Anyone who has heard of John Stuart Mill has also heard that his estimated IQ was off the chart, maybe 200. I don’t know how one determines that for a guy who lived in the nineteenth century except to say it might have something to do with his having read Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire at an age when I was heavily into picture books as I repeatedly read Little Toot (or had my mother repeatedly read it to me). Anyway, Mill was smart. He knew Greek before age five, read works in that language, and as a child tutored his siblings in it and in Latin.
John Stuart Mill provides material for the spectrum of topics that cross our minds today, so it’s difficult for me to center on a single aspect of his thought, much, by the way, with which I disagree from the perspective of my lower IQ. But one of his statements touches on something near to what I wrote about recently, using as I did, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” as a qualifier. * Mill wrote, “A world from which solitude is extirpated, [sic.] is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspiration which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without.” ** Yes, in solitude and in silence we can do some thinking that our otherwise distracted brains could not do. So, I certainly can agree with Mill on this—in part.
I say “in part” because I also know that in the midst of mental turmoil and frenetic activity the human brain is also capable of insights. There is no single path on which genius walks. Just sitting on a rock at the top of the Himalayas doesn’t guarantee peace, insight, or creativity—though it does invite frostbite. Knowing humans, I might say, “The same grand scene, however wondrous, becomes after a while, the same scene for brains enthralled by ‘what else is there’ to see.” In other words, we’re an antsy species. We tend at times to favor both turmoil and frenetic competition. We tend to like the comforts of civilization as much as we like natural beauty. Maybe, we actually like those comforts more.
But Mill’s main argument occurs in the rest of his passage from Political Economy. In it, he decries the endless pursuit of wealth, the use of all arable land for agriculture to support a Malthusian population growth, and the extinction of all animals, save those that support humans, through the destruction of habitats converted into landscapes purposed for human “progress.” He had looked at his times and the Industrial Revolution’s fostering the conditions conducive to rampant population growth, had seen that the needs of urban dwellers meant devastation of landscapes at home and abroad, had noted reasons for population explosions in countries whose resources were funneled into developed nations, and had concluded that people would only suffer in the long run by a competition for resources. He proposed a “stationary state” to replace the one in which population kept doubling at the expense of habitats, life-forms, and silence.
You can hear echoes of Mill’s thought today coming from philosophers like Peter Singer. Those who adopt such a position usually rail against uncontrolled population growth as though there were some realistic way of stopping people from procreating without unintended consequences. Imposing restrictions on procreation, as the Chinese did with the one-child policy, eventually leads to an ageing population, turning the population pyramid upside down. Then what? Who does the work to support the ageing? And that hypocritical scenario, though resulting in fewer births, actually births calls for euthanasia to cull the “useless” members of a population. I say “hypocritical” because those who call for a cull and a decreased population never include themselves as members to be culled. For those who think there are too many people, the ultimate surefire cure is death in the absence of demonstrable utility. And those who believe there are too many people see themselves as elite doctors who can appropriately administer that cure.
In fact, we do live in a world with a growing population, and even devastating epidemics and wars don’t seem to stop the growth. We have to keep inventing, keep creating the only offspring of the Industrial Revolution that has brought us to this condition, that is, we have to continue creating technologies and the wealth that accompanies them. The pressure of the times requires it. Progress necessitates more progress, and, sorry to say, necessitates inequalities through competition. The opposite of progress, a “stationary state” such as Mill proposes, ineluctably leads to even greater inequalities.
We number more than seven billion at the time of this writing, and many do suffer the poor conditions Mill foresaw. But, if we take Venezuela as a model for a “stationary state,” we can see that the problem is always with those elite who “run” such states. Chavez and Maduro initiated, according to an article in the New York Times, “the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 years….” *** People like John Stuart Mill have always supposed that a stationary economy with unmitigated egalitarian economy can work “if we have the right people in charge”—meaning them. Or they suppose that the stationary system itself somehow regulates an even distribution of resources while at the same time making life better for all. Regardless of failures in all “stationary” societies, those who believe in controlling the problems associated with material growth and the pursuit of material growth always generate the opposite of what they envision. Want proof? Study your history. Study the Venezuela of 2019.
Mill’s vaunted utilitarianism is a form of idealism. He asks whether or not everyone wants to become richer ad infinitum and then proposes that the “stationary state” is “a very considerable improvement” over the keep-up-with-the-Joneses materialist capitalism of his day. But every idealist ends in self-contradiction, and Mill and his modern counterparts are no exception. Want an example? Mill says, “Only when in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers, become the common property of the species and the means of improving and elevating the common lot.” Yep. Socialism. That’s Mill’s fallback position. And it is socialism under “deliberate guidance,” you know, under people like Stalin, Mao, Castro, and recently, Chavez and Maduro. The self-contradiction? Mill still favors individualism and competition in his stationary state.
