This morning while driving I tuned the radio to Neal Boortz, an Atlanta talk show host who bills himself as libertarian. He said that although the liberal has an answer for many things, there is one question he cannot answer.
I post this here. I use "progressive liberal" rather than just "liberal" as there is a difference. Traditionally liberal has meant one who believes in liberty or being liberated - freedom to be oneself and freedom to be politically free. I think today, however, most liberals are progressive liberals who believe that the role of government is to redistribute property in order that all people have the same existential means to live their life. This is a new term for the old fashioned one: socialism.
Boortz: Do you think it is alright if I choose to give a homeless person $10?
Progressive Liberal: Yes.
Boortz: Do you think it is alright if you choose to give a homeless person $10?
Progressive Liberal: Yes.
Boortz: Do you think it is alright if I hold a gun with the shooting end touching your forehead and tell you to give $10 to the homeless person?
Progressive Liberal: Absolutely not!
Boortz: Then why is it alright if I go to Washington and ask the politician to hold that gun to your head to get that $10 for the homeless person?
Progressive Liberal: Hemming and Hawing. No answer.
We know Obama's answer: "It's fair." But is it? Is using force to get what YOU want fair? Is using force to get what a majority wants fair? By what standard?
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
What's Happening to the American Spirit?
(When I read this article, I got excited. There is a lot wrong with the underpinnings of this man’s viewpoint and yet he is putting his finger on a crucial aspect of the energy and drive, and the resulting creativity of our culture at this point in history. Culturally we are bound to serve others and the government is only able to pass laws forcing us to do so because we accept that that is a proper goal for our society and, therefore, one’s life. When a man has produced goods and services which others have bought because they see the value in them and yet he is asked to “give back”, the underlying assumption is that the voluntary trade of value for value is actually immoral – lying, stealing, merely material, etc. This is a horrendous fallacy and injustice, and anyone who accepts it deserves the guilt he will experience from living his life as he must in order to survive. We live in the era of the New Slavery.
His title is true in one sense and not true in another. The laws bind us to being less powerful in our lives and at the same time, they can never bind us since ultimately we only accept the victim status psychologically if we say so. This distinction is crucial for the future of political freedom from the heavy hand of government force. My comments are in green.)
Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2009
How Modern Law Makes Us Powerless
The real barrier to Barack Obama's 'responsibility' era.
By PHILIP K. HOWARD
Calling for a "new era of responsibility" in his inaugural address, President Barack Obama reminded us that there are no limits to "what free men and women can achieve." Indeed. America achieved greatness as the can-do society. This is, after all, the country of Thomas Paine and barn raisings, of Grange halls and Google. Other countries shared, at least in part, our political freedoms, but America had something different -- a belief in the power of each individual. President Obama's clarion call of self-determination -- "Yes We Can" -- hearkens back to the core of our culture.
Cartoon by David Klein
But there's a threshold problem for our new president. Americans don't feel free (Because objectively they aren’t free) to reach inside themselves and make a difference. ("Make a difference" is one of those unobjective buzzwords that has come to mean "make a difference with other people as a purpose for living one's life." It is true that what one creates and produces can make a difference with other people but it can never be an authentic purpose for one's life. Making a profit means one is making a difference because people traded their money for what you produced.) The growth of litigation and regulation has injected a paralyzing uncertainty into everyday choices. All around us are warnings and legal risks. The modern credo is not "Yes We Can" but "No You Can't." Our sense of powerlessness is pervasive. Those who deal with the public are the most discouraged. Most doctors say they wouldn't advise their children to go into medicine. Government service is seen as a bureaucratic morass, not a noble calling. Make a difference? You can't even show basic human kindness for fear of legal action. Teachers across America are instructed never to put an arm around a crying child.
The idea of freedom as personal power got pushed aside in recent decades by a new idea of freedom -- where the focus is on the rights of whoever might disagree. (Rather than the objective violation of a person’s right to his life and his property, the visible expression of his life.)
Daily life in America has been transformed. Ordinary choices -- by teachers, doctors, officials, managers, even volunteers -- are paralyzed by legal self-consciousness. Did you check the rules? Who will be responsible if there's an accident? A pediatrician in North Carolina noted that "I don't deal with patients the same way any more. You wouldn't want to say something off the cuff that might be used against you."
Here we stand, facing the worst economy since the Great Depression, and Americans no longer feel free to do anything about it. We have lost the idea, at every level of social life, that people can grab hold of a problem and fix it. Defensiveness has swept across the country like a cold wave. We have become a culture of rule followers, trained to frame every solution in terms of existing law or possible legal risk. The person of responsibility (Responsibility is a function of reaping and experiencing the consequences of one’s actions. Government force erases responsibility. One cannot be responsible for that which he had no choice but to do.) is replaced by the person of caution. When in doubt, don't.
All this law, we're told, is just the price of making sure society is in working order. But society is not working. Disorder disrupts learning all day long in many public schools -- the result in part, studies by NYU Professor Richard Arum found, of the rise of student rights. Health care is like a nervous breakdown in slow motion. Costs are out of control, yet the incentive for doctors is to order whatever tests the insurance will pay for. Taking risks is no longer the badge of courage, but reason enough to get sued.
There's an epidemic of child obesity, but kids aren't allowed to take the normal risks of childhood. Broward County, Fla., has even banned running at recess.
The flaw, and the cure, lie in our conception of freedom. (And that lies in the understanding of man’s nature and the type of consciousness he has.) We think of freedom as political freedom. We're certainly free to live and work where we want, and to pull the lever in the ballot box. But freedom should also include the power of personal conviction and the authority to use your common sense. Analyzing the American character, Alexis de Tocqueville, considered "freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones. . . . Subjection in minor affairs does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to sacrifice their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated."
This is not an ideological point. Freedom in daily choices is essential for practical reasons (and spiritual reasons) -- necessary for government officials and judges as well as for teachers, doctors and entrepreneurs. The new legal order doesn't honor the individuality of human accomplishment. (The new legal order doesn’t honor the existence of individuals.) People accomplish things by focusing on the goal, and letting their instincts, mainly subconscious, try to get them there. "Amazingly few people," management guru Peter Drucker observed, "know how they get things done." Most things happen, the philosopher Michael Polanyi wrote, through "the usual process of trial and error by which we feel (Really? I don’t think that captures it. He’s missing the mind’s cognitive role in our actions.) our way to success." Thomas Edison put it this way: "Nothing that's any good works by itself. You got to make the damn thing work."
Modern law pulls the rug out from under all those human powers and substitutes instead a debilitating self-consciousness. (Reality consists of what there is to be conscious of and also one’s own consciousness – that tool of survival in the world. The proper processing of information from one’s senses requires focusing out there and also being responsible for one’s mechanism by which one grasps and processes that information.) Teachers lose their authority, Prof. Arum found, because the overhang of law causes "hesitation, doubt and weakening of conviction." Skyrocketing health-care costs are impossible to contain as long as doctors go through the day thinking about how they will defend themselves if a sick person sues.
The overlay of law on daily choices destroys the human instinct (man does not possess instincts. He is a living entity and for man, he must choose to live. Nothing automatically propels him in that direction other than his nature as a living entity has built into mechanisms which indicate to him that he is doing that or not doing that. But what he does about the information he gets from his body – the pleasure or the pain – doesn’t tell him what to do. He has to discover that. Hence no instincts. An instinct is an automatic propensity toward life that works to sustain him. Animals have that, but not man. Man is quite capable of choosing suicide and often does.) needed to get things done. Bureaucracy can't teach. Rules don't make things happen. Accomplishment is personal. Anyone who has felt the pride of a job well done knows this. (This is the experience the unification of the mind and body in performing an Ego Unit. The Ego Unit is a discovery of mine which supports a person to grasp the nature of real accomplishment and consciously engage in that practice if he so chooses.)
How do we restore Americans' freedom in daily choices? Freedom is notoriously malleable towards self-interest. "We all declare for liberty," Abraham Lincoln observed, "but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing."
Freedom, however, is not just a shoving match. Freedom has a formal structure. It has two components:
1) Law sets boundaries that proscribe what we must do or can't do -- you must not steal, you must pay taxes.
2) Those same legal boundaries protect an open field of free choice in all other matters.
The forgotten idea is the second component -- that law must affirmatively define an area free from legal interference. Law must provide "frontiers, not artificially drawn," as philosopher Isaiah Berlin put it, "within which men should be inviolable." (Our Constitution is the document that is the means of carrying out The Declaration of Independence. In that it states that every man has a RIGHT to his life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, i.e. the freedom to be free of other men telling him what to do. This has been done. So what is the REAL problem? What is it that has taken us in the direction away from something that we already know works and releases the creative energy of men? This is the real question which this author does not answer. He keeps his argument at the level of laws and yet those laws are carrying out more fundamental beliefs. What are they?)
This idea has been lost to our age. When advancing the cause of freedom, law today is all proscription and no protection. There are no boundaries, just a moving mudbank comprised of accumulating bureaucracy and whatever claims people unilaterally choose to assert. People wade through law all day long. Any disagreement in the workplace, any accident, any incidental touching of a child, any sick person who gets sicker, any bad grade in school -- you name it. Law has poured into daily life. (This is why I no longer take on architecture in the way I once did. In my lifetime, the building code has gone from a small 5x8 book about an inch thick to a 4’ shelf of 9x12 binders specifying dimensions and layouts and surfaces and construction and everything. One can do nothing without consulting the building code and trying to figure out what is meant. Creative energy is sapped by bureaucratic energy. Working on big buildings thoroughly contained by all these laws and dictums which, by the way, are never finalized in the books since the government interpreters are constantly changing them, is to render oneself a drone for life. That’s not me and I’m not interested. So I shrunk my sphere of operation to small private creative projects that I am stimulated by and yet avoid the bulk of government regulation.)
The solution is not just to start paring back all the law -- that would take 10 lifetimes, like trying to prune the jungle. We need to abandon the idea that freedom is a legal maze, where each daily choice is like picking the right answer on a multiple-choice test. We need to set a new goal for law -- to define an open area of free choice. This requires judges and legislatures to affirmatively assert social norms of what's reasonable and what's not. "The first requirement of a sound body of law," Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote, "is that it should correspond with the actual feelings and demands of the community." (We need to understand that no one has the right to tell us what to do and compel our action and at the same time none of us has the right to infringe the same right of another person. This in practice means the separation of economy and state in the same way that in our past we have separated church and state. This separation is breaking down too.)
The profile of authority structures needed to defend daily freedoms (So what is this concept “daily freedoms?” This kind of thinking is typical of a person who is stopped from thinking by wanting to please people, I say, rather than identifying the nature of things. This is why this article, although capturing the spiritual essence of our New Slavery is poor at identifying what has to be seen differently if things are to change and man is able to live free once again.) is not hard to imagine. Judges would aspire to keep lawsuits reasonable, understanding that what people sue for ends up defining the boundaries of free interaction. Schools would be run by the instincts and values of the humans in charge -- not by bureaucratic micromanagement -- and be held accountable for how they do.
Government officials would have flexibility to meet public goals, also with accountability. Public choices would aspire to balance (balance has nothing to do with the solution of this problem. Rather it has to do with acting from objectively true principles.) for the common good, not, generally, to appease someone's rights.
