Yesterday was my birthday, and it went by almost unnoticed. Not on the part of those around me, many wished me all the best, but rather on my part.
You see, I have taken to not celebrating my birthday. Seeing it as being a “little thing” I have largely ignored it for years, after all a birthday is just another day, you aren’t really a year older, just a day. I didn’t give it much thought at all. I went to work, didn’t mention it, came home and had a normal unremarkable day.
Then it hit me, spurred by a comment made by my Sister-in-Law who, when I remarked that I had received no birthday gifts and had no plan to celebrate at all, commented that she “hated that”, meaning the trivialization of such celebrations. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but this morning I realized just what I was doing.
The Strikers Oath states in its first sentence “I swear by my life, and my love of it”, well this apathy toward my own birthday was not showing my life (Me) the ‘love’ it/I deserve. Too easily we reduce our lives to indistinguishable days, each following in bored procession one after the other. This is the antithesis of the Objectivist philosophy. Objectivism teaches us that we should celebrate our lives, that it is the end of all our means and that it is worth and worthy of any and all tributes we can heap upon it.
Having had this sudden realization I began to see the other ways I had been trivializing my own existence. I had let others that I value, specifically my wife view her birthday in the same fashion. Thus I was robbing myself of an opportunity to express with complete selfish satisfaction how much I value her.
Hell the day itself does not need to be important at all. The mere act of living my life in my own way, however small, is worthy of complete mindfulness, a conscious joyful acknowledgement of life, my life and my living of it.
My birthday has come and gone, but its passing, as unremarked as it was, has left me with this thought… Today, and every day is the first day of the rest of your life. Live it, consciously, actively, viscerally, fully.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
The Canadian Farce of Rights and Freedoms #2
If you are a classically liberal thinker like myself you probably believe in the notion of unalienable rights, which is to say Rights as a precondition to living ones life as a man; To me and those like me rights are an intrinsic necessity to living as opposed to merely existing in this world.
Well, the talking heads that wrote and lawyered the Charter don't believe in Rights like that. As a matter of fact I don't think they believe in Rights at all, only the power of the state.
The second sentence of the Charter is called "Rights and Freedoms in Canada" now that is a tall order, or at least you would think it would be a hard thing to cram into a single solitary sentence but the sentence really has nothing to do with Rights and freedoms and everything to do with who will allow you, and when you will be allowed to have rights and freedoms.
It states in full; "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
This is the first of many caveats in the Charter, and like all the others it is strategically placed to nullify any statement that could give the impression that Rights and Freedoms are a part of human nature as opposed to a permission granted to men at the whim of the state/government/some random constitutional lawyer.
Read that sentence. If you do so without mincing words you will immediately recognize its intent. Were you to simplify the sentence , boiling it down to its absolute meaning it would read... The Government has decided exactly what permissions you have to act and live your life and it will also decide when you will be permitted to do so.
In other words... your rights are what we say they are when we say they are.
So much for the "Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms".
Saturday, January 22, 2011
The Canadian Farce of Rights and Freedoms
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a document that chains the people of Canada to a contradiction riddled and unapologetically statist perversion of the concepts of individual freedom and liberty.
"Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:"
This is the first line of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
So, in a document that claims to innumerate and codify the rights and freedoms of the people of Canada the first sentence contains a statement which, if examined rationally and without compromise, would lead to such a host of contradictions that the whole thing ought to have been thrown out of any 1st year law class.
Principle is defined in part as; a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived:
If it is true that Canada recognizes the Supremacy of God then which God?
No, there is no scope here to quibble and claim as many progressively minded people do that the statement is a generalization regarding the spiritual nature of any and all belief in a supernatural deity or notion, because to claim that is to allow a multitude of contradictions.
Remember the word "principles"? Well religions in Canada - which are the earthy manifestation of "God" - who according to our charter is "supreme" - don't recognize or even allow the same principles to be exercised. While some sects of the Christian religion recognize in principle (and action) the right of two men or two women to marry, the Catholic God most certainly does not; and that is one of the more benign contradictions of the notion of "principle" that this fallacious statement incurs.
