Brainpolice : Universality, Altruism

The Decline of Morality in the West

Brainpolice — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 00:51:00 GMT

I believe in objective secular morality, founded on reason and universalism. I think a common mistake is the idea that if we ditch religion, we must fall back on moral relativity. Then the religious people feed on this and get to accuse secular people of being nihilists or hedonists. But I think that an objective secular morality can easily be formulated without relying on an appeal to authority, wether that be an appeal to a deity or an appeal to government. In some ways, I share a lot in common with the philosophy of the Objectivists (Ayn Rand's philosophy), although I think they make some wrong turns and draw some erroneous political conclusions.

I think that morality has declined in the west because we have abandoned reason for secular forms of faith (often political ones). We are not taught to value ourselves. Rather, we are taught to value an endless array of group-identities. Thus, instead of identifying ourselves as individuals we think of ourselves as a part of imaginary collective constructs, such as political groups, races, nations, economic classes, and so on. Out of the crises of meaning brought on by the relative fall of medievalist religion, we have sought meaning in the wrong places. And the persuit of science has unfortunately lead us down a path that leads people to erroneously accept determinism, thus denying free will. We need a new enlightenment.

The philosophy of self-sacrifice (altruism) has been widely accepted in varying forms. But this philosophy is erroneous and destructive at its root. What are the logical implications of universally applying the philosophy that the primary reason for living is to sacrifice oneself for the sake of others? The logical implication is mutual self-destruction. If the purpose of life is to sacrifice it, then in effect life has no real value. So this altruism ends up leading us in a nihilistic direction in practice, to deny the existance of truth and the genuine "self". In place of our genuine identities as individuals, we have identified with archetypes.

The solution, then, lies in the rediscovery of reason and the self. This requires the purging of false collectivist constructs, which obscure who we really are as individuals. While the enlightenment may have lead to the decline of religious absolutism, this does not suffice to solve the problem. Tearing down one false god and replacing it with another is hardly an improvement. In the abscence of hardcore belief in a diety, people have turned to governments to provide the exact same function. The false gods of government and nation-hood must be questioned altogether. Only then will needless conflict and moral deprivation start to subside.

Positive "Rights"

Brainpolice — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:33:00 GMT

The idea of positive rights is that people have a "right" to be given particular benefits, material resources or services by others. They represent claims of a right to recieve positive benefits from other people, in the abscence of any actual "debt" incurred. They require people to take certain actions with regaurd to eachother. The contemporary notion of a right to healthcare, a right to education and a right to income equality are common manifestations of this.

It is empirically impossible to consistantly apply or enforce positive rights to all people. Imagine that every single person has a positive obligation to provide food, clothing, income security, healthcare, and education for eachother. Not only does the scarcity of resources make this hopelessly utopian, but it is simply physically impossible for each person to exercise their quotal share of control over everyone else. There is no realistic way for everyone to keep continual tabs on eachother as to ensure that they fulfill their alleged positive obligations to serve eachother. Therefore, the attempt to enforce positive rights will always in practise impose a burden on one group to the benefit of another. Positive rights cannot realistically be applied equally. Of course, wether they are attempted to be enforced or not, there will always be some degree of inequality in terms of the material resources people possess, and hence people's alleged positive rights will always be quantatively imbalanced. Any attempt to set it up so that everyone has an absolutely equal quantity, as well as quality, of goods and services will be in vein.

More importantly, however, is that claims of positive rights inherently must violate what is known as "negative rights", which are real rights. Positive rights require that people be forced to sacrifice in order to serve eachother. In short, all claims of positive rights bestow a positive obligation onto everyone to perform particular actions on the behalf of others. This is essentially altruism or forced egalitarianism. Negative rights, in contrast, bestow an obligation for people to abstain from infringing on the free actions of others. They do not require anyone to take any particular action. Instead, they are based on people abstaining from infringing on the free action of others. Negative rights is to be understood as freedom from the violence or coercion of other people. A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another human being, or group of people, such as a state, in the form of violence or coercion. Therefore, positive rights violate negative rights in that they infringe on the liberty of others to not be forced to give to, serve or associate with other people. For example, in forcing someone to give money to someone else, their right to be free from coercion is being trampled upon, for they are being forced to take a particular action to benefit someone else against their will.