Reviving the can-do spirit that made America great requires a legal overhaul of historic dimension. (The legal overhaul cannot proceed without moral guidance as to which kinds of actions are consonant with man’s nature and need to be protected by the law. Thus the deeper problem is the re-examination of the dominant moral code and the assumptions about existence and consciousness upon which it depends. I’m of the opinion that the surrender of one’s mind to a higher authority – be it God or Society – must be thrown out lock, stock and barrel. Rather, people have to question all of these underlying structures and see whether they work and why or are they allowing them in their lives for other reasons – such as social acceptance.) We must scrape away decades of accumulated legal sediment and replace it with coherent legal goals and authority mechanisms, designed to affirmatively protect individual freedom in daily choices. "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing," Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison, "and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical . . . ." The goal is not to change our public goals. (Well there is no such thing as a public goal. In fact there is no such thing as “the public.” “The public” is a collectivist floating abstraction. Anything said in the name of the public is total BS because the public is nothing more than a collection of individuals. So ascribing anything to the public means that the speaker wants his values and the rest be damned. Whoever those other people are at the moment of his speaking do not exist. He may think he speaks for the public, but that is a fat lie too.) The goal is make it possible for free citizens to achieve them.
(In today’s culture, no one with a public voice is speaking for individualism. All leadership, some faster and some slower, is leading us into the slavery of the individual to the collective. In this context, there were no good political candidates this year. The New Enslavement is speeding up)
Mr. Howard, a lawyer, is chair of Common Good (http://www.commongood.org/), and author of the new book "Life Without Lawyers," published this month by W.W. Norton & Co.
His title is true in one sense and not true in another. The laws bind us to being less powerful in our lives and at the same time, they can never bind us since ultimately we only accept the victim status psychologically if we say so. This distinction is crucial for the future of political freedom from the heavy hand of government force. My comments are in green.)
Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2009
How Modern Law Makes Us Powerless
The real barrier to Barack Obama's 'responsibility' era.
By PHILIP K. HOWARD
Calling for a "new era of responsibility" in his inaugural address, President Barack Obama reminded us that there are no limits to "what free men and women can achieve." Indeed. America achieved greatness as the can-do society. This is, after all, the country of Thomas Paine and barn raisings, of Grange halls and Google. Other countries shared, at least in part, our political freedoms, but America had something different -- a belief in the power of each individual. President Obama's clarion call of self-determination -- "Yes We Can" -- hearkens back to the core of our culture.
Cartoon by David Klein
But there's a threshold problem for our new president. Americans don't feel free (Because objectively they aren’t free) to reach inside themselves and make a difference. ("Make a difference" is one of those unobjective buzzwords that has come to mean "make a difference with other people as a purpose for living one's life." It is true that what one creates and produces can make a difference with other people but it can never be an authentic purpose for one's life. Making a profit means one is making a difference because people traded their money for what you produced.) The growth of litigation and regulation has injected a paralyzing uncertainty into everyday choices. All around us are warnings and legal risks. The modern credo is not "Yes We Can" but "No You Can't." Our sense of powerlessness is pervasive. Those who deal with the public are the most discouraged. Most doctors say they wouldn't advise their children to go into medicine. Government service is seen as a bureaucratic morass, not a noble calling. Make a difference? You can't even show basic human kindness for fear of legal action. Teachers across America are instructed never to put an arm around a crying child.
The idea of freedom as personal power got pushed aside in recent decades by a new idea of freedom -- where the focus is on the rights of whoever might disagree. (Rather than the objective violation of a person’s right to his life and his property, the visible expression of his life.)
Daily life in America has been transformed. Ordinary choices -- by teachers, doctors, officials, managers, even volunteers -- are paralyzed by legal self-consciousness. Did you check the rules? Who will be responsible if there's an accident? A pediatrician in North Carolina noted that "I don't deal with patients the same way any more. You wouldn't want to say something off the cuff that might be used against you."
Here we stand, facing the worst economy since the Great Depression, and Americans no longer feel free to do anything about it. We have lost the idea, at every level of social life, that people can grab hold of a problem and fix it. Defensiveness has swept across the country like a cold wave. We have become a culture of rule followers, trained to frame every solution in terms of existing law or possible legal risk. The person of responsibility (Responsibility is a function of reaping and experiencing the consequences of one’s actions. Government force erases responsibility. One cannot be responsible for that which he had no choice but to do.) is replaced by the person of caution. When in doubt, don't.
All this law, we're told, is just the price of making sure society is in working order. But society is not working. Disorder disrupts learning all day long in many public schools -- the result in part, studies by NYU Professor Richard Arum found, of the rise of student rights. Health care is like a nervous breakdown in slow motion. Costs are out of control, yet the incentive for doctors is to order whatever tests the insurance will pay for. Taking risks is no longer the badge of courage, but reason enough to get sued.
There's an epidemic of child obesity, but kids aren't allowed to take the normal risks of childhood. Broward County, Fla., has even banned running at recess.
The flaw, and the cure, lie in our conception of freedom. (And that lies in the understanding of man’s nature and the type of consciousness he has.) We think of freedom as political freedom. We're certainly free to live and work where we want, and to pull the lever in the ballot box. But freedom should also include the power of personal conviction and the authority to use your common sense. Analyzing the American character, Alexis de Tocqueville, considered "freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones. . . . Subjection in minor affairs does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to sacrifice their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated."
This is not an ideological point. Freedom in daily choices is essential for practical reasons (and spiritual reasons) -- necessary for government officials and judges as well as for teachers, doctors and entrepreneurs. The new legal order doesn't honor the individuality of human accomplishment. (The new legal order doesn’t honor the existence of individuals.) People accomplish things by focusing on the goal, and letting their instincts, mainly subconscious, try to get them there. "Amazingly few people," management guru Peter Drucker observed, "know how they get things done." Most things happen, the philosopher Michael Polanyi wrote, through "the usual process of trial and error by which we feel (Really? I don’t think that captures it. He’s missing the mind’s cognitive role in our actions.) our way to success." Thomas Edison put it this way: "Nothing that's any good works by itself. You got to make the damn thing work."
Modern law pulls the rug out from under all those human powers and substitutes instead a debilitating self-consciousness. (Reality consists of what there is to be conscious of and also one’s own consciousness – that tool of survival in the world. The proper processing of information from one’s senses requires focusing out there and also being responsible for one’s mechanism by which one grasps and processes that information.) Teachers lose their authority, Prof. Arum found, because the overhang of law causes "hesitation, doubt and weakening of conviction." Skyrocketing health-care costs are impossible to contain as long as doctors go through the day thinking about how they will defend themselves if a sick person sues.
The overlay of law on daily choices destroys the human instinct (man does not possess instincts. He is a living entity and for man, he must choose to live. Nothing automatically propels him in that direction other than his nature as a living entity has built into mechanisms which indicate to him that he is doing that or not doing that. But what he does about the information he gets from his body – the pleasure or the pain – doesn’t tell him what to do. He has to discover that. Hence no instincts. An instinct is an automatic propensity toward life that works to sustain him. Animals have that, but not man. Man is quite capable of choosing suicide and often does.) needed to get things done. Bureaucracy can't teach. Rules don't make things happen. Accomplishment is personal. Anyone who has felt the pride of a job well done knows this. (This is the experience the unification of the mind and body in performing an Ego Unit. The Ego Unit is a discovery of mine which supports a person to grasp the nature of real accomplishment and consciously engage in that practice if he so chooses.)
How do we restore Americans' freedom in daily choices? Freedom is notoriously malleable towards self-interest. "We all declare for liberty," Abraham Lincoln observed, "but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing."
Freedom, however, is not just a shoving match. Freedom has a formal structure. It has two components:
1) Law sets boundaries that proscribe what we must do or can't do -- you must not steal, you must pay taxes.
2) Those same legal boundaries protect an open field of free choice in all other matters.
The forgotten idea is the second component -- that law must affirmatively define an area free from legal interference. Law must provide "frontiers, not artificially drawn," as philosopher Isaiah Berlin put it, "within which men should be inviolable." (Our Constitution is the document that is the means of carrying out The Declaration of Independence. In that it states that every man has a RIGHT to his life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, i.e. the freedom to be free of other men telling him what to do. This has been done. So what is the REAL problem? What is it that has taken us in the direction away from something that we already know works and releases the creative energy of men? This is the real question which this author does not answer. He keeps his argument at the level of laws and yet those laws are carrying out more fundamental beliefs. What are they?)
This idea has been lost to our age. When advancing the cause of freedom, law today is all proscription and no protection. There are no boundaries, just a moving mudbank comprised of accumulating bureaucracy and whatever claims people unilaterally choose to assert. People wade through law all day long. Any disagreement in the workplace, any accident, any incidental touching of a child, any sick person who gets sicker, any bad grade in school -- you name it. Law has poured into daily life. (This is why I no longer take on architecture in the way I once did. In my lifetime, the building code has gone from a small 5x8 book about an inch thick to a 4’ shelf of 9x12 binders specifying dimensions and layouts and surfaces and construction and everything. One can do nothing without consulting the building code and trying to figure out what is meant. Creative energy is sapped by bureaucratic energy. Working on big buildings thoroughly contained by all these laws and dictums which, by the way, are never finalized in the books since the government interpreters are constantly changing them, is to render oneself a drone for life. That’s not me and I’m not interested. So I shrunk my sphere of operation to small private creative projects that I am stimulated by and yet avoid the bulk of government regulation.)
The solution is not just to start paring back all the law -- that would take 10 lifetimes, like trying to prune the jungle. We need to abandon the idea that freedom is a legal maze, where each daily choice is like picking the right answer on a multiple-choice test. We need to set a new goal for law -- to define an open area of free choice. This requires judges and legislatures to affirmatively assert social norms of what's reasonable and what's not. "The first requirement of a sound body of law," Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote, "is that it should correspond with the actual feelings and demands of the community." (We need to understand that no one has the right to tell us what to do and compel our action and at the same time none of us has the right to infringe the same right of another person. This in practice means the separation of economy and state in the same way that in our past we have separated church and state. This separation is breaking down too.)
The profile of authority structures needed to defend daily freedoms (So what is this concept “daily freedoms?” This kind of thinking is typical of a person who is stopped from thinking by wanting to please people, I say, rather than identifying the nature of things. This is why this article, although capturing the spiritual essence of our New Slavery is poor at identifying what has to be seen differently if things are to change and man is able to live free once again.) is not hard to imagine. Judges would aspire to keep lawsuits reasonable, understanding that what people sue for ends up defining the boundaries of free interaction. Schools would be run by the instincts and values of the humans in charge -- not by bureaucratic micromanagement -- and be held accountable for how they do.
Government officials would have flexibility to meet public goals, also with accountability. Public choices would aspire to balance (balance has nothing to do with the solution of this problem. Rather it has to do with acting from objectively true principles.) for the common good, not, generally, to appease someone's rights.
Reviving the can-do spirit that made America great requires a legal overhaul of historic dimension. (The legal overhaul cannot proceed without moral guidance as to which kinds of actions are consonant with man’s nature and need to be protected by the law. Thus the deeper problem is the re-examination of the dominant moral code and the assumptions about existence and consciousness upon which it depends. I’m of the opinion that the surrender of one’s mind to a higher authority – be it God or Society – must be thrown out lock, stock and barrel. Rather, people have to question all of these underlying structures and see whether they work and why or are they allowing them in their lives for other reasons – such as social acceptance.) We must scrape away decades of accumulated legal sediment and replace it with coherent legal goals and authority mechanisms, designed to affirmatively protect individual freedom in daily choices. "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing," Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison, "and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical . . . ." The goal is not to change our public goals. (Well there is no such thing as a public goal. In fact there is no such thing as “the public.” “The public” is a collectivist floating abstraction. Anything said in the name of the public is total BS because the public is nothing more than a collection of individuals. So ascribing anything to the public means that the speaker wants his values and the rest be damned. Whoever those other people are at the moment of his speaking do not exist. He may think he speaks for the public, but that is a fat lie too.) The goal is make it possible for free citizens to achieve them.