Who's principle wins?
What sort of principle (fundamental, primary, or general law or truth) if any is upheld?
If you claim that the sentence is merely a recognition of spirituality what principles do we hold as true and which ones are the ones our nation is actually founded upon?
If we as a society get to pick and choose which "principles" we allow our nameless, faceless, secular Deity-thing to actually count as our founding principles why do we bother even trying to shroud the first sentence of this aberration of Rights in a spiritual cloak in the first place?
As for the remainder of the sentence, I have no complaint with the principle of "the rule of Law". That is not to say that I don't have issue with the things that we have been saddled with as "Law" but I'll get into those points as I delve further into this despicable document.
"Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:"
This is the first line of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
So, in a document that claims to innumerate and codify the rights and freedoms of the people of Canada the first sentence contains a statement which, if examined rationally and without compromise, would lead to such a host of contradictions that the whole thing ought to have been thrown out of any 1st year law class.
Principle is defined in part as; a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived:
If it is true that Canada recognizes the Supremacy of God then which God?
No, there is no scope here to quibble and claim as many progressively minded people do that the statement is a generalization regarding the spiritual nature of any and all belief in a supernatural deity or notion, because to claim that is to allow a multitude of contradictions.
Remember the word "principles"? Well religions in Canada - which are the earthy manifestation of "God" - who according to our charter is "supreme" - don't recognize or even allow the same principles to be exercised. While some sects of the Christian religion recognize in principle (and action) the right of two men or two women to marry, the Catholic God most certainly does not; and that is one of the more benign contradictions of the notion of "principle" that this fallacious statement incurs.
Who's principle wins?
What sort of principle (fundamental, primary, or general law or truth) if any is upheld?
If you claim that the sentence is merely a recognition of spirituality what principles do we hold as true and which ones are the ones our nation is actually founded upon?
If we as a society get to pick and choose which "principles" we allow our nameless, faceless, secular Deity-thing to actually count as our founding principles why do we bother even trying to shroud the first sentence of this aberration of Rights in a spiritual cloak in the first place?
As for the remainder of the sentence, I have no complaint with the principle of "the rule of Law". That is not to say that I don't have issue with the things that we have been saddled with as "Law" but I'll get into those points as I delve further into this despicable document.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Christmas
I think too many people expect "Christmas" to have some sort of profound effect on people as if the day has some sort of intrinsic spirit, when it is just another day, and the only "spirit" the day can have is a direct reflection of the spirit we give it. But having fostered completely unrealistic expectations people end up pissed off and disheartened that "everyone" is still exactly what and how and who they were throughout the year.
Here is my advice on Christmas... Use the day and the season to celebrate those people who you value. Don't worry about all of mankind... we are not all in this together. We are all individuals and as individuals we have to make rational value judgments about the people in our lives. That means the ones you deal with every day, your loved ones as well as that "idiot" that bumped into you without an apology when you were shopping.
Remember, you will have no more in common with the drug addled thief downtown on Dec 25th than you did for the rest of the year, and just because its Christmas it does not mean that his evil actions deserve to be forgiven, nor conversely do they become more evil because of the season.
It's Christmas. Buy something nice for someone nice, spend time with the people you love. Be good to yourself.
You want to know the best part about that idea? If everyone did it, if everyone rationally and selfishly chose to celebrate the people and things in their own lives that made life worth living (every day and all year) then there really would be peace on earth, and we'd get it without anyone telling us the way we got it was wrong or evil.
Here is my advice on Christmas... Use the day and the season to celebrate those people who you value. Don't worry about all of mankind... we are not all in this together. We are all individuals and as individuals we have to make rational value judgments about the people in our lives. That means the ones you deal with every day, your loved ones as well as that "idiot" that bumped into you without an apology when you were shopping.
Remember, you will have no more in common with the drug addled thief downtown on Dec 25th than you did for the rest of the year, and just because its Christmas it does not mean that his evil actions deserve to be forgiven, nor conversely do they become more evil because of the season.
