I just wanted to say happy birthday to Ayn Rand. She was born on February 2, 1905. She's dead now, so my wishing her happy birthday has nothing to do with her personally. She'll never hear my wishes now. No, it has more to do with my hope for a future modeled on her sense of virtue, her sense of life. We are still so very far from that world. There are still so many sleeping their indolent dreams of empire while the gates are molding on their hinges. America is dying. It is our ignorance which is the poison in its veins. While the politicians wax pompous and self-important, our country is falling apart. Oh, yeah, you won't feel it for a while. America really was that powerful. It really was that great. There's still a lot of energy to bleed off. But as long as we stick our heads in the sand, let ourselves bleed out in denial of our wounds, America doesn't have much of a future ahead of it. I hope that my children, when I have them, may still be able to have enough opportunity to become educated and have access to a Montessori school so that their minds can evolve unmolested by those who would imprint their egos on the helpless minds of children...and would imprint them with only obedience. If America collapses completely into either the darkness of fascism or the darkness of communism, then a great light will have gone out of the world. And who can say when next it will be born anew? So Happy Birthday, Ayn. Atlas is shrugging and the socialists are choking on the ideal world of their own making. Maybe the rest of them will listen enough to what you had to say to learn something yet.
Cheers,
American Antitheist
Translator
Showing posts with label sacrifice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sacrifice. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Health Care...or Smoke and Mirrors in the Halls of Congress...
I haven't had a lot of time to write or even think about social issues much in recent weeks, so I apologize for the lengthy hiatus. New country, new job, new home, new car...lots of things needed sorting out. Someone brought to my attention their concerns over the current health care debate and I thought I would add my two cents.
It may sound wonderful to imagine a world where everyone has cheap affordable healthcare, but what does that mean, who pays for it, and can such a concept as insurance ever be universal? I think the left and the right both grossly oversimplify all the issues involved and selectively fail to see the viewpoint of one side or the other. It is not a question of class struggle. It is not a question of haves versus have-nots. To adopt such a delineation is to instantly put the debate in a socialist camp from the get-go. The question is, as always, individual liberty. Do you have a right to order a doctor around? Do you have the medical knowledge necessary to second-guess their decisions? Do you have the financial knowledge necessary to adjust a fiduciary table of risk and returns? If you do not, then you cannot be expected to be able to select a representative who could responsibly make such decisions either. And if they cannot make such decisions, then should anyone have the right to supersede the conscience of educated and trained professionals at the point of a gun?
When it comes to government involvement in anything, it must always come down to the governments entitlement to use force to enforce law. By expanding legislation, we expand the government's charter to use force against us. Unless there is a damn good reason for that, I will be opposed to any enlargement of federal authority. We have to assume that our professionals will be professional. If they misrepresent their services, lie, make false promotions, etc. they are already violating the law and no further legislation is necessary. New legislation is necessary to define the terms of homesteading new frontiers of human knowledge and territory and the disputes that inevitably come from them. It is not to regulate and direct our lives. I am 100% inflexible on this concept: Individual human rights are absolute and inviolate. But people do not have the right to someone else's labor, their effort, or their livelihood (even and especially including doctors, bankers, and teachers). If Obama truly wished to make healthcare affordable, then he should consider unwinding the Gordian knot that our government has steadily added to practically everything over the last hundred some odd years, rather then instigating irrational waves of panic to help slide through unwarranted and unnecessary controls on free movement and action (e.g. Pig Flu pandemic scare).
Altruism is what is killing us. I believe this now more than ever. If you could but accept that as a possibility, I think you would be amazed at how much of the human narrative comes into a clear and understandable focus. Also how much easier it is to make moral judgments, when those morals are derived from clearly defined concepts which are derived from perceptions and are adjudicated by the facts of human existence and not on arbitrary exhortations of "humanity" as a concept undefined. I listen to Obama speak and I realize that he classifies businessmen as outside the scope of "we" when he refers to "us" as Americans and "them" as the bankers on wall street. But does he accept responsibility for the fact that business could not collude with government if government was not involved in business? Just as government cannot collude with religion, when religion is properly and strictly separated from government. Just as the end to religious war was precipitated by the separation of church and state, so will the class wars be ended by the separation of government and economics. Politics, is the province of reaching a consensus on how to deal with the classical crimes, the classical criminals, to defending the rights of its citizens from enemies foreign and domestic, and for determining the terms by which new properties, both intellectual and real, will be negotiated between vying parties. Nothing else requires an official mandate. The rest, as they say, is up to us, to the professionals, the educated men and women who decide where to invest their resources. The risk is also ours. As is the responsibility. These are absolutes, unchanging through time. No civilized society can be sustained without them. As much as we may want somebody, anybody to promise us sweet things and remove the burden of that responsibility, all attempts to do so throughout history have ended in disaster. If it will, is no longer a question. The question is, if we will let it happen again.
That is a choice we all must make, but rest assured I hold no illusions about my ability to sway you to my way of thinking. I see things in black and white, because that is how clearly the consequences of a course of actions springs to mind. It is an issue of life and death. I have seen what happens to medicine in highly regulated countries. There are horror stories that you could not conceive of happening here. (Such as women dying in childbirth because the ambulance had to keep driving in circles for hours because no hospital could accept them. Why? Because the mish-mash of regulation on obstetrics had so strangled the industry that most doctor's felt it was safer to go into other specializations and the country found itself with a shortage of nursery units. Funny, huh? That's Japan, where they're supposedly worried about a decreasing population). But there is always a first time for everything I guess. Seen the waiting lines in Canada? THAT's where we'll be going and in short order.
I apologize in advance if I haven't dealt properly with all the possible arguments. But fundamentally, my problem is at the root of the assumption--i.e. that government should have anything to do with the choice in this matter. Thereafter is merely quibbling over details of implementation.
It may sound wonderful to imagine a world where everyone has cheap affordable healthcare, but what does that mean, who pays for it, and can such a concept as insurance ever be universal? I think the left and the right both grossly oversimplify all the issues involved and selectively fail to see the viewpoint of one side or the other. It is not a question of class struggle. It is not a question of haves versus have-nots. To adopt such a delineation is to instantly put the debate in a socialist camp from the get-go. The question is, as always, individual liberty. Do you have a right to order a doctor around? Do you have the medical knowledge necessary to second-guess their decisions? Do you have the financial knowledge necessary to adjust a fiduciary table of risk and returns? If you do not, then you cannot be expected to be able to select a representative who could responsibly make such decisions either. And if they cannot make such decisions, then should anyone have the right to supersede the conscience of educated and trained professionals at the point of a gun?
When it comes to government involvement in anything, it must always come down to the governments entitlement to use force to enforce law. By expanding legislation, we expand the government's charter to use force against us. Unless there is a damn good reason for that, I will be opposed to any enlargement of federal authority. We have to assume that our professionals will be professional. If they misrepresent their services, lie, make false promotions, etc. they are already violating the law and no further legislation is necessary. New legislation is necessary to define the terms of homesteading new frontiers of human knowledge and territory and the disputes that inevitably come from them. It is not to regulate and direct our lives. I am 100% inflexible on this concept: Individual human rights are absolute and inviolate. But people do not have the right to someone else's labor, their effort, or their livelihood (even and especially including doctors, bankers, and teachers). If Obama truly wished to make healthcare affordable, then he should consider unwinding the Gordian knot that our government has steadily added to practically everything over the last hundred some odd years, rather then instigating irrational waves of panic to help slide through unwarranted and unnecessary controls on free movement and action (e.g. Pig Flu pandemic scare).
Altruism is what is killing us. I believe this now more than ever. If you could but accept that as a possibility, I think you would be amazed at how much of the human narrative comes into a clear and understandable focus. Also how much easier it is to make moral judgments, when those morals are derived from clearly defined concepts which are derived from perceptions and are adjudicated by the facts of human existence and not on arbitrary exhortations of "humanity" as a concept undefined. I listen to Obama speak and I realize that he classifies businessmen as outside the scope of "we" when he refers to "us" as Americans and "them" as the bankers on wall street. But does he accept responsibility for the fact that business could not collude with government if government was not involved in business? Just as government cannot collude with religion, when religion is properly and strictly separated from government. Just as the end to religious war was precipitated by the separation of church and state, so will the class wars be ended by the separation of government and economics. Politics, is the province of reaching a consensus on how to deal with the classical crimes, the classical criminals, to defending the rights of its citizens from enemies foreign and domestic, and for determining the terms by which new properties, both intellectual and real, will be negotiated between vying parties. Nothing else requires an official mandate. The rest, as they say, is up to us, to the professionals, the educated men and women who decide where to invest their resources. The risk is also ours. As is the responsibility. These are absolutes, unchanging through time. No civilized society can be sustained without them. As much as we may want somebody, anybody to promise us sweet things and remove the burden of that responsibility, all attempts to do so throughout history have ended in disaster. If it will, is no longer a question. The question is, if we will let it happen again.
That is a choice we all must make, but rest assured I hold no illusions about my ability to sway you to my way of thinking. I see things in black and white, because that is how clearly the consequences of a course of actions springs to mind. It is an issue of life and death. I have seen what happens to medicine in highly regulated countries. There are horror stories that you could not conceive of happening here. (Such as women dying in childbirth because the ambulance had to keep driving in circles for hours because no hospital could accept them. Why? Because the mish-mash of regulation on obstetrics had so strangled the industry that most doctor's felt it was safer to go into other specializations and the country found itself with a shortage of nursery units. Funny, huh? That's Japan, where they're supposedly worried about a decreasing population). But there is always a first time for everything I guess. Seen the waiting lines in Canada? THAT's where we'll be going and in short order.
I apologize in advance if I haven't dealt properly with all the possible arguments. But fundamentally, my problem is at the root of the assumption--i.e. that government should have anything to do with the choice in this matter. Thereafter is merely quibbling over details of implementation.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
In Mourning for America
Do the math:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-budget7-2009may07,0,4310621.story
A 3.55 trillion dollar budget....17 billion dollars in budget cuts...a deficit of 1.2 trillion dollars...
Now, seriously....any investor....any one sitting at home doing their finances, would they seriously think that these numbers are acceptable? When you're in debt, do you spend more hoping that you'll magically bring in increased revenues somewhere down the line? Do you buy 2 new cars, a GM and a Chrysler with the hope that if you give them some money, they may give you a job, or a raise? Does it make any sense to increase debt beyond our ability to pay it back? If you're in business, do you expand your company's operations when sales are down? If you're managing a household, do you go on a luxurious vacation, when the creditors are knocking at the door?