(In today’s culture, no one with a public voice is speaking for individualism. All leadership, some faster and some slower, is leading us into the slavery of the individual to the collective. In this context, there were no good political candidates this year. The New Enslavement is speeding up)
Mr. Howard, a lawyer, is chair of Common Good (http://www.commongood.org/), and author of the new book "Life Without Lawyers," published this month by W.W. Norton & Co.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
President Obama
Watching the inauguration, I am again thankful that America is able to turn over power in a rational manner – for the most part.
I am thinking, though, about Obama being elected and now assuming President of the United States of America. When all is said and done, what is the meaning?
I say: This is the beginning of the end of black as victim and white as privileged.
Obama has, in effect, said – with his life – “I’m the one. I will be held ultimately accountable. I’m not willing to use my race to gain favor. Why? I can’t. It won’t work.”
If Obama has a good intention, by itself it won’t work. If he is not acting when he should or acting when he should not, it won’t work. And if he manipulates people as he did in the campaign, it won’t work. And above all, excuses won’t work.
Why?
Reality takes no prisoners. It is absolute. The facts are the facts. Men cannot change that. (Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan) Men can only change their relationship to the facts and the faster they correctly recognize the facts the more ably they can take actions that will work.
Among reality’s constituents are people. And they have a nature too. Fundamental to man’s nature is man’s form of consciousness – a conceptual consciousness. Every man must craft purposes and achieve them to survive and flourish. He has no choice.
In our nature we are all equal. That is where the equality ends. Each man has different capacities, different resources, different purposes. In his world each uses those to advance his life. Will Obama recognize this or will he try not? Whichever he chooses will determine his success.
Depending on his actions, Obama will forward the meaning of his election or not.
For my part whatever guilt I absorbed for being white,it is at an end. In the wake of Obama’s election I will treat my black “brothers” as I expect to be treated – accountable for my actions. It would be a step backward to not rise to this occasion and hold you to account if that is required given the new standard.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” -- Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963. (45+ years ago) That dream is now to be realized. In this context, I wish Obama great success and the country will prosper.
I am thinking, though, about Obama being elected and now assuming President of the United States of America. When all is said and done, what is the meaning?
I say: This is the beginning of the end of black as victim and white as privileged.
Obama has, in effect, said – with his life – “I’m the one. I will be held ultimately accountable. I’m not willing to use my race to gain favor. Why? I can’t. It won’t work.”
If Obama has a good intention, by itself it won’t work. If he is not acting when he should or acting when he should not, it won’t work. And if he manipulates people as he did in the campaign, it won’t work. And above all, excuses won’t work.
Why?
Reality takes no prisoners. It is absolute. The facts are the facts. Men cannot change that. (Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan) Men can only change their relationship to the facts and the faster they correctly recognize the facts the more ably they can take actions that will work.
Among reality’s constituents are people. And they have a nature too. Fundamental to man’s nature is man’s form of consciousness – a conceptual consciousness. Every man must craft purposes and achieve them to survive and flourish. He has no choice.
In our nature we are all equal. That is where the equality ends. Each man has different capacities, different resources, different purposes. In his world each uses those to advance his life. Will Obama recognize this or will he try not? Whichever he chooses will determine his success.
Depending on his actions, Obama will forward the meaning of his election or not.
For my part whatever guilt I absorbed for being white,it is at an end. In the wake of Obama’s election I will treat my black “brothers” as I expect to be treated – accountable for my actions. It would be a step backward to not rise to this occasion and hold you to account if that is required given the new standard.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” -- Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963. (45+ years ago) That dream is now to be realized. In this context, I wish Obama great success and the country will prosper.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Nitty-gritty of Race
This is from The Atlas Society, an alternative (alternative in the sense of different from, not equal to) objectivist-influenced organization (alternative to the Ayn Rand Institute, the organization charged with the intellectual consistency and furtherance of objectivism by virtue of Leonard Peikoff being the intellectual and financial heir to Rand's estate.)
Thoughts on Racial Thinking
By Edward Hudgins
January 17, 2009 -- January 2009 finds the issue of race front-and-center with the celebration of black civil rights leader Martin Luther King's birthday followed by the inauguration of Barack Obama as America's first black president, in Washington, D.C., a majority black city with a black mayor.
With Obama's election, discussions of race have tended to be framed in two ways.
First there has been an increased focus on values in black communities and culture. For example, comedian/actor Bill Cosby has received much attention for his strong pronouncements about the need for blacks in the lower class to teach their children personal morality, clean up the coarseness in their own culture, and focus more on self-improvement.
These sentiments have been expressed for years by a small but now-growing number of conservative blacks, sentiments that were often ignored by too many other blacks, who looked to government as a principal source of personal improvement. But the well-articulated message of personal responsibility from a high-profile liberal like Cosby is less easily ignored.
Second, because Obama ran as a candidate who wanted to "transcend" race, there has been concern among many old-school black leaders that the new president, as he tries to do what he sees as right for all Americans, will ignore what these leaders see as the unique needs of blacks. It's no surprise that these Leftists see more government handouts and preferences as what blacks "need."
But the issue of race should be framed in a more fundamental way, in terms of the individual versus the collective, in this case membership in the black racial group.
The individual is king
Martin Luther King was right in the hope he expressed in his famous 1963 civil rights speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
The reason we judge people by their character is that character is something over which individuals ultimately have control and for which they can rightly be praised or blamed. And one's own ideas and actions, even more than one's environment and upbringing, form one's character and support one's own survival and flourishing.
During the initial years of the Civil Rights Movement the goal of leaders like King was not only to change laws that discriminated against blacks but also to change the moral attitudes of many Americans. Whatever one thinks of Obama's policies today, his election with 43 percent of the white vote and 54 percent of votes from whites under the age of 29 shows how far the country and culture have come in the past half-century, from the days when the ideas of the Ku Klux Klan could command the attention of far more than a handful of fringe bigots.
Race to government
But in spite of King's focus on individual character, most black leaders after King-self-appointed, media- created, or otherwise-actively sought to keep the focus on racial identity rather than on the individual. This was in large part because they sought not simply equality before the law but also special government handouts and privileges based on race, ostensibly to make up for past wrongs.
Needless to say, special treatment did not raise blacks to the same economic level as whites; it's not handouts but personal enterprise and initiative that bring prosperity.
Worse, special treatment encouraged many blacks to think of themselves as helpless victims who had to depend on others for their wellbeing.
Further, to secure special privileges black leaders had to encourage whites, and especially politicians, to continue to think in racial terms as well. Even the majority of individual whites who might have had nothing to do with discrimination or the legal barriers to blacks had to see themselves as somehow collectively responsible for the plight of blacks.
Seeing the world in black and white
But by encouraging racial thinking, black elites opened a Pandora's box.
Most individuals aren't scholars. They often make judgments based on impressions rather than deep analysis. So consider an impression they might get by thinking in terms of race.
In 2005 there were 194 murders in Washington, D.C., a city that is 57 percent black. That year neighboring Prince Georges County had 173 murders; it is 66 percent black. The next highest number of murders in the Washington metropolitan area in 2005 was in Fairfax, Virginia, which had only 24 killings. That city is only 9 percent black. Go 30 miles up Interstate 95 to Baltimore, which is 65 percent black, and you have 269 murders. You see a similar pattern in metropolitan areas across the country.
While murder rates and rates for many other crimes have steadily declined in the D.C. area and throughout the nation over past decades, we can still ask, "What impression do we get from judging first in terms of race?" The answer: Avoid black neighborhoods. They are dangerous. Even black cab drivers are sometimes known to refuse to pick up other blacks in certain neighborhoods; these cabbies seem to have a rational prejudice since they see that the danger of becoming crime victims is higher in certain neighborhoods and from individuals of a certain race.
For years black elites and white liberals argued that it is poverty and economic differences that cause high crime rates. But over time and across other ethnic groups this pattern has not held. Poverty as such doesn't equal crime.
Further, most individual poor blacks are not criminals. Somehow their below-the-national-average incomes don't compel them to rob liquor stores.
Abandon the collectivist perspective and you see that factors like the moral character and personal responsibility about which King and Cosby spoke are more important determinants of who becomes a criminal and, more important, who lives a successful and happy life.
What's in a name?
Other black elites still blame racism and discrimination for the plight of many blacks, even though legal barriers were removed decades ago.
For example, in 2003 Marianne Bertrand, of the University of Chicago, and Sendhil Mullainathan, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported on an experiment they conducted to determine whether employers react adversely to black-sounding names, which would indicate a tendency to discriminate. They sent out 5,000 resumes in response to 1,300 job advertisements. Some of the resumes contained black-sounding names-Keisha, Aisha, Rasheed- while identical resumes contained white-sounding names-Jay, Brad, Kristen. The researches found that the resumes with the white-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to get a callback from prospective employers.
But rather than demonstrating the existence of an irrational racism, the study might really show that the collective identity promoted by black elites has had another sad affect. Why? Blacks have special privileges under a plethora of laws to sue for alleged acts of discrimination. Evidence of actual discrimination need not be proved against the employer; the twisted uses of statistics can substitute. Further, black elites have made an industry of promoting and financing such suits.
So employers who learn to think and see the world in terms of a racial group rather than individual potential and achievement will be reluctant to increase their chances of getting sued by hiring members of a litigious group.
They might also remember those high crime rates. And they might remember that out-of-wedlock births, with all the associated pathologies, for non-Hispanic whites is about 25 percent compared to nearly 70 percent for blacks. If one is thinking in terms of groups, the impression is that this one doesn't seem to be very responsible.
The colorblind mind
Of course, more important than what others think about us is what we each think about ourselves and the world in which we live; about our own goals and aspirations; about how we might best achieve those goals.
Many of our ideas, values, assumptions, and expectations ostensibly come from others, from parents and teachers, and the transmission belt of the culture in which we find ourselves. Thus those who are critical of particular ideas and values found in black culture are on the right track.
But when individuals tie their sense of identity and self- worth to membership in a group or culture, they are likely to have an immediate, negative, emotional, and thought-stopping reaction to any criticism of the group's values.
This is why it is crucial for every human being, and especially those who want to see the black pathologies of the past disappear, to hold up as high virtues the importance of critically examining all of one's values and ideas, and the importance of using one's own individual, independent mind to make such judgments rather than accepting ideas simply because they are found in one's group or culture.
During the presidential election Barack Obama came in for much criticism for his twenty-year membership in the Trinity United Church, presided over by Pastor Jeremiah Wright. Wright was a vocal purveyor of anti- Americanism, bizarre conspiracy theories, and a racist black liberation theology that was featured on the church's website. Obama said he missed the sermons containing Wright's wrong-headed rantings.
But what of the other members of this, the largest black church in Chicago? What of those thousands who over the years have screamed "Hallelujah" at such nonsense?
Wright has supposedly expressed the view that the government might have spread AIDS and drugs in black communities. These are views found among a number of black elites; indeed Rep. Maxine Waters, a black California Democrat and chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, has for years gone after the CIA for supposedly being involved in drug trafficking in inner cities. What of those who, out of anger rather than evidence, walk around with such an improbably and unproven notion in their heads about who is behind the pushers? What about those who base their judgments about the source of black drug addiction on this notion, and who use this notion to guide to their political actions and thus continue to vote for Waters?
