Few fads in the modern West are more disturbing than the sudden positive light shed on sexualities understood until recently as obviously unhealthy. For example, an adult male with more than just an idle fantasy of becoming a “woman” is no longer thought of in the mainstream as being confused and mentally ill. Instead, he’s given both cultural and medical support for his decision. The culture applauds him for his bravery, and a doctor injects him with estrogen. Similarly, an adult female, in her futile quest to become a “man”—for she will never truly become a man—is cheered on, by family, friends, and strangers alike, when she makes the obviously insane decision to schedule a double mastectomy.

A related pair of examples is (1) the cultural support given to adult males who, in their failure to come into their own as men, reject the traditional expectation of adult males being masculine, and (2) the converse cultural support given to adult females who, at their peril, reject womanhood and femininity.

After a century of socialist catastrophe, we find, strangely enough, that the essence of the socialist psyche—a way of thinking and feeling that I hope to give a clear explanation of in this essay—is still perfectly alive and well, though of course not as much in purely economic terms anymore. That is, the way of thinking and feeling of the kind of people who are susceptible to the socialist contagion is, despite the spectacular failure of socialism in the 20th century, unfortunately still very common. The spirit of socialism has grown weak economically (at least in comparison to how strong it was in the 20th century), but it’s still very strong elsewhere, viz. in feminism and social justice. Ultimately, the essence or spirit of the socialist, feminist, and social-justice psyches are all one and the same: All of those ideologies are built on the same foundation of sand: They’re all manifestations of the “denial of X nature,” whether the denial of human nature (i.e., what we all have in common) or the denial of male nature (i.e., what men all have in common) or the denial of female nature (i.e., what women all have in common). That is, all of those ideologies share the same fundamental article of faith: the faith in the “infinite malleability of man.” Just because you’re a man, or a woman, or white, or black, neither means that you are one way or another, nor means that you should be one way or another. Anybody can be anything. We’re all free to choose. The groups that we belong to don’t determine what we are or should be as individuals.

While traditional Western culture took into account racial, sexual, and many of the other fundamental differences between different groups of people, the modern West tries in vain to ignore or get rid of those differences.

That is: The West of generations past took seriously the differences in strengths, weaknesses, and proclivities among different groups. For example, being born male, they thought, “destined” you down a certain path in life, and being born female “destined” you down a different path. If a man acted like the stereotype of a woman, then he was told to man up. And if a woman acted like the stereotype of a man, then she would get the same kind of treatment, just in the reverse. But in the modern age, i.e. in the age of feminism and social justice, gender roles are no longer taken for granted.

Western culture has taken a degenerate turn as democracy has replaced monarchy in the wake of the catastrophes of the World Wars. Standards have fallen precipitously, with even the most justified and measured of criticism often being rejected out of hand for being “sexist,” “racist,” or otherwise socially unacceptable. For example, if a man proposes to in effect turn himself into a poor substitute for a woman, then you’re expected to at least nod along passively or if not cheer him on actively. Most importantly, you’re not allowed to ask what the underlying mental illness may be—for that, of course, would be “transphobic”—and you’re not allowed to give him the advice that, above all, he truly and desperately needs: the advice on how to bring his mental world into natural alignment with the unchangeable facts of the physical world (the relevant fact here being that he was born male). Ultimately, what he needs isn’t an injection or surgery but advice on how to live in harmony with the natural order.

Getting people to identify you as X is a powerful way of increasing your motivation to do what’s expected of X. That is, (1) signaling that you’re a certain kind of person will cause people to expect you to do certain things which are associated with those signals, and (2) such expectations will act as social pressure for you to conform to those expectations. For example, if you look like an intellectual then people will expect you to be an intellectual. They’ll expect you to have interesting or insightful things to say.

Thus, finding an identity which is associated with being the kind of person that you want to be, and then figuring out how to signal that identity, is a powerful way of getting even more motivation for being that kind of person than you already have.

There’s also the social motivation that comes from feeling like you’re part of a group that you respect, especially if you think of that group as being in conflict with another group. That is: If you feel like you’re part of an in-group, then you get extra social motivation. And if you feel like that in-group is on the side of good fighting against an out-group that’s on the side of evil, then you get extra-extra social motivation. To summarize: If your in-group is internally harmonious, with you playing a certain role for that in-group (which is in harmony with the other roles), and your in-group is externally in conflict with an out-group, then from that combination of harmony and conflict comes an intoxicatingly powerful source of social motivation.