No, of course not. Anyone who did that would be at least grossly irresponsible, and possibly insane. Does it justify it any more to demand that our children and our children's children, that generations, yes, generations of our descendants will have to pay for these excesses? Doesn't that make it all the more evil, to assign debt to those who have no say in the matter, to burden them with an obligation to feed our folly? Is it satisfying to mark our children with the mark of Obama's breed of original sin?
This madness seems to know no bounds. I do not see a bright future for America until a significant libertarian presence is felt in Congress and the White House. As such, I've darkened the background of my page to reflect the feeling that America has entered a dark age of decline. Hopefully the grassroots efforts of advocates of liberty across the nation will one-day be enough to lift this blinding curtain of self-righteousness and end the orgy of self-immolation which is the American politic.
Just think of it, and does it make any sense:
$1,200,000,000,000 deficit
- $17,000,000,000 budget cuts
=$1,183,000,000,000 remaining deficit
....Just what kind of difference is Obama making?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-budget7-2009may07,0,4310621.story
A 3.55 trillion dollar budget....17 billion dollars in budget cuts...a deficit of 1.2 trillion dollars...
Now, seriously....any investor....any one sitting at home doing their finances, would they seriously think that these numbers are acceptable? When you're in debt, do you spend more hoping that you'll magically bring in increased revenues somewhere down the line? Do you buy 2 new cars, a GM and a Chrysler with the hope that if you give them some money, they may give you a job, or a raise? Does it make any sense to increase debt beyond our ability to pay it back? If you're in business, do you expand your company's operations when sales are down? If you're managing a household, do you go on a luxurious vacation, when the creditors are knocking at the door?
No, of course not. Anyone who did that would be at least grossly irresponsible, and possibly insane. Does it justify it any more to demand that our children and our children's children, that generations, yes, generations of our descendants will have to pay for these excesses? Doesn't that make it all the more evil, to assign debt to those who have no say in the matter, to burden them with an obligation to feed our folly? Is it satisfying to mark our children with the mark of Obama's breed of original sin?
This madness seems to know no bounds. I do not see a bright future for America until a significant libertarian presence is felt in Congress and the White House. As such, I've darkened the background of my page to reflect the feeling that America has entered a dark age of decline. Hopefully the grassroots efforts of advocates of liberty across the nation will one-day be enough to lift this blinding curtain of self-righteousness and end the orgy of self-immolation which is the American politic.
Just think of it, and does it make any sense:
$1,200,000,000,000 deficit
- $17,000,000,000 budget cuts
=$1,183,000,000,000 remaining deficit
....Just what kind of difference is Obama making?
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The Curse of the Merry Men
This is an interesting take on the story of Robin Hood written by an associate of mine, I hope you find it as entertaining as I did:
This is why Ragnar describes Hood as a “double-parasite”. This is why Ragnar is Hood’s opposite. Ragnar defends justice where Hood destroys it. Ragnar defends human rights and the freedom of all human beings to choose their own path and reap the full consequences of their choices. Hood abrogates them all in the pursuit of his own ends. Hood is the embodiment of the collectivist ideal. Ragnar embodies the ideals of laissez-faire capitalism. Ragnar defends a moral code founded on the twin principles of “life and production.” Robin Hood represents cannibalism for cannibalism’s sake. The unstated price of joining Robin’s ‘band of merry men’ is a taste for human flesh. This is why the two characters stand in conflict. This is the true significance of Ragnar’s declaration that Robin Hood is the one man he must destroy.
The government has just issued Directive 10-289, a mandate to nationalize all business and establish “stability” by freezing the economy. No wages shall change. No one may leave their jobs nor find a new one. No competition is to be allowed whatsoever. All prices, all terms of employment, all terms of sale are to be set and administered by a centralized government. In the aftermath of this directive, Hank Rearden, one of the last great industrialists, teeters on the brink of total despair as he struggles to comprehend the ramifications of what this will mean for his life and his dreams. At this moment, Ragnar Danneskjold, a renegade and pirate, presents himself to Rearden with an offering of hope and a glimpse of the world that could still be. He reveals to Rearden his true aim in pursuing the life of a pirate. That aim is to destroy a man and wipe every last vestige of his memory from the minds of the human race. That man is none other than Robin Hood.
This pivotal scene from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (Part II Chapter VII) does not draw its significance from the action, but from Ragnar’s portrayal of Robin Hood and his reasons for fighting the very idea of the mythical bandit. To fully understand the significance of this we must first address this question: Who is Robin Hood? Ragnar describes him as the “foulest of creatures, the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich, whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal.” The actual historical origins of the Robin Hood mythos are vague at best, but Ragnar makes clear that he is not fighting a historical character, he is fighting the moral principles that the legend of Robin Hood has come to represent.
Traditionally, Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Variations on the tale abound. Some state that he is dispossessed royalty fighting to regain what has been pillaged wrongly by the ruling regime. In this sense, the character is reminiscent of what Ragnar Danneskjold represents in Atlas Shrugged. Ragnar states explicitly that he avoids confrontations with representatives of the legitimate functions of government. He does not attack military or policing vessels. He only attacks those ships which carry resources that have been appropriated from their owners without their consent and in spite of their protest. He then takes those resources and holds them in reserve, waiting for their rightful owners to come and claim them. The rightful owners are those who created the resource, who either made a natural resource able to be utilized, or who created that which had formerly not existed. The rights to the distribution of those ideas and the benefits of that distribution belong exclusively to the creators of those values.
Oil belongs to those who make it possible to be drilled, those who do the drilling, and who process it and make it ready to be used to meet the demands of their customers. Each in turn works according to the terms they set amongst themselves in order to exchange productive work for their own survival and the resources necessary to develop their own dreams and ambitions. But if that oil is seized by some group of people without the consent of the producers, then that group is morally indefensible regardless of their social position. Justice is only served by returning the merchandise to its rightful owners. This is Ragnar’s function. He is an agent of justice reclaiming stolen merchandise. He even makes the concession that Robin Hood may be interpreted in this way “It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed…”However, as he continues, he qualifies this by emphasizing, “that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived.”
Despite potentially nobler interpretations of Robin Hood, the popular and by far most influential interpretation of the myth is simply that Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor. What gives the character moral status is that his crimes are mitigated by his charity. A robber who steals simply for himself would have been dull and commonplace in an era when highwaymen abounded. What gave the story its uniqueness and longevity was the idea that this character was somehow doing evil for good and the moral complexity that this signified. The heart of this paradox is the assumption that Robin Hood was doing good by distributing wealth to those who lacked it. In common portrayals of the story it is usually sufficient only to portray his victims as rich to establish Hood as the hero. Further explanations of the circumstances of the victim’s wealth are rarely given, if at all. The core idea is simply that it is justifiable to take from those who have and give to those who do not, simply because of the need of the latter and for no other reason. This is the moral imperative of altruism. It is this idea which Ragnar hopes to destroy.
Ragnar stands opposed to the idea that rights are defined by a person’s needs. Those who adopt the altruist ethic make a claim that the more productive and the more successful a person is, the more they deserve to be sacrificed to the needs of others. They claim that the good of an action is determined by how much the benefactor lacked the benefit. Means and ends become inconsequential. Cause and effect become inconsequential. The only things that matter are who benefits and how much they need. The altruist feeds off of the need of the poor and disadvantaged. He uses them as a justification for imposing his needs on the rich, whose resources he covets. His need is justified altruistically because he lays no claim for his own use; he covets those resources for the good of others. According to this reasoning, any crime is justifiable if it is done in the service of others. Even murder is justifiable as long as it can be justified by placating some group’s need—the greater the need, the greater the moral status of the crime; the more helpless the benefactor, the more noble the deed. Morality becomes defined by a calculus of human suffering and nobility restricted to those who sacrifice that they most value to the desires of whoever may demand it.
Perhaps the most insidious aspect of this ethic is that the poor are condemned to suffer forever. They are guaranteed immunity from Robin Hood only as long as there is not anyone with more need than they. Only the neediest, the least able to provide for themselves—only these people are immune. Everyone else must wait for the time when they are chosen as the sacrificial victim to placate the need of the lowest common denominator. Everyone else must wait under the knife. The only way out is to compete for the bottom slot, to make a business out of begging for help and pleading one’s need to the arbitrary jury of those around you. The altruist ethic condemns the poor to maintain their poverty lest they be sacrificed for succeeding too much at the practice of survival. It forces them to compete for death.
This is why Ragnar describes Hood as a “double-parasite”. This is why Ragnar is Hood’s opposite. Ragnar defends justice where Hood destroys it. Ragnar defends human rights and the freedom of all human beings to choose their own path and reap the full consequences of their choices. Hood abrogates them all in the pursuit of his own ends. Hood is the embodiment of the collectivist ideal. Ragnar embodies the ideals of laissez-faire capitalism. Ragnar defends a moral code founded on the twin principles of “life and production.” Robin Hood represents cannibalism for cannibalism’s sake. The unstated price of joining Robin’s ‘band of merry men’ is a taste for human flesh. This is why the two characters stand in conflict. This is the true significance of Ragnar’s declaration that Robin Hood is the one man he must destroy.
It's been a while... お久しぶり
First off, I'd like to apologize for being away for so long. But real life takes a priority over my internet musings. Anyways, having taken care of business for now, I find myself with some time to comment on the events of the last 4 months. Probably most prominent in everybody's minds is the full-blown financial panic that is sweeping over the world. The dollar is trading for 88 yen, the Dow is down, way down, and the big auto companies are on the verge of collapse. In the midst of this we have Greenspan lamenting the free-market system and Fortune 500 executives running down to Washington to beg for money--your money.
So, it goes without saying that a lot of people are wondering what Obama is going to do with this mess when he gets into office. A lot of people, that is, except for me. That's because I know exactly what he's going to do. He's going to spend a lot of government money. He's going to give a lot of money to big business, of course not the same big business cronies that Bush has, he'll give it to his green frontier democratic buddies. They may very well let the car companies hang (as they really should) but I don't think they'll go through with it. The Democrats are too reliant on unionized labor. Although the only way they're going to be able to pay for all these bailouts and all the social programs they want to cram down our throats is to raise taxes. Or perhaps they'll just raise taxes on businesses and the rich. (As if that won't be even more of a reason for companies and rich people to put their money elsewhere). Or, like Bernanke and the incompetent quacks at the FED have already done, devalue the currency like there's no tomorrow.