To think as an individual, to abandon group-think, requires calm consideration, not mind-blinding emotions. This is a crucial lesson that those who want to see America become a truly "transracial" country must learn.
Obama's D.C.
In Washington, D.C., President Obama will turn on the TV and every week, sometimes every day, see what he saw in Chicago and what can be seen in any major American city: tearful locals holding candlelight vigils for murder victims-too often children. They declare through their grief that, "This must stop!" But soon the sad scene will be repeated. The faces of the mourners and the victims are most often black. And when the killers are caught, they too are mostly black.
The problems of race today aren't those of the white bigotry which sadly was the rule through much of America's history. The problems are found in wrong ideas and wrong values.
Obama has an opportunity to help complete the American Revolution, which promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to each individual. But securing and enjoying these rights require a morality of individualism, independent, critical thinking, and a culture in which we each view one another as individuals to be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our characters.
------------Hudgins is executive director and a senior scholar at The Atlas Society, the Center for Objectivism.
Thomas Offers...[an objective view] on Social Safety Nets
William Thomas, TAS director of programs, answers questions on Objectivism that come in through our website. Appropriate for the first week of the new Obama administration, his topic is:
* "Social safety nets - Is it wrong to join them?" January 15, 2009
Even productive individuals can fall victim to illness, disability, and disaster. Thomas discusses self- interest and private safety nets.
The Atlas Society website contains over 170 questions and answers about Objectivism. You can view them all or ask your own question by visiting our Q&A section.
Thoughts on Racial Thinking
By Edward Hudgins
January 17, 2009 -- January 2009 finds the issue of race front-and-center with the celebration of black civil rights leader Martin Luther King's birthday followed by the inauguration of Barack Obama as America's first black president, in Washington, D.C., a majority black city with a black mayor.
With Obama's election, discussions of race have tended to be framed in two ways.
First there has been an increased focus on values in black communities and culture. For example, comedian/actor Bill Cosby has received much attention for his strong pronouncements about the need for blacks in the lower class to teach their children personal morality, clean up the coarseness in their own culture, and focus more on self-improvement.
These sentiments have been expressed for years by a small but now-growing number of conservative blacks, sentiments that were often ignored by too many other blacks, who looked to government as a principal source of personal improvement. But the well-articulated message of personal responsibility from a high-profile liberal like Cosby is less easily ignored.
Second, because Obama ran as a candidate who wanted to "transcend" race, there has been concern among many old-school black leaders that the new president, as he tries to do what he sees as right for all Americans, will ignore what these leaders see as the unique needs of blacks. It's no surprise that these Leftists see more government handouts and preferences as what blacks "need."
But the issue of race should be framed in a more fundamental way, in terms of the individual versus the collective, in this case membership in the black racial group.
The individual is king
Martin Luther King was right in the hope he expressed in his famous 1963 civil rights speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
The reason we judge people by their character is that character is something over which individuals ultimately have control and for which they can rightly be praised or blamed. And one's own ideas and actions, even more than one's environment and upbringing, form one's character and support one's own survival and flourishing.
During the initial years of the Civil Rights Movement the goal of leaders like King was not only to change laws that discriminated against blacks but also to change the moral attitudes of many Americans. Whatever one thinks of Obama's policies today, his election with 43 percent of the white vote and 54 percent of votes from whites under the age of 29 shows how far the country and culture have come in the past half-century, from the days when the ideas of the Ku Klux Klan could command the attention of far more than a handful of fringe bigots.
Race to government
But in spite of King's focus on individual character, most black leaders after King-self-appointed, media- created, or otherwise-actively sought to keep the focus on racial identity rather than on the individual. This was in large part because they sought not simply equality before the law but also special government handouts and privileges based on race, ostensibly to make up for past wrongs.
Needless to say, special treatment did not raise blacks to the same economic level as whites; it's not handouts but personal enterprise and initiative that bring prosperity.
Worse, special treatment encouraged many blacks to think of themselves as helpless victims who had to depend on others for their wellbeing.
Further, to secure special privileges black leaders had to encourage whites, and especially politicians, to continue to think in racial terms as well. Even the majority of individual whites who might have had nothing to do with discrimination or the legal barriers to blacks had to see themselves as somehow collectively responsible for the plight of blacks.
Seeing the world in black and white
But by encouraging racial thinking, black elites opened a Pandora's box.
Most individuals aren't scholars. They often make judgments based on impressions rather than deep analysis. So consider an impression they might get by thinking in terms of race.
In 2005 there were 194 murders in Washington, D.C., a city that is 57 percent black. That year neighboring Prince Georges County had 173 murders; it is 66 percent black. The next highest number of murders in the Washington metropolitan area in 2005 was in Fairfax, Virginia, which had only 24 killings. That city is only 9 percent black. Go 30 miles up Interstate 95 to Baltimore, which is 65 percent black, and you have 269 murders. You see a similar pattern in metropolitan areas across the country.
While murder rates and rates for many other crimes have steadily declined in the D.C. area and throughout the nation over past decades, we can still ask, "What impression do we get from judging first in terms of race?" The answer: Avoid black neighborhoods. They are dangerous. Even black cab drivers are sometimes known to refuse to pick up other blacks in certain neighborhoods; these cabbies seem to have a rational prejudice since they see that the danger of becoming crime victims is higher in certain neighborhoods and from individuals of a certain race.
For years black elites and white liberals argued that it is poverty and economic differences that cause high crime rates. But over time and across other ethnic groups this pattern has not held. Poverty as such doesn't equal crime.
Further, most individual poor blacks are not criminals. Somehow their below-the-national-average incomes don't compel them to rob liquor stores.
Abandon the collectivist perspective and you see that factors like the moral character and personal responsibility about which King and Cosby spoke are more important determinants of who becomes a criminal and, more important, who lives a successful and happy life.
What's in a name?
Other black elites still blame racism and discrimination for the plight of many blacks, even though legal barriers were removed decades ago.
For example, in 2003 Marianne Bertrand, of the University of Chicago, and Sendhil Mullainathan, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported on an experiment they conducted to determine whether employers react adversely to black-sounding names, which would indicate a tendency to discriminate. They sent out 5,000 resumes in response to 1,300 job advertisements. Some of the resumes contained black-sounding names-Keisha, Aisha, Rasheed- while identical resumes contained white-sounding names-Jay, Brad, Kristen. The researches found that the resumes with the white-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to get a callback from prospective employers.
But rather than demonstrating the existence of an irrational racism, the study might really show that the collective identity promoted by black elites has had another sad affect. Why? Blacks have special privileges under a plethora of laws to sue for alleged acts of discrimination. Evidence of actual discrimination need not be proved against the employer; the twisted uses of statistics can substitute. Further, black elites have made an industry of promoting and financing such suits.
So employers who learn to think and see the world in terms of a racial group rather than individual potential and achievement will be reluctant to increase their chances of getting sued by hiring members of a litigious group.
They might also remember those high crime rates. And they might remember that out-of-wedlock births, with all the associated pathologies, for non-Hispanic whites is about 25 percent compared to nearly 70 percent for blacks. If one is thinking in terms of groups, the impression is that this one doesn't seem to be very responsible.
The colorblind mind
Of course, more important than what others think about us is what we each think about ourselves and the world in which we live; about our own goals and aspirations; about how we might best achieve those goals.
Many of our ideas, values, assumptions, and expectations ostensibly come from others, from parents and teachers, and the transmission belt of the culture in which we find ourselves. Thus those who are critical of particular ideas and values found in black culture are on the right track.
But when individuals tie their sense of identity and self- worth to membership in a group or culture, they are likely to have an immediate, negative, emotional, and thought-stopping reaction to any criticism of the group's values.
This is why it is crucial for every human being, and especially those who want to see the black pathologies of the past disappear, to hold up as high virtues the importance of critically examining all of one's values and ideas, and the importance of using one's own individual, independent mind to make such judgments rather than accepting ideas simply because they are found in one's group or culture.
During the presidential election Barack Obama came in for much criticism for his twenty-year membership in the Trinity United Church, presided over by Pastor Jeremiah Wright. Wright was a vocal purveyor of anti- Americanism, bizarre conspiracy theories, and a racist black liberation theology that was featured on the church's website. Obama said he missed the sermons containing Wright's wrong-headed rantings.
But what of the other members of this, the largest black church in Chicago? What of those thousands who over the years have screamed "Hallelujah" at such nonsense?
Wright has supposedly expressed the view that the government might have spread AIDS and drugs in black communities. These are views found among a number of black elites; indeed Rep. Maxine Waters, a black California Democrat and chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, has for years gone after the CIA for supposedly being involved in drug trafficking in inner cities. What of those who, out of anger rather than evidence, walk around with such an improbably and unproven notion in their heads about who is behind the pushers? What about those who base their judgments about the source of black drug addiction on this notion, and who use this notion to guide to their political actions and thus continue to vote for Waters?
To think as an individual, to abandon group-think, requires calm consideration, not mind-blinding emotions. This is a crucial lesson that those who want to see America become a truly "transracial" country must learn.
Obama's D.C.
In Washington, D.C., President Obama will turn on the TV and every week, sometimes every day, see what he saw in Chicago and what can be seen in any major American city: tearful locals holding candlelight vigils for murder victims-too often children. They declare through their grief that, "This must stop!" But soon the sad scene will be repeated. The faces of the mourners and the victims are most often black. And when the killers are caught, they too are mostly black.
The problems of race today aren't those of the white bigotry which sadly was the rule through much of America's history. The problems are found in wrong ideas and wrong values.
Obama has an opportunity to help complete the American Revolution, which promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to each individual. But securing and enjoying these rights require a morality of individualism, independent, critical thinking, and a culture in which we each view one another as individuals to be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our characters.
------------Hudgins is executive director and a senior scholar at The Atlas Society, the Center for Objectivism.
Thomas Offers...[an objective view] on Social Safety Nets
William Thomas, TAS director of programs, answers questions on Objectivism that come in through our website. Appropriate for the first week of the new Obama administration, his topic is:
* "Social safety nets - Is it wrong to join them?" January 15, 2009
Even productive individuals can fall victim to illness, disability, and disaster. Thomas discusses self- interest and private safety nets.
The Atlas Society website contains over 170 questions and answers about Objectivism. You can view them all or ask your own question by visiting our Q&A section.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
A Constant and A Variable
Life consists of two parts: a constant and a variable. The constant piece follows from the nature of man as a particular kind of living entity. The variable piece follows from the myriad ways of fulfilling on the requirements of the constant.
A man is a living being. Life, at root, involves taking the actions which forward and maintain life otherwise life is over. It goes out of existence. Although the lower animals and plants have no problem with this issue in that they are programmed to maintain their life, that isn’t the case for man.
Why? He possesses volition, the capacity to choose.
Man doesn't know automatically what to eat and not eat. He knows he has to eat, the constant, but some things are good and nutritious, some things are bad and poisonous, the variables. He has to learn, i.e. use his mind to gain knowledge, the effects of various things in nature, the variables, on his life if he chooses to live and flourish.
He even gets to choose whether to live or not. We see many people who give up on living and drift or take actions which, short term or long, will end their lives. None of this is a given for man.
Key to all of this is man's means of survival: his reason, his rational capacity. He must live by that or die. A cheetah will catch him. An elephant will crush him. A bug will poison him. He cannot compete in life on the level of the animals.
