RPTM Podcast Episode Forty-One: Chinese Prostitutes, Black Whiskey, and Bleeding Kansas

In the 2003 documentary "The Mindscape of Alan Moore," Comic book writer Alan Moore lays out his feelings on conspiracy theories:

"The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening; nobody is in control. The world is rudderless."

And yes, conspiracies can be dangerous, misleading, or outright dumb in the wrong hands. But this fear is also applied unfairly to historical studies. What if there were no gatekeepers? Or, to quote Alan Moore again: "who watches the watchmen?" 

Spontaneous order is the unexpected emergence of order out of seeming chaos. It is generally used to explain the emergence of varied social orders in human social grids from the demeanor of a mixture of self-interested people who are not deliberately trying to create order through planning. Examples of systems that developed through spontaneous order include the evolution of life on Earth, the Internet, a free-market economy, and in our current perspective, history. In the words of Macho Man Randy Savage in an interview in 1987 on Prime Time Wrestling, "the cream rises to the top." 

Spontaneous orders are scale-free webs, while institutions are ordered grids. While organizations are created and controlled by specific individuals or groups, spontaneous orders are created and maintained by no one in particular. In history, spontaneous order is defined as the result of human actions, not of human design.

Critics say the foundations of this type of thinking are so disconnected because the concept of spontaneous order lacks distinctness and inner framing. And that the theory's constituents lack intentionality, the significance of fundamental or worthwhile understanding, and the natural selection of competitive practices. The idea has also been criticized for not proposing a moral argument, and the overall perspective includes clashing strands that never seek to conform to systematically.

But I'm here to counter that, albeit in a shorter version. This is a subject I plan to attack at more extraordinary lengths, but I'll kick that can down the road for now. The central planners that design our textbooks have the arduous job of condensing history into a nice and neat 16-week course. They perform vivisection on our past, removing events that they deem vestigial. But we need to ask ourselves if these events are purposely hidden from us? Is it a coincidence most have never heard of the Tulsa massacre until the Watchmen television show? Despite the best efforts to keep certain events hidden, the collective never forgets. And with the digital age in full swing, our ability to spread the truth is like poison ivy to the powers that be.

The Cream always rises to the top.

HIGHLIGHTS

• People v. Hall, the California Supreme Court case that denied the rights of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans to testify against white citizens. Ah Toy was an American prostitute and madam in San Francisco, California, and purportedly the first Chinese prostitute in San Francisco during the California Gold Rush.
• Seneca Village was a 19th-century settlement of primarily African American landowners in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, within what would become present-day Central Park. 
• Nathan "Nearest" Green the first African-American master distiller on record in the United States. He was reportedly instrumental in developing the Lincoln County Process, the sugar maple charcoal filtering method used to make most Tennessee Whiskey.
• Bleeding Kansas describes the period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces following the creation of the new territory of Kansas in 1854. In all, some 55 people were killed between 1855 and 1859. The struggle intensified the ongoing debate over the future of slavery in the United States and served as a pivotal precursor to the Civil War.
• James Buchanan was an American lawyer, diplomat and politician who served as the 15th president of the United States from 1857 to 1861. Buchanan was speculated to be homosexual. 

CHAPTERS
0:37 Intro
4:09 People v. Hall
8:49 Seneca Village
19:04 Uncle Nearest
23:01 Bleeding Kansas
29:44 James Buchanan
33:22 Outro

RESOURCES
People v. Hall
AH TOY
Seneca Village
Seneca Village a Story of Removing Black People from the Land to Build a Park- Central Park of Manhattan
Nathan "Nearest" Green
Bleeding Kansas
JAMES BUCHANAN
15. James Buchanan