The Moneyball Method — Excerpt 8A
Free Will
When a child is born, the world must seem chaotic, but reality is certain. Born with marvelous sensory perception, it still takes time and effort to process the information and classify everything. For a child, responsible and intelligent adults (ideally his father and mother) are essential for bringing security and order to their baby’s world, but its mind must act and do the work. In fact, the hallmarks of childhood are the independence and pride that come from doing things for themselves.
Children also need to be taught how to think — the rules of logic, concept formation and proving ideas with realistic evidence. It never ends, or shouldn’t. And as Romantic novelist Victor Hugo explains, knowledge has a beginning, “Such are inventors. When one cannot discover America, one discovers a little wagon. At least it is something.”[1] From childhood to adulthood, from perception to propositions, the possibilities are boundless when the learning fire stays lit.
Even so, if that spirit is paralyzed by progressive education and its postmodern philosophers, Americans and Western civilization will rot from within. Look around, but for the rest of us, novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand offers hope, “The middle class has created an antidote which is perhaps the most hopeful movement of recent years: the spontaneous, unorganized, grass-roots revival of the Montessori system of education — a system aimed at the development of a child’s cognitive, i.e. rational faculty.”[2] If the childhood delight in learning becomes a lifelong ambition and is combined with purposeful action, anyone can realize their heroic potential.
For this author, spending 30 hours a week with an exuberant infant turned toddler while writing this book is convincing proof. The key is to protect their independence and pride while teaching them cause and effect, individual rights, long-term thinking, cultural opportunities and about certain threats to them all. For that, heroic role models are priceless.
During the progressive rock era of the 1970s and 80s, the Canadian power trio Rush released their album titled 2112. It was 1976 and its lyrics belong to Neil Peart, whose spirit left us on January 7, 2020. With his bandmates Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, the theme of the recording is a dystopian future in which the individual had become enslaved to the forces of totalitarianism. The album’s liner notes conclude, “With acknowledgment to the genius of Ayn Rand.” © 1976 Mercury Records © 1976 Anthem Entertainment.” For reference, Anthem is also the title of a novella published by Rand in 1937.
Considered the greatest drummer of his generation, Neil Peart was not compliant. As he once told an interviewer, “Howard Roark stood as a role model for me — as exactly the way I was already living.”[3] Roark is the fictional hero in Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel, The Fountainhead and its exemplar for independence and integrity. Making it real, Peart once told an interviewer, “It’s about being your own hero. I set out to never betray the values that 16-year-old had, to never sell out, to never bow to the man.” [4] Known to his bandmates as The Professor, Peart’s writing and musicianship prove that literature can be a great teacher.
His attitude was to become the best drummer he could be. Not just for Rush, but in all contemporary music, “What is a master but a master student? And if that’s true, then there’s a responsibility on you to keep getting better and to explore avenues of your profession.”[5] To underscore learning as a life-long virtue, psychology professor Edwin Locke adds,
“Developing conceptual knowledge and skill (e.g., language skills) requires thousands of hours of focused effort and practice. The same is true for many physical skills (e.g., playing a musical instrument). For people to remain purposeful, learning continues throughout life.”[6]
2112 was also a protest album of sorts. Rush was offering the pro-reason solution to a society that had decivilized, as described by this lyric from Part III — Discovery, “I know it’s most unusual. To come before you so. But I’ve found an ancient miracle. I thought that you should know. Listen to my music. And hear what it can do. There’s something here as strong as life. I know that it will reach you.”[7] Like another relic discovered in Rand’s Anthem novella, the “strong as life” reference was to an ancient guitar from their society’s civilized, productive past.
For Anthem and 2112, the old inventions were dangerous in their new, dystopian context because they grew from the tree of knowledge, reason and truth. On point, both stories illustrate today’s postmodern ethical chaos in which the vices of public service and forced equality have become virtues. The purpose of these inversions is to mask the ultimate threat to any authoritarian regime, as Rush’s 1980 hit song Free Will attests,
“You can choose a ready guide. In some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide. You still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears. And kindness that can kill. I will choose a path that’s clear. I will choose free will.”[8]
If nothing is certain and no one is perfect, kindness that kills will naturally trickle down to cultural norms. In other words, conformity over independence and integrity. In evidence, state, media and church collectives today disguise mob violence as peaceful protest, oppressive regulation as saving democracy, fascism as anti-fascism and the price- fixing of medical, housing, education and money as freedom.
In the context of the traditional investing advice model, it is market forecasters that are the “ready guides.” Government policy makers are the “celestial voices.” Risks already discounted by the market’s price mechanism are “phantom fears.” And socially responsible investing and climate justice are “kindness that can kill.” In contrast, The Moneyball Method will choose a “path that’s clear,” and that begins with the values and aspirations that give meaning to each investor’s life. In that regard, Dr. Locke recommends, “Without the guidance of conscious purpose, one’s life simply goes out of control and reduces to chance.”[9]
[1] Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three, as translated by Lowell Bair, Bantam Books, 1962.
[2] Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, 1982. Page 261.
[3] Scott Bullock, Liberty Magazine, September 1997.
[4] Jeff Hayden, Inc. Magazine, January 11, 2020.
[5] Longreads, January 19, 2021. Rolling Stone, 2012.
[6] Edwin A. Locke, The Illusion of Determinism, 2017. Page 27.
[7] Neil Peart, 2112 — Part III Discovery, 1976.
[8] Neil Peart, Permanent Waves — Free Will, 1980.
[9] Edwin A. Locke, The Illusion of Determinism, 2017. Page 26.
