Apologies for my radio silence this past week. Before I get to that. Let me first introduce some bonus material: a few weeks ago I gave a 30 mins talk on the origin of liberalism in Santiago Chile at an event celebrating Adam Smith at 300 years *here
Like every other term in public discourse, "crisis" is used sloppily, and without much regard to its central meaning. Still, I think it does refer to a situation in which a decisive turning point is to be expected: in the case of global heating, a view that we will either decarbonize by some impending date like 2030, or else suffer catastrophic consequences. I wouldn't think of referring to, say, poverty in the US, or long-standing dictatorships in lots of places as involving a crisis. These are bad things, which, we suppose will persist indefinitely unless some decisive action is taken.
And, it is the latter class of problem, I think where the rationalist wants to do something and the (Oakeshott-style) conservative wants to leave ill enough alone. By contrast, in a crisis, there is no choice about whether to do something and not much time to figure out what to do.
Like every other term in public discourse, "crisis" is used sloppily, and without much regard to its central meaning. Still, I think it does refer to a situation in which a decisive turning point is to be expected: in the case of global heating, a view that we will either decarbonize by some impending date like 2030, or else suffer catastrophic consequences. I wouldn't think of referring to, say, poverty in the US, or long-standing dictatorships in lots of places as involving a crisis. These are bad things, which, we suppose will persist indefinitely unless some decisive action is taken.
And, it is the latter class of problem, I think where the rationalist wants to do something and the (Oakeshott-style) conservative wants to leave ill enough alone. By contrast, in a crisis, there is no choice about whether to do something and not much time to figure out what to do.