It's Christmas. Buy something nice for someone nice, spend time with the people you love. Be good to yourself.
You want to know the best part about that idea? If everyone did it, if everyone rationally and selfishly chose to celebrate the people and things in their own lives that made life worth living (every day and all year) then there really would be peace on earth, and we'd get it without anyone telling us the way we got it was wrong or evil.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Destroyer.
I haven't been writing much lately, and although the new job has something to do with that I'm beginning to recognize the other main contributing factor, and that is what I'm focusing on today.
Basically I'm feeling politically disenfranchised, which is to say that the harder I look at society, the accepted system of morality and state of government the more it upsets, disgusts and alienates me.
As much as I believe that a properly constrained government is achievable, I am more sure each and every day that such a thing can not be created within or upon the current framework of any western democratic state. The Keynesian economic morass, corrupt political principles, moral bankruptcy and culture of entitlement both within these governments and within the general population makes the dream of building a laissez faire "purse" out of this "sows ear" a practical impossibility.
The whole mess needs to be destroyed, wholly and utterly destroyed. But more than the real and actual act of destruction is required, it must all be tied explicitly to the flawed premises that predicate the need for destruction.
In economics the boom and bust of our Keynesian economies must be explicitly tied to the idiocy of fiat currency and deficit spending, while at the same time the strength and self-correcting nature of a free market must be championed. The lunacy of handing economic control to elected but clueless officials or government bureaucrats should be writ large in the blood and sweat of the failures of that system. The businessman should take his rightful spot as the champion of the economic world and the politician and the bureaucrat should be relegated to purely political issues.
In politics we must kill the idea that government is an institution responsible for providing anything except a framework within which our individual rights (life, liberty and property) are protected from the initiation of force. It can not accomplish that goal by promising to serve any but the interest of the singular individual. No man, no group and no interest, however seemingly noble can ever be championed over the individual. There can be no law upholding the "rights" of women, or gays or consumers or blacks, or the poor, as each and every one of these demographic groups is explicitly consumed by the term "individual" and to rule in the favour of a single group is to destroy the rights of every individual outside of that group.
Our morality needs to be tied to this world, to our lives and to our purpose. This world is where we need our morality and what we need our morality for is living, not some absurd promise of an afterlife, or as some cosmic balancing act. Once that simple principle is recognized it is quite easy to see that the moral object of our lives is in the living, and that living with joy, and purpose is the good. All moral acts are those that serve us individually in the true achievement of our own happiness and our own goals and our own purpose.
Morality is not a floating abstraction that can be summarized in a few simplistic edicts. We exist as thinking rational individuals and as a result our morality must be based on the situations we find ourselves in. To declare "thou shall not kill" as a moral imperative, is an abuse of thought that demands that every moral man submit and become subservient to any immoral brute.
Perhaps the cornerstone of all of this is the need to recognize that the mere act of mortal existence, which is to say, drawing a breath as a human being entitles us to nothing. Even the unalienable rights of life, liberty and property must be secured somehow. Nature does not grant the right to live, only the ability to seek to live, nature will not give us liberty, only the ability to create liberty and nature will not bestow upon us property of any sort, only the will to create it in our own name for our own use.
The world as it is, as we have made it (thus far) is one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase with reason, nature and the facts of reality. Our current societies (all of them) are a perversion of misguided morality, incorrect economic theory, corrupt politics and undeserved rewards. It all needs to be destroyed. It must be destroyed, before it can be replaced with;
Basically I'm feeling politically disenfranchised, which is to say that the harder I look at society, the accepted system of morality and state of government the more it upsets, disgusts and alienates me.
As much as I believe that a properly constrained government is achievable, I am more sure each and every day that such a thing can not be created within or upon the current framework of any western democratic state. The Keynesian economic morass, corrupt political principles, moral bankruptcy and culture of entitlement both within these governments and within the general population makes the dream of building a laissez faire "purse" out of this "sows ear" a practical impossibility.