So the first thing one has to assess is: "Where is my mind in regard to the using of it? Do I seek the facts so I may know them first hand or do I take someone else's word for them? Do I trust someone (in the form of a political speech or a quote from a philosophy or a religion) who says HOPE for the things I need and enjoy, or do I trust someone who says ACT for the things I need and enjoy? Do I trust someone who says the way to get what I need is through politics or the way to get what I need is to construct a plan and take the action to achieve those things?"
(I don't mean by HOPE the benign use of the word when one has constructed his plan, checked it twice, taken the actions to fulfill that plan to the limit of where he had control of events and then had to wait for the results to come in or not. If you need a job and have done everything you know how to do to get one - you have put together your resume, gone through the list of jobs in the paper and on Craig's List, contacted your friends and colleagues to let them know what you have to offer, gotten in the car and driven to the places where you would like to work and talked to them, written articles on the subject you would like to work in so that others who want you could find you, etc. and then you release all of that effort and listen for someone someplace to respond, that is not the kind of HOPE that I'm talking about in this or my previous post. This benign use of the word means the law of cause and effect sometimes takes time, you know it and you honor it. I am reminded of the Serenity Prayer used by AA. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. --Reinhold Niebuhr)
The great thing about the constant is it allows, actually it necessitates, one to induce principles which support one to live well and flourish. How does one do this? He observes human beings living. Life's requirements comes in the form of needs. Needs include the material things like food, clothing and shelter and they also include the needs of consciousness such as pleasure, beauty and knowledge. To fulfill needs one must take action.
Other people's observations can be a support in learning the eternal nature of human being and the principles that work for living, but the important thing is that one has to see for himself how these principles operate, i.e. they have to pass the muster of his own mind as to whether they correspond to reality. Without this standard, he destroys his mind and his capacity for happiness - the enjoyment of his success in living. If he does not do this, he is chained to other people's minds or his feelings - not a tool for knowing - and thus is left adrift. Following either will not give him happiness nor serenity. He's what is known as a lost soul.
When Moses carried the Ten Commandments down from the mountain top, what happened? Essentially, to his mind he had a good idea. He was thinking of the tribe of Jews that he wanted to give guidance to so they could survive. He knew they had to stick together so the requirements of the tribe was the standard. Individuals doing their own thing was out. When he promulgated the dictum "Thou shalt not kill," he wasn't thinking of exceptions or how to formulate a law that corresponds to reality. He was affirming the fact that they can't be fighting each other and keep survival of the group in mind. Insofar as the principle is concerned, there are times when it is appropriate and a requirement, if one wants to live, to kill - even someone else in the tribe.
It was only later that religious leaders discovered that a very effective way to control a group's behavior is to issue them a law that makes no sense to apply in every instance and then hold them in place with guilt - that corrosive feeling that is a powerful controller of a human being. All tribes - be they primitive or modern states - and religions based on faith at some level control their people through guilt and fear of tribal disapproval and ostrasization, i.e., eternal damnation. All tribes and all religions require you to sacrifice one thing - your mind, that which makes you YOU. This is the meaning of the story of Abraham and Isaac.
Ethics is actually a science grounded in the observation of human beings for the purpose of learning the principles, learning the nature of the constant, that govern human action which when applied work to insure one’s ability to gain the values that support, maintain, and further one’s life such that one flourishes and attains happiness. When one arrives at such principles, he incorporates them into a body of knowledge that he lives by. This is his code of morality – the moral principles that he lives by. His character is the result. This determines his soul and is the meaning of the fact that a man is a being of self-made soul.
Objectivity is not the following of some principle that sounds good and other people observe as a custom as if were true in and of itself. That is rationalism, not rationality nor objectivity. Rationalism is the negation of one’s mind and will be a source of frustration, anger and ultimately depression and death if one practices it or attempts to. It may even be a true principle in the sense that it corresponds to the nature of human being, but if one doesn’t see how it works and adopts it by his own volition, it will still destroy his mind and render him unhappy. Ultimately he practiced it because of others or his unexamined feelings (fears).
Happiness and the serenity that is an aspect of authentic happiness is, for the most part, because one lives independent of what others think of him and according to true principles which he sees are true. True means a statement which corresponds to reality. Living in such a way will produce over time the results he wants.
This approach to ethics is known as rational egoism. It applies whether one lives alone on a desert island or in society. It applies to people of the West and people of the East, to whatever culture you belong or whatever skin color you have and no matter if you are Muslim, Christian or atheist. None of those attributes of the particular human being matter for it is the eternal nature of human being that governs whether a particular principle works or not.
In our era, the constant is not only neglected but reviled. "Do whatever you want. Who are we to judge another’s actions. After all it is his life" – as if he were some entity free from the law of identity. "Whatever the culture says is true is true," they say. "One should be pragmatic," they say. "The only thing that can work is to reassess every moment and change one’s mind depending on what public opinion will accept." None of these people have learned the role of the mind nor the role of true leadership. They drive their lives looking in the rear view mirror. The reason that primitive tribes remain primitive and socialist principles do not work is because they both chain the mind to the group which ultimately means the individuals jettison their own minds in favor of those who have power over the group. No one is thinking.
The United States was an historic achievement. It was the first society that was formed recognizing that it is the individual human mind that must be free. The tremendous success of this nation and the tremendous attraction of it to people around the globe is because here it was possible that a man could be free to live according to his own purpose and according to the observations and conclusions of his own mind. That’s the essence of our greatness.
It is heartbreaking to see every public voice peddling the dictates of an opposite philosophy and peddling as fast as they can in that opposite direction. If when things are going bad and you don’t know what to do, I can countenance your hoping that God will reveal a way for you. Just remember, though, God is not out there. He is you. Essentially He, whatever that floating concept is, is a product of Your mind. Get rid of the dichotomy and embrace your mind, your life and its requirements, the constant, and I promise, things will start to look up for you. You will have given up the passive acceptance of life and that empty concept of HOPE.
A man is a living being. Life, at root, involves taking the actions which forward and maintain life otherwise life is over. It goes out of existence. Although the lower animals and plants have no problem with this issue in that they are programmed to maintain their life, that isn’t the case for man.
Why? He possesses volition, the capacity to choose.
Man doesn't know automatically what to eat and not eat. He knows he has to eat, the constant, but some things are good and nutritious, some things are bad and poisonous, the variables. He has to learn, i.e. use his mind to gain knowledge, the effects of various things in nature, the variables, on his life if he chooses to live and flourish.
He even gets to choose whether to live or not. We see many people who give up on living and drift or take actions which, short term or long, will end their lives. None of this is a given for man.
Key to all of this is man's means of survival: his reason, his rational capacity. He must live by that or die. A cheetah will catch him. An elephant will crush him. A bug will poison him. He cannot compete in life on the level of the animals.
So the first thing one has to assess is: "Where is my mind in regard to the using of it? Do I seek the facts so I may know them first hand or do I take someone else's word for them? Do I trust someone (in the form of a political speech or a quote from a philosophy or a religion) who says HOPE for the things I need and enjoy, or do I trust someone who says ACT for the things I need and enjoy? Do I trust someone who says the way to get what I need is through politics or the way to get what I need is to construct a plan and take the action to achieve those things?"
(I don't mean by HOPE the benign use of the word when one has constructed his plan, checked it twice, taken the actions to fulfill that plan to the limit of where he had control of events and then had to wait for the results to come in or not. If you need a job and have done everything you know how to do to get one - you have put together your resume, gone through the list of jobs in the paper and on Craig's List, contacted your friends and colleagues to let them know what you have to offer, gotten in the car and driven to the places where you would like to work and talked to them, written articles on the subject you would like to work in so that others who want you could find you, etc. and then you release all of that effort and listen for someone someplace to respond, that is not the kind of HOPE that I'm talking about in this or my previous post. This benign use of the word means the law of cause and effect sometimes takes time, you know it and you honor it. I am reminded of the Serenity Prayer used by AA. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. --Reinhold Niebuhr)
The great thing about the constant is it allows, actually it necessitates, one to induce principles which support one to live well and flourish. How does one do this? He observes human beings living. Life's requirements comes in the form of needs. Needs include the material things like food, clothing and shelter and they also include the needs of consciousness such as pleasure, beauty and knowledge. To fulfill needs one must take action.
Other people's observations can be a support in learning the eternal nature of human being and the principles that work for living, but the important thing is that one has to see for himself how these principles operate, i.e. they have to pass the muster of his own mind as to whether they correspond to reality. Without this standard, he destroys his mind and his capacity for happiness - the enjoyment of his success in living. If he does not do this, he is chained to other people's minds or his feelings - not a tool for knowing - and thus is left adrift. Following either will not give him happiness nor serenity. He's what is known as a lost soul.
When Moses carried the Ten Commandments down from the mountain top, what happened? Essentially, to his mind he had a good idea. He was thinking of the tribe of Jews that he wanted to give guidance to so they could survive. He knew they had to stick together so the requirements of the tribe was the standard. Individuals doing their own thing was out. When he promulgated the dictum "Thou shalt not kill," he wasn't thinking of exceptions or how to formulate a law that corresponds to reality. He was affirming the fact that they can't be fighting each other and keep survival of the group in mind. Insofar as the principle is concerned, there are times when it is appropriate and a requirement, if one wants to live, to kill - even someone else in the tribe.
It was only later that religious leaders discovered that a very effective way to control a group's behavior is to issue them a law that makes no sense to apply in every instance and then hold them in place with guilt - that corrosive feeling that is a powerful controller of a human being. All tribes - be they primitive or modern states - and religions based on faith at some level control their people through guilt and fear of tribal disapproval and ostrasization, i.e., eternal damnation. All tribes and all religions require you to sacrifice one thing - your mind, that which makes you YOU. This is the meaning of the story of Abraham and Isaac.
Ethics is actually a science grounded in the observation of human beings for the purpose of learning the principles, learning the nature of the constant, that govern human action which when applied work to insure one’s ability to gain the values that support, maintain, and further one’s life such that one flourishes and attains happiness. When one arrives at such principles, he incorporates them into a body of knowledge that he lives by. This is his code of morality – the moral principles that he lives by. His character is the result. This determines his soul and is the meaning of the fact that a man is a being of self-made soul.
Objectivity is not the following of some principle that sounds good and other people observe as a custom as if were true in and of itself. That is rationalism, not rationality nor objectivity. Rationalism is the negation of one’s mind and will be a source of frustration, anger and ultimately depression and death if one practices it or attempts to. It may even be a true principle in the sense that it corresponds to the nature of human being, but if one doesn’t see how it works and adopts it by his own volition, it will still destroy his mind and render him unhappy. Ultimately he practiced it because of others or his unexamined feelings (fears).
Happiness and the serenity that is an aspect of authentic happiness is, for the most part, because one lives independent of what others think of him and according to true principles which he sees are true. True means a statement which corresponds to reality. Living in such a way will produce over time the results he wants.
This approach to ethics is known as rational egoism. It applies whether one lives alone on a desert island or in society. It applies to people of the West and people of the East, to whatever culture you belong or whatever skin color you have and no matter if you are Muslim, Christian or atheist. None of those attributes of the particular human being matter for it is the eternal nature of human being that governs whether a particular principle works or not.
In our era, the constant is not only neglected but reviled. "Do whatever you want. Who are we to judge another’s actions. After all it is his life" – as if he were some entity free from the law of identity. "Whatever the culture says is true is true," they say. "One should be pragmatic," they say. "The only thing that can work is to reassess every moment and change one’s mind depending on what public opinion will accept." None of these people have learned the role of the mind nor the role of true leadership. They drive their lives looking in the rear view mirror. The reason that primitive tribes remain primitive and socialist principles do not work is because they both chain the mind to the group which ultimately means the individuals jettison their own minds in favor of those who have power over the group. No one is thinking.
