California Governor Gavin Newsom and President Biden are using the force of government to implement economic and green-energy plans that can only lead to suffering — if not disaster — for their citizens. These men — filled with delusions of grandeur in seeking a utopian society while making their mark in history — actually suffer from the deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance that culminates in “chronological snobbery.”
What is chronological snobbery? Chronological implies that it will have something to do with time. A snob is someone who thinks of himself in higher standing than he really is. Newsom and Biden are chronological snob poster boys.
A chronological snob thinks of himself as more advanced than people from previous eras simply because people are more “advanced” now than they were then. The author C.S. Lewis used the term to refer to himself. Lewis defined chronological snobbery as, “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.” In other words, anything from the past should be considered second-rate to those things of the present.
When Lewis wrote this, he was an atheist and thought that the sciences had overcome the need for religion to explain the world, and because of this, he thought of himself as better than everybody in the past who believed in religion, most notably those in the Medieval period. Doesn’t this sound quite like all the green-energy fanatics when it comes to their pretzel logic-based science that lacks any first principles?
What are first principles? A first principle is a premise that cannot be deduced any further. Over two thousand years ago, Aristotle defined a first principle as “the first basis from which a thing is known.”
“First principles” thinking is a fancy way of saying “think like a scientist.” Scientists don’t assume anything. They start with questions: What are we absolutely sure is true? What has been proven? First principles are basic or self-evident.
The recent news of power-grid issues in California and elsewhere, along with the draconian implementation of newly imposed electric-vehicle laws, demonstrates to even the least informed person that Biden and Newsom are fools — especially seeing that they truly think their green-energy agendas can be successfully accomplished as they attempt to save the world from the evils of climate change.
Their lack of critical thinking to promote innovation and unwillingness to use first principles to fulfill the energy needs their green-energy plans will require shows that they are chronological snobs whose names will forever live in infamy versus reverence. All at what cost? The power infrastructure of the United States is far from sufficient to handle our current power needs, let alone the needs of a “green energy” driven nation.
Electric-vehicle pioneer Elon Musk is one fine example of a critical thinker who used first principles to innovate and develop what is now SpaceX. According to Atomic Habits author James Clear, when Musk began his quest to send the first rocket to Mars,
He ran into a major challenge right off the bat. After visiting a number of aerospace manufacturers around the world, Musk discovered the cost of purchasing a rocket was astronomical — up to $65 million. Given the high price, he began to rethink the problem.
“I tend to approach things from a physics framework,” Musk said in an interview. “Physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. So, I said, okay, let’s look at the first principles. What is a rocket made of? Aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, plus some titanium, copper, and carbon fiber. Then I asked, what is the value of those materials on the commodity market? It turned out that the materials cost of a rocket was around two percent of the typical price.”
Instead of buying a finished rocket for tens of millions, Musk decided to create his own company, purchase the raw materials for cheap, and build the rockets himself. SpaceX was born.
Within a few years, SpaceX had cut the price of launching a rocket by nearly 10x while still making a profit. Musk used first principles thinking to break the situation down to the fundamentals, bypass the high prices of the aerospace industry, and create a more effective solution.
There was a time when the United States led the world in the innovation and discovery that created many of the luxuries of everyday life that we now take for granted. All of this came from the great inventors and thinkers who used “first principle” thinking processes to achieve success.
Today, it is self-evident that our current government and many of our elected leaders need to pursue first principles in all they do, especially when their actions lead to major changes that will affect our lives forever regarding such basics as energy and food production.
Our nation is suffering from chronological snobs like Biden and his ilk who are more consumed than ever with the “Great Reset” narrative, and it is up to us to remove them from power and support new leaders who understand and practice first principles.
It’s time we govern and innovate with common-sense and first-principles thinking — which is no more than the act of boiling a process down to the fundamental parts that we know are true and building up from there.
It’s that simple.