If someone has a right of self-ownership, then noone else can legitimately claim control over their bodies. Self-ownership implies that they are free to act without others initiating force or threatening to do so against their person. The alternative to self-ownership is some kind of slavery, even if it's a partial kind of slavery in question. The consistant application of positive rights would imply that everyone is eachother's slave. But as we have previously touched on, it is impossible to consistantly apply it. Therefore, in practise, one individual or group is enslaved to another under a regime of positive rights. If someone has a right to that property by which they voluntarily aquired, then noone else can legitimately claim that property against their will. Property rights implies that they are free to control that which they have justly aquired without others initiating force or threatening to do so against their property or to claim control over it against their will. The alternative to property rights is some kind of theft or coercive usory. The consistant application of positive rights would imply that everyone has a right to steal from eachother. But since it is impossible consistantly apply positive rights, in practise, one individual or group is plundered to the benefit of another.

As has been pointed out by professor Walter Block, the utopianism of positive rights can further be demonstrated by making another distinction between positive and negative rights. Negative rights violations require a human agent. Positive rights violations don't. Suppose that a natural disaster occurs, such as a bad tusnami or hurricane in central asia. Could it be legitimately argued that any negative rights violations occured? Most certainly not - no individual used any aggression or compulsion against eachother. But if one takes positive rights seriously, one could concievably argue that the people's positive rights were violated - afterall, they had no food, adequate clothing, shelter, healthcare or education! This, of course, is not to say that it would not be wise to provide such victims with food and shelter, but the idea of positive rights would lead us to claim that each and every victim of the disaster has an abstract "right" to have others provide certain services, in this case clothing and shelter, even against their will.

A mighty strange doctrine this notion of positive rights is. Someone can be charged with violating someone else's rights when they have not done anything to that person at all, and may have never even met the person in their life. A positive rights violation merely requires that someone abstain from fulfilling some expected positive obligation, even if they are completely unaware of such an excepted obligation. In other words, you are charged with a rights violation for the "crime" of taking no action at all or simply not knowing someone else! But people who are separated by oceans and large land masses must therefore be considered guilty in the extreme according to this view, for they mostly don't really interact with eachother at all. In either case, exploring the notion of positive rights empirically clearly leads us into an endless series of absurdities. More importantly, however, in terms of ethics the concept of positive rights is indistinguishable from a concept of mutual theft and slavery.

A Defense of Rational Egoism

Brainpolice — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:05:00 GMT

Defining Rational Egoism

Wikipedia defines rational egoism as follows:

"Rational egoism is the pursuit of one's own, accurately perceived, self-interest. The term may refer either to the philosophical view that it is always in accordance with reason to pursue self-interest (a view closely related to ethical egoism) or to the behavioral postulate that people actually act in accord with their own, accurately perceived, self-interest (a particular version of psychological egoism)."

It goes on to more specifically define Ayn Rand's take on rational egoism:

"Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, links its rational values directly to egoism. Her book The Virtue of Selfishness explains in depth the concept of egoism. The version of rational egoism defined by Rand consists of the principle that pursuing personal interest is rational, and not seeking personal interest is irrational.

In Rand's view, there is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness. Rational egoism, however, is not an excuse to act on every whim or emotional impulse, because it is irrational to desire what one has not earned. Happiness requires objective principles, like moral integrity and a respect for the rights of others."

The Problem with Altruism

There is much trouble with the idea that one has a positive moral obligation to serve others, while doing things to benefit yourself is somehow an "evil" (this overlooks the fact that one engages in mutually beneficial relations with others and acts of benevolence precisely out of their self-interest; mutual self-interest). If I have a positive obligation to serve others, then those others are effectively my master, and I am their slave. If acting for the interest of my self-preservation and happiness is a sin, then I am effectively commanded to abstain from happiness and sacrifice my life. But the rational egoist does not proclaim that everyone should live in total social isolationism or do whatever they want, all they are saying is that everyone should engage eachother in a mutually beneficial manner out of mutual self-interest.

If altruism was consistantly applied, there would be no human beings left, since everyone would sacrifice themselves to eachother and do nothing for themselves. Altruism as a philosophy cannot be universally applied to all human beings, let alone one human being, unless we consider it a philosophy of mutual self-destruction. A selfless person is one that does not exist. So at the end of the day, while the logical implications of consistantly following altruism are horrid, perhaps the more important point is that there is no such thing as an altruist, since everyone possesses self-awareness (no matter how low-intensity this self-awareness may be) and inherently must act to benefit themselves. I do not know of any single human being in the past or present who acts in a purely self-sacrificing manner to serve others. And I do not know of a single act of genuine kindness or benevolence that is not done out of self-interest on a fundamental level.

