Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Listen! The Lord is calling to the city—
    and to fear your name is wisdom—
    “Heed the rod and the One who appointed it.
Am I still to forget your ill-gotten treasures, you wicked house,
    and the short ephah, which is accursed?
Shall I acquit someone with dishonest scales,
    with a bag of false weights?

• Micah 6:9-11

The field commander said to them, “Tell Hezekiah:
“‘This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: On what are you basing this confidence of yours?  You say you have counsel and might for war—but you speak only empty words. On whom are you depending, that you rebel against me?  Look, I know you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it! Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who depend on him.  But if you say to me, “We are depending on the Lord our God”—isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, “You must worship before this altar”?
“‘Come now, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them!  How then can you repulse one officer of the least of my master’s officials, even though you are depending on Egypt for chariots and horsemen?  Furthermore, have I come to attack and destroy this land without the Lord?  The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.’”
Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah said to the field commander, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it.  Don’t speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.”
But the commander replied, “Was it only to your master and you that my master sent me to say these things, and not to the people sitting on the wall—who, like you, will have to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine?”
Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!  This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you.  He cannot deliver you!  Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the Lord when he says, ‘The Lord will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’

• Isaiah 36:4-15

Then the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, the people of Israel have become dross to me; all of them are the copper, tin, iron and lead left inside a furnace. They are but the dross of silver. Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘Because you have all become dross, I will gather you into Jerusalem. As silver, copper, iron, lead and tin are gathered into a furnace to be melted with a fiery blast, so will I gather you in my anger and my wrath and put you inside the city and melt you. I will gather you and I will blow on you with my fiery wrath, and you will be melted inside her. As silver is melted in a furnace, so you will be melted inside her, and you will know that I the Lord have poured out my wrath on you.’”

• Ezekiel 22:17-22

“Bernard Mandeville was a Dutch philosopher, satirist, and physician, who made his home in London. His best-known work, The Fable of Bees (1729) concerns a hive of industrious bees which, when suddenly made virtuous, stop working and go and live quietly in a nearby tree. Its central argument is that the only way any society can progress is through vice, and that virtues are lies employed by the ruling elite to subdue the lower classes. Economic growth, stated Mandeville, stems only from the individual’s ability to satisfy his greed. His ideas are often seen as the forerunners to the theories of Adam Smith in the 18th century.”

• Sam Atkinson (senior editor), The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained

For those confused by the title, it should be “We Are Busy,” but “are” is a form of the verb “to be” so I morphed “are” to “bees” to mock Mandeville’s fable.  Some who do not speak English might be confused.  Sorry.

Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) was a Dutch philosopher.  His philosophy was offensive in his day, and since then it has been described as false, cynical, and degrading.  My post on Adam Smith was entitled Self-Interest and the Bargain, since Mandeville is considered the forerunner of his theories.

The three Scriptures are interesting.  Micah and Ezekiel create bookends for the story of how God rescued the people of Jerusalem in the times of Hezekiah.  God lures the people to the seeming security of the city and then some great army lays siege of the city.  Gather everyone together and away from their source of food and then starve them to death.  Look at the lengthy sieges in history and starvation killed more than the sword or the bombs.

But I look at the premise of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees and it simply makes no sense.  The bees gain virtue and then decide that they do not need to work anymore.

Mandeville has confused virtue with class status.  Maybe in his time, that resembled the case, but God instills in each of our hearts that sense of right and wrong.  Those virtues are self-evident.  When we think that you have to be royalty or rich to have virtue, it lowers the common man to that of an animal.  Of course, that is where Adam Smith refines the points Mandeville wrote down.  We apply our own self-interest, regardless of virtue or what is right, even for the person in question, and then you bargain to gain such advantage to obtain your self-interest.  It becomes a philosophy of barbarism.

But I recently went back home to my hometown.  My brother-in-law had passed away.  The little town that I grew up in has turned into a town twice the square miles of my youth and three times the number of people.  And what is now houses upon houses was farmland when I was small.

The farms failed.  The only way to make a living farming was to have a mega-farm.  You could either go to work for the big farmer, usually a gentleman farmer who only visited the farm once a year (and has no knowledge of which plant is a watermelon plant and which is a sweet potato plant), or you could sell out to the big farmer and go to work in town at one of the many factories that keep springing up, then closing down when the manufacturer learns that it is cheaper to make the goods in Monterrey, Mexico.

I have been to Monterrey, Mexico and the ride from the airport to the downtown hotel drives by every big “USA” manufacturer that you can think of.  Every factory with a wall around it, with gun turrets and armed guards.

So, now the poor people have no land to plant a family garden and no job either.  At what point does anarchy set in.

The industrial revolution started not long after Mandeville’s death.  I am not saying that we are returning to the pre-industrial revolution serfdom where you have to be rich to even have virtue, but I have seen the results of the riots and protests of my youth (hard to tell them apart most of the time).  The counterculture rejected the work-a-day lifestyle of their parents, but most fell into the same trap when they found themselves going nowhere.  The family unit collapsed.  The moral code blurred to the point of nonexistence.  And to some degree, virtue totally left the building. The rich would do anything (legal or illegal) just to make the next dollar.  The poor would steal the dollar, if they could.

And the virtuous person ends up working for one and giving any spare dollar to the other.

But now, I have lowered myself into the cynicism that Mandeville was known for.

But I reject that cynicism.  God is in control, and I may not see any tangible fruits of my labors in this life, but God has my back.  And He gives me what I need.  I have virtue, and the rich man cannot buy it from me and the poor man cannot steal it.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.