0% interest rates are not a good thing. Printing money on 0% interest rates to "increase cash flow" is not a good thing. It has one tangible result. Yes, money increases. But the downside is that money is worth less. Or worthless as the case may be. Japan is still stuck with interest rates next to nothing after 20 years of recession. It took Koizumi and his aggressive stance of let them fail and make them write off their bad debt, that cleansed the banking industry and let Japan recover, if only temporarily. For a brief span, the Japanese economy recovered. But it wasn't long before the looting bureaucrats, the ruling daimyo of the LDP decided to sink their teeth into the only freshly rejuvenated business sector. First off was a crack-down on foreign-sourced investments, increased government intervention in mergers and sales of businesses. A raise in taxes, the dismantling of Livedoor, and the ongoing stink of corruption in Japanese politics all combined to nudge things back over the edge. This was happening well-before the housing meltdown in the US, despite what the pundits say. I know. I've been watching the news, and I have a fairly decent long-term memory. Nonetheless, America wants to charge right after Japan and do exactly the same wrong things they did. Nobody, except perhaps Jim Rogers and perhaps the far too splintered assortment of objectivists and libertarians out there has a real understanding of what needs to be done...or perhaps nobody else who's speaking...
Dismantle the FED. Dismantle the government's centralized banking scheme. This disaster, and the long string of disasters that have been happening for the last hundred years are all the direct result of government intervention. Think about it this way, did they have such a thing as unemployment in early days after the American revolution, when business was relatively unrestricted? No.
Yes, there were poor people and there were rich people. There will always be poor people and rich people. But the difference is that the classical American system enabled people to become rich by their own effort, with the fruits of their will. And with this freedom came the condemnation to poverty for the lack of effort. This is the principle of social justice. That those who do not strive to improve their lives shall not be able to, and that those who do, will be. Whether they will achieve personal happiness or not, is something which no government can ever promise, no human being can ever promise another. But the freedom to pursue happiness, the freedom to strive for it, to grasp for it, to work for it, matched with the opportunity to seize it if it is in your grasp---this is the freedom which drives the mind and hearts of men and women to do great things and to pull themselves up from the sordid depravity of apathetic resignation to misery which so characterizes life in the collectivist nations throughout history.
But you, who would preach that social justice must be meted out by the government, those of you who preach that we should all be held hostage to one man's vision of the future, to one man's dreams, even if he is selected by all of our neighbors, you preach a different creed. For how many years must we pay off the future? For how many years must the children of today be sacrificed for the phantoms of tomorrow? Whose vision is worth the slavery of a single man? A single woman? A single child? The founders of this country said that freedom was the heart and soul of value, that without freedom, there is no value to be had in society. That without freedom, we are slaves. And so we are.
'How can we be slaves?' you may ask. After all, are we not surrounded by art and entertainment to suit any fantasy? Are we not free to elect whoever we want for office? (Although the efforts to keep third-party candidates from participating in elections may cast some doubt on that premise.) What else would you call it when all of us must work as hard as we can to gather what resources we can to survive, but people come with the threat of imprisonment or violence to take what you have worked to bring into creation by force? The presumption is that the fruits of your labor are not yours. The presumption is that they belong to your master and that it is your master's will which has the right to decide how they are dispersed. Whether that master is one man who seized power, or if that master is a group of men who your neighbors have chosen to lead you, even if that master was chosen by you yourself--that does not grant them the moral right to your labor. If you grant others the moral right to dictate the terms of your work and the use of its products, then you grant them the moral right to treat you as a slave. And so we are treated. Groups of men and women gather to decide how they can divvy up the pie of American wealth without any consideration that they did nothing to create it, and have no moral claim to it. They cite legal precedent as the foundation of their right, common law borrowed from Europe.
What they neglect to recognize is that America's break from Europe was an ideological break, a moral break. The morality of Europe had led to the servitude of its citizenry and generations of feudal wars, alliances, treachery, and corruption. The strengths of America were the strengths of an emergent American morality, one which died stillborn for want of a voice to express it in terms detached from the old traditions of altruism. And altrusim has slowly choked that system of strength until America will soon fade into the ranks of other statist, socialist nations, chomping at the bit for a taste of world power. What could have once been a shining model of the glory of human liberation, is slippy into the murky, soiled, and shabby frame of a beggar whining about destiny. A nation of men and women who forged their own destiny with their bare hands, is being whipped and shaped into a nation of equivicators and rationalizers. Let reality be the final judge and arbiter of this debate, of this age-long struggle. Open your eyes and see that the tragedies in the headlines today are the culmination of thousands of years of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. For how long can we repeat those very same mistakes without realizing that the answer is to try something different, something which has not been tried, something which would set us all free to pursue our dreams to the extent of our abilities and fly as high as we are able? Why not try freedom? Why not try capitalism? Real capitalism. Not the watered down, hypocritical vacillation characterized by base opportunists like Greenspan. Real capitalism, like that envisioned by Ayn Rand (whom Greenspan betrayed the moment he joined the FED). Instead, is it really better to emulate a socially stagnant Japan or the disastrous economic policies of Soviet Russia?
Who pays for it? Who pays for it all? We all do. We are all victims in this, and some are both victim and victimizer. But we will all pay the price. Our children will pay it and their children. By supposedly working for the future we are instead signing our children over into a life of slavery, where their dreams will always be ranked second to the demands of any organized group of their neighbors. What's the price? The price is paid for in deserted store fronts. The price is paid in unemployment. The price is paid in disease and crime. The price for your slave-owner's paradise, is that everyone is enslaved, noone and everyone is master, and we all descend into poverty together. Or is it that you imagine yourself in the 'privileged' elite that won't have to muck about with all that. Well, I suppose an altruist like Warren Buffett would probably be the last to feel the effects of the meltdown. But when need and apathy has strained their functional capacity and drained the motivation of it's creative minds--it won't be long before the institutional foundations of businesses around the world come tumbling down like a cascading array of dominoes.
If you are still not convinced, if instead you are more than ever insistent that the only way to cure our current ails is to whip us into better and better shape, to force us at the point of the gun and demand our cooperation through violence, then you deserve everything that's coming down the line. Why? Because it's your choice. The ideas you promote, the people you elect have a tangible effect on the world we live in. You can either choose to make it a better world, one where people are freer and happier. Or you can prolong the suffering, dispense misery and condone the execution of the human soul. You WILL reap that which you sow.
So, it goes without saying that a lot of people are wondering what Obama is going to do with this mess when he gets into office. A lot of people, that is, except for me. That's because I know exactly what he's going to do. He's going to spend a lot of government money. He's going to give a lot of money to big business, of course not the same big business cronies that Bush has, he'll give it to his green frontier democratic buddies. They may very well let the car companies hang (as they really should) but I don't think they'll go through with it. The Democrats are too reliant on unionized labor. Although the only way they're going to be able to pay for all these bailouts and all the social programs they want to cram down our throats is to raise taxes. Or perhaps they'll just raise taxes on businesses and the rich. (As if that won't be even more of a reason for companies and rich people to put their money elsewhere). Or, like Bernanke and the incompetent quacks at the FED have already done, devalue the currency like there's no tomorrow.
0% interest rates are not a good thing. Printing money on 0% interest rates to "increase cash flow" is not a good thing. It has one tangible result. Yes, money increases. But the downside is that money is worth less. Or worthless as the case may be. Japan is still stuck with interest rates next to nothing after 20 years of recession. It took Koizumi and his aggressive stance of let them fail and make them write off their bad debt, that cleansed the banking industry and let Japan recover, if only temporarily. For a brief span, the Japanese economy recovered. But it wasn't long before the looting bureaucrats, the ruling daimyo of the LDP decided to sink their teeth into the only freshly rejuvenated business sector. First off was a crack-down on foreign-sourced investments, increased government intervention in mergers and sales of businesses. A raise in taxes, the dismantling of Livedoor, and the ongoing stink of corruption in Japanese politics all combined to nudge things back over the edge. This was happening well-before the housing meltdown in the US, despite what the pundits say. I know. I've been watching the news, and I have a fairly decent long-term memory. Nonetheless, America wants to charge right after Japan and do exactly the same wrong things they did. Nobody, except perhaps Jim Rogers and perhaps the far too splintered assortment of objectivists and libertarians out there has a real understanding of what needs to be done...or perhaps nobody else who's speaking...
Dismantle the FED. Dismantle the government's centralized banking scheme. This disaster, and the long string of disasters that have been happening for the last hundred years are all the direct result of government intervention. Think about it this way, did they have such a thing as unemployment in early days after the American revolution, when business was relatively unrestricted? No.
Yes, there were poor people and there were rich people. There will always be poor people and rich people. But the difference is that the classical American system enabled people to become rich by their own effort, with the fruits of their will. And with this freedom came the condemnation to poverty for the lack of effort. This is the principle of social justice. That those who do not strive to improve their lives shall not be able to, and that those who do, will be. Whether they will achieve personal happiness or not, is something which no government can ever promise, no human being can ever promise another. But the freedom to pursue happiness, the freedom to strive for it, to grasp for it, to work for it, matched with the opportunity to seize it if it is in your grasp---this is the freedom which drives the mind and hearts of men and women to do great things and to pull themselves up from the sordid depravity of apathetic resignation to misery which so characterizes life in the collectivist nations throughout history.
But you, who would preach that social justice must be meted out by the government, those of you who preach that we should all be held hostage to one man's vision of the future, to one man's dreams, even if he is selected by all of our neighbors, you preach a different creed. For how many years must we pay off the future? For how many years must the children of today be sacrificed for the phantoms of tomorrow? Whose vision is worth the slavery of a single man? A single woman? A single child? The founders of this country said that freedom was the heart and soul of value, that without freedom, there is no value to be had in society. That without freedom, we are slaves. And so we are.
