In my late teens, I suddenly started buying a lot of books, thousands of dollars worth of books in fact. I eventually sold most of them, keeping the ones especially in the traditions of Austrian economics (with Ludwig von Mises being at the center for me) and British empiricism (with David Hume being at the center). What distinguished, then, for me, Austrian economics and British empiricism, from everything else? What distinguished Mises and Hume from everybody else? My interest at that time was in designing an artificial language, which no school of thought in linguistics helped me do, at least no school of thought in linguistics that I knew about. When I started reading Mises and Hume, I immediately understood that:

1. Misesian economics was the best model science for linguistics.
2. Humean philosophy was the best foundation for Misesian economics (the empiricist-rationalist controversy notwithstanding) and in turn for “Misesian” linguistics.

What distinguished Mises and Hume from everybody else was:

1. How deep their foundational work was
2. How well their systems fit together (with my goal being to put Misesian economics on a Humean foundation and then build “Misesian” linguistics on that foundation)

With Mises and Hume as my inspiration, I threw myself into foundational work and system building. It was only later that I learned how hostile the present age is to that kind of ambition. I’ve found myself out of place.

My reaction has been not only to swim against the current of the present age but also to ask why the current is flowing in the direction that it is: against foundational work and system building.

My understanding, which is admittedly nascent, is that there was a boom in Western confidence in the late-19th and early-20th centuries and a bust in the mid-to-late-20th century (after the 1960s), which correlated, interestingly, with the rise and fall of cigarettes. It was starting in the 1880s that cigarettes were first successfully industrialized—a man named “James Bonsack” patented the first cigarette-rolling machine in 1881, supposedly—and it was starting in the 1960s that cigarettes were first successfully stigmatized. Confidence boomed and busted, that is, in correlation with the rise and fall of cigarettes.

The boom and bust in confidence also correlated with the World Wars, which were ultimately catastrophic. Nationalistic pride and ambition led to war, and then the war led to catastrophe; humility “rescued” the winners and losers alike.

The boom in confidence led to foundational work and system building, often with the goal being to make society anew, and then the bust led to the opposite.