The whole mess needs to be destroyed, wholly and utterly destroyed. But more than the real and actual act of destruction is required, it must all be tied explicitly to the flawed premises that predicate the need for destruction.
In economics the boom and bust of our Keynesian economies must be explicitly tied to the idiocy of fiat currency and deficit spending, while at the same time the strength and self-correcting nature of a free market must be championed. The lunacy of handing economic control to elected but clueless officials or government bureaucrats should be writ large in the blood and sweat of the failures of that system. The businessman should take his rightful spot as the champion of the economic world and the politician and the bureaucrat should be relegated to purely political issues.
In politics we must kill the idea that government is an institution responsible for providing anything except a framework within which our individual rights (life, liberty and property) are protected from the initiation of force. It can not accomplish that goal by promising to serve any but the interest of the singular individual. No man, no group and no interest, however seemingly noble can ever be championed over the individual. There can be no law upholding the "rights" of women, or gays or consumers or blacks, or the poor, as each and every one of these demographic groups is explicitly consumed by the term "individual" and to rule in the favour of a single group is to destroy the rights of every individual outside of that group.
Our morality needs to be tied to this world, to our lives and to our purpose. This world is where we need our morality and what we need our morality for is living, not some absurd promise of an afterlife, or as some cosmic balancing act. Once that simple principle is recognized it is quite easy to see that the moral object of our lives is in the living, and that living with joy, and purpose is the good. All moral acts are those that serve us individually in the true achievement of our own happiness and our own goals and our own purpose.
Morality is not a floating abstraction that can be summarized in a few simplistic edicts. We exist as thinking rational individuals and as a result our morality must be based on the situations we find ourselves in. To declare "thou shall not kill" as a moral imperative, is an abuse of thought that demands that every moral man submit and become subservient to any immoral brute.
Perhaps the cornerstone of all of this is the need to recognize that the mere act of mortal existence, which is to say, drawing a breath as a human being entitles us to nothing. Even the unalienable rights of life, liberty and property must be secured somehow. Nature does not grant the right to live, only the ability to seek to live, nature will not give us liberty, only the ability to create liberty and nature will not bestow upon us property of any sort, only the will to create it in our own name for our own use.
The world as it is, as we have made it (thus far) is one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase with reason, nature and the facts of reality. Our current societies (all of them) are a perversion of misguided morality, incorrect economic theory, corrupt politics and undeserved rewards. It all needs to be destroyed. It must be destroyed, before it can be replaced with;
- a moral code based on mans life and the living of it,
- an economic system based on and working in coordination with markets and market forces,
- politics based on and in service to individual rights and only individual rights and,
- the rational and selfish rejection of entitlement in favour of self-reliance and productive effort in all aspects of our individual lives, whatever our ability.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Values
They claim that money can’t buy happiness, and they mean that material possessions can’t make a person happy which is true.
But it isn't true for the reason that modern moralists want us to believe. It’s not because money or possessions are evil, or that they poisons us “spiritually” making it easier for “a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”, nor is it because they somehow create inequality, or oppresses the guy that doesn’t have quite as much.
No, the actual reason is that money, or any other possession for that matter, is not the requisite end, though it can be a means to the end (happiness) if used properly. If one treats money (or any similar good) as the end product of their life they are missing the point of that life.
If you buy a Harley Davidson for the prestige and believe that it will bring you the attention and the adoration of a certain crowd or group and therefore it will make you happy, your happiness will be a ghost; gone as soon as you step off the machine. If on the other hand you buy the Harley because you desire to ride and enjoy the particular feel of the scooter, that your value is in the quality of its craftsmanship its originality and of course the riding itself, then every time you ride you will be happy, and that happiness will spill over into other parts of your life.
The point is that life isn’t about the accumulation of physical wealth or goods. He who dies with the most toys may or may not be a winner, but it isn’t because of the toys.
The winner is the man who achieves his values, who lives by those values. But those values aren’t necessarily possessions; they are the actualization of concepts and reason, of moral and ethical choices. They are all the parts, pieces, premises and pleasures that further our lives.
