The Invisible Order

If you're literary and your writing needs some order, there's always The Invisible Order for libertarian editorial solutions.

Civilization, Capital, and the Moral Order in The Road

There is an excellent piece at mises.org on The Apocalyptic Vision of The Road, which reviews Cormac McCarthy's book The Road. Ben O'Neill analyzes the disappearance of the moral order and the varieties of capital in the novel.

Cormac McCarthy is also the author of All the Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, and several other novels. He is also a trustee and writer-in-residence at the Santa Fe Institute, an important center for the study of complexity, and which has been one of the main drivers in the push for complexity economics, of which Austrian economics is a long-time contributor. So it should perhaps not surprise anyone that one can find good economics in his novels. Just be ready for a very dark read.

Elaine Scarry on the Literary Order and the Moral Order

Elaine Scarry on how the literary order affects and contributes to the formation of the moral order. The more literate we became, the more moral people became. How does this happen? Scarry suggests it comes about because of literature's

invitation to empathy, its reliance on deliberative thought, and its beauty.

She argues that Medieval literature gave rise to new institutions -- and as any Austrian economist will tell you, institutions matter for what kind of spontaneous orders will emerge.

The entire essay is very intersting and very thought-provoking.
________________
Update: PJ Manney makes this argument too, in 2006, in Empathy in the Time of Technology: How Storytelling is the Key to Empathy. HT: PJ Manney

Call for Papers

January 1, 2013 will see the release of the inaugural issue of "Developments in Spontaneous Orders: A Journal of Diversity, Globalization, and Entrepreneurship," a peer-reviewed journal of the EDGE Center, a social science research center at UT-Dallas.

We are seeking papers for our inaugural issue on our journal's theme(s):

• Spontaneous Orders
• Entrepreneurship
• Diversity
• Globalization
• Science and Technology

We encourage all scholars interested in exploring how the above themes can help us better understand our social world to consider submitting original academic papers. Acceptable papers can range from case studies to theoretical explorations.

Since this is an online journal, we are accepting papers year-round. Papers will be published two at a time throughout the year, with each issue consisting of a year's worth of papers. To have a paper considered for publication on the release date, please submit by Oct. 1, 2012

Manuscripts should be sent as Microsoft Word attachments via email to zatavu1@aol.com. Manuscripts submitted to this journal should not have been published elsewhere and should not simultaneously be submitted to another journal.

Please be sure that the first page of your manuscript contains the title of the article, the names and affiliations of all authors, any notes or acknowledgments, as well as, the complete mailing addresses of all authors. The second page should contain no author information as well as an abstract of no more than 150 words and 5 to 7 keywords.

Manuscripts should be Times New Roman 12 font. We are an interdisciplinary journal, and the writing must be intelligible to the professional reader who is not a specialist in any particular field. Manuscripts that do not conform to these requirements and the following manuscript format may be returned to the author prior to review for correction.

Papers should be between 8,000 and 11,000 words in length. The entire manuscript should be double spaced.

I encouarge everyone to spread the word and to freely repost this call for papers.

 

Troy Camplin, Ph.D.

Senior Fellow, EDGE Center

Editor, Developments in Spontaneous Orders: A Journal of Diversity, Globalization, and Entrepreneurship
zatavu1@aol.com