Fragments #5 – Public Masturbation or Philosophy?, Liberty vs. Democracy, Marital Farts
Thoughts and links from this week
Below is the fifth installment of a new format I am trying out of shorter-form content to come out weekly. Here are installments #1, #2, #3, & #4.Hopefully, this will break up the extended interregnums between my long-form pieces (I know you have been begging for more). If you like it: good; if you hate it: even better.
Does your fav philosopher even masturbate in public?
The first book that financial philosopher and overweight, bicycle enthusiast, Nassim Taleb, wrote was Dynamic Hedging a technical book detailing the intricacies of trading options. I first read it when I was starting in finance (pronounce “fin-nance” not “fi-nance”) as an equity derivatives trader.
The term hedging in finance is used the same as the phrase “hedge your bets”, meaning limiting your potential losses. First applied to pecuniary matters in the 17th century, the term comes from literal hedges – used to enclose one’s yard (and property) as a means of surety and limiting losses from things outside getting in/things inside getting out.
The term Dynamic Hedging refers to how one must shift their loss-protection as environments and information changes – this is a major theme picked up in Taleb’s later best-selling works The Black Swan, & AntiFragile.
Interestingly, the root of the words stock (referring to equity shares) has its roots in shrubbery as well one half a stick (or a stock) was the original receipt for payment to the English Exchequer.
Taleb models himself off the stoic philosopher Seneca. Stoics, named because they gathered around the stoa in the Athenian Agora, preached impartiality to fate and fortune and inherited their disdain for the pleasures of this world from the earlier Cynic school.
Founded by the student of Socrates, Antisthenes, the Cynics sought to reduce the things of the flesh to bare necessities in order that the soul may be as free as possible. Their name comes from their “dog-like” (kynikos) existence and gives us the word cynicism.
The most notorious of their ascetic adherents, Diogenes, sought to eschew all comforts and societal norms, and was made famous for insulting Alexander the Great to his face, living in a wine jar, and masturbating in public. I have had the chance to have dinner with Taleb multiple times and though he is interesting, he is nowhere near as adventurous.
Liberty vs. Democracy:
Diogenes may have been free of the bonds of polite society, but what does it mean to truly be free? Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn was a political scientist and historian who hoped to trace out the history of liberty as a political ideal. His book Liberty Or Equality draws out how liberalism has countervailed against ideals of equality and its cousin democracy.
Classical liberalism, meaning the protection of individual liberties, is by definition against group or majority rule i.e. the tyranny of the 51% i.e. Democracy. Many of founding fathers including Madison, Jefferson, and Addams were strictly against direct democracy, and even had hesitations for representative democracy.
Democracy, because it has the imprimatur of the masses, is much more totalitarian than a monarchy or oligarchy ever could be. Kuehnelt-Leddihn notes that even the paragon of absolute monarchy, the Sun King, Louis XIV, who apocryphally stated “L'État, c'est moi.” was remarkably more circumscribed in his abilities to extend governmental (over)reach than modern “liberal democracies.”
Louis could never get away with a mandatory draft for war, nor a yearly humiliation ritual where people confess their economic sins (the income tax), nor a prohibition on alcohol let alone a war on drugs. One should remember that the largest democides in history, killing tens of millions, were committed by People’s Republics.
Or as Orestes Brownson stated:
There’s shit in the milk – so drink it raw!
Politics is dirty work, just like animal husbandry. Joel Salatin notes in Folks, This Ain’t Normal that cows evolved foraging on savannah type grassland environments. However, under the industrial agricultural revolution, beef and dairy cattle were were moved from free-range pastures to stockpiled feedlots where they were fed subsidized corn (and pieces of dead cow) instead of harvested grasses.
This high corn diet (often genetically modified and rich in glyphosate) causes acidosis in the cattle’s rumen, which allows for E. Coli 1057:H7 to proliferate, this E. Coli strain can cause hemorrhagic diarrhea and death in humans. The feedlots pack the cattle cheek-to-jowl and mired in their own feces. The farmers are forced to administer copious amounts of antibiotics to stave off infections.
Due to the high intensity, speed, and automation of the industrial slaughterhouse and dairy the fecal matter is difficult to remove during butchering and processing. The solution to all this from the FDA and USDA is to irradiate the feces laden meat and pasteurize the dairy products.
A common claim is that lactose intolerance in adults comes from a lack of a genetic mutation that keeps the LCT gene (the blueprint for lactase) turned on post breast-feeding age. This gene is heavily concentrated in northern and western Europe and absent in places like Sub-Saharan Africa or Asia (many spurious but grand claims about world history and genetic destiny have been made from this).
But this doesn’t account for the fact that many peoples lacking the LCT mutation like steppe Mongolians and African pastoralists have a remarkably high dairy diet and yet still survive. An alternative hypothesis is that lactose intolerance comes primarily from the processing, specifically the pasteurization, of dairy products – in which enzymes get denatured and bacteria killed that actually aid in the digestive process. In short people without the LCT mutation can ingest dairy just fine so long as it is not pasteurized.
The full backstory behind pasteurization and the Rockefeller money interests behind it is a fun rabbit hole to go down. Raw milk suppliers in the US tend to be smaller and more holistically minded: raising free-range, grass-fed and finished, happier cows and thereby avoiding many of the pitfalls of industrial ag.
I can attest for the benefits of raw dairy myself – if I eat too many pasteurized dairy products my wife kicks me out of the bedroom, but I can consume raw dairy products and maintain marital bliss. Give raw dairy a try, you can find a local supplier here – it is easier on the gut and the loved ones.
That’s all for this week and thanks for reading,
Zay