'How can we be slaves?' you may ask. After all, are we not surrounded by art and entertainment to suit any fantasy? Are we not free to elect whoever we want for office? (Although the efforts to keep third-party candidates from participating in elections may cast some doubt on that premise.) What else would you call it when all of us must work as hard as we can to gather what resources we can to survive, but people come with the threat of imprisonment or violence to take what you have worked to bring into creation by force? The presumption is that the fruits of your labor are not yours. The presumption is that they belong to your master and that it is your master's will which has the right to decide how they are dispersed. Whether that master is one man who seized power, or if that master is a group of men who your neighbors have chosen to lead you, even if that master was chosen by you yourself--that does not grant them the moral right to your labor. If you grant others the moral right to dictate the terms of your work and the use of its products, then you grant them the moral right to treat you as a slave. And so we are treated. Groups of men and women gather to decide how they can divvy up the pie of American wealth without any consideration that they did nothing to create it, and have no moral claim to it. They cite legal precedent as the foundation of their right, common law borrowed from Europe.
What they neglect to recognize is that America's break from Europe was an ideological break, a moral break. The morality of Europe had led to the servitude of its citizenry and generations of feudal wars, alliances, treachery, and corruption. The strengths of America were the strengths of an emergent American morality, one which died stillborn for want of a voice to express it in terms detached from the old traditions of altruism. And altrusim has slowly choked that system of strength until America will soon fade into the ranks of other statist, socialist nations, chomping at the bit for a taste of world power. What could have once been a shining model of the glory of human liberation, is slippy into the murky, soiled, and shabby frame of a beggar whining about destiny. A nation of men and women who forged their own destiny with their bare hands, is being whipped and shaped into a nation of equivicators and rationalizers. Let reality be the final judge and arbiter of this debate, of this age-long struggle. Open your eyes and see that the tragedies in the headlines today are the culmination of thousands of years of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. For how long can we repeat those very same mistakes without realizing that the answer is to try something different, something which has not been tried, something which would set us all free to pursue our dreams to the extent of our abilities and fly as high as we are able? Why not try freedom? Why not try capitalism? Real capitalism. Not the watered down, hypocritical vacillation characterized by base opportunists like Greenspan. Real capitalism, like that envisioned by Ayn Rand (whom Greenspan betrayed the moment he joined the FED). Instead, is it really better to emulate a socially stagnant Japan or the disastrous economic policies of Soviet Russia?
Who pays for it? Who pays for it all? We all do. We are all victims in this, and some are both victim and victimizer. But we will all pay the price. Our children will pay it and their children. By supposedly working for the future we are instead signing our children over into a life of slavery, where their dreams will always be ranked second to the demands of any organized group of their neighbors. What's the price? The price is paid for in deserted store fronts. The price is paid in unemployment. The price is paid in disease and crime. The price for your slave-owner's paradise, is that everyone is enslaved, noone and everyone is master, and we all descend into poverty together. Or is it that you imagine yourself in the 'privileged' elite that won't have to muck about with all that. Well, I suppose an altruist like Warren Buffett would probably be the last to feel the effects of the meltdown. But when need and apathy has strained their functional capacity and drained the motivation of it's creative minds--it won't be long before the institutional foundations of businesses around the world come tumbling down like a cascading array of dominoes.
If you are still not convinced, if instead you are more than ever insistent that the only way to cure our current ails is to whip us into better and better shape, to force us at the point of the gun and demand our cooperation through violence, then you deserve everything that's coming down the line. Why? Because it's your choice. The ideas you promote, the people you elect have a tangible effect on the world we live in. You can either choose to make it a better world, one where people are freer and happier. Or you can prolong the suffering, dispense misery and condone the execution of the human soul. You WILL reap that which you sow.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Abolish the Federal Reserve
I couldn't've said it better myself...So I won't try. Check out the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QHKJWm9IsM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QHKJWm9IsM
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Dawkins and the Fallacy of the Meme
If you've been following this blog, then you'll probably have gathered that I hold Richard Dawkins in pretty high regard. After all, he's one of the people who has made it to my "Some people I admire..." corner. The reason is that he generally presents well-reasoned arguments supported by fact. I think this is why his argument for the gene's eye view of evolution is so strong. It is a strength derived from simplicity.
Genes propagate which are successful at surviving and reproducing. The twin pressures of survival and reproduction vary depending on the demands of the physical environment, the consumable resources available, and the level of competition between varying phenotypes for those resources. The genes--inherent in the genetic combinations embodied by the "gene machines" which carry them--are propagated in direct correlation to how well that body is adapted to the demands on its reproductive and survival capacity. Due to the imperfection of the reproduction process of genes and the cumulative effect of evolutionary pressures over time, diverse species come into existence. This is the essence of our modern understanding of evolution. Having reached this point, I can see how it would be tempting to drive the Darwinian argument even further. I mean once we have established the social behavior of animals as attributable to their genetic make-up and Darwinian pressures not only on their genetics but on their learned behaviors, then I can see how it may become difficult to draw the line on where Darwin ends and psychology begins.
It is at this murky middle ground that Dawkins introduced the idea of the meme. His argument runs that just as genes are units of genetic information which guide how a being is constructed, memes are units of conceptual information, ideas. He holds that evolutionary pressures apply to memes in a way similar to the way in which they apply to genes. This is basically proposing that ideas battle for survival in the same way as genes do. Ideas compete to be propagated by receptive brains.
The error in this analogy should be glaringly obvious and it frankly surprised me when I saw it wedged into his latest book, The God Delusion. I could understand the nature of the thought experiment when it was first introduced in The Selfish Gene back in the 70s. It seemed a playful hypothesis the intent of which was to illustrate how a Darwinian system could apply to other things than genes. Taken as a simple illustration or an analogy I suppose it's harmless enough. But put forth as a serious concept of how ideas come to be in our heads, it is blatantly irresponsible.
The force which eliminates faulty combinations of genes, or gene complexes, is death. The inability to sustain life sufficiently to procreate means that that collection of genes isn't passed on. If a gene complex is arranged such as it is ineffective at procreating it also fails to continue. Death and disfigurement are brutal adjudicators of whether a gene survives or not. The root of how they evolve is in their imperfect reproduction. But the measure by which inefficient genes are eliminated is death.
So, the basic fallacy of memes lies in this. Whereas genes require no conscious adjudicator to evolve, their ability to survive or not is purely decided by the factual constraints of their existence, memes require a conscious adjudicator to reproduce, modify, and also to be negated.
Dawkins vision of the meme paints us as passive receptacles for our ideas just as we are passive receptacles of our genes. The fault should be readily apparent. Whereas I have absolutely nothing I can do about the genes that I have in my body, I actively choose which ideas I adhere to, which ones I bother to propagate, and which ideas I reject and fight against. I choose this. This "I" is my consciousness. And even if this I is reducible to deterministic parts, the self-referential capacity of people's minds to modify and monitor their own internal content is not something which should be passed over so lightly or surrendered so readily as the argument for memes would have us do.
This self-referential capacity is what grants us the power to monitor our ideas, to select them by standards that we set ourselves. That is why it matters little what instincts and genetic persuasions are embedded in our genes. We have the power to choose the ideas, the beliefs, the ideologies we desire to pursue. We have the power to do this, because we are self-referential and self-modifying beings. We, in short, have the power to rise above our genetic limitations. This is what most prominently sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Memes also differ from genes in that memes are non-verifiable. You cannot isolate a meme. You can't test for it. You can't even define it. How much of an idea is a meme? Dawkins tries to cover this by broadening the concept to cover "meme-plexes" Well, this makes as little sense as memes. We arrive at the same question. What is a memeplex? How can you isolate it? How do you even begin to define what one would be in reality? As a scientifically unverifiable concept, it is strange that it should be introduced by an author who has a reputation for scientific rigor.
There is perhaps one possible circumstance under which the meme theory of the propagation of ideas may have some merit. And that would be to describe the manner in which ideas come to be in people who either do not have the ability or lack the capacity to be self-referential or self-modifying, if such people truly do exist. Children , perhaps, could be considered to be in this state and that is a good argument for having special rules to protect them from abuses of their burgeoning conceptual system. For everyone else, the acceptance and survival of ideas is something which is actively decided.
Even as is the case with bad ideas that we held prior to receiving some new piece of information or being introduced to some new perspective that we hadn't been previously aware of, we make a choice as to whether to continue holding our prior belief or to discard it in favor of something new. Yes, this can be traumatic, especially the more deeply held and fundamental the belief in question. But it is done on a regular basis by people every day. The whole long history of science is a documentation of this process. Things which were not known before, were discovered. Answers were actively sought and explanations obtained.
To render the whole history of human thought as a passive process inacted on our brains by some vague undefined process of memes entering our brains without our consent and potentially reworking our mental processes, is to spit in the face of every scientist who has ever contributed to the advance of knowledge, to every person who has ever attempted to advance our comprehension of morality.
In short, it annihilates the very concept of morality. Something which becomes less surprising as one continues reading the God Delusion to see Dawkins' argument for evolutionary morality. He does not waste much time before referring to Kant to back up his claims that altruism is somehow an evolutionary imperative. Something which is ironically diametrically opposed to his entire argument for the gene's eye view of evolutionary theory.
What he insists on calling "reciprocal altruism" may just as easily be labeled "natural capitalism" for it has the same net effect and apparently the same motivations as any parties which would come to work together for mutual advantage. He makes the subsequent logical misstep of sliding between definitions of altruism. He starts with "reciprocal altruism" something which arises out of different creatures developing symbiotic relationships in response to evolutionary pressures and then proceeds to equate this with moral altruism, the belief that it is good to sacrifice oneself to strangers. Cooperation between friends and family which has obvious survival benefits cannot be directly connected to anonymously altruistic behavior. And in order to explain this away, Dawkins says that this is perhaps due to a misfiring of the altruistic protocol in our genes.
This could, perhaps, have saved him from stumbling into the trap he'd set for himself, but he repeatedly marches into the morass of claiming how much better altruism is than selfish pursuits and how science and all creation back him up on it. Unfortunately for Dawkins, his argument for altruism is bound entirely to his careful merging of definitions and a kind of lexical sleight of hand. Despite the word "altruism" being used in two ways, there is absolutely no similarity between observed "reciprocal altruism" as perceived in the biological world and "moral altruism" as promoted by Kant and company. This connection is false, and if an argument is to be made for it, it must be made explicit. I do not accept at face value that altruism is "good". This is simply a clever way to try and avoid justifying the claim.