The United States was an historic achievement. It was the first society that was formed recognizing that it is the individual human mind that must be free. The tremendous success of this nation and the tremendous attraction of it to people around the globe is because here it was possible that a man could be free to live according to his own purpose and according to the observations and conclusions of his own mind. That’s the essence of our greatness.
It is heartbreaking to see every public voice peddling the dictates of an opposite philosophy and peddling as fast as they can in that opposite direction. If when things are going bad and you don’t know what to do, I can countenance your hoping that God will reveal a way for you. Just remember, though, God is not out there. He is you. Essentially He, whatever that floating concept is, is a product of Your mind. Get rid of the dichotomy and embrace your mind, your life and its requirements, the constant, and I promise, things will start to look up for you. You will have given up the passive acceptance of life and that empty concept of HOPE.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Selling Hope, the Real Con
This morning I read in an article that no one, 20 days before Obama's inauguration, knows what to expect. All are in HOPE.
How does HOPE arise and what is its source?
Man, to survive, as does any living thing, does so by having beneficial, pro-his life results by which he can continue to live. There are two categories of benefits: Those where the beneficiary does nothing to enact its cause, and those where the beneficiary enacts the cause.
An example of the first kind is when Aunt Louise dropped off a casserole in the afternoon and you didn't have to do much to cook dinner that evening; or when a snow plow plowed your street and you didn't have to dig yourself out to a passable road; or when a rainstorm came in the night and you didn't have to water the lawn the next day.
An example of the second kind is when you got in your car, visited the businesses you would like to work for and landed a job; or you painted a painting you had been thinking about and now either enjoy it yourself or sold it.
Benefits beyond one's control, one can only HOPE for.
Benefits that one can cause, one can ACT for.
The latter are known as VALUES: "that which one acts to gain and/or keep." (Rand)
Obama sold HOPE as a VALUE - which it is not. And that is the con. HOPE is never, never a VALUE anymore that snake oil is a cure.
With the exponential, unbridled growth of government robbing us of our resources and regulations restricting the myriad solutions to the needs we must fulfill in order to live, isn't it clear that whatever we need in life is going to become increasingly something we can only HOPE for? With our power removed they become ever less something we can ACT for?
HOPE is for the powerless. ACTION is for the powerful.
Obama's appeal was to the powerless (and those that believe that the powerless have a claim on the powerful - a fallacious ethic) for the purposes of creating more of them. The powerless take what they can get. The powerful get to decide what they want and act to gain it. In Obama's case that includes deciding what he will give the powerless. He gained our nation's permission by means of his snake-oil charms and now we are going to get what we asked for - alms.
Say bye-bye to your vaunted standard of living. These are the sunset years for that. You are living in the afterglow of a dying fire - yours. Given this state of affairs your only alternative is to get yourself high - I mean high on the Powerful One's list so that some of the benefits you can only hope for gratuitously fall on you. (There is another alternative: become independent.)
Inside this society's system, we're all beggers now - as some of our vaunted businessmen and state governors are amply proving.
And this is why Obama is oh so, so evil - more evil than Bush ever was. Bush was a mixture of premises that still believed in your freedom and although his knowledge of what that means and what he needed to do to enact it was corrupt, his motive wasn't evil.
Obama doesn't even feign loyalty to your right to ACT for your VALUES - i.e., your freedom. He plans to substitute positive rights to benefits for the negative rights protecting your individual freedom to live in society. Obama turned the page. He is a watershed President for the United States and until we grasp what is going on, there is but one direction for us. DOWN. Now corruption will be a way to survive for all. Get out those knee pads.
( Thanks to Dr. Tara Smith in her book Viable Values, p. 84, for this distinction.)
How does HOPE arise and what is its source?
Man, to survive, as does any living thing, does so by having beneficial, pro-his life results by which he can continue to live. There are two categories of benefits: Those where the beneficiary does nothing to enact its cause, and those where the beneficiary enacts the cause.
An example of the first kind is when Aunt Louise dropped off a casserole in the afternoon and you didn't have to do much to cook dinner that evening; or when a snow plow plowed your street and you didn't have to dig yourself out to a passable road; or when a rainstorm came in the night and you didn't have to water the lawn the next day.
An example of the second kind is when you got in your car, visited the businesses you would like to work for and landed a job; or you painted a painting you had been thinking about and now either enjoy it yourself or sold it.
Benefits beyond one's control, one can only HOPE for.
Benefits that one can cause, one can ACT for.
The latter are known as VALUES: "that which one acts to gain and/or keep." (Rand)
Obama sold HOPE as a VALUE - which it is not. And that is the con. HOPE is never, never a VALUE anymore that snake oil is a cure.
With the exponential, unbridled growth of government robbing us of our resources and regulations restricting the myriad solutions to the needs we must fulfill in order to live, isn't it clear that whatever we need in life is going to become increasingly something we can only HOPE for? With our power removed they become ever less something we can ACT for?
HOPE is for the powerless. ACTION is for the powerful.
Obama's appeal was to the powerless (and those that believe that the powerless have a claim on the powerful - a fallacious ethic) for the purposes of creating more of them. The powerless take what they can get. The powerful get to decide what they want and act to gain it. In Obama's case that includes deciding what he will give the powerless. He gained our nation's permission by means of his snake-oil charms and now we are going to get what we asked for - alms.
Say bye-bye to your vaunted standard of living. These are the sunset years for that. You are living in the afterglow of a dying fire - yours. Given this state of affairs your only alternative is to get yourself high - I mean high on the Powerful One's list so that some of the benefits you can only hope for gratuitously fall on you. (There is another alternative: become independent.)
Inside this society's system, we're all beggers now - as some of our vaunted businessmen and state governors are amply proving.
And this is why Obama is oh so, so evil - more evil than Bush ever was. Bush was a mixture of premises that still believed in your freedom and although his knowledge of what that means and what he needed to do to enact it was corrupt, his motive wasn't evil.
Obama doesn't even feign loyalty to your right to ACT for your VALUES - i.e., your freedom. He plans to substitute positive rights to benefits for the negative rights protecting your individual freedom to live in society. Obama turned the page. He is a watershed President for the United States and until we grasp what is going on, there is but one direction for us. DOWN. Now corruption will be a way to survive for all. Get out those knee pads.
( Thanks to Dr. Tara Smith in her book Viable Values, p. 84, for this distinction.)
Saturday, January 3, 2009
The Problem with the Double Standard
When will the double standard finally kill us as a nation?
The problem with the government is that it is everything that we aren't or can't be. Madoff got the lesson as well as are many million others these days.
Let's see, haven't I heard this before? Where we are limited in our knowledge, God is omniscient. Where we are limited in our power, God is omnipotent. Where we are limited by time and place, God is omnipresent. So, is belief in the State to provide what we can't anything but another religion? Doesn't look like it.
And who spends oodles of time and money schooling people in this belief - this faith - whether it be in God or State? I don't see the difference between a liberal fundamentalist and a religious fundamentalist.
My experience of both is they are dogmatic, unreasoning and live a compartmentalized life. That brain has a fault line and is subject to biologic tremors. "Don't bother me with the facts, ma'am. They might upset my precious point of view which is here to protect me from discomfort, risk and well, you know, a life fully lived."
The root evil is initiatory force. Forcing the mind of another means the forced person cannot be moral because he cannot choose the forbidden whether it applies in a particular circumstance or not. Initiatory force thus lowers a man to a sub-human level. He cannot be responsible so he learns not to be. It doesn't pay.
This is the mental/psychological climate that allows a Madoff to get as far as he did. It is the mental/psychological climate of our country right now. As man jettisons his mind, Madoff's are really attractive.
Who is your Madoff?
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
The Morality of Money
I saw this here and had to pass this on.
"When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket, and then that society vanishes in a spread of ruins and slaughter. Do you wish to know whether that day is coming?
"Watch Money. Money is a barometer of a society's virtue.
"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - then you may know that your society is doomed.
"Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection, and the base of a moral existence." ~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
_______________________________
Like it or not, this is exactly where we are. Force is now the standard. Individual rights (you know, those inadequate "negative rights" of the Constitution), any actions stemming from self-interest branded as unfair and selfish, money worth nothing if invested in government instruments, government thugs running every which way to scamper from the spotlight on their nefarious actions, government intrusion into healthy banks, welfare for the businesses that are incapable of surviving because they made poor judgments, ordinary unsuccessful local people calculating how they can get in on the government's largesse, laws more concerned to protect criminals and terrorists than the real victims, property expropriated and handed over to the man with political pull - all backed with the gun to force you, the taxpayer, to pay for it - are the "non-rules" of the game. Because the structure for men to deal with each other peacefully (voluntary, free trade) and resolve their differences by peaceful means (courts based on objective laws) has collapsed, it is every man for himself. And, this is exactly where we are in the process of our decline.
Obama, regarded by many as a god, marks the apotheosis of all of the negative, anti-life ideas that have ruined men through the ages. (I have yet to find an Obama voter who looked into his history insofar as the ideas, Marxism and religion - Islam and Christianity, that have fueled him for over 20 years and how he operated in the corrupt swamp of Chicago/Illinois politics. Not a single one!)
How can you stop it? Get rational. Find out how pro-life institutions, your agreements at your level, have to work and deal only with people who meet those standards. Protect your essential property and values the best way you can. Be mindful of your surroundings - the people and their mindset and attitudes - for a gauge of your physical safety. The rest of the herd will go over the cliff. Work to not be one of them.
"When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket, and then that society vanishes in a spread of ruins and slaughter. Do you wish to know whether that day is coming?"Watch Money. Money is a barometer of a society's virtue.
"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - then you may know that your society is doomed.
"Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection, and the base of a moral existence." ~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
_______________________________
Like it or not, this is exactly where we are. Force is now the standard. Individual rights (you know, those inadequate "negative rights" of the Constitution), any actions stemming from self-interest branded as unfair and selfish, money worth nothing if invested in government instruments, government thugs running every which way to scamper from the spotlight on their nefarious actions, government intrusion into healthy banks, welfare for the businesses that are incapable of surviving because they made poor judgments, ordinary unsuccessful local people calculating how they can get in on the government's largesse, laws more concerned to protect criminals and terrorists than the real victims, property expropriated and handed over to the man with political pull - all backed with the gun to force you, the taxpayer, to pay for it - are the "non-rules" of the game. Because the structure for men to deal with each other peacefully (voluntary, free trade) and resolve their differences by peaceful means (courts based on objective laws) has collapsed, it is every man for himself. And, this is exactly where we are in the process of our decline.
Obama, regarded by many as a god, marks the apotheosis of all of the negative, anti-life ideas that have ruined men through the ages. (I have yet to find an Obama voter who looked into his history insofar as the ideas, Marxism and religion - Islam and Christianity, that have fueled him for over 20 years and how he operated in the corrupt swamp of Chicago/Illinois politics. Not a single one!)
How can you stop it? Get rational. Find out how pro-life institutions, your agreements at your level, have to work and deal only with people who meet those standards. Protect your essential property and values the best way you can. Be mindful of your surroundings - the people and their mindset and attitudes - for a gauge of your physical safety. The rest of the herd will go over the cliff. Work to not be one of them.
Monday, December 22, 2008
It's Not that Diets Don't Work...
