"Smith argues that morality is not driven by some innate moral sense, as was claimed by his old teacher Francis Hutchison, but by humanity’s natural sociability – the need for approval from our peers. We behave to one another in ways that allow us to get along together, but this does not stem from a rational calculation to gain personal advantage. Instead, our responses are driven by our emotions, the principal of which is our capacity for empathy."
I didn’t know this! So super interesting. Thanks so much for the link, I will check it out for sure.
Reminds me a lot of Will Storr’s work on Status Games, which I’m increasingly fascinated by. I’ve only engaged his work indirectly through secondary references (podcasts, youtubes, etc), I’m keen to learn more.
Appreciate you nudging me in this direction!
Admittedly, I’m not entirely sure what your more pointed point may be with that quote but I love it nonetheless. Which makes me curious: what about the piece got you thinking about that quote and Smith’s actual larger body of work? He’s largely been flattened to the invisible hand justification for free market supremacy which wasn’t even necessarily what he meant by it to my best understanding.
@Chevan Nanayakkara would probably have a lot to say on this! I’m part way through a couple of excellent complimentary pieces he wrote on these themes:
Yeah, that Smith has been reduced to free markets and the invisible hand as seen through a 20th/21st century lens, while forgetting economists were moral philosophers and interested in more than just dollars and cents.
The real issue isn't Smith's work, but how post-Great Depression elites weaponized selective pieces of it to create an entire mythology about economics being a 'science' with natural laws. They invoked Smith's name while stripping away his understanding of morality, empathy, and social cooperation - hence the 'neoclassical' label that pays homage while fundamentally distorting his insights.
The mythology that economics follows scientific laws has created artificial constraints in our minds about what's possible. People think 'there's no money' for community development while trillions flow to corporate subsidies, when our actual economic tools can create widespread opportunity. Understanding these limitations shows us we can do something right now - we have policy levers that work with our natural sociability rather than against it.
Finishing this series felt strange. I didn't come to substack expecting to find alignment. I just figured it was another "social media" site- somewhere to repost my blog entries like I'm wont to do in other places too. But this place is different. It is quiet in its impact. The gaps of silence are big because an alert: a like, a comment, a repost are like deafening noises: because you know that in same way your thought really resonated with another human at a much deeper level than click-bait or shock engagement. That really means something to me and draws me back to Substack.
When I say alignment, maybe I mean resonance. Reading your personal struggles (thank you for being so candid) but also your hopeful cynicism about Capitalism (I can detect hope a mile away, don't tell me it's not there!) I can say, I feel it too. The last week or so we have been on a parallel journey and even though I don't want to post it... I have to say part 3 really felt like a setup for what I posted today.
oh and I'm really excited to read your next piece! I am half way through the other one and loving it (my brain looks like a browser with too many tabs open, and a small distraction could mean the tab never gets re-opened.)
Maybe there is a collaborative piece in our future!
yes you're so right about the hope part!! And about our resonance. As I said to you elsewhere (or someone else? lol i'm loosing track) I am heartened to find so many likeminds here, and even more so, to be having experiences like ours where our pieces are coming out nearly same day, on the same or complimentary topics, as if a story is trying to come through that's bigger than all of us.
I am really taken by Elizabeth Gilbert's contemporary take on the muse, that ideas are sentient and will knock on the door for only so long before they move on to someone else. Or as one of my indigenous friends shared with me: a song will travel the world until someone sings it.
You and I are both obviously very adept with the intellectualization of emergence dynamics, and I also see the spiritual nonmaterial themes too. Humans have too much hubris in claiming our thoughts are purely our own.
I feel similarly and finding alignment and resonance has been very uplifting. I like to think "the song travels the world looking for the soul to sing it." We're just vessels, the message is out there, looking for a place to come in.
That was quite a journey in the best of ways! It delights me to see other people find an idea and let it unfurl once or twice around the world to find themselves just close enough to where they started that they can tell how far they'd come.
Quick aside, I fucking hate the welfare queen trope and fuck Ronald Regan. Trust and verify that you may be the worst president ever were it not for such competition from your successors.
Of the 250K ideas out there, it seemed like you displayed or relayed maybe a 100k of them and, were there but world enough and time, I'd read every book you referenced as that shit is my jam. As it is, I took the Naomi Klein book out of the library.
One thing I think of at the end of this is that, in a world where AI is ingesting digesting and vomiting back all our ideas half baked and totally cocked, maybe the most radical thing one can do is read and share what you read with the class.