The unfortunate thing is that this casts a shadow over the entire book. One that I thoroughly enjoyed until I started getting into where Dawkins starts grasping for moral straws from evolutionary science. His arguments against religion are succinct, logical, and damning. Theists will have a hard time convincing anyone who has read this book of the existence of God. And I wager that it will be an encouragement to many others to renounce their belief as irrational.
That is why I cannot understand why he had to try to foist this arbitrary Kantian nihilism into another perfectly salient critique of religion. The only possibility that comes to mind is that he has an ideological agenda apart from that of removing religiosity from its dominating hold on people's lives. Just like Sam Harris had to squeeze in an arbitrary assertion for the legitimacy of torture into his End of Faith, so too has Dawkins had to try and squeeze in an argument for moral altruism into a book on the same subject and with the same goal.
What baffles the imagination is that the issue of severing our subservience to religion is too important to risk in harnessing it to pet political and ideological pursuits especially those which effectively harness the morality of most organized religions and swallows them whole without question. Altruism is the morality of the religious. And religion cannot be swayed effectively until the proponents of reason learn to reject altruism as axiomatic of good. As long as the moral high-ground is effectively surrendered to the institution if not the literal word of religion, then all we can expect is a replay of the tragedies of the 2oth century as many critics rightly point out.
The reason why Dawkins, Harris et all cannot effectively combat the criticism of Stalin, Hitler, Zedong, etc, as being atheists is because they are all inherently committed to the idea that altruism is the moral ideal. Religious institutions are often committed to expressing the same values that they are proposing as being good. Their argument is that the literal teachings of religions are usually brutal, incoherent, and incompatible with modern society, which is true. They handicap their arguments because they don't want to accept the alternative to altruism, which would be objectivist rational self-interest.
They could easily repel the accusations that Stalin, Mao, and Polpot were all atheists. They could do this by pointing out that yes, they were atheists but their brutality was not a factor of their atheism. It was a factor of their altruism and the altruistic systems which they were manipulating. They were thrust into power because of movements that cried for sacrifice for the common good. They were revolutionaries seeking to establish a collectivist utopia on earth, and the sick thing is that they succeeded. Apologists come afterwards to say that well, that's not really how socialism is supposed to work. But the dedication to an altruistic moral ideal is the only unifying explanation that can be used to condemn both the horrors of religious authority and the horrors of secular collectivist authority.
Avoiding this argument leaves proponents of atheism in the much weakened position of claiming that religions are brutal because of their ideas, but that the brutality of atheist regimes stems from their leaders. It is obvious that the brutality stems from the ideas on both sides. The thing that Dawkins does not accept is that the true terror is one that is deeper than religion, it is rooted in altruism. Altruism is the death cult. Altruism is the cause greater than oneself that all can be sacrificed for. Altruism is the greater good for whom Jihad is deemed necessary. If only Dawkins would shift his arguments just a bit deeper and aim at the heart of the problem, then his arguments would be stronger and the cause of atheism would be greatly furthered. Unfortunately, he still chooses to cling to the morality of Christian tradition, even having renounced Christian fables. And the choice he leaves us with ends up not to be that much of a choice after all.
Genes propagate which are successful at surviving and reproducing. The twin pressures of survival and reproduction vary depending on the demands of the physical environment, the consumable resources available, and the level of competition between varying phenotypes for those resources. The genes--inherent in the genetic combinations embodied by the "gene machines" which carry them--are propagated in direct correlation to how well that body is adapted to the demands on its reproductive and survival capacity. Due to the imperfection of the reproduction process of genes and the cumulative effect of evolutionary pressures over time, diverse species come into existence. This is the essence of our modern understanding of evolution. Having reached this point, I can see how it would be tempting to drive the Darwinian argument even further. I mean once we have established the social behavior of animals as attributable to their genetic make-up and Darwinian pressures not only on their genetics but on their learned behaviors, then I can see how it may become difficult to draw the line on where Darwin ends and psychology begins.
It is at this murky middle ground that Dawkins introduced the idea of the meme. His argument runs that just as genes are units of genetic information which guide how a being is constructed, memes are units of conceptual information, ideas. He holds that evolutionary pressures apply to memes in a way similar to the way in which they apply to genes. This is basically proposing that ideas battle for survival in the same way as genes do. Ideas compete to be propagated by receptive brains.
The error in this analogy should be glaringly obvious and it frankly surprised me when I saw it wedged into his latest book, The God Delusion. I could understand the nature of the thought experiment when it was first introduced in The Selfish Gene back in the 70s. It seemed a playful hypothesis the intent of which was to illustrate how a Darwinian system could apply to other things than genes. Taken as a simple illustration or an analogy I suppose it's harmless enough. But put forth as a serious concept of how ideas come to be in our heads, it is blatantly irresponsible.
The force which eliminates faulty combinations of genes, or gene complexes, is death. The inability to sustain life sufficiently to procreate means that that collection of genes isn't passed on. If a gene complex is arranged such as it is ineffective at procreating it also fails to continue. Death and disfigurement are brutal adjudicators of whether a gene survives or not. The root of how they evolve is in their imperfect reproduction. But the measure by which inefficient genes are eliminated is death.
So, the basic fallacy of memes lies in this. Whereas genes require no conscious adjudicator to evolve, their ability to survive or not is purely decided by the factual constraints of their existence, memes require a conscious adjudicator to reproduce, modify, and also to be negated.
Dawkins vision of the meme paints us as passive receptacles for our ideas just as we are passive receptacles of our genes. The fault should be readily apparent. Whereas I have absolutely nothing I can do about the genes that I have in my body, I actively choose which ideas I adhere to, which ones I bother to propagate, and which ideas I reject and fight against. I choose this. This "I" is my consciousness. And even if this I is reducible to deterministic parts, the self-referential capacity of people's minds to modify and monitor their own internal content is not something which should be passed over so lightly or surrendered so readily as the argument for memes would have us do.
This self-referential capacity is what grants us the power to monitor our ideas, to select them by standards that we set ourselves. That is why it matters little what instincts and genetic persuasions are embedded in our genes. We have the power to choose the ideas, the beliefs, the ideologies we desire to pursue. We have the power to do this, because we are self-referential and self-modifying beings. We, in short, have the power to rise above our genetic limitations. This is what most prominently sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Memes also differ from genes in that memes are non-verifiable. You cannot isolate a meme. You can't test for it. You can't even define it. How much of an idea is a meme? Dawkins tries to cover this by broadening the concept to cover "meme-plexes" Well, this makes as little sense as memes. We arrive at the same question. What is a memeplex? How can you isolate it? How do you even begin to define what one would be in reality? As a scientifically unverifiable concept, it is strange that it should be introduced by an author who has a reputation for scientific rigor.
There is perhaps one possible circumstance under which the meme theory of the propagation of ideas may have some merit. And that would be to describe the manner in which ideas come to be in people who either do not have the ability or lack the capacity to be self-referential or self-modifying, if such people truly do exist. Children , perhaps, could be considered to be in this state and that is a good argument for having special rules to protect them from abuses of their burgeoning conceptual system. For everyone else, the acceptance and survival of ideas is something which is actively decided.
Even as is the case with bad ideas that we held prior to receiving some new piece of information or being introduced to some new perspective that we hadn't been previously aware of, we make a choice as to whether to continue holding our prior belief or to discard it in favor of something new. Yes, this can be traumatic, especially the more deeply held and fundamental the belief in question. But it is done on a regular basis by people every day. The whole long history of science is a documentation of this process. Things which were not known before, were discovered. Answers were actively sought and explanations obtained.
To render the whole history of human thought as a passive process inacted on our brains by some vague undefined process of memes entering our brains without our consent and potentially reworking our mental processes, is to spit in the face of every scientist who has ever contributed to the advance of knowledge, to every person who has ever attempted to advance our comprehension of morality.
In short, it annihilates the very concept of morality. Something which becomes less surprising as one continues reading the God Delusion to see Dawkins' argument for evolutionary morality. He does not waste much time before referring to Kant to back up his claims that altruism is somehow an evolutionary imperative. Something which is ironically diametrically opposed to his entire argument for the gene's eye view of evolutionary theory.
What he insists on calling "reciprocal altruism" may just as easily be labeled "natural capitalism" for it has the same net effect and apparently the same motivations as any parties which would come to work together for mutual advantage. He makes the subsequent logical misstep of sliding between definitions of altruism. He starts with "reciprocal altruism" something which arises out of different creatures developing symbiotic relationships in response to evolutionary pressures and then proceeds to equate this with moral altruism, the belief that it is good to sacrifice oneself to strangers. Cooperation between friends and family which has obvious survival benefits cannot be directly connected to anonymously altruistic behavior. And in order to explain this away, Dawkins says that this is perhaps due to a misfiring of the altruistic protocol in our genes.
This could, perhaps, have saved him from stumbling into the trap he'd set for himself, but he repeatedly marches into the morass of claiming how much better altruism is than selfish pursuits and how science and all creation back him up on it. Unfortunately for Dawkins, his argument for altruism is bound entirely to his careful merging of definitions and a kind of lexical sleight of hand. Despite the word "altruism" being used in two ways, there is absolutely no similarity between observed "reciprocal altruism" as perceived in the biological world and "moral altruism" as promoted by Kant and company. This connection is false, and if an argument is to be made for it, it must be made explicit. I do not accept at face value that altruism is "good". This is simply a clever way to try and avoid justifying the claim.
The unfortunate thing is that this casts a shadow over the entire book. One that I thoroughly enjoyed until I started getting into where Dawkins starts grasping for moral straws from evolutionary science. His arguments against religion are succinct, logical, and damning. Theists will have a hard time convincing anyone who has read this book of the existence of God. And I wager that it will be an encouragement to many others to renounce their belief as irrational.
That is why I cannot understand why he had to try to foist this arbitrary Kantian nihilism into another perfectly salient critique of religion. The only possibility that comes to mind is that he has an ideological agenda apart from that of removing religiosity from its dominating hold on people's lives. Just like Sam Harris had to squeeze in an arbitrary assertion for the legitimacy of torture into his End of Faith, so too has Dawkins had to try and squeeze in an argument for moral altruism into a book on the same subject and with the same goal.
What baffles the imagination is that the issue of severing our subservience to religion is too important to risk in harnessing it to pet political and ideological pursuits especially those which effectively harness the morality of most organized religions and swallows them whole without question. Altruism is the morality of the religious. And religion cannot be swayed effectively until the proponents of reason learn to reject altruism as axiomatic of good. As long as the moral high-ground is effectively surrendered to the institution if not the literal word of religion, then all we can expect is a replay of the tragedies of the 2oth century as many critics rightly point out.