...it's that YOU don't work.
I discovered this fact this past summer. And this doesn't apply just to diets. It applies to everything. This post is about your (I mean you and me - us human beings) orientation to the world around you and yourself.
This discovery came in the form of reading a few paragraphs in a book entitled Breaking Free From Compulsive Eating by Geneen Roth. Ms. Roth had followed every diet known to man and had gotten nowhere except heavier. One day she had enough. She chose to give up dieting, to eat whatever she wanted and listen to her body. This was the beginning of orienting herself to how her body did with the foods she ate.
She began to learn because she focused not on wanting to be thin, but on the facts as they presented themselves. It wasn't that she didn't want to be thin in some kind of way, but rather that she gave up forcing herself to be thin. If what was natural for her was to be a little heavier than her picture of how she ought to be, then so be it. There are plenty of studies that show that those with a little fat live longer anyway.
But none of this is the thrust of this story. The crucial thing is the orientation to reality. And, one's body is a real thing in a real world. It works in a particular way because it has identity. One's body is unique but it is a specific unique existent within an unique class of existents known as human being.
Once you listen to your body, you start to see how it operates and what makes it hum like a finely tuned engine and what keeps it from doing that. At this point you come smack dab up against your habits, some of which may be good and some of which may be harmful. So now what do you do?
Do you listen to what the facts are telling you or do you continue indulging your habits? This is the question that separates the objectivists from the subjectivists - those that shape their lives related to the facts and those that indulge their feelings or follow what others say.
What I've found is that the more I am in harmony with the facts and use them to guide me, the more motivated I am. I may try something, but I don't give up a habit until I am motivated to give it up based on the evidence I have gathered. If I am not ready, there is more to be learned. I know that my life and its quality is kept in existence by my choice. There is a connection of the facts all the way down to this choice. I have discovered an integration of mind and body that I never knew before.
No longer do I need to read spiritual books or take spirituality courses. Those are evidence of the non-integration of the mind and body, known as the mind/body split. In an integrated existence one's spiritual life is never separated from living. It is always present and oh so gratifying and luscious that the unification of one's self is real. You know it because you live it. It's what I've always wanted.
Resignation, that deep feeling of having given up on something important, is not a part of this world. The important things come roaring back except they are now in a context of reality. Some of those things were a product of the split and when grounded in reality you know you are really not interested in them.
Of course it is always possible that you could have made a mistake in your identification of the facts. There are no guarantees. One has to do the work of thinking - i.e., using the mind, man's particular form of consciousness which is his basic means of survival. This means applying logic and integrating one's identifications with the rest of one's knowledge. It only works if the identification is consistent with reality and the rest of what you know to be true to reality.
Feelings, although providing valuable information in regard to your underlying values, are not a means of cognition. They will not help you live as you would, in your heart of hearts, like to live. (I'm thinking joyous and serene possessing the knowledge that you are fully capable to live as you want.) They can only be an indirect signpost, provided you correctly identify the value giving rise to them, of your values. And, the value that your feelings are telling you has either been threatened or supported may be rational, i.e. consistent with reality, or irrational, i.e., inconsistent with reality.
What I am doing, instead of spirituality courses, is taking morality courses to learn more about the principles of living that work for human being and why they work. In fact, I'm leading a workshop on the subject. Nine of us are engaged in this inquiry and learning process.
Once you begin to unravel the mystery that is yourself, you will find that you now have some real information upon which you can build your life. You can check to see if your values are rational given that you are a particular kind of existent. If so, then you are free to choose any of the zillions of ways of fulfilling on that value. And it will work for you and you will experience joy and happiness.
Joy is the emotion one feels when he achieves a value. One can feel joy even if the value he achieves is irrational, although it does not have the same full, rich, deep quality that it has if one achieves a life-sustaining rational value.
Happiness is the emotion one feels when he achieves a rational value and he knows it is rational. Happiness is fundamental and enduring, being in harmony with the nature of you as human being and is ultimately about one's character - the set of principles and habits which source one to act in life, in the fullest sense possible for human being, in a self-sustaining way. It is the reward for being moral.
Back to the diet saga. One day I ran out of my daily multi-vitamin tablets. I had long had a question about the value of those tablets since with the abundance of food it seemed to me that one's body would find what it needs in there someplace. I didn't replace them. One day I noticed that I wanted to eat tomatoes. So I did. I realized that the vitamin tablets had masked the information I needed to truly enjoy and savor my food. What a difference. Cooking has become so much fun.
The principles of this story have now become applied in every area of my life from politics to friends I choose to my budgeting to any of my activities where I wonder how it really works. I already know a lot. I was just using that info for the wrong reasons and I didn't get the payoff - happiness.
Happy Holidays.
I discovered this fact this past summer. And this doesn't apply just to diets. It applies to everything. This post is about your (I mean you and me - us human beings) orientation to the world around you and yourself.
This discovery came in the form of reading a few paragraphs in a book entitled Breaking Free From Compulsive Eating by Geneen Roth. Ms. Roth had followed every diet known to man and had gotten nowhere except heavier. One day she had enough. She chose to give up dieting, to eat whatever she wanted and listen to her body. This was the beginning of orienting herself to how her body did with the foods she ate.
She began to learn because she focused not on wanting to be thin, but on the facts as they presented themselves. It wasn't that she didn't want to be thin in some kind of way, but rather that she gave up forcing herself to be thin. If what was natural for her was to be a little heavier than her picture of how she ought to be, then so be it. There are plenty of studies that show that those with a little fat live longer anyway.
But none of this is the thrust of this story. The crucial thing is the orientation to reality. And, one's body is a real thing in a real world. It works in a particular way because it has identity. One's body is unique but it is a specific unique existent within an unique class of existents known as human being.
Once you listen to your body, you start to see how it operates and what makes it hum like a finely tuned engine and what keeps it from doing that. At this point you come smack dab up against your habits, some of which may be good and some of which may be harmful. So now what do you do?
Do you listen to what the facts are telling you or do you continue indulging your habits? This is the question that separates the objectivists from the subjectivists - those that shape their lives related to the facts and those that indulge their feelings or follow what others say.
What I've found is that the more I am in harmony with the facts and use them to guide me, the more motivated I am. I may try something, but I don't give up a habit until I am motivated to give it up based on the evidence I have gathered. If I am not ready, there is more to be learned. I know that my life and its quality is kept in existence by my choice. There is a connection of the facts all the way down to this choice. I have discovered an integration of mind and body that I never knew before.
No longer do I need to read spiritual books or take spirituality courses. Those are evidence of the non-integration of the mind and body, known as the mind/body split. In an integrated existence one's spiritual life is never separated from living. It is always present and oh so gratifying and luscious that the unification of one's self is real. You know it because you live it. It's what I've always wanted.
Resignation, that deep feeling of having given up on something important, is not a part of this world. The important things come roaring back except they are now in a context of reality. Some of those things were a product of the split and when grounded in reality you know you are really not interested in them.
Of course it is always possible that you could have made a mistake in your identification of the facts. There are no guarantees. One has to do the work of thinking - i.e., using the mind, man's particular form of consciousness which is his basic means of survival. This means applying logic and integrating one's identifications with the rest of one's knowledge. It only works if the identification is consistent with reality and the rest of what you know to be true to reality.
Feelings, although providing valuable information in regard to your underlying values, are not a means of cognition. They will not help you live as you would, in your heart of hearts, like to live. (I'm thinking joyous and serene possessing the knowledge that you are fully capable to live as you want.) They can only be an indirect signpost, provided you correctly identify the value giving rise to them, of your values. And, the value that your feelings are telling you has either been threatened or supported may be rational, i.e. consistent with reality, or irrational, i.e., inconsistent with reality.
What I am doing, instead of spirituality courses, is taking morality courses to learn more about the principles of living that work for human being and why they work. In fact, I'm leading a workshop on the subject. Nine of us are engaged in this inquiry and learning process.
Once you begin to unravel the mystery that is yourself, you will find that you now have some real information upon which you can build your life. You can check to see if your values are rational given that you are a particular kind of existent. If so, then you are free to choose any of the zillions of ways of fulfilling on that value. And it will work for you and you will experience joy and happiness.
Joy is the emotion one feels when he achieves a value. One can feel joy even if the value he achieves is irrational, although it does not have the same full, rich, deep quality that it has if one achieves a life-sustaining rational value.
Happiness is the emotion one feels when he achieves a rational value and he knows it is rational. Happiness is fundamental and enduring, being in harmony with the nature of you as human being and is ultimately about one's character - the set of principles and habits which source one to act in life, in the fullest sense possible for human being, in a self-sustaining way. It is the reward for being moral.
Back to the diet saga. One day I ran out of my daily multi-vitamin tablets. I had long had a question about the value of those tablets since with the abundance of food it seemed to me that one's body would find what it needs in there someplace. I didn't replace them. One day I noticed that I wanted to eat tomatoes. So I did. I realized that the vitamin tablets had masked the information I needed to truly enjoy and savor my food. What a difference. Cooking has become so much fun.
The principles of this story have now become applied in every area of my life from politics to friends I choose to my budgeting to any of my activities where I wonder how it really works. I already know a lot. I was just using that info for the wrong reasons and I didn't get the payoff - happiness.
Happy Holidays.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The Madoff Mess
First of all I want to say that I haven't published for over two weeks because I have been very busy with business: Renting out a room, designing a house and producing a workshop on rational egoism. As these settle down, I expect to have more time for my blog.
I am reading the accounts of the Madoff fraud scandal with much interest. The Wall Street Journal has run accounts of the breadth and depth of those affected by the collapse of Bernard Madoff's investment fund. It was a Ponzi scheme that consistently paid 8 to 12 percent returns based not on his earnings from his investments but on the ability to attract new people who wanted to "be in on" what the fund had to offer - consistently high returns. When the economy went south and his customers wanted their money, he was unable to provide it because the new people who provided for his payouts were no longer coming online. He had swallowed his "Jonah" and now was sick and rolled over, belly up.
I say "be in on" because Mr. Madoff was very selective of his "customers." If they were loud about his fund, he might stop doing "business" with them. He was dictatorial in this respect. Also, Mr. Madoff operated under the radar. He lived modestly given his income. He was very private, not a big socializer. He was uncomfortable in social settings, especially large ones.
The thing that is amazing me is that his customers, besides having a lot of money to invest, seem to have one of three characteristics. Either they are in the money making business in the abstract world of finance or they want to "make a difference" through their charities and foundations or they want to show their "class" by having an exclusive investment which they "chat up" with those they are trying to impress.
Normally a business produces a service or product and it makes a profit based on whether the product is one people want and it keeps the cost of its means of producing the service or product less than its income. In this way, it is directly tied to reality. If it doesn't watch all the factors which enter into producing the product and lets any one of them get out of control, it is threatened with failure - loss of its assets and its profit making power.
But as one purchases financial instruments up the line from that base, it gets to be a more complex problem to know how the company(s) in which one invested are tied to reality. If one doesn't have a means of tying the abstractions back to their concretes, one loses control of his investment and he is now in the hands of someone else's behavior and judgments. He has lost his independence which is fundamentally his own ability to obtain and judge the facts.
Clearly character becomes monumentally important. Quickly, the basics of character are rationality, independence, honesty, integrity, justice, productivity and pride. Having someone with whom you are dealing meet these standards (the explanation of what these standards are is a whole other subject which I am not going into here. Read Ayn Rand's "The Objectivist Ethics" in her book The Virtue of Selfishness for an explanation and derivation of them. Essentially they are the attributes of a healthy mind) is the means of judging character.
