculum. And then second, he notes that there has been the start of a kind of uprising amongst economic students who believe they have been deprived of the kind of broader education they would prefer but do not know how university departments can be encouraged to teach it.

I am in complete agreement with the need to bring these various other traditions into mainstream debate and am also working with the student movement, the so-called “Post-Crash Economics Society”, which coincidentally just last week had its first meeting in Australia.

There are many more ways to approach economic questions than those found in the confines of the mainstream. There has also been such a failure of the economic theory to provide much guidance in getting our economies out of the problems we are now in, that I find it a scandal how little effort has been made to have a post mortem on what went wrong. And when I think of what it is that went wrong, I am not referring to the frequently raised question about why was no one able to foresee the GFC, but the more significant question, which is, why are the policies that have been introduced to restore our economies to health not working?

The Post-Crash Economics approach is one way of going about it. But given my first experience here I have doubts about whether this is much of an answer even though the right questions were being asked.

The main speaker had come all the way from Manchester to discuss what they had in mind. And while there were various moments when his own underlying agenda was all-too-obvious to me as a long-ago member of the left, his final slide had the words “It’s time to challenge the orthodoxy” and showed a woman with a “power to the people” fist in the air.

I therefore asked the first of the questions from the floor, which was more of a comment than a question. And what I said was something like this

“If you would like to set up a group that widens the study of economics and introduces the full range of the various schools of thought to the education of economics students, then I am with you. But if you are going to just use this grouping as another version of the ratbag left, then you will do nothing other than create one more meaningless structure which someone such as myself will have nothing to do with. Your presentation was not neutral. You are a person of the left, which is all right since many people are. But you will only succeed if what you do really is neutral between all of the various groups that find neo-classical economics wrong in important respects. Economics, however, is not an easy subject that someone without formal training can choose amongst theoretical perspectives without serious study. If this is just one more self-indulgent anti-capitalist rant, then this will go nowhere. You cannot ‘democratise’ the study of economics as you described your ambition as if economics can be some kind of all-in enterprise where everyone’s opinion counts for one and no one’s counts for more than one. If you are genuinely interested in broadening the perspectives students receive, then, but only then, will you have the support of those of us from a more market-oriented perspective, or indeed, from anyone with an interest in the fullest development of economic theory.”

To be quite blunt about it, economic students are in no position to suggest how economic theory ought to be taught or what the content of their courses ought to be. And even while I agree with them that there is a large problem with mainstream economic theory, and I am pleased to find they are curious about other approaches, I cannot see how they can have much to say about which economic theories are the most appropriate. It is an issue to be decided within departments of economics and amongst economists themselves. They are absolutely right to seek a wider set of perspectives but I am not sure they are going about it in the right sort of way.

My own version of what these students have sought was proposed in my Defending the History of Economic Thought (Elgar 2013). In my view, the ideal place for debates among the various economic traditions is within the study of the history of economic thought. This is where it should be. Such discussions should be found on our websites, in our journals and as an important part of our conferences. Every one of these heterodox traditions has a history of its own that is an essential element in understanding these theories. Whether Austrian or Marxist or anything else between, each focuses on its own historical development as a way of understanding its own core concepts. It is, sadly, only the mainstream that ignores its history, which is why HET has almost disappeared from within most schools of economics.

I not only think this is part of the means to save the history of economic thought from extinction, but it would also be a valuable addition to the education of economists. The most important ability an historian of economic thought must have may be an ability to make sense of the views of others. It is why HET should be a forum for discussing the widest range of perspectives so that we can all learn new things from each other.