The reason why Dawkins, Harris et all cannot effectively combat the criticism of Stalin, Hitler, Zedong, etc, as being atheists is because they are all inherently committed to the idea that altruism is the moral ideal. Religious institutions are often committed to expressing the same values that they are proposing as being good. Their argument is that the literal teachings of religions are usually brutal, incoherent, and incompatible with modern society, which is true. They handicap their arguments because they don't want to accept the alternative to altruism, which would be objectivist rational self-interest.
They could easily repel the accusations that Stalin, Mao, and Polpot were all atheists. They could do this by pointing out that yes, they were atheists but their brutality was not a factor of their atheism. It was a factor of their altruism and the altruistic systems which they were manipulating. They were thrust into power because of movements that cried for sacrifice for the common good. They were revolutionaries seeking to establish a collectivist utopia on earth, and the sick thing is that they succeeded. Apologists come afterwards to say that well, that's not really how socialism is supposed to work. But the dedication to an altruistic moral ideal is the only unifying explanation that can be used to condemn both the horrors of religious authority and the horrors of secular collectivist authority.
Avoiding this argument leaves proponents of atheism in the much weakened position of claiming that religions are brutal because of their ideas, but that the brutality of atheist regimes stems from their leaders. It is obvious that the brutality stems from the ideas on both sides. The thing that Dawkins does not accept is that the true terror is one that is deeper than religion, it is rooted in altruism. Altruism is the death cult. Altruism is the cause greater than oneself that all can be sacrificed for. Altruism is the greater good for whom Jihad is deemed necessary. If only Dawkins would shift his arguments just a bit deeper and aim at the heart of the problem, then his arguments would be stronger and the cause of atheism would be greatly furthered. Unfortunately, he still chooses to cling to the morality of Christian tradition, even having renounced Christian fables. And the choice he leaves us with ends up not to be that much of a choice after all.
Friday, May 16, 2008
A Rebuttal to Some Arguments Against Objectivism
(This post may be hard to follow if you're not familiar with objectivist philosophy, but I'll try to make my rebuttal as concise as possible)
Well, the inspiration for this post comes from the following video. :
Please watch the video as I'll be destroying the objections raised therein one by one.
(First of all: the Axioms)
The video claims that objectivist axioms are not automatically accepted by anyone trying to attack them. I hold that they are. Let us see what his arguments are.
(1.1 Existence exists)
The video claims that the statement of identity is tautological and that this renders it meaningless? It's an axiom. Axioms are simply statements of reality. They are the bedrock upon which an argument is based. A tautological axiom would seem to be a given. I fail to see what the problem is in starting a logical derivation from something which is universally accepted (i.e. tautological).
The video then goes on to propose this question as being the truly essential point, "Is there existence apart from my experience in the first place?" Well, in short....yes. And of course the creator of this video accepts this because they went to the trouble of making the video in the first place. If this person truly rejects the idea that there is a common existence outside of his experience, then to make the video in spite of that would be truly mad. That, in itself, would be enough to disqualify this person from the status of "rational".
He then proceeds to prove that he is mad by proposing that "existence can be denied". How then is it possible that I am writing this critique of something which he created, put on the internet, and I subsequently viewed? Existence exists. This statement, which the video's creator initially conceded was a TAUTOLOGY (something which is ALWAYS true), is now contradicted by the statement "existence can be denied." This is a contradiction and renders this line of argument invalid. At best, this approach is intellectually dishonest. To paraphrase koenichfuerst, I think that's a sneaky way of pushing relativist nonsense down your throat from the very start. If "existence" exists by definition, as it would have to in order to be a tautology, then, by definition, it cannot be denied.
He then moves on to suggest that the great debate of metaphysics is to establish whether or not sense perception actually exists or if we are all Keanu Reaves in the Matrix. (Oh, boy....pop analogies here we come...). Once again, if all of our perceptions are wrong, and he truly believes this, then why are two human beings able to communicate at all? Why are we able to read each other's words and understand the content? How are we able to reach any agreements on anything whatsoever if the nature of existence is indeed so subjective?
I'm jumping ahead but koenichfuerst later invokes evolution as a support of a later argument. Evolution would have no meaning if our perceptions were all illusory. The whole theory of evolution is based on the idea that living beings change bit by bit over time. But one of the agents of that change is the environment in which they live. The better adapted to that environment they are, the better they are at surviving and in passing along their genes. Those who aren't as well adapted die off without the chance to pass them along. Evolution demands a direct correlation between survival and reality, between existence and life. You can't dismiss the identity principle as "begging the question" and subsequently use a theory which would be meaningless without it for support. This is another sign of intellectual dishonesty. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I hope that this is sufficient to brand koenichfurst as a charlatan and a liar. No wonder he didn't want to stick his face to this nonsense.
But, let's continue just to clean up all his inaccuracies.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 1
(1.2 Free Will)
Basically he is saying that free will cannot exist in a deterministic system. So, he says that if we accept physics, evolution, biology...in short the scientific explanation of existence and rule out any supernatural mumbo jumbo, that there is no room left for free will. If the man had any familiarity with cognitive science at all, then he would realize that this is just not so.
Of course objectivism supports the scientific view of our existence which rules out the possibility of a metaphysical soul. But, if you take a look at cognitive science, and in particular the work of Douglas Hofstadter, you will begin to see that it is possible to explain consciousness from within a deterministic framework. The window is called self-referentiality. For a detailed exploration of this concept I recommend you to Hofstadter's book, Godel, Escher, Bach. Although I must note that Hofstadter is in no way connected with objectivism and some of his personal opinions run definitely counter to it. However his initial theory of strange loops and tangled hierarchies seems to have a lot of value in the fields of cognitive science and artificial intelligence. And it is an eloquent depiction of just how likely it is that deterministic science and free will can co-exist.
Never say never, dude.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 2
(2. Ethics)...oh, goody...let's see what he has in store for us....
He is saying that the biological goal of life is reproduction not survival.
Well, he's half right, but mostly wrong.
The biological goal of genes is reproduction. And they have worked under evolutionary laws for so long that the "gene machines" or bodies they have constructed to carry and reproduce them have become highly effective at enabling them to do so. From a post-Dawkins Darwinian perspective, genes are the principle actors in evolution and from the gene's perspective it is most definitely concerned with survival. A gene can survive for thousands and thousands of years and the gene's "goal", so to speak, is to survive indefinitely. It is by the process of evolution that it "hopes" to do so. Of course the gene doesn't actually "hope" for anything or have goals, but the analogy helps to visualize the aggregate effects of natural selection at the gene level. Of course, this is too highly intricate a concept to be dealt with in a paragraph. I refer the reader to Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene for a fuller treatment of the idea. Of course, Dawkins is not an objectivist either, but since objectivism is a philosophy of reason, it can freely draw from science to support itself. And Dawkins is a brilliant evolutionary biologist.
The problem here is that genes are intent on survival which means that we have a drive to replicate, but for the genes to continue to exist and to optimize their chance for survival, their hosts or bodies must survive, and be able to survive for as long as necessary. And even then, aside from gene theory, let's just look at observations of the animal kingdom. How many animals knowingly commit suicide? Let's see..........ZERO. The reason is that any animal that had a genetic propensity to kill itself off, would succeed and would no longer exist. Evolution would allow it its wish and it would cease to be. Let's weaken it then, would any animal even exist which worked against it's own survival? NO. Why? Well, same thing. If an animal worked against itself (or did not work to preserve its own life) then this would be a huge disadvantage and it would become extinct due to evolutionary pressures. So, you can't use evolution to say that animals don't try to sustain their lives.
Furthermore, Ayn Rand does not claim that life is the ultimate value of all living beings. Animals cannot have values, because they do not have choice, they are merely programmed by those genes. Human beings, on the other hand, have that already established free-will. So, they can CHOOSE not to live and commit suicide. They CAN work against themselves if they wish. Only IF you choose life as your ultimate value, will the is-ought gap be bridged. Why? Because then the answer to things' optimal use is answered. If the ultimate goal is life, then all things, all rules of existence must be utilized in the way which is optimal for your own survival and then again survival in accordance with your nature as a human being. Continued survival in a state which is in accordance with your human nature is what we call happiness. If you choose to hold death as your ultimate value, then you are free to do so, but it will not bring you happiness.
Of course, if you choose not to hold life as your ultimate value, then you are in an immoral state, as he points out. As such, you can leech off of whoever is willing to support you, whether it be the blood money raped from the labor of others and dispensed by a welfare state, or if it is simply the charity of others upon which you can depend (or demand as the case may be). Of course, you can also die as do people who commit suicide, or do suicidal things.
As for the example of the praying mantis, it is highly debatable whether the male is aware of the fate that will meet it when it copulates. Most likely, it is simply driven by its genes as are all animals. I'm sure that it would much prefer to go on living if it could, but once again a praying mantis has no choice in the matter. People do. And I fail to see how surviving genetically equates with existing. The male CEASES to exist. It dies. Once again (third time) this is a case of intellectual dishonesty where koenichfuerst is switching definitions mid-sentence. The intent is to confuse your frame of reference so as to cram his argument down your throat, so to speak. (Pardon the paraphrase.)
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 3
Finally, the Albert Ellis defense holds absolutely no weight whatsoever. Ellis developed Rational Therapy. And just by checking out the Wikipedia article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ellis
we find,
"RT required that the therapist help the client understand — and act on the understanding —that his personal philosophy contains beliefs that lead to his own emotional pain. This new approach stressed actively working to change a client's self-defeating beliefs and behaviors by demonstrating their irrationality and rigidity. Ellis related everything to these core irrational beliefs such as "I must be perfect" and "I must be loved by everyone". Ellis believed that through rational analysis, people can understand their errors in light of the core irrational beliefs and then construct a more rational position."