I joined substack to get those little woodchucks of ideas in the corners of my mind out so they could start widdling at the foundations of other people, but I'm shocked by the quality of the stuff that's out there. Or, to put it in a trope: Came for the writing. Stayed for stuff like your article.
I think I might cry. I'm still floored that anyone reads my stuff but when it actually lands like this and sparks actual interest and follow up... I just cannot find words. I'm on my way out, I'll come back with something more substantive soon, just wanted to at least tell you you made my week. Thank you for taking the time.
I came back because, same same: here for the writing, stayed for stuff like our exchanges. At least for this moment, substack still feels like a place where actual kind humans exist and want to connect and think together and make little communities of shared experience. I've appreciated our interactions from the first one. This deepens that. I especially appreciate that you're specific in what stands out for you and how the essay impacted you. This is why I bother to write at all and why I almost cried reading it (and have reread it multiple times now 😭😭😭). thank you again for taking the time and being so genuine.
And btw -- did you know Naomi is here on substack? I haven't engaged her new work much, but she's still as brilliant as ever last I scanned.
Have you read (or written) any pieces that tie into these themes you'd recommend I check out?
I just saved the 'on becoming a white collar cole miner' piece and really looking forward to that!
All the love is heartening. It's almost like the world doesn't have to be incessantly shitty...at least not here...not yet.
I didn't know that about Naomi at all let alone her substack. It's funny I never think to look for authors I like outside of substack despite Paul Krugman being why I even came here cause I heard he left the NYT to start one. Couple great books on related topics I finished recently were Limitarianism (essentially wealth should be capped so people don't starve to death, seems obvious but argued well), and Non-Zero by Robert Wright (book written in '99 that seems to foresee all the tech getting ahead of society, good read)
I just did a 3-parter about how jobs being awful (part 1), and then there not being any jobs (part 2), is causing service to suck everywhere which is having a huge negative impact on all our daily lives (part 3). Part 1 if you're so inclined: https://imsureyoureright.substack.com/p/bad-service-is-ruining-our-lives?r=5f69g4. Definitely see big overlaps in the venn diagrams of our stuff and psyched for it. Coming here I assumed others thought like me out there, but hadn't had much proof. Evidence now abounds!
Will def check out the box of amazing. I have been digging Seth's substack: https://dotmilk.substack.com/. Also thanks for the note to Cat as I didn't know her stuff, I'll check her out too. This whole experience is making my little nerd heart sing.
(also, side note, I'm male, but thought it was hilarious that you presumed I'm a she. Honestly, I was really glad my stuff didn't reek of testosterone as that can be a blindspot for us dudes)
I will definitely check out your stuff! thanks for the links. I already had the white collar mining one on my radar and really looking forward to the others.
I also kinda love (and apologize for?) the gender mix up in so far as I'm very interested in changing norms around masculinity - and that you were clearly unbothered.
I have to sheepishly admit that my cues you 'were female' were super gendered; I was coding qualities like curiosity, humility, specific substantive praise, clear commitment to human betterment and rejection of capitalist norms as female. While unfair and biased of me, telling nonetheless.
At the risk of being inflammatory, these are quiet a few of the *human* traits I desperately hope more men remember how to embody. Not only is it lonely and depressing to try to mate in their absence in most men, but it's stealing life and wellbeing from *all* people. "patriarchy hurts men too" and all that stuff I shouldn't say unless I want to invite a flamewar in my comments.
Thanks again for the thoughtful engagement. Look forward to more. xo
Jenn. I'm searching for words here... I can't quite find a way to actually describe how it feels that you've picked up this drum again and are beating it so clearly and loudly. LNE 2.0 ++. Thank you.
BTW... when I texted you about Michael L., it was because a different version of this post told the story of where I actually realized the punctuated equilibrium pattern's relationship to social evolution... it was with him on my deck, I'm pretty sure post-LNE. <3
"Smith argues that morality is not driven by some innate moral sense, as was claimed by his old teacher Francis Hutchison, but by humanity’s natural sociability – the need for approval from our peers. We behave to one another in ways that allow us to get along together, but this does not stem from a rational calculation to gain personal advantage. Instead, our responses are driven by our emotions, the principal of which is our capacity for empathy."
https://www.panmurehouse.org/adam-smith/works/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments/
I didn’t know this! So super interesting. Thanks so much for the link, I will check it out for sure.