1. An a priori truth is such that it’s impossible to conceive of anything contrary to it. For example, it’s a priori true that there’s one dimension of time, for it would be impossible to imagine more than one dimension of time—at least I can’t figure out how to do so. An a posteriori truth, on the other hand, is such that it’s possible to conceive of something (or more than one thing) contrary to it. Here gravity works as an example: It’s a posteriori true that gravity exists and does what it does, for it’s possible to imagine a world without gravity or a world with a different kind of gravity.
2. “Mathematics” starts out with its a priori axioms, and then in becoming “physics” it adds its physics-relevant a posteriori postulates. “Economics,” by contrast, stays “economics” through that same transition. (Note: “Axioms,” under my definition, are by definition a priori, which means that the phrasing “a priori axiom” is redundant. In the same way, “postulates” are by definition a posteriori, which means that the phrasing “a posteriori postulate” is redundant.)
3. However, analogous to the distinction between “mathematics” and physics” can be made the distinction between “praxeology” and “economics.”
4. Each axiom is either true or false—actually, it may be better to say that each axiom is either coherent or incoherent—in that each axiom is either (a) “fundamental” or not and (b) a priori true or not—i.e. coherent or not. The postulates, on the other hand, are chosen relatively freely, for a system of postulates can describe either reality or a hypothetical; a system of postulates, as long as each postulate is “fundamental,” can be a coherently counterfactual system made out of the minimal number of assumptions. Axioms, being minimal a priori assumptions, have no conceivable alternatives, whereas postulates, being minimal a posteriori assumptions, do have conceivable alternatives.
5. From the axioms and postulates come the theorems. From something “minimal” comes something “maximal.”
6. Mathematics is the pure logic of space and time, number and shape. In other words, mathematics is the a priori foundation of any a posteriori field involving space, time, number, or shape. What’s praxeology, then? I’d say that praxeology is the pure logic of action, i.e. the a priori foundation of any a posteriori field involving action. That is, mathematics is to physics (and some other fields) as praxeology is to economics (i.e., the study of money), linguistics (i.e., the study of words), etc.
7. Note, though, that with good enough notation people may start to think of praxeology as part of mathematics.
8. To use pure reason is to reason purely from the a priori. Mathematics and praxeology, then, are exercises in pure reason.
9. An impressive feat of redundancy: “The pure theory of action, i.e. praxeology, partakes of apodictic certainty, gets its truth a priori, and makes use of axioms only (with no postulates).”
10. Mises talks about the importance of using “imaginary constructions.” Interestingly, an “imaginary construction” is a counterfactual postulate.
11. Consider the distinctions between (a) “reason” and “experience” and (b) “rationalism” and “empiricism.”
12. An a priori truth comes “prior” to experience, and an a posteriori truth comes “posterior” to experience.

1. Consider the following proposition: “Cats eat mice.” How we can make more explicit the prediction inherent in that proposition? “If you see a cat and a mouse together, then you’re likely to see the cat chase and try to eat the mouse.” That conversion makes the proposition (i.e., the belief) “pay rent,” yes. But it doesn’t convert truth to utility—consider here the classic discussion with Jason about whether truth is ultimately just utility. After all, you may not care one way or another what happens when you see a cat and a mouse together. Utility only comes into play once you try to use the (purported) truth of the proposition that cats eat mice.
2. We must of course distinguish between speaking truthfully and speaking usefully.
3. People who are concerned above all with what’s useful for them in the short term—i.e., selfish, hedonistic people—are the least concerned with truth.
4. If you read the classics in multiple languages, write for posterity, and travel the world, then you’re more likely to find the truth than a monoglot who stays in one place and debates about current events. More abstractly: Truth is perspective-neutral. The people who are the most truth-oriented are those who take into account the widest variety of perspectives (e.g., different languages, different eras).
5. How we categorize is of course a matter of utility, and thus every proposition, no matter how supposedly wertfrei, will have snuck into it at least one utility-related implication. For example, consider the following proposition: “Lemons have seeds.” The word “lemon,” which is mutually exclusive with, say, the word “orange,” implies that there’s some kind of claimed utility difference between the range of phenomena 🍋 and the range of phenomena 🍊—a different kind of being may well not see the point in differentiating the two. That notwithstanding, though: Truth can be nevertheless untangled from utility because, e.g., the proposition “lemons have seeds” is true whether anybody cares about the indifference range 🍋 or not.
6. That is: The proposition “lemons have seeds” is the prediction that if you open a lemon, then you’ll find seeds. It’s a separate question whether anybody would care or not.
7. Some people check utility on a shorter timescale, and other people check utility on a longer timescale. Personally, I’m comfortable following a path of inquiry for months or even years without asking what I’m going to get out of it.
8. Purported truth: (a) A cat living in your house as the cause, and (b) the mice living in your house getting killed as the effect. Consider next the same purported truth except mixed with purported utility: (a) A cat living in your house as the means, and (b) the mice living in your house getting killed as the ends. The only difference here is between cause and effect and means and ends. If you don’t care whether there are mice in your house or not, then the proposition “cats eat mice” is a useless truth. But if you do care, and you want the mice gone, then that same proposition goes from a mere understanding of perspective-neutral cause and effect to cause-as-means, effect-as-ends.

1. Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Semiotics, by contrast, is the scientific study of anything symbolic, whether natural language or not. For example, linguistics doesn’t study the artificial languages of logic and mathematics, but semiotics does.
2. What’s the significance of the distinction in linguistics between “natural language” and “artificial language?” What about the related distinctions between “children” and “adults,” “natives” and “foreigners”?
3. To think like a linguist is to bring a logical or mathematical mind to the analysis of “intuition,” the structure of natural language being isomorphic to the structure of “intuition.”
4. In practice, linguistics is often the scientific study of folk physics, folk psychology, etc.

1. In using phenomenalism to check whether we’re using language meaningfully, there’s the problem of how we can be said to mean so much more than we ever actually think. For example, how can we be said to mean the whole range of color associated with the word “black” even though, practically speaking, we’d only think of a handful of particular shades when saying the word?
2. The answer is that the meaning of a word (1) isn’t to be found only in what’s immediately present—only in what’s immediately introspectable due to being present to the “mind’s eye”—(2) nor is it to be found even in the aggregate of all that’s been present or introspectable to the individual across time; instead, (3) it’s to be found in the group—in the aggregate of all that’s been present or introspectable to all of the individuals involved across time. If a language evolves a word, then that word is presumably a common-enough indifference range. If one individual asks for “coffee,” and then another individual gives them something different than what they actually thought of, but they’re nevertheless no less satisfied, then neither individual will find any reason to change to using a different word.