But it isn't true for the reason that modern moralists want us to believe. It’s not because money or possessions are evil, or that they poisons us “spiritually” making it easier for “a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”, nor is it because they somehow create inequality, or oppresses the guy that doesn’t have quite as much.
No, the actual reason is that money, or any other possession for that matter, is not the requisite end, though it can be a means to the end (happiness) if used properly. If one treats money (or any similar good) as the end product of their life they are missing the point of that life.
If you buy a Harley Davidson for the prestige and believe that it will bring you the attention and the adoration of a certain crowd or group and therefore it will make you happy, your happiness will be a ghost; gone as soon as you step off the machine. If on the other hand you buy the Harley because you desire to ride and enjoy the particular feel of the scooter, that your value is in the quality of its craftsmanship its originality and of course the riding itself, then every time you ride you will be happy, and that happiness will spill over into other parts of your life.
The point is that life isn’t about the accumulation of physical wealth or goods. He who dies with the most toys may or may not be a winner, but it isn’t because of the toys.
The winner is the man who achieves his values, who lives by those values. But those values aren’t necessarily possessions; they are the actualization of concepts and reason, of moral and ethical choices. They are all the parts, pieces, premises and pleasures that further our lives.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
W.E. Henley
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
W.E. Henley
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Christmas
From the Ayn Rand Lexicon...
[In answer to the question of whether it is appropriate for an atheist to celebrate Christmas:]Yes, of course. A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property (though it is supposed to be part, but is a largely unobserved part) of the Christian religion.
The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: “Merry Christmas”—not “Weep and Repent.” And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form—by giving presents to one’s friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance . . . .
The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialized. The gift-buying . . . stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street decorations put up by department stores and other institutions—the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors—provide the city with a spectacular display, which only “commercial greed” could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle.
The Objectivist Calendar, Dec. 1976.
Merry Christmas one and all!
Monday, November 2, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The Nature of Governments
We’ve heard it all before… “Government is a necessary evil.” Well, that is a lie, and a dangerous lie at that.
By implication the statement seems to say that if we dumb humans could only get it right we could exist in a society free of government. This is the anarchist dream, but even they recognize the need for the protection of rights, for national and personal security. However, their solution is not governmental but private. They say that a society let a man hire a company to protect his rights that he could be safe, that he would be protected.
Of course that all falls disastrously apart when Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith each having hired different security forces both maintain their rights have been violated and each attempts to have the other arrested for the transgression. Protection Company “A” plus Protection Company “B” minus the stability of a single government equals bloodbath.
Alternatively such anarchy panders to the far too human tendency toward the principal that might makes right and gangs, private armies and warlords turn the anarchist utopia into a Hobbesian life, cruel, brutish and short.
On the other side of the coin is the belief that Government, (still as a necessary evil) is what makes a society, that it is an end in itself, that it is more important than any one man. The socialist and communist while promising that someday the state will “whither away” still believe in it indeed they make it the causus beli of their society.
In following the false notion of collective rights, they come to believe that in order to provide what is “good” to “all” it is necessary to destroy the concept and meaning of the individual. “You” as an entity do not exist. You are a cog in the wheel, insignificant when measured against the needs of others. What others? The others. What need? Their need. Who is the “all” that they are working so hard for? Why it’s anyone but you, the individual.
So where does this leave us? Well, to be honest, metaphysically it leaves us way, way back before government and politics and society ever enter into the picture, but that is a subject for another day so let me just make a “simple” assertions here.
The previous two extremes attempted, or claimed to protect mans rights. What essential right is it that the Anarchist and the Socialist seek to protect? Mans right to life.
Life is the right from which all other rights spring, be they true rights like liberty and property or false printing press rights like the right to healthcare or to a job.
Can one sell a right, or hire it out? Certainly not.
Who has a life worthy of the term right? Society, a nation, some group, government or gang? No.
Only an individual can possess rights and no individual can ever hold his rights higher than the rights of another. And it is that principle that brings us to the nature, purpose and necessity of government.
