Brainpolice : Means and Ends, Philosophy

Insurrection vs. Pacifism: A False Dillema

Brainpolice — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:34:00 GMT

There is a general traditional strategic split among anarchists between insurrectionary anarchism and pacifist anarchism. Insurrection is generally associated with either individual or public violent revolution, although if one wants to be specific it is etymologically linked closely with the concept of an "insurgent", and an "insurgency" could be seen as a spontaneous defensive response to an initial invasion by a political and/or military power (like the "insurgency" in Iraq, for example). On the other hand, pacifist anarchists completely reject any degree or kind of violence, likely viewing it as inconsistent and hypocritical, and this is more than just a strategic question for absolutist pacifists because they reject self-defense as a matter of principle.

However, it would be decieving to assume that these are the only two possible options. Reasonable arguments could be given against both of them and they could be constrasted from an explicitly "libertarian anarchism" that makes a clear distinction between defense and arbitrary violence. On one hand, pacifism can be criticized on the grounds that it doesn't make any room for defense and it consequentially leaves one in a submissive position relative to power; rulers aren't likely to just voluntarily give up their power, especially when there isn't even a moderate threat of resistance. On the other hand, the traditional violent revolution can be critisized on the grounds that it threatens to undermine the end that it is a means towards and often just leads to a vangaurd state; arbitrary violence contradicts the principles that one is "fighting for" to begin with and is not likely to lead to the goal of a free society.

For a hasty insurrectionist, violence is the first resort, while for a libertarian anarchist, violence is more of a last resort of defense in comparison (there is a difference between defending yourself in the face of a police state and simply taking people out arbitrarily), and the kind of measures supported by some insurrectionists definitely crosses well over the line of defense and into the realm of assassination and rioting. From a libertarian perspective, it is hard to see how simply storming city hall and shooting the place up like it's Duke Nukem is reasonable or consistent. Aside from the possible horrors that may be endorsed by an insurrectionist as a means, the main problem that an insurrectionist faces is the question of how to avoid the phenomenon of the revoltionists becoming the new power center. Instead of "the new society in the shell of the old", there are valid concerns about "the new power center in the shell of the old". While insurrectionary anarchism is contrasted from marxist vangaurd statism on a certain level, there still may be a context in which such a distinction essentially breaks down.

The conundrum of the pacifist is sort of the opposite one: namely, that when it does come down to a question of defending oneself in the face of aggression, pacifism constrains the individual to the point of powerlessness. There are certain situations in which peaceful resistance will simply be crushed with violence, and in this sense pacifism is simply suicidal as a strategy. While the argument that anarchism could only work if everyone in the world agreed or if everyone was perfectly peaceful is not valid, it may be valid as an argument against pacifism in the sense that pacifism offers no real means to counter violence when it comes down to the nitty gritty of situations in which people use violence; that is, it could be viewed as giving carte blanch power to those who do use violence precisely because organized resistance to it is prohibited to everyone else (by their own code even).

With that being said, this should not be construed to imply that violence is necessarily the only way to counter power - I think that is too pessemistic and Hobbesian of a view. There are numerous non-violent ways to counter power that can potentially have an effect, particularly if one is focusing on the long-term. At a meta level, the most basic of these ways to combat power is a matter of philosophy and ideas, by not allowing the ideological constructs of power to hold weight for you and to spread the demystification of such ideological constructs. On another level, another way to combat power is through a myriad of forms of civil disobedience, which can potentially be effective if the proper precautions are taken. There *is* a certain extent that there's a sense in which power is dependant on compliance or asequiesance, and power can be sterilized sometimes through sheer lack of consensus and compliance. And to put the matter in positive terms, one can combat power through association to foster competition with power and more of a degree of self-reliance that lessens one's unchosen dependancies on power.

However, one shouldn't take too idealistic of a view of the matter either. Power does not dissapear overnight and in some sense anarchism is inherently a long-term project. The traditional notion of revolution can be critisized for precisely this reason, I.E. that it naively expects a singular violent uprising to dissolve power. It doesn't really work that way. On the other hand, the notion of a purely peaceful process seems naive when one considers the likelyhood (or lack thereof) of those in power to cooperating with those who wish to dismantle their power. When it actually does come down to one being explicitly threatened with violence, it seems like violent resistance is essentially the only way to counter it, and a pacifist is simply a sitting duck in such situations for the obvious reasons already mentioned. This is why a "3rd way" makes more sense than either pacifism or insurrectionism.