I fail to see how this is an attack on objectivism. Demanding that everyone love you would seem to be a chronic problem of someone without self-esteem or self-worth who is desperately seeking validation from everyone around them. As for the seeking of perfection, it depends entirely upon what your concept of "perfect" is. If it is based on the irrational, then of course pursuing it will lead to problems. If it is based on the rationally attainable, then there is nothing impossible about it. Perfection can be attained as long as your notion of perfection is defined by reality and does not consist of an attempt to redefine reality to meet your conception. As a philosophy which preaches that full acceptance of the reality of the world is fundamental to all else, objectivism would demand that people keep their goals realistic. If anything, given this article, I would think that RT is fully compatible with objectivism. Of course I'm not fully versed in the method, but the principles seem non-contradictory.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 4
Obviously, he's too busy to read any of the works he refers to, or research any of the ideas he's criticizing. Remember, koenichfuerst...ignorance is not a rebuttal. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it isn't true.
Cheers.
(If you're interested, Koenichfuerst replied to this post, and I posted a link to his rebuttal along with my counter. It should be interesting to note that he has yet to respond to it. Here's the link: http://anamericananti-theistabroad.blogspot.com/2008/05/further-defense-against-koenichfuerst.html)
Well, the inspiration for this post comes from the following video. :
Please watch the video as I'll be destroying the objections raised therein one by one.
(First of all: the Axioms)
The video claims that objectivist axioms are not automatically accepted by anyone trying to attack them. I hold that they are. Let us see what his arguments are.
(1.1 Existence exists)
The video claims that the statement of identity is tautological and that this renders it meaningless? It's an axiom. Axioms are simply statements of reality. They are the bedrock upon which an argument is based. A tautological axiom would seem to be a given. I fail to see what the problem is in starting a logical derivation from something which is universally accepted (i.e. tautological).
The video then goes on to propose this question as being the truly essential point, "Is there existence apart from my experience in the first place?" Well, in short....yes. And of course the creator of this video accepts this because they went to the trouble of making the video in the first place. If this person truly rejects the idea that there is a common existence outside of his experience, then to make the video in spite of that would be truly mad. That, in itself, would be enough to disqualify this person from the status of "rational".
He then proceeds to prove that he is mad by proposing that "existence can be denied". How then is it possible that I am writing this critique of something which he created, put on the internet, and I subsequently viewed? Existence exists. This statement, which the video's creator initially conceded was a TAUTOLOGY (something which is ALWAYS true), is now contradicted by the statement "existence can be denied." This is a contradiction and renders this line of argument invalid. At best, this approach is intellectually dishonest. To paraphrase koenichfuerst, I think that's a sneaky way of pushing relativist nonsense down your throat from the very start. If "existence" exists by definition, as it would have to in order to be a tautology, then, by definition, it cannot be denied.
He then moves on to suggest that the great debate of metaphysics is to establish whether or not sense perception actually exists or if we are all Keanu Reaves in the Matrix. (Oh, boy....pop analogies here we come...). Once again, if all of our perceptions are wrong, and he truly believes this, then why are two human beings able to communicate at all? Why are we able to read each other's words and understand the content? How are we able to reach any agreements on anything whatsoever if the nature of existence is indeed so subjective?
I'm jumping ahead but koenichfuerst later invokes evolution as a support of a later argument. Evolution would have no meaning if our perceptions were all illusory. The whole theory of evolution is based on the idea that living beings change bit by bit over time. But one of the agents of that change is the environment in which they live. The better adapted to that environment they are, the better they are at surviving and in passing along their genes. Those who aren't as well adapted die off without the chance to pass them along. Evolution demands a direct correlation between survival and reality, between existence and life. You can't dismiss the identity principle as "begging the question" and subsequently use a theory which would be meaningless without it for support. This is another sign of intellectual dishonesty. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I hope that this is sufficient to brand koenichfurst as a charlatan and a liar. No wonder he didn't want to stick his face to this nonsense.
But, let's continue just to clean up all his inaccuracies.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 1
(1.2 Free Will)
Basically he is saying that free will cannot exist in a deterministic system. So, he says that if we accept physics, evolution, biology...in short the scientific explanation of existence and rule out any supernatural mumbo jumbo, that there is no room left for free will. If the man had any familiarity with cognitive science at all, then he would realize that this is just not so.
Of course objectivism supports the scientific view of our existence which rules out the possibility of a metaphysical soul. But, if you take a look at cognitive science, and in particular the work of Douglas Hofstadter, you will begin to see that it is possible to explain consciousness from within a deterministic framework. The window is called self-referentiality. For a detailed exploration of this concept I recommend you to Hofstadter's book, Godel, Escher, Bach. Although I must note that Hofstadter is in no way connected with objectivism and some of his personal opinions run definitely counter to it. However his initial theory of strange loops and tangled hierarchies seems to have a lot of value in the fields of cognitive science and artificial intelligence. And it is an eloquent depiction of just how likely it is that deterministic science and free will can co-exist.
Never say never, dude.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 2
(2. Ethics)...oh, goody...let's see what he has in store for us....
He is saying that the biological goal of life is reproduction not survival.
Well, he's half right, but mostly wrong.
The biological goal of genes is reproduction. And they have worked under evolutionary laws for so long that the "gene machines" or bodies they have constructed to carry and reproduce them have become highly effective at enabling them to do so. From a post-Dawkins Darwinian perspective, genes are the principle actors in evolution and from the gene's perspective it is most definitely concerned with survival. A gene can survive for thousands and thousands of years and the gene's "goal", so to speak, is to survive indefinitely. It is by the process of evolution that it "hopes" to do so. Of course the gene doesn't actually "hope" for anything or have goals, but the analogy helps to visualize the aggregate effects of natural selection at the gene level. Of course, this is too highly intricate a concept to be dealt with in a paragraph. I refer the reader to Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene for a fuller treatment of the idea. Of course, Dawkins is not an objectivist either, but since objectivism is a philosophy of reason, it can freely draw from science to support itself. And Dawkins is a brilliant evolutionary biologist.
The problem here is that genes are intent on survival which means that we have a drive to replicate, but for the genes to continue to exist and to optimize their chance for survival, their hosts or bodies must survive, and be able to survive for as long as necessary. And even then, aside from gene theory, let's just look at observations of the animal kingdom. How many animals knowingly commit suicide? Let's see..........ZERO. The reason is that any animal that had a genetic propensity to kill itself off, would succeed and would no longer exist. Evolution would allow it its wish and it would cease to be. Let's weaken it then, would any animal even exist which worked against it's own survival? NO. Why? Well, same thing. If an animal worked against itself (or did not work to preserve its own life) then this would be a huge disadvantage and it would become extinct due to evolutionary pressures. So, you can't use evolution to say that animals don't try to sustain their lives.
Furthermore, Ayn Rand does not claim that life is the ultimate value of all living beings. Animals cannot have values, because they do not have choice, they are merely programmed by those genes. Human beings, on the other hand, have that already established free-will. So, they can CHOOSE not to live and commit suicide. They CAN work against themselves if they wish. Only IF you choose life as your ultimate value, will the is-ought gap be bridged. Why? Because then the answer to things' optimal use is answered. If the ultimate goal is life, then all things, all rules of existence must be utilized in the way which is optimal for your own survival and then again survival in accordance with your nature as a human being. Continued survival in a state which is in accordance with your human nature is what we call happiness. If you choose to hold death as your ultimate value, then you are free to do so, but it will not bring you happiness.
Of course, if you choose not to hold life as your ultimate value, then you are in an immoral state, as he points out. As such, you can leech off of whoever is willing to support you, whether it be the blood money raped from the labor of others and dispensed by a welfare state, or if it is simply the charity of others upon which you can depend (or demand as the case may be). Of course, you can also die as do people who commit suicide, or do suicidal things.
As for the example of the praying mantis, it is highly debatable whether the male is aware of the fate that will meet it when it copulates. Most likely, it is simply driven by its genes as are all animals. I'm sure that it would much prefer to go on living if it could, but once again a praying mantis has no choice in the matter. People do. And I fail to see how surviving genetically equates with existing. The male CEASES to exist. It dies. Once again (third time) this is a case of intellectual dishonesty where koenichfuerst is switching definitions mid-sentence. The intent is to confuse your frame of reference so as to cram his argument down your throat, so to speak. (Pardon the paraphrase.)
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 3
Finally, the Albert Ellis defense holds absolutely no weight whatsoever. Ellis developed Rational Therapy. And just by checking out the Wikipedia article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ellis
we find,
"RT required that the therapist help the client understand — and act on the understanding —that his personal philosophy contains beliefs that lead to his own emotional pain. This new approach stressed actively working to change a client's self-defeating beliefs and behaviors by demonstrating their irrationality and rigidity. Ellis related everything to these core irrational beliefs such as "I must be perfect" and "I must be loved by everyone". Ellis believed that through rational analysis, people can understand their errors in light of the core irrational beliefs and then construct a more rational position."
I fail to see how this is an attack on objectivism. Demanding that everyone love you would seem to be a chronic problem of someone without self-esteem or self-worth who is desperately seeking validation from everyone around them. As for the seeking of perfection, it depends entirely upon what your concept of "perfect" is. If it is based on the irrational, then of course pursuing it will lead to problems. If it is based on the rationally attainable, then there is nothing impossible about it. Perfection can be attained as long as your notion of perfection is defined by reality and does not consist of an attempt to redefine reality to meet your conception. As a philosophy which preaches that full acceptance of the reality of the world is fundamental to all else, objectivism would demand that people keep their goals realistic. If anything, given this article, I would think that RT is fully compatible with objectivism. Of course I'm not fully versed in the method, but the principles seem non-contradictory.
koenichfuerst: 0
American Antitheist: 4
Obviously, he's too busy to read any of the works he refers to, or research any of the ideas he's criticizing. Remember, koenichfuerst...ignorance is not a rebuttal. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it isn't true.
Cheers.
(If you're interested, Koenichfuerst replied to this post, and I posted a link to his rebuttal along with my counter. It should be interesting to note that he has yet to respond to it. Here's the link: http://anamericananti-theistabroad.blogspot.com/2008/05/further-defense-against-koenichfuerst.html)
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
This is John Galt Speaking...
This is a 13-parter, so I can't embed all the clips here. But I seriously recommend that you at least look at part 1 and if you like, go check out the others.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Altruism: Servility and Humanity as Sacrificial Animals
Thank you, Ron Fournier.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for what could not be a more vivid portrait of altruism in America and exactly what is wrong with it.
In case you didn't see his commentary on the nobility of sacrifice as an American tradition, here's the link so you can see for yourselves.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24366817/
What disgusts me about this the most are the assumptions that he makes about good and evil and what is noble or ignoble. He places selflessness as an ethical ideal, sacrifice as its expression, and a state of servitude as the blessed pinnacle of human endeavor.