Government is necessary to protect the rights of individuals, to ensure that their rights are held on par with all other individuals. No mans position, strength, wealth, need or wants can ever place his rights above the rights of another man. That assurance is the sole function of government, it is not evil, it is just and proper and rational.
How a government approaches the defence of individual rights defines its nature. The anarchist disallows government as the arbiter of disputes and consequently the protector of rights, so rights are destroyed.
The socialist perverts the concept of rights and applies it to some nameless, faceless undefined collective making slaves of all.
The welfare statist attempts to make rights out of needs consequentially following the socialists path to hell.
And finally religionists of whatever political persuasion subverts mans right to live his own life for the commandments of some supernatural fairy tale and the promise of something better when he is dead..
So the next time you hear someone say that government is a necessary evil ask him to name which evil he prefers more, slavery, servitude or death.
By implication the statement seems to say that if we dumb humans could only get it right we could exist in a society free of government. This is the anarchist dream, but even they recognize the need for the protection of rights, for national and personal security. However, their solution is not governmental but private. They say that a society let a man hire a company to protect his rights that he could be safe, that he would be protected.
Of course that all falls disastrously apart when Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith each having hired different security forces both maintain their rights have been violated and each attempts to have the other arrested for the transgression. Protection Company “A” plus Protection Company “B” minus the stability of a single government equals bloodbath.
Alternatively such anarchy panders to the far too human tendency toward the principal that might makes right and gangs, private armies and warlords turn the anarchist utopia into a Hobbesian life, cruel, brutish and short.
On the other side of the coin is the belief that Government, (still as a necessary evil) is what makes a society, that it is an end in itself, that it is more important than any one man. The socialist and communist while promising that someday the state will “whither away” still believe in it indeed they make it the causus beli of their society.
In following the false notion of collective rights, they come to believe that in order to provide what is “good” to “all” it is necessary to destroy the concept and meaning of the individual. “You” as an entity do not exist. You are a cog in the wheel, insignificant when measured against the needs of others. What others? The others. What need? Their need. Who is the “all” that they are working so hard for? Why it’s anyone but you, the individual.
So where does this leave us? Well, to be honest, metaphysically it leaves us way, way back before government and politics and society ever enter into the picture, but that is a subject for another day so let me just make a “simple” assertions here.
The previous two extremes attempted, or claimed to protect mans rights. What essential right is it that the Anarchist and the Socialist seek to protect? Mans right to life.
Life is the right from which all other rights spring, be they true rights like liberty and property or false printing press rights like the right to healthcare or to a job.
Can one sell a right, or hire it out? Certainly not.
Who has a life worthy of the term right? Society, a nation, some group, government or gang? No.
Only an individual can possess rights and no individual can ever hold his rights higher than the rights of another. And it is that principle that brings us to the nature, purpose and necessity of government.
Government is necessary to protect the rights of individuals, to ensure that their rights are held on par with all other individuals. No mans position, strength, wealth, need or wants can ever place his rights above the rights of another man. That assurance is the sole function of government, it is not evil, it is just and proper and rational.
How a government approaches the defence of individual rights defines its nature. The anarchist disallows government as the arbiter of disputes and consequently the protector of rights, so rights are destroyed.
The socialist perverts the concept of rights and applies it to some nameless, faceless undefined collective making slaves of all.
The welfare statist attempts to make rights out of needs consequentially following the socialists path to hell.
And finally religionists of whatever political persuasion subverts mans right to live his own life for the commandments of some supernatural fairy tale and the promise of something better when he is dead..
So the next time you hear someone say that government is a necessary evil ask him to name which evil he prefers more, slavery, servitude or death.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Altruism At The Movies: Two Thumbs Down
It was standard movie fare. A great cataclysm was about to strike, the Army was putting people onto trucks to take them to safety. The last two spots were taken by the heroine and her male companion (who has already been characterized as being something of an asshole). Suddenly out in the crowd a heavy woman, clutching a baby with another child in tow cries out to be saved.