The matter could be thought of in terms of an anarchist contextualization of Neitzsche's dichotomy between "master morality" and "slave morality". One could say that the masses tend to embrace and follow a "slave morality" that restrains them from engaging in self-assertion while those in power tend to embrace and follow a "master morality" that gives them free reign of self-assertion (although there is a sense in which this does not absolutely hold - there are people in power who genuinely believe in a "slave morality" but are working within an institution of "master morality", and not all of "the masses" believe in a strict "slave morality"), and the combined effect of this is that "slave morality" actually has the function of enabling the master class in that it tends to render the masses powerless by virtue of their own moral dogma.

But I would say then that the purpose should not be to expand "master morality" to everyone but to overcome and transcend both "slave morality" and "master morality". By analogy, pacifism is "slave morality" and insurrectionism is "slave morality" manifested as "master morality". In the context of the state, something like state-socialism could be seen as "slave morality manifested as master morality". The problem isn't restricted to "slave morality" but to the dualistic paradigm itself. "Master morality" as it is actually generally manifested in politics is an outwardly-oriented form of self-assertion in the sense of dominating the lives of others, which is not the same thing as a more inward form of self-assertion in the sense of genuine self-improvement or concern with one's long-range interest. So I would say that both "slave morality" and "master morality" suffer from the same fundamental problem; they are both, in some sense, not "properly egoistic".

Morality, Rationality, Survival and the Law

Brainpolice — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:27:00 GMT

I was having a bit of a debate with an Objectivist and we got into some questions about morality and rationality. It related to the question of suicide, and I maintained that suicide is irrational but not immoral and that the individual has the liberty to commit such an irrational act. The Objectivist asserted that irrationality is immorality. This doesn't make any sense to me. I'd say that what is moral is inherently rational, but not that what is rational is inherently moral. Likewise, I'd say that what is immoral is inherently irrational, but not that what is irrational is inherently immoral. This is not a paradox when one makes a proper distinction between a vice and a crime or between that which is unethical and that which is merely incorrect or counterproductive. A meaningful distinction between ethics and aesthetics also helps clear up any confusion in this regaurd.

Consider the implications of combining the two premises that (1) that which is irrational is inherently immoral and (2) the law should reflect morality. I can think of endless things that are irrational and harmless to others in and of themselves that should consequentially be viewed as "immoral" and be outlawed under this logic: suicide, not taking a shower, not brushing your teeth, discrimating based solely or primarily on the basis of race, to continue to associate with people who hurt or manipulate you, to smoke cigarettes and do hard drugs, to pray, to go to church, to stay up for 3 days, to starve yourself, to bite your nails, to have promiscous sex with strangers, to have a high time preference, to not take care of one's own property, to not defend oneself and to be boistrous and loud.

All of these things are irrational and many of them are unconductive to either the quality of one's life or its continued existance, but I consider none of them to be immoral and think that all of them should be permissible and legal. It's not conductive to certain ends for me to buy certain products or patronize certain service providers over other ones. It's not conductive to my long-term economic security to borrow and spend lots of money and not save. It's not conductive to my long-term health to eat a certain way. But am I "immoral" for making a mistake in judgement or for merely being stupid or for having aesthetic tastes? That's absurd. It's not "immoral" for me to make bad financial decisions or have bad eating habits. The expression of aesthetic tastes in general could be viewed as irrational. There is no rational way to justify the notion that someone has an obligation to make a certain aesthetic choice because it happens to be the most efficient towards survival or happiness or prosperity, and in the case of happiness there is no way to determine what will make someone else happy. The logical end of this kind of thinking would seem to lead to the legislation of economic preferances in the name of utility.

One might object to this reductio as absurdum by trying to make a distinction between the law and morality, by positing that the law doesn't have to reflect or be in accordance with morality, but one can only do so by opening up a pandora's box of inconsistancy and accepting the evils of legal positivism. This view holds the law to be above morality and consequentially functions as a way to make moral inconsistancies and acceptions. The inevitable consequence of taking this view is that the law is quite blatantly turned into a instrument of immorality. Using such an approach to politics, things that are immoral can be legitimized by merely appealing to its legality. Natural law, in contrast, holds the currently existing and positive law up to an independant standard of justice, derived from reason. Notice that rationality does play a role, but the natural law follows from morality. It's not the case that everything that is rational is moral and everything that is irrational is immoral. Rationality in this context is only an instrumental tool that is used to figure out what is moral and immoral. But it does not follow that everything that is a product of rationality is moral or that all irrational actions are immoral actions.

