Merry Christmas!

Polanyi, Lewis, and Triathlons

Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!

Here we are “as in olden days, happy golden days of yore.”

I find the Christmas season to be a wonderful time of year – full of hope and also nostalgia. But sometimes the nostalgia has a tinge of sadness as I remember happy seasons that will not come again because of irreversible changes in life – the nostalgia of childhood or first shopping in high school with my siblings for Christmas presents or having long stretches at home with my family during college breaks.

Now a major question has become how do we hold Christmas celebration in ways that honor God and that our children will look back on fondly? I’ve been reading C. S. Lewis’ Four Loves lately and one of the lines he uses several times to explain how different loves can go bad is that when love becomes a god, he becomes a demon. Without going into too much detail (yet), part of how I read that line is that we ought to be careful not to put “too much weight” on things that cannot bear it or were not made to bear it. This is true in relationships. Expecting far more of someone than we should in terms of conversation or hanging out or understanding us inevitably leads to disappointment. This is true of events and seasons.

So while Christmas is a wonderful season, it’s important not to put too much weight or expectation on it or on the day. Thankfulness and gratitude can temper potentially unrealistic or unreasonable expectations and hopes. God has come into the world as a man, and we live in light of that no matter what day of the year it is. And it also gives us a reason to celebrate anytime, not only on holidays.

Personal Update

Life these past few weeks has been a bit busier than I expected. Kathryn took a longer trip to Alaska than we had planned to help her parents. I had the kids for about five days a couple weeks ago. Fortunately, the younger ones are starting to play well together for long periods of time and the older ones have a decent amount of school to keep them busy. We survived and I got a few things done (and took some days off).

On the personal front, I’ve been training pretty hard for a triathlon in January. Although my general fitness is pretty good, I’ve started doing a couple long workouts each week of swimming, then biking, then running – building up towards those distances so that my body is used to the specific activities. Today, for example, I swam 1800 yards, biked just over 13 miles, and ran three miles.

In 2017 I did a sprint triathlon with a friend in Minneapolis, but I haven’t done one since. This upcoming triathlon will be the “Olympic” length, which means a .93 mile swim (~1600 yards), a 25 mile cycle, and a 6.2 mile run. While finishing it in under three hours is my basic goal, I think at a low elevation and with good conditions (and assuming I don’t injure myself in the next couple of weeks), there is a chance I’ll break two hours and thirty minutes.

Bookshelf

I just finished up Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge. It is a good book, but not for everyone. Nor are all the chapters equally compelling. In fact, I found the fourth part of the book a little disappointing. In it, Polanyi tries to ground his epistemology in biology. I realize that probably sounds strange – it makes more sense if you follow his arguments about systems, complexity, and meaning.

Still, I didn’t find it very satisfying. His criticisms of behaviorism and determinism (and materialist objectivism) are good, but what he offers instead seems a bit empty. In grounding his views in biology, he spends a great deal of time talking about evolution – which he calls a “fact.” This is not the time or place to litigate the nuances of evolutionary claims and evidence, but I was surprised at how matter-of-factly Polanyi embraces a general evolutionary account after he has spent hundreds of pages caveating the limits and confidence we should place in our knowledge.

Yet he doesn’t seem very happy with most evolutionists’ reasoning. He repeatedly talks about the need for a directing force or purpose behind evolution – suggesting a kind of deistic model. From his weird comments about theology and the nature of belief, I think we can probably rule him out as an orthodox Christian. But who knows?

Still, Personal Knowledge is an excellent exploration of the limits and nature of knowledge. Polanyi offers many valuable insights about discovery, inquiry, community, knowledge, and the nature of personal commitment to our lives. If you don’t want to wrestle through the dense text, listen to our podcast instead! Once it is published that is…

Or you can read my summaries of:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Writing

I wrote a letter to my local paper last week about how the city council should moderate its budget growth in the future. It increased its 2025 budget by nearly 11% over the 2024 budget – and they plan on drawing about $200,000 from the city’s reserve fund to cover a projected deficit. I also sent off two short pieces, one about modern monetary theory and the other about whether Gen Z has gotten a raw economic deal with high house and car prices.

In addition to short pieces about problems experienced by children of elites and a piece about DEI/ESG in 2025, this week I hope to finish up a short academic piece about Christianity, economics, and public policy. In it, I describe the difference between technical economics and philosophical economics. Technical economics gives us important insight into how the world works, but it also struggles to explain certain kinds of phenomena under certain conditions.

Here are three pieces on environmental issues I wrote that came out in late November:

1. Green policies fuel riches for elites, pain for the rest; The Blaze

2. The Real Climate Change Disaster; The American Spectator

3. Republicans should reform America’s environmental policy; Washington Examiner

Reflection

There was a big political ruckus last week when Elon Musk and Trump shot down a continuing resolution bill to keep the government open. Musk’s argument was that this CR included way too much spending and complication – especially a hundred billion additional dollars in relief fund for hurricane victims as well as an additional thirty billion for FEMA and hundreds of other pages. Cutting out the extra spending alone would have saved over $300 per person in the U. S. and over a $1000 per taxpayer.

Unfortunately, neither of those line items were removed from the final bill. Musk’s torpedoing of the first CR just made the Democrats more serious about getting what they could (and they always want more spending), and so they voted in force to pass the CR just after midnight last Friday. This tells me:

1) that there are some interesting dynamics going on with Musk and DOGE

2) when it comes to Congress, “business as usual” in DC may not change all that much in 2025

Where we have change, though, is in political and social “vibes” since Trump was re-elected. Left-leaning governments around the world are collapsing or in trouble (Germany, France, Canada, etc.). And in the U. S., Trump is basking in the highest approval he’s had since entering politics. Transgender ideology is in retreat (and will likely suffer an additional setback from the Supreme Court in 2025), DEI has been rolled back by public companies employing millions of people, and ESG is in retreat in finance and corporate board rooms as well.

Of course, this is no reason for complacency. Plenty of work remains to be done. But it is remarkable how much public sentiment has changed, and how quickly.

Game Corner

This week I’ll briefly talk about a nontraditional “game,” ColorKu. As the name suggests, this game is similar to Sudoku – but with several compelling advantages. First, the aesthetics are better. The colors and tactile experience of placing wooden balls on the board is very satisfying. I’ve played Sudoku in the past, but it is not my go-to puzzle activity. ColorKu often is.

The second, even greater, advantage is that a large physical board allows two or more people to work on the same puzzle simultaneously. This allows more cooperation, makes impasses shorter, and adds a verbal element to calculation and reasoning.

If you hate traditional Sudoku, this game probably isn’t for you. But if you enjoy a good Sudoku puzzle now and then, but are looking for a more social (and beautiful) experience that others can share, I definitely recommend Colorku.