A soldier says that there is no more room...
"But you have to save my babies" cries the woman.
There is safety 10 miles away says the soldier, you will have to walk.
But we can't walk 10 miles she cries... Save my children!
At this point the heroine jumps off of the truck. "You can have my spot" she says, in the purest spirit of altruism, giving up her safety and security for a total stranger.
The heroine then looks back at her male companion. "Come on she says..."
And that is where it happens, the companion, rightfully concerned with his own welfare refuses to give up his seat.
The result (condemnation) is nurtured in the watcher, from the earlier characterization of this companion as a coward and a jerk. So the reaction of my wife when she muttered "jerk" under her breath came as little surprise.
I looked at her and realized that she hadn't thought about the elicited reaction. So I asked her. "If you were already safe in the shelter would you want me to give up my life for some complete stranger? Is that woman's life worth more to you than mine? Think about it... I'd gladly give up my seat for you or our kids but for a stranger? What makes her life more valuable than mine?
There was no answer.
Now being as smart (and normally) as rational as my wife is I don't often win an argument with one point like that, but it was so simple this time...
Why? Because the ideal of altruism is so often shown in this way, as a remote "lifeboat scenario" with the situation completely detached from those observing it, where the hero/heroine always eventually survives and the selfish jerk almost always dies. But that isn't true to nature. It is the people who do everything that they can to save their own lives that end up surviving, not the ones that give their safety away to a stranger.
Why is the stranger important? What possible reason could there be to sacrifice your life for a complete stranger? Some might point to animals using altruistic behaviour in the wild as an admonishment that we Humans should be at least as "good" but look at what they are comparing us to.
A monkey or a beaver can not reason and operates on instinct in a range of the moment existence. There are no value judgments being made, the animal is not sacrificing itself it is operating the autopilot of instinct.
So next time you see this cinematic or literary trick used take a moment to think. Raise yourself above the level of a Rhesus monkey or Beaver and ask the important question.
What do you value, what is being asked for in sacrifice?
A soldier says that there is no more room...
"But you have to save my babies" cries the woman.
There is safety 10 miles away says the soldier, you will have to walk.
But we can't walk 10 miles she cries... Save my children!
At this point the heroine jumps off of the truck. "You can have my spot" she says, in the purest spirit of altruism, giving up her safety and security for a total stranger.
The heroine then looks back at her male companion. "Come on she says..."
And that is where it happens, the companion, rightfully concerned with his own welfare refuses to give up his seat.
The result (condemnation) is nurtured in the watcher, from the earlier characterization of this companion as a coward and a jerk. So the reaction of my wife when she muttered "jerk" under her breath came as little surprise.
I looked at her and realized that she hadn't thought about the elicited reaction. So I asked her. "If you were already safe in the shelter would you want me to give up my life for some complete stranger? Is that woman's life worth more to you than mine? Think about it... I'd gladly give up my seat for you or our kids but for a stranger? What makes her life more valuable than mine?
There was no answer.
Now being as smart (and normally) as rational as my wife is I don't often win an argument with one point like that, but it was so simple this time...
Why? Because the ideal of altruism is so often shown in this way, as a remote "lifeboat scenario" with the situation completely detached from those observing it, where the hero/heroine always eventually survives and the selfish jerk almost always dies. But that isn't true to nature. It is the people who do everything that they can to save their own lives that end up surviving, not the ones that give their safety away to a stranger.
Why is the stranger important? What possible reason could there be to sacrifice your life for a complete stranger? Some might point to animals using altruistic behaviour in the wild as an admonishment that we Humans should be at least as "good" but look at what they are comparing us to.
A monkey or a beaver can not reason and operates on instinct in a range of the moment existence. There are no value judgments being made, the animal is not sacrificing itself it is operating the autopilot of instinct.
So next time you see this cinematic or literary trick used take a moment to think. Raise yourself above the level of a Rhesus monkey or Beaver and ask the important question.
What do you value, what is being asked for in sacrifice?
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