Too bad Mill didn’t live to witness the more than 100 million people killed under socialist regimes or the billions of people who have suffered under the “deliberate guidance” of those in charge of “stationary states,” such as Venezuela. With hindsight, he might have used his great intellect to reevaluate his idealistic utilitarianism. History has shown that “common property” doesn’t elevate “the common lot.” Because he was not a strict socialist, he believed in competition as a way to ward off indolence: “Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress.” **** Mill—and maybe his modern offspring—want progress in a stationary setting.
There are those today who envision themselves as bright as John Stuart Mill. And they, like Mill, seem to want the preservation of individualism under the auspices of some regulating body guided by “judicious foresight.” Yes, Mill had a high IQ and maybe some of his modern-day intellectual offspring are also bright. But being smart and doing smart are different. Each generation that takes up the banner of socialism might be genuinely well-meaning and idealistic, but no generation has yet demonstrated a way to keep insidious indolence from dominating the lives of any population living in the absence of competition in a “stationary state.”
In On Liberty, Mill stressed the importance of preserving individualism. He saw in 1859 that “The tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society, and diminish the power of the individual.” ***** Now, it’s your time to find a way to preserve your personal individualism in time when pressure abounds to control all under “deliberate guidance.” There’s no easy answer, of course, but beware the evils that arise when the lives of the many are placed in the hands of the few. Beware the effects when a state monopoly replaces competition. And beware the insidious indolence that creeps into any stationary state. Beware, also, that laissez-faire does, in fact, generate its own detrimental effects on a population. Mill tried in two different works to resolve the issues that we still face today. That we are still discussing them is evidence that he had no final solution. In this all of us are simultaneously smart and dumb. We can raise the argument about a progressive or stationary state, argue for or against the ideals of either or both, but we can’t seem to reconcile the ideal with the real—except in the context of history. We’ve seen what has happened in past stationary states. What makes us think that any future stationary state will resolve the associated ills that seem inherent? ******
*5/11/2019. “When Everywhere Is Times Square, No One Will See a Star” http://thisisnotyourpracticelife.com/blog.html
**Political Economy. 1865. Sixth ed., vol. ii. Bk. Iv. Ch. 6, p. 232.
***Kurmanaev, Anatoly. Venezuela’s Collapse Is the Worst Outside of War in Decades, Economists Say. New York Times 17 May 2019, Online at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/world/americas/venezuela-economy.html Accessed on May 17, 2019.
****Political Economy, pp. 376, 377.
*****On Liberty.
******Just a final note: After the fall of the Soviet Union, a “stationary state,” member countries sought outside help to clean the environments devastated by bureaucrats who had no personal interest in preserving Nature. Seems that complete government control was worse than, or just as bad as, laissez-faire in devastating the planet; devastation of natural settings was one of the reasons Mill took pen to paper.
John Stuart Mill provides material for the spectrum of topics that cross our minds today, so it’s difficult for me to center on a single aspect of his thought, much, by the way, with which I disagree from the perspective of my lower IQ. But one of his statements touches on something near to what I wrote about recently, using as I did, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” as a qualifier. * Mill wrote, “A world from which solitude is extirpated, [sic.] is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspiration which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without.” ** Yes, in solitude and in silence we can do some thinking that our otherwise distracted brains could not do. So, I certainly can agree with Mill on this—in part.
I say “in part” because I also know that in the midst of mental turmoil and frenetic activity the human brain is also capable of insights. There is no single path on which genius walks. Just sitting on a rock at the top of the Himalayas doesn’t guarantee peace, insight, or creativity—though it does invite frostbite. Knowing humans, I might say, “The same grand scene, however wondrous, becomes after a while, the same scene for brains enthralled by ‘what else is there’ to see.” In other words, we’re an antsy species. We tend at times to favor both turmoil and frenetic competition. We tend to like the comforts of civilization as much as we like natural beauty. Maybe, we actually like those comforts more.
But Mill’s main argument occurs in the rest of his passage from Political Economy. In it, he decries the endless pursuit of wealth, the use of all arable land for agriculture to support a Malthusian population growth, and the extinction of all animals, save those that support humans, through the destruction of habitats converted into landscapes purposed for human “progress.” He had looked at his times and the Industrial Revolution’s fostering the conditions conducive to rampant population growth, had seen that the needs of urban dwellers meant devastation of landscapes at home and abroad, had noted reasons for population explosions in countries whose resources were funneled into developed nations, and had concluded that people would only suffer in the long run by a competition for resources. He proposed a “stationary state” to replace the one in which population kept doubling at the expense of habitats, life-forms, and silence.
You can hear echoes of Mill’s thought today coming from philosophers like Peter Singer. Those who adopt such a position usually rail against uncontrolled population growth as though there were some realistic way of stopping people from procreating without unintended consequences. Imposing restrictions on procreation, as the Chinese did with the one-child policy, eventually leads to an ageing population, turning the population pyramid upside down. Then what? Who does the work to support the ageing? And that hypocritical scenario, though resulting in fewer births, actually births calls for euthanasia to cull the “useless” members of a population. I say “hypocritical” because those who call for a cull and a decreased population never include themselves as members to be culled. For those who think there are too many people, the ultimate surefire cure is death in the absence of demonstrable utility. And those who believe there are too many people see themselves as elite doctors who can appropriately administer that cure.
