Memories of the 28th Century

“Social Contract theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons' moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live.” From the article on “Social Contract theory” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/


The idea to Social Contract doesn’t often come to mind, but it’s there in the background most of the time, but it has come up a few times ...

I was reminded recently that monarchy really is the best and most efficient form of government, and, if the monarch is reasonably intelligent, then it is the most humane form of government. But the best thing about monarchy is that it eliminates silly, wasteful, and unpleasant elections, and it makes it relatively unlikely that the dregs of society will end up involved in running a country.

By dregs I mean people like Donald Trump. In my brief life we have had some amazingly incompetents ...

Even though it isn't a major issue in the news, there is a holy war going on. DAESH would like to be fighting against the princes of Christendom, as their ancestors did centuries ago, but there aren't any princes of Christendom anymore. The issues that DAESH is fighting about are not issues to more than a few people outside of their organization. Eight hundred or a thousand years ago religious power was a major concern, but in most of the world religion is a personal matter that is not part of governmental ...

“Cave ab homine unius libri.” Beware the man of one book. Pliny the Elder

This fine adage came to mind earlier today, when I was listening to a man who thinks that the Jews control the world, and that all evil comes from them (he thinks The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is non-fiction). There seem to be many people who put their faith into a single item or narrow set of beliefs. Religious zealots are of this sort and sports fanatics also, but sports fanatics seldom go to war over ...

There I was in Starbucks about six o’clock this morning when I noticed that they were playing more covers, bad covers, mostly of mediocre songs. I asked a barista about it and was simply told that they had to play Starbucks playlists. The employees used to play some of their own CD’s, but that was banned. Apparently there is a problem with royalties. If Starbucks is trying to minimize royalties, then their playlists are only slightly successful, because they still have to pay the songwriter’s ...