How horribly backward this all seems to me.
"Sacrifice," writes Fournier, "is a word that Americans like to associate with their heritage, their ideals and themselves." I don't. And I know quite a few other Americans who don't. What is it about sacrifice that makes it an ideal? Even if it has been in our heritage, it does not necessarily make it so. Rather it would seem better treated as a regret, a misfortune forced on us to deal with governments and movements of masses which demand our sacrifices and offer little in return. When sacrifices are forced upon people, when their property is stolen under the guise of social works, when their lives are chained and mandated by the asphyxiating legislation of special interests, then they are made sacrificial offerings on the altar of Society rather than choosing to make sacrifices. I fail to see what is noble in being made a victim. Victims of any form of brutality deserve the same respect as any other human being and some compassion or pity. But suffering is not a virtue in itself any more than sacrifice is.
"No Mother Teresas there" quips Fournier about Romney and Huckabee. Well, none here either. I recommend Christopher Hitchens' book The Missionary Position for a detailed presentation of exactly how "virtuous" she was. If we were to call virtuous those who would work unwaveringly towards foisting Catholic law on an entire nation of people as she did in Ireland we would be turning the very notion of virtue on its head so that tyranny most foul would become the goal of our aspirations and submission (or "service") to such tyranny would be the honorable role of the enlightened citizen.
But Fournier is just getting started. He moves on to berate our "materialistic" nature which as he puts it is "consumed by consuming, a materialistic culture that encourages people to pursue happiness via shopping sprees and save sacrifice for tithing on Sundays and distant do-gooders."
He lumps together ideas like it's a fire sale. Everything must go! First of all, materialism does not necessarily mean that one will think of shopping malls as Nirvana, or seek absolution on Ebay. According to Wikipedia, "The philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is matter, and is considered a form of physicalism."
And here's the entry from Merriam-Webster online:
So, what we have here is a pathetically cloaked attempt to get us to swallow the idea that we should feel guilty for our material success, because what we should be doing, according to Fournier, is to be stressing over spiritual matters. This is an assumption to which any athiest should take offense.
But he cannot be satisfied with these offenses against reason, he has to rub salt in the wound.
He writes:
"But it would be a mistake to assume there is no stomach for sacrifice — or its sister virtue, service — in our society and in our politics. The desire to serve is part of human nature, and a particularly American virtue. History tells us that our selfless instincts flower in troubled times like these, and can be tapped by leaders looking for ways to motivate an anxious people."
He simply has to keep stressing his assumption that sacrifice is a virtue, as though saying it enough times would be sufficient proof. Of course he doesn't feel like he needs to justify this, as he is obviously writing for a spiritual audience, one that accepts the Judeo-Christian ethics at face value. Unfortunately far too many athiests do as well, a symptom of their misguided attraction to collectivist ideologies such as socialism and communism which share the same ethical base. Placing sacrifice and selflessness as virtues in the place of accomplishment and pride wreaks havoc on the moral compass of humanity, turning all our ideals against the mandates of the reality of our survival. It demands that we all become sinners and robs us of our self-esteem because of the impossibility of the demands on our conscience. Rather than feeling pride for what good we have done through the virtue of our work, we must feel shame for every empty mouth, and every shattered soul. Rather than feel the shining glory of purposeful action, we must become cynical and bitter at the impossibility of ever there being an action with purpose. THIS is what it means to place sacrifice, servility, and altruism as ideals. For a more detailed argument on the horrors of altruistic belief systems, I would refer the author to the works of Ayn Rand, most notably The Virtue of Selflessness.
I could go on. Fournier definitely does. I've written this much and only covered the first half page of his editorial. He fills up 2 full pages with this tripe. But I won't bother. The reason is that pulling the ideologies from his work is just that simple. He assumes that everyone feels the same way about these things, and so he makes absolutely no pretense about covering them up. It isn't enough that we simply do what we can, when we encounter misfortune in this world, we must give our whole lives to it to merit consideration in Fournier's analysis.
Dying in war counts as a worthwhile sacrifice in Fournier's analysis, but surprisingly in that he so readily takes on the mantle of a determiner of virtue, he cannot discriminate between the virtue of the abolitionists or the confederates, nor between the struggle for Manifest Destiny or the struggle against fascism and communism. Clearly all these endeavors are rendered equally virtuous in that the people who fought for them died. And there we have it at its heart. As long as you die for something, then you're virtuous. I would rather live and place life as the ultimate value. There are far too many Jihadists that would be rushing to agree with Fournier at this point.
As for me, I can't stomach to read through his raving scribbles for one second longer. So, go check it out for yourselves, and try to think about this one thing if nothing else--If it is virtuous to sacrifice the most you can to the most "deserving", what would utopia look like?
(And no cheating. We're talking about real sacrifice here. That means that you don't get equal or greater values in return.)
Thank you, thank you, thank you for what could not be a more vivid portrait of altruism in America and exactly what is wrong with it.
In case you didn't see his commentary on the nobility of sacrifice as an American tradition, here's the link so you can see for yourselves.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24366817/
What disgusts me about this the most are the assumptions that he makes about good and evil and what is noble or ignoble. He places selflessness as an ethical ideal, sacrifice as its expression, and a state of servitude as the blessed pinnacle of human endeavor.
How horribly backward this all seems to me.
"Sacrifice," writes Fournier, "is a word that Americans like to associate with their heritage, their ideals and themselves." I don't. And I know quite a few other Americans who don't. What is it about sacrifice that makes it an ideal? Even if it has been in our heritage, it does not necessarily make it so. Rather it would seem better treated as a regret, a misfortune forced on us to deal with governments and movements of masses which demand our sacrifices and offer little in return. When sacrifices are forced upon people, when their property is stolen under the guise of social works, when their lives are chained and mandated by the asphyxiating legislation of special interests, then they are made sacrificial offerings on the altar of Society rather than choosing to make sacrifices. I fail to see what is noble in being made a victim. Victims of any form of brutality deserve the same respect as any other human being and some compassion or pity. But suffering is not a virtue in itself any more than sacrifice is.
"No Mother Teresas there" quips Fournier about Romney and Huckabee. Well, none here either. I recommend Christopher Hitchens' book The Missionary Position for a detailed presentation of exactly how "virtuous" she was. If we were to call virtuous those who would work unwaveringly towards foisting Catholic law on an entire nation of people as she did in Ireland we would be turning the very notion of virtue on its head so that tyranny most foul would become the goal of our aspirations and submission (or "service") to such tyranny would be the honorable role of the enlightened citizen.
But Fournier is just getting started. He moves on to berate our "materialistic" nature which as he puts it is "consumed by consuming, a materialistic culture that encourages people to pursue happiness via shopping sprees and save sacrifice for tithing on Sundays and distant do-gooders."
He lumps together ideas like it's a fire sale. Everything must go! First of all, materialism does not necessarily mean that one will think of shopping malls as Nirvana, or seek absolution on Ebay. According to Wikipedia, "The philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is matter, and is considered a form of physicalism."
And here's the entry from Merriam-Webster online:
1 a: a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter
b: a doctrine that the only or the highest values or objectives lie in material well-being and in the furtherance of material progress
c: a doctrine that economic or social change is materially caused — compare historical materialism
2: a preoccupation with or stress upon material rather than intellectual or spiritual things
b: a doctrine that the only or the highest values or objectives lie in material well-being and in the furtherance of material progress
c: a doctrine that economic or social change is materially caused — compare historical materialism
2: a preoccupation with or stress upon material rather than intellectual or spiritual things
But he cannot be satisfied with these offenses against reason, he has to rub salt in the wound.
He writes:
"But it would be a mistake to assume there is no stomach for sacrifice — or its sister virtue, service — in our society and in our politics. The desire to serve is part of human nature, and a particularly American virtue. History tells us that our selfless instincts flower in troubled times like these, and can be tapped by leaders looking for ways to motivate an anxious people."
He simply has to keep stressing his assumption that sacrifice is a virtue, as though saying it enough times would be sufficient proof. Of course he doesn't feel like he needs to justify this, as he is obviously writing for a spiritual audience, one that accepts the Judeo-Christian ethics at face value. Unfortunately far too many athiests do as well, a symptom of their misguided attraction to collectivist ideologies such as socialism and communism which share the same ethical base. Placing sacrifice and selflessness as virtues in the place of accomplishment and pride wreaks havoc on the moral compass of humanity, turning all our ideals against the mandates of the reality of our survival. It demands that we all become sinners and robs us of our self-esteem because of the impossibility of the demands on our conscience. Rather than feeling pride for what good we have done through the virtue of our work, we must feel shame for every empty mouth, and every shattered soul. Rather than feel the shining glory of purposeful action, we must become cynical and bitter at the impossibility of ever there being an action with purpose. THIS is what it means to place sacrifice, servility, and altruism as ideals. For a more detailed argument on the horrors of altruistic belief systems, I would refer the author to the works of Ayn Rand, most notably The Virtue of Selflessness.
I could go on. Fournier definitely does. I've written this much and only covered the first half page of his editorial. He fills up 2 full pages with this tripe. But I won't bother. The reason is that pulling the ideologies from his work is just that simple. He assumes that everyone feels the same way about these things, and so he makes absolutely no pretense about covering them up. It isn't enough that we simply do what we can, when we encounter misfortune in this world, we must give our whole lives to it to merit consideration in Fournier's analysis.
Dying in war counts as a worthwhile sacrifice in Fournier's analysis, but surprisingly in that he so readily takes on the mantle of a determiner of virtue, he cannot discriminate between the virtue of the abolitionists or the confederates, nor between the struggle for Manifest Destiny or the struggle against fascism and communism. Clearly all these endeavors are rendered equally virtuous in that the people who fought for them died. And there we have it at its heart. As long as you die for something, then you're virtuous. I would rather live and place life as the ultimate value. There are far too many Jihadists that would be rushing to agree with Fournier at this point.
As for me, I can't stomach to read through his raving scribbles for one second longer. So, go check it out for yourselves, and try to think about this one thing if nothing else--If it is virtuous to sacrifice the most you can to the most "deserving", what would utopia look like?
(And no cheating. We're talking about real sacrifice here. That means that you don't get equal or greater values in return.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
