The Philosophical Optimist

  Part I: What’s Wrong With the World             I’m gonna save the world—who’s with me?   How do we do this?   Answer: technology, but not just the sort of technology you’re thinking of.   Technology, though often enabled by scientific knowledge (this is the sort of technology we usually think of when we speak of “tech,” or as the British say, “kit”), is actually a manifestation of culture; it is something we do, and not just something we know.   Failure to observe this distinction has resulted in the common idolatry of technology, where the mere fact that we can do something is assumed to mean that we must do it—or at least, that we should.   Money—not just coinage or paper money, but the very idea of money, debt, credit, etc.—is arguably one of mankind’s greatest technological inventions; but even the best of inventions needs to be reexamined from time to time. [1]   Perhaps if the ancient Greeks had been willing to question the social technology we call slavery, they might hav

            First of all, to begin, let us admit to the reality of matter.   Anyone who has ever had their plans derailed by a punch in the mouth [1] —or any such similar impact—should be willing to stipulate to this.   “Matter” is just a general term for the material out of which the stuff around us is made, and when we add energy to it to get it moving, it can wind up hitting us in the mouth (and so our common experience also establishes the reality of a second essential thing, energy).   Matter generally occurs in one of four physical states: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma—an insight the ancients captured metonymically by speaking of the four elements: earth, water, air, & fire; which are familiar naturally occurring instances of those four material states.   They were somewhat wrong in calling these “elements,” but they were on to something.   Using a term cognate [2] with “matter,” we refer to the amount of material in something as its “mass” (as opposed to “weight,” which