A back-row comrade who had an idea.

Watering Cans

  "There is no certainty in language, there is no gravity and therefore no grammar jeweled gene to make it easy, no dictionary, no precision in the corridors of meaning. Language emerged, to greater or lesser extent in all living things as an anti entropy bolishivism. An opposition to order, a management mechanism born of the probabilities, uncertainties and convictions existent in the universe's own opinion of itself, and unearthed by the poking around of physicists in that place in the universe where photons have energy and momentum, no mass but they exert pressure, or a slope were life asks questions."

 In other words Walking Stewart was incorrect, the philosopher does not bow down to the microscope. Far from it, the miscroscope bows down to the philosopher.

The trap of conviction and the danger of idealism are two excellent criticisms. The charge of Human Centric claptrap is always a valuebale criticism. If we think of math, science etc as a more correct and precise iteration of language, a place to find the security of an authority that offers a high potential for demonstrably correct answers, there does seem to be a definition of trust that makes great sense. 

 But worth raising a memory here comrade. I friend of mine, a corporal, was once given a report by a young officer, it went this way "His men will follow him anywhere, if only to find out what he'll do next."

 Try not to laugh, but can we look at the idea that the universe is the Front Row, it doesn't know what it's doing, but it's doing something. Life in all its forms is a back row.

 I think this does require us to think of how Schopenhauer's idea of Will might bond with Tagore and together present a human centric back row case to the court with particluar reference to Free Market Economics. Will we listen to science will we listen to myth or do we listen to emotions of the moment and not much more.

 As I have understood him Adam Smith in his wealth of nations saw good in a nation becoming wealthy. He also saw how personal greed could overtake an enterprise, lead to poor decisions, reduce what he called it's efficiency. A wealthy nation needed a sound moral foundation. Something people weren't good at. His answer was a free market, that allowed the efficient enterprise to succeed and the inefficient enterprise to fail.

 In my view science, reason, the art of economics, mathematics have all failed to resolve an issue in our species. That issue is "How do we make good decisions?"

 This leaves us with Power, as if pulled by an invisible force, gravitating toward poorer and poorer decisions, while good decisions follow the fate that Foster Wallace hoped would befall that safeguard of civilization some of us refer to as the joy of irony.

As poor decisions gather momentum, head toward a terminal velocity, the back row remains the preserve of past wisdom. Adam Smith wasn't God. He was a voice from the back row that failed miserably.