Rationality can point one to the most efficient means at achieving a desired end and it can point one to the most moral means to a desired end (and the two aren't necessarily always the same thing), but not all questions of persueing desired ends are moral questions. That's the problem. Rationality can suggest that engaging in cooperative industrial production is more efficient to my survival and general well-being to being a hunter-gatherer, but it does not follow that I have a moral obligation to choose the more efficient means. I would assert that one has the liberty to go live as a hunter-gatherer, even if it is self-destructive or nowhere near as beneficial as the alternatives, and hence there is no real moral obligation to choose to engage in industrial production. The question of whether to live as a hunter-gatherer or as an industrial worker or producer is morally irrelevant in and of itself. From my perspective, regaurdless of the utility towards life and prosperity of the choices in question, the individual essentially has free reign to choose whichever alternative they want so long as they aren't violating any ethical or metaethical principles in the process, so long as they don't force anyone else to pursue or not pursue a particular option. These become questions of personal preferance, regaurdless of any objective concerns about their utility.

It seems to me that Objectivists rely too much on the concept of survival in their ethics, which makes it take a sort of utilitarian turn. They use survival, or more broadly the achievement of desires necessary to fullfil the necessities of life, as the primarily justification for actions. That is, Objectivists essentially conclude that because liberty is necessary for survival and the achievement of certain virtues or benefits (such as happiness, prosperity and healthiness), liberty is justified because it leads to those things. However, there are some problems with this view. While liberty is a necessary condition for survival and flourishing, it does not gaurantee it. Someone could theoretically be perfectly free and not violate anyone else's rights yet be unhappy, unhealthy, uneducated and have trouble surviving. So it seems far too demanding on people to proclaim that people have an obligation to do that which is necessary to survive and benefit themselves. People have the liberty to persue their survival and happiness, and it is in their rational self-interest to do so, but they have no such obligation to do so or to choose the most efficient means to doing so.

Yes, it is irrational to not persue the continuance of one's life and improvements upon its quality. But to consider people "immoral" for not doing so or not adequately doing so seems ridiculous. It also seems to me that Objectivists extend ethics way beyond interpersonal relations and into the realm of purely personal decisions. But for me, ethics is interpersonal and thus purely personal decisions are aesthetic at best. Such purely personal decisions can be objectively evaluated as being "good for you" or "bad for you", but there is no way to genuinely make them obligatory or enforcable and an unobligatory and unenforcable ethics seems like no ethics at all. It makes no sense to proclaim that one has a moral obligation to pursue and fulfill their rational self-interest while simultaneously say that they are free to not fulfil the moral obligation. Since I think that people are free to harm themselves or to make bad personal decisions, I have no choice but to consider such actions morally neutral at best. Otherwise, the implication would be that people should be legally required to eat healthy, raise their children in a right way, read the right books and conform to an endless sea of requirements in their personal preferances.

One might object that if what I'm implying is the case, then ethics wouldn't apply to a lone man stranded on an island. My answer is: yes, ethics indeed doesn't apply to a lone man stranded on an island, because ethics has no meaning in such a scenario. There's no one else to steal from, murder, lie to, cheat, and so on. There's noone else to violate the rights of. One could do all sorts of things to further one's own survival and happiness, but morality wouldn't really come into the picture until you start introducing interpersonal relations. The choice of a man stranded on an island "to hunt or not to hunt" or "what materials should I make my home with?" has no moral significance. Such decisions are not moral decisions but purely practical ones. Morality would only come into place with such questions in terms of how it affects the rational self-interest of other people, in terms of whether or not the means one pursues in the persuit of such things violate the life, liberty and property of others.

Another problem with this erroneous conflation of rationality and morality is that it essentially implies that holding irrational thoughts is immoral in and of itself. Thought crimes! It is of course true and important to realize that ideas determine the course of history. But nonetheless it is ultimately the realization of those ideas, or at least the attempt to do so, and the means by which those ideas are implemented that is immoral. Merely believing in false or irrational ideas does not make someone immoral, and neither would they be immoral for pursueing, spreading and enacting those ideas so long as it is on a voluntary basis. Stupidity and ignorance is not immorality. Being misinformed or just flat out wrong is not immoral in and of itself. Believing in communism or the flying spagetti monster is a vice, not an immorality. Forcing communism or the church of the flying spagetti monster onto people is what would be an immorality.

It seems to me that the moral of the story is that the fetishizing of the mind and survival leads to some absurd implications and conclusions if consistantly followed through.

Political Philosophy Is Dead

Brainpolice — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:30:00 GMT

Clearly, conservatism and liberalism have become anti-concepts, devoid of any objective meaning. They used to have fairly clear definitions, but now they are meaningless terms that change with the context and times at the drop of a hat. The people refering to themselves as "conservatives" don't really favor a free economy and small government. The people refering to themselves as "liberals" don't really favor peace and progress. Both contemporary ideologies function within the same framework. They fundamentally support the exact same system. They've devolved into silly disagreements over how political power should be used and who it should be used to benefit, rather then actual substantial disagreements in political philosophy and over means. They no longer are political philosophies at all. Just group think and identity-politics. Cultural preferences. Not meaningful concepts.

