- Feb 5, 2002
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The more complex our social arrangements are, the more effort is needed to keep them running. This belonged to the common sense of social life long before it was codified in physics as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Living creatures die; so do cities, nations, and civilizations.
The principle is true even when our social arrangements harmonize with the inclinations of our nature. For example, human nature is made with a view to marriage, friendship, and family life. We seek them, and we go to great lengths to maintain them. Even so, all sorts of things can go wrong with them. Marriages may unravel. Friends may fall out. Family members may become estranged.
But the principle is especially true when our arrangements are contrary to the inclinations of our nature, and we are trying to compensate for the tension. To give but a single example, this is why socialism has never worked. People are not utterly selfish, but neither are they entirely unselfish, especially toward strangers. As G.K. Chesterton remarked, utopian schemes “take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon.”
Continued below.
The principle is true even when our social arrangements harmonize with the inclinations of our nature. For example, human nature is made with a view to marriage, friendship, and family life. We seek them, and we go to great lengths to maintain them. Even so, all sorts of things can go wrong with them. Marriages may unravel. Friends may fall out. Family members may become estranged.
But the principle is especially true when our arrangements are contrary to the inclinations of our nature, and we are trying to compensate for the tension. To give but a single example, this is why socialism has never worked. People are not utterly selfish, but neither are they entirely unselfish, especially toward strangers. As G.K. Chesterton remarked, utopian schemes “take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon.”
Continued below.