The rational egoist does not oppose individuals giving to and helping eachother, what is opposed is the use of force to make people do so against their will and self-interest. What is opposed is parasitism, where one individual or group is forcefully coerced to sacrfice to the benefit of another individual or group. This is the exact opposite of social cooperation: it is the method of theft and phony philanthropy. The rational egoist clearly sees that the best way to benefit people is for them to work together voluntarily in their self-interest so that all parties gain. True philanthropy results from cooperation. If the methods to one's well-intended ends are not cooperative, if they are coercive, then this is not true charity, but rather a destructive act that disintegrates the social order.

The Universalism of Rational Egoism: Harmony of Interests

In short, it is impossible to separate voluntary social interaction or "social cooperation" from self-interest. "Social cooperation" stems directly from self-interest and could not exist without it. One may try to counter the arguements for rational egoism by claiming that people may act in their self-interest in a way that harms or unjustly controls others, but this would not actually be an action in one's self-interest. William Graham Sumner said it best: "If I want to be free from any other man's dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control." Herbert Spencer also understood this when he stated that people respect the rights of others in direct proportion to their respect for their own rights. If one wishes no harm to be done to themselves, as a prerequisite, they must not harm others. This is simply the defacto result of universally applying the principles.

There in fact is no conflict between people's rational self-interest and remaining ethical. In a self-interested sense, I don't harm other people because I realize that it establishes a precedent that will return to haunt me. And my empathy for others stems from my regaurd for myself, so there is nothing contradictary between self-interest and charitable acts either. In either case, if the principle of individual sovereignty holds true, then it must be universally applied to all human beings. And if it is universally applied to all human beings, then each individual must effectively be shielded from invasion/aggression by the other. The non-aggression principle represents this quite well. For the non-aggression principle leaves each individual free to persue their self-interest without infringing on the liberty of anyone else.

Rational egoism and the non-initiation of aggression go hand in hand. The rational egoist does not steal from others because they wouldn't like to be stolen form. A parasite eventually destroys its host, which destroys itself. And the rational egoist is concious of the fact that they can actually benefit more in the long-run through voluntary trade. The rational egoist has no compeling reason to go around assaulting and murdering others who have not threatened their lives or property. They realize that they would be destroying the very social order that benefits them, which will diminish their utility in the long-run. Of course, if people are sovereign self-owners, then in order to be logically consistant the criteria once again applies universally. While the rational egoist refuses to recognize any positive obligations to others, they do not demand such obligations from others either. While they refuse to be enslaved by others, they also do not enslave others.

Rational Egoism Applied: The Ethics of Being a Solider

I reject the idea that soldiers are virtuous altruists who sacrifices themselves for the sake of my freedom. Put in plain, albiet uneasy to swallow terms, a non-drafted solider is someone who is willing to murder for the state. I do not respect this, nor do I find it virtuous in any way. This fact is often obscured with the idea that a non-drafted soldier is someone who is willing to sacrifice their lives for the state (which I find irrational to begin with), but it is never aknowledged that they are people who are willing to take the lives of others for the state as well. Let me make it plain and clear: you have no altruistic duty to sacrifice for me, and I do not want your sacrifice. Nor will I bow down and worshop you.

I empathize with soldiers only to the extent that they are forced into such a position against their will. This is especially true in the case of a draft, which is involuntary servitude and thus unethical at the root. But to the extent that soldiers may willingly choose to murder for the state, I do not empathize at all. This being said, I can relate to the idea that soldiers could be viewed as pawns for the higher-ups, since it is the generals and politicians who ultimately send them off to foreign lands and centrally plan such endeavors. But the old "I was just following orders" precedent will not fly with me. You could very well not follow immoral orders if you have the courage to. That's what takes true courage. There is nothing rational about sacrificing oneself to benefit rulers.

Conclusion

The consistant application of rational egoism may lead to some controversial yet absolutely logical implications. Rational egoism is a commonly misunderstood philosophical position in that it is often miscontrued as sanctioning hedonism and unbridled narcissism, but this is not the case if one actually understands what it means and implies. It should not be confused with the style of near-nihilistic egoism espoused by the likes of Max Stirner. It is not "might makes right". Properly understood, it is a philosophical basis for a voluntary ethic in human interaction. For there is ultimately nothing more rational and more beneficial to the individual then universally applied liberty.