Reminds me a lot of Will Storr’s work on Status Games, which I’m increasingly fascinated by. I’ve only engaged his work indirectly through secondary references (podcasts, youtubes, etc), I’m keen to learn more.
Appreciate you nudging me in this direction!
Admittedly, I’m not entirely sure what your more pointed point may be with that quote but I love it nonetheless. Which makes me curious: what about the piece got you thinking about that quote and Smith’s actual larger body of work? He’s largely been flattened to the invisible hand justification for free market supremacy which wasn’t even necessarily what he meant by it to my best understanding.
@Chevan Nanayakkara would probably have a lot to say on this! I’m part way through a couple of excellent complimentary pieces he wrote on these themes:
https://chevan.substack.com/p/economics-is-not-a-science
https://chevan.substack.com/p/introducing-opportunity-economics
Yeah, that Smith has been reduced to free markets and the invisible hand as seen through a 20th/21st century lens, while forgetting economists were moral philosophers and interested in more than just dollars and cents.
The real issue isn't Smith's work, but how post-Great Depression elites weaponized selective pieces of it to create an entire mythology about economics being a 'science' with natural laws. They invoked Smith's name while stripping away his understanding of morality, empathy, and social cooperation - hence the 'neoclassical' label that pays homage while fundamentally distorting his insights.
The mythology that economics follows scientific laws has created artificial constraints in our minds about what's possible. People think 'there's no money' for community development while trillions flow to corporate subsidies, when our actual economic tools can create widespread opportunity. Understanding these limitations shows us we can do something right now - we have policy levers that work with our natural sociability rather than against it.
https://chevan.substack.com/p/introducing-opportunity-economics?r=8ae8z
Finishing this series felt strange. I didn't come to substack expecting to find alignment. I just figured it was another "social media" site- somewhere to repost my blog entries like I'm wont to do in other places too. But this place is different. It is quiet in its impact. The gaps of silence are big because an alert: a like, a comment, a repost are like deafening noises: because you know that in same way your thought really resonated with another human at a much deeper level than click-bait or shock engagement. That really means something to me and draws me back to Substack.
When I say alignment, maybe I mean resonance. Reading your personal struggles (thank you for being so candid) but also your hopeful cynicism about Capitalism (I can detect hope a mile away, don't tell me it's not there!) I can say, I feel it too. The last week or so we have been on a parallel journey and even though I don't want to post it... I have to say part 3 really felt like a setup for what I posted today.
My version of hope.
https://chevan.substack.com/p/introducing-opportunity-economics?r=8ae8z
oh and I'm really excited to read your next piece! I am half way through the other one and loving it (my brain looks like a browser with too many tabs open, and a small distraction could mean the tab never gets re-opened.)
Maybe there is a collaborative piece in our future!
Oh there is a cool idea, a collab. I like it.
Thanks for reading and engaging. I know what you mean with the tabs, I had to come up with a system just for Substack.
Regarding the writing, of course I'm happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have.
yes you're so right about the hope part!! And about our resonance. As I said to you elsewhere (or someone else? lol i'm loosing track) I am heartened to find so many likeminds here, and even more so, to be having experiences like ours where our pieces are coming out nearly same day, on the same or complimentary topics, as if a story is trying to come through that's bigger than all of us.
I am really taken by Elizabeth Gilbert's contemporary take on the muse, that ideas are sentient and will knock on the door for only so long before they move on to someone else. Or as one of my indigenous friends shared with me: a song will travel the world until someone sings it.
You and I are both obviously very adept with the intellectualization of emergence dynamics, and I also see the spiritual nonmaterial themes too. Humans have too much hubris in claiming our thoughts are purely our own.
I feel similarly and finding alignment and resonance has been very uplifting. I like to think "the song travels the world looking for the soul to sing it." We're just vessels, the message is out there, looking for a place to come in.
That was quite a journey in the best of ways! It delights me to see other people find an idea and let it unfurl once or twice around the world to find themselves just close enough to where they started that they can tell how far they'd come.
Quick aside, I fucking hate the welfare queen trope and fuck Ronald Regan. Trust and verify that you may be the worst president ever were it not for such competition from your successors.
Of the 250K ideas out there, it seemed like you displayed or relayed maybe a 100k of them and, were there but world enough and time, I'd read every book you referenced as that shit is my jam. As it is, I took the Naomi Klein book out of the library.