Gay marriage? Prayer in school? Intelligent design? Flag burning? The wage gap between men and women? Abstinance-only programs or passing out condoms? Which alternative energy source to subsidize? Who's universal healthcare plan is better? What religion a canidate adheres to? How charismatic they are? Which thug in a suite with a smile is better then the other? Why the hell are you people even argueing about this stuff? What a waste of time! These are not substantial issues or matters of political philosophy. They are personal preferences and opinions. These things are either trivial or entirely irrelevant. It amounts to people debating over which arm they should be punched with or what kind of gun they should be shot with. Hardly anyone is standing up and saying "I don't want to be shot!".

I am not concerned with how the system should be used or whom it should be used on the behalf of (absolutely irrelevant!), I am interested in holding the system up to an independant standard and exploring wether or not it is justifiable. I am not concerned with what cultural and personal preferences people hold (absolutely irrelevant!), I am primarily concerned with what means they advocate in the persuit of those preferences (voluntarism and pluralism or coercion and monocentrism?). Most people no longer address fundamental questions of political philosophy. Instead, they quibble endlessly over semantics and irrelevancies and pragmatics. This is why I am disillusioned with politics itself. Everyone is busy fighting with eachother over absolutely meaningless and stupid ***, which distracts them from the fundamental problems at hand. They should all be uniting against the system. Not wasting their time trying to dress it up all nice to their preferences and use it to their personal advantage and to crush those who they personally disfavor.

Altruism Doesn't Exist

Brainpolice — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:50:00 GMT

Is it really possible for someone to engage in a completely selfless act? A rational exploration of the question must lead to a negative rather then affirmative answer. For isn't it the case that no matter what action one engages in, it involves their selves and some kind of motivation on their part? So long as the individual in question could be said to have a motivation for acting, even if this motivation is a benevolent one, it cannot be said that they are acting in a truly selfless manner. So long as one has conciousness, so long as one is self-aware, one cannot truly be selfless. In order to be selfless one would have to cease to exist altogether, or by the very least enter an inhuman state in which one has no volition. But such a state of being is not how human beings work. It could only be used to describe non-concious forms of life such as a plant.

Altruism is not an objective description of human actions so much as a rationalization used to compel people into engaging in certain actions. It is certainly true that one could engage in an action that benefits another rather then oneself, but such an action could not take place without the deliberate concious effort and motivation of the individual in question. If a benevolent act towards another is truly voluntary, then it cannot be said to be genuinely altruistic because in such a scenario the individual actually percieves the act to be in their self-interest at least on a psychological level. That is, they desire to give to others. A genuine desire originates within the individual themself. Satisfaction is obtained upon the fulfillment of the desire, even if the desire is to fulfill a percieved positive obligation towards another.

So long as human beings act to remove a source of dissatisfaction, it could not be said that they act in a void of self-interest. They act in the persuit of satisfaction, which is their percieved self-interest. They employ means for the purpose of obtaining desired ends. The statement that humans act in self-interest on a fundamental level and that human beings are rational animals does not mean that humans will always make correct choices, that the ends they desire are necessarily logical and ethical, or that the means they employ in the persuit of such ends are the proper or most efficient ones toward obtaining their goals. It is merely a description of how human action works, that human beings are volitional creatures with goals and the capacity to choose among means for the purpose of obtaining their goals.

On one hand, every single person is rational in the sense that they possess the faculty of reason and are self-aware. They have the ability to freely make choices. In this sense of the word, noone can be more rational then anyone else because this is merely a description of our fundamental natures. On the other hand, in terms of their actual beliefs and choices, noone is consistantly rational if we are using rational to mean in accordance with objective reality and their actual best interest. People make all sorts of choices that can easily be demonstrated to be harmful to them, and people believe plenty of things that are not in accordance with objective reality. In this sense of the word, some people are simply more rational then others, make more coherant arguements and better choices. But when libertarians describe human beings as inherently being rational, we are using the first sense of the word, not the second. It would be disingenous to act as if we are argueing that everyone is consistant in their beliefs, sharp as a bell and makes wonderful lifestyle choices.

Altruism cannot be a logical description of human action because it contradicts the fundamental nature of how humans act. That is, no rational agent, in the general way in which rationality is defined, can possibly act in a manner that is entirely detached from motivation or desire. No human being is actually an altruist precisely because they are human beings. It would seem to be the case that the insights of praxeology and psychological egoism demonstrate this beyond the shadow of a doubt.