In fact, we do live in a world with a growing population, and even devastating epidemics and wars don’t seem to stop the growth. We have to keep inventing, keep creating the only offspring of the Industrial Revolution that has brought us to this condition, that is, we have to continue creating technologies and the wealth that accompanies them. The pressure of the times requires it. Progress necessitates more progress, and, sorry to say, necessitates inequalities through competition. The opposite of progress, a “stationary state” such as Mill proposes, ineluctably leads to even greater inequalities.
We number more than seven billion at the time of this writing, and many do suffer the poor conditions Mill foresaw. But, if we take Venezuela as a model for a “stationary state,” we can see that the problem is always with those elite who “run” such states. Chavez and Maduro initiated, according to an article in the New York Times, “the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 years….” *** People like John Stuart Mill have always supposed that a stationary economy with unmitigated egalitarian economy can work “if we have the right people in charge”—meaning them. Or they suppose that the stationary system itself somehow regulates an even distribution of resources while at the same time making life better for all. Regardless of failures in all “stationary” societies, those who believe in controlling the problems associated with material growth and the pursuit of material growth always generate the opposite of what they envision. Want proof? Study your history. Study the Venezuela of 2019.
Mill’s vaunted utilitarianism is a form of idealism. He asks whether or not everyone wants to become richer ad infinitum and then proposes that the “stationary state” is “a very considerable improvement” over the keep-up-with-the-Joneses materialist capitalism of his day. But every idealist ends in self-contradiction, and Mill and his modern counterparts are no exception. Want an example? Mill says, “Only when in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers, become the common property of the species and the means of improving and elevating the common lot.” Yep. Socialism. That’s Mill’s fallback position. And it is socialism under “deliberate guidance,” you know, under people like Stalin, Mao, Castro, and recently, Chavez and Maduro. The self-contradiction? Mill still favors individualism and competition in his stationary state.
Too bad Mill didn’t live to witness the more than 100 million people killed under socialist regimes or the billions of people who have suffered under the “deliberate guidance” of those in charge of “stationary states,” such as Venezuela. With hindsight, he might have used his great intellect to reevaluate his idealistic utilitarianism. History has shown that “common property” doesn’t elevate “the common lot.” Because he was not a strict socialist, he believed in competition as a way to ward off indolence: “Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress.” **** Mill—and maybe his modern offspring—want progress in a stationary setting.
There are those today who envision themselves as bright as John Stuart Mill. And they, like Mill, seem to want the preservation of individualism under the auspices of some regulating body guided by “judicious foresight.” Yes, Mill had a high IQ and maybe some of his modern-day intellectual offspring are also bright. But being smart and doing smart are different. Each generation that takes up the banner of socialism might be genuinely well-meaning and idealistic, but no generation has yet demonstrated a way to keep insidious indolence from dominating the lives of any population living in the absence of competition in a “stationary state.”
In On Liberty, Mill stressed the importance of preserving individualism. He saw in 1859 that “The tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society, and diminish the power of the individual.” ***** Now, it’s your time to find a way to preserve your personal individualism in time when pressure abounds to control all under “deliberate guidance.” There’s no easy answer, of course, but beware the evils that arise when the lives of the many are placed in the hands of the few. Beware the effects when a state monopoly replaces competition. And beware the insidious indolence that creeps into any stationary state. Beware, also, that laissez-faire does, in fact, generate its own detrimental effects on a population. Mill tried in two different works to resolve the issues that we still face today. That we are still discussing them is evidence that he had no final solution. In this all of us are simultaneously smart and dumb. We can raise the argument about a progressive or stationary state, argue for or against the ideals of either or both, but we can’t seem to reconcile the ideal with the real—except in the context of history. We’ve seen what has happened in past stationary states. What makes us think that any future stationary state will resolve the associated ills that seem inherent? ******
*5/11/2019. “When Everywhere Is Times Square, No One Will See a Star” http://thisisnotyourpracticelife.com/blog.html
**Political Economy. 1865. Sixth ed., vol. ii. Bk. Iv. Ch. 6, p. 232.
***Kurmanaev, Anatoly. Venezuela’s Collapse Is the Worst Outside of War in Decades, Economists Say. New York Times 17 May 2019, Online at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/world/americas/venezuela-economy.html Accessed on May 17, 2019.
****Political Economy, pp. 376, 377.
*****On Liberty.
******Just a final note: After the fall of the Soviet Union, a “stationary state,” member countries sought outside help to clean the environments devastated by bureaucrats who had no personal interest in preserving Nature. Seems that complete government control was worse than, or just as bad as, laissez-faire in devastating the planet; devastation of natural settings was one of the reasons Mill took pen to paper.
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