Looking at the list of shattered investors, it is interesting to learn who they were and what was important to them. Clearly they were interested in the high returns. But they sacrificed their judgment in order to obtain those returns. Many were charities who are in the business of "doing good" by helping other people.
Doing good in today's culture is not a function of having a profitable business. In fact if you are a good and healthy business, you are suspect. We hear all the time that it is good "to give back" as if the product we offered which people wanted in order to better their lives is insufficient, even criminal, as a way of making a living. In order to gain moral credence, one has to give some of his profits to charity or give back by forming a fund that helps some lesser soul.
I assert that this fact blinds people. They have taken their eye off the ball and they do not judge people by the standards that work in reality. Their doing good is not objective. They don't judge the good they do by producing something that is a value for human life and that another person decided to buy. Instead, they "hope" they are doing good by their self-referential standard of how they feel giving money to someone else.
The financial people who were swamped in the scandal live in the rarified abstractions of earning money without knowing how and for what it was produced. This cuts them off from reality and proper judgment, i.e., the virtue of justice.
Beyond these two categories, there are those who love exclusivity and being on the inside when others are out. These are the really superficial people caught up in a bonfire of vanities fueled by a bogus idea of "class." The current conversation around class is such bullshit and in my mind, completely discredited. It is a conversation to stop learning and the onrush of life's events. If not that, we call it something else.
This altruistic view of the good is big, big, big in our culture right now. We have elected a president who played to the idea of being classy and being all things to all people. Specifically he supressed the details of his life just as Madoff did. There are many red flags around him once you begin to look at "the seams on the ball coming at you" rather than just the ball. Once you look at the details, the seams on the ball, and judge them by the moral principles above, the whole thing goes into slow motion. You can see where this thing is going.
Madoff's investors would not do that and they are paying the price. (They could have judged because they are capable.) For some it is a very, very heavy price: multimillionaire to broke in the blink of an eye.
When some of these investors go to the government asking for the taxpayers to bail them out, as are many others unwilling to be a judge of character, because they are such "good" people, don't support that. You will be supporting your own demise and culpability in this disease of our culture.
I am reading the accounts of the Madoff fraud scandal with much interest. The Wall Street Journal has run accounts of the breadth and depth of those affected by the collapse of Bernard Madoff's investment fund. It was a Ponzi scheme that consistently paid 8 to 12 percent returns based not on his earnings from his investments but on the ability to attract new people who wanted to "be in on" what the fund had to offer - consistently high returns. When the economy went south and his customers wanted their money, he was unable to provide it because the new people who provided for his payouts were no longer coming online. He had swallowed his "Jonah" and now was sick and rolled over, belly up.
I say "be in on" because Mr. Madoff was very selective of his "customers." If they were loud about his fund, he might stop doing "business" with them. He was dictatorial in this respect. Also, Mr. Madoff operated under the radar. He lived modestly given his income. He was very private, not a big socializer. He was uncomfortable in social settings, especially large ones.
The thing that is amazing me is that his customers, besides having a lot of money to invest, seem to have one of three characteristics. Either they are in the money making business in the abstract world of finance or they want to "make a difference" through their charities and foundations or they want to show their "class" by having an exclusive investment which they "chat up" with those they are trying to impress.
Normally a business produces a service or product and it makes a profit based on whether the product is one people want and it keeps the cost of its means of producing the service or product less than its income. In this way, it is directly tied to reality. If it doesn't watch all the factors which enter into producing the product and lets any one of them get out of control, it is threatened with failure - loss of its assets and its profit making power.
But as one purchases financial instruments up the line from that base, it gets to be a more complex problem to know how the company(s) in which one invested are tied to reality. If one doesn't have a means of tying the abstractions back to their concretes, one loses control of his investment and he is now in the hands of someone else's behavior and judgments. He has lost his independence which is fundamentally his own ability to obtain and judge the facts.
Clearly character becomes monumentally important. Quickly, the basics of character are rationality, independence, honesty, integrity, justice, productivity and pride. Having someone with whom you are dealing meet these standards (the explanation of what these standards are is a whole other subject which I am not going into here. Read Ayn Rand's "The Objectivist Ethics" in her book The Virtue of Selfishness for an explanation and derivation of them. Essentially they are the attributes of a healthy mind) is the means of judging character.
Looking at the list of shattered investors, it is interesting to learn who they were and what was important to them. Clearly they were interested in the high returns. But they sacrificed their judgment in order to obtain those returns. Many were charities who are in the business of "doing good" by helping other people.
Doing good in today's culture is not a function of having a profitable business. In fact if you are a good and healthy business, you are suspect. We hear all the time that it is good "to give back" as if the product we offered which people wanted in order to better their lives is insufficient, even criminal, as a way of making a living. In order to gain moral credence, one has to give some of his profits to charity or give back by forming a fund that helps some lesser soul.
I assert that this fact blinds people. They have taken their eye off the ball and they do not judge people by the standards that work in reality. Their doing good is not objective. They don't judge the good they do by producing something that is a value for human life and that another person decided to buy. Instead, they "hope" they are doing good by their self-referential standard of how they feel giving money to someone else.
The financial people who were swamped in the scandal live in the rarified abstractions of earning money without knowing how and for what it was produced. This cuts them off from reality and proper judgment, i.e., the virtue of justice.
Beyond these two categories, there are those who love exclusivity and being on the inside when others are out. These are the really superficial people caught up in a bonfire of vanities fueled by a bogus idea of "class." The current conversation around class is such bullshit and in my mind, completely discredited. It is a conversation to stop learning and the onrush of life's events. If not that, we call it something else.
This altruistic view of the good is big, big, big in our culture right now. We have elected a president who played to the idea of being classy and being all things to all people. Specifically he supressed the details of his life just as Madoff did. There are many red flags around him once you begin to look at "the seams on the ball coming at you" rather than just the ball. Once you look at the details, the seams on the ball, and judge them by the moral principles above, the whole thing goes into slow motion. You can see where this thing is going.
Madoff's investors would not do that and they are paying the price. (They could have judged because they are capable.) For some it is a very, very heavy price: multimillionaire to broke in the blink of an eye.
When some of these investors go to the government asking for the taxpayers to bail them out, as are many others unwilling to be a judge of character, because they are such "good" people, don't support that. You will be supporting your own demise and culpability in this disease of our culture.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The Created Union
The gay marriage debate is stuck and has descended into a political war. I’ve not been attracted to this debate nor the idea of a civil union. A civil union brings up for me a lot of negativity – mainly that the union is nothing more than two people going to a dusty office in a court house and getting a legal document which creates two people into a legal unit. All the romance is reduced to that very unromantic legality. I suspect that the fight may at some level be about the lack of romantic parity that the two terms, marriage and civil union, conjure.
Thus it is easy to relegate the civil union to something of lesser value. And this is a problem. Even though two gays love each other deeply and want to spend the rest of their lives together, the idea of a civil union does not feel like that. It feels unimportant, like a distorted step-child next to marriage, the rich value-laden, full-of-life real thing.
Let’s get clear about one thing. Two adults as free individuals have the right to create a contract to live together and be seen and legally dealt with as a unit in a particular context. That is inherent in individual rights, the thing that the government is designed to protect. Neither one has a right to create such a contract unilaterally. Thus one person doesn’t have the right to create a slave of the other in any form. Therefore each has the right to legally nullify the union if it has evolved into a stuck state whereby the value of being in the union has gone out of it.
A marriage, traditionally conceived, is a union of two people which contains within it the possibility of creating a child. It holds a biological aspect different than two people of the same sex joined in a union. For this it needs to be acknowledged.
But at the same time, it is not just about that. History shows us marriages that are unable to fulfill their biological possibility or are really for other reasons. Perhaps the two people of the opposite sex are unable to conceive a child. Their marriage will be barren, as the term is used, unless they create a child in some extra-marital way. (By extra-marital I mean a means outside of one man, one woman having sex, conceiving a child that is carried to term and is born an individual human being all inside the marriage.) Their marriage, although it looks like a regular marriage, does not hold the possibility of a biological union.
Then there are marriages for financial purposes and professional purposes. For example, I think it would have been much smarter when Bill Clinton got himself into trouble over sex and Hillary played the hurt wife, had they told us that theirs is a “power marriage.” They were not in a union primarily for the purpose of having a child, even though they did.
Gays, even though decried by many, have long been a possibility for people. They do not see life in terms of the same categories that straight people do. Because of this, they have made many contributions in art and all other fields because they are able to open the human culture to other possibilities – other ways of seeing things. This is a good thing because even if a person does not ultimately choose to see the world through the opening that was created by them, they now can know more precisely what they do choose in a wider context and therefore a fuller meaning of their choice. Knowledge and the culture advances because of gays contribution.
I would like to offer a new name for all of these unions that are not grounded in biology: The Created Union.
This name offers all kinds of possibilities and all kinds of romance. It offers creating unions, both biological and non-biological, based on values. The first question that arises is “Why are you creating THIS union?” And that is something the two people of every union should know.
This reformulation would then place gays back in their valuable role of breaking down old ways of thinking and seeing the world in wider, more conscious and potentially more meaningful terms. Instead of relegating gays to the epistemological trash heap of the confused as to how sex really works or the moral trash heap of inverted values, they actually have here a possibility of offering the world something of value – a new way of looking at lifelong unions that can be a source of positive purpose producing growth and happiness.
I can see all people wanting a Created Union. It’s a possibility that is that attractive.
Thus it is easy to relegate the civil union to something of lesser value. And this is a problem. Even though two gays love each other deeply and want to spend the rest of their lives together, the idea of a civil union does not feel like that. It feels unimportant, like a distorted step-child next to marriage, the rich value-laden, full-of-life real thing.
Let’s get clear about one thing. Two adults as free individuals have the right to create a contract to live together and be seen and legally dealt with as a unit in a particular context. That is inherent in individual rights, the thing that the government is designed to protect. Neither one has a right to create such a contract unilaterally. Thus one person doesn’t have the right to create a slave of the other in any form. Therefore each has the right to legally nullify the union if it has evolved into a stuck state whereby the value of being in the union has gone out of it.
A marriage, traditionally conceived, is a union of two people which contains within it the possibility of creating a child. It holds a biological aspect different than two people of the same sex joined in a union. For this it needs to be acknowledged.
But at the same time, it is not just about that. History shows us marriages that are unable to fulfill their biological possibility or are really for other reasons. Perhaps the two people of the opposite sex are unable to conceive a child. Their marriage will be barren, as the term is used, unless they create a child in some extra-marital way. (By extra-marital I mean a means outside of one man, one woman having sex, conceiving a child that is carried to term and is born an individual human being all inside the marriage.) Their marriage, although it looks like a regular marriage, does not hold the possibility of a biological union.
Then there are marriages for financial purposes and professional purposes. For example, I think it would have been much smarter when Bill Clinton got himself into trouble over sex and Hillary played the hurt wife, had they told us that theirs is a “power marriage.” They were not in a union primarily for the purpose of having a child, even though they did.
Gays, even though decried by many, have long been a possibility for people. They do not see life in terms of the same categories that straight people do. Because of this, they have made many contributions in art and all other fields because they are able to open the human culture to other possibilities – other ways of seeing things. This is a good thing because even if a person does not ultimately choose to see the world through the opening that was created by them, they now can know more precisely what they do choose in a wider context and therefore a fuller meaning of their choice. Knowledge and the culture advances because of gays contribution