One thing I think of at the end of this is that, in a world where AI is ingesting digesting and vomiting back all our ideas half baked and totally cocked, maybe the most radical thing one can do is read and share what you read with the class.
I joined substack to get those little woodchucks of ideas in the corners of my mind out so they could start widdling at the foundations of other people, but I'm shocked by the quality of the stuff that's out there. Or, to put it in a trope: Came for the writing. Stayed for stuff like your article.
I think I might cry. I'm still floored that anyone reads my stuff but when it actually lands like this and sparks actual interest and follow up... I just cannot find words. I'm on my way out, I'll come back with something more substantive soon, just wanted to at least tell you you made my week. Thank you for taking the time.
I came back because, same same: here for the writing, stayed for stuff like our exchanges. At least for this moment, substack still feels like a place where actual kind humans exist and want to connect and think together and make little communities of shared experience. I've appreciated our interactions from the first one. This deepens that. I especially appreciate that you're specific in what stands out for you and how the essay impacted you. This is why I bother to write at all and why I almost cried reading it (and have reread it multiple times now 😭😭😭). thank you again for taking the time and being so genuine.
And btw -- did you know Naomi is here on substack? I haven't engaged her new work much, but she's still as brilliant as ever last I scanned.
Have you read (or written) any pieces that tie into these themes you'd recommend I check out?
I just saved the 'on becoming a white collar cole miner' piece and really looking forward to that!
Which makes me think of this piece that just blew my mind I think you'll love. another long read but worrrrrrrrrrth it especially with what you're publication is about: https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-cult-of-productivity-is-breaking
All the love is heartening. It's almost like the world doesn't have to be incessantly shitty...at least not here...not yet.
I didn't know that about Naomi at all let alone her substack. It's funny I never think to look for authors I like outside of substack despite Paul Krugman being why I even came here cause I heard he left the NYT to start one. Couple great books on related topics I finished recently were Limitarianism (essentially wealth should be capped so people don't starve to death, seems obvious but argued well), and Non-Zero by Robert Wright (book written in '99 that seems to foresee all the tech getting ahead of society, good read)
I just did a 3-parter about how jobs being awful (part 1), and then there not being any jobs (part 2), is causing service to suck everywhere which is having a huge negative impact on all our daily lives (part 3). Part 1 if you're so inclined: https://imsureyoureright.substack.com/p/bad-service-is-ruining-our-lives?r=5f69g4. Definitely see big overlaps in the venn diagrams of our stuff and psyched for it. Coming here I assumed others thought like me out there, but hadn't had much proof. Evidence now abounds!
Will def check out the box of amazing. I have been digging Seth's substack: https://dotmilk.substack.com/. Also thanks for the note to Cat as I didn't know her stuff, I'll check her out too. This whole experience is making my little nerd heart sing.
(also, side note, I'm male, but thought it was hilarious that you presumed I'm a she. Honestly, I was really glad my stuff didn't reek of testosterone as that can be a blindspot for us dudes)
I will definitely check out your stuff! thanks for the links. I already had the white collar mining one on my radar and really looking forward to the others.
I also kinda love (and apologize for?) the gender mix up in so far as I'm very interested in changing norms around masculinity - and that you were clearly unbothered.
I have to sheepishly admit that my cues you 'were female' were super gendered; I was coding qualities like curiosity, humility, specific substantive praise, clear commitment to human betterment and rejection of capitalist norms as female. While unfair and biased of me, telling nonetheless.
At the risk of being inflammatory, these are quiet a few of the *human* traits I desperately hope more men remember how to embody. Not only is it lonely and depressing to try to mate in their absence in most men, but it's stealing life and wellbeing from *all* people. "patriarchy hurts men too" and all that stuff I shouldn't say unless I want to invite a flamewar in my comments.
Thanks again for the thoughtful engagement. Look forward to more. xo
Jenn. I'm searching for words here... I can't quite find a way to actually describe how it feels that you've picked up this drum again and are beating it so clearly and loudly. LNE 2.0 ++. Thank you.
BTW... when I texted you about Michael L., it was because a different version of this post told the story of where I actually realized the punctuated equilibrium pattern's relationship to social evolution... it was with him on my deck, I'm pretty sure post-LNE. <3
Oh cool! 😊❤️
I get this vibe that we’re just getting started (again). Really happy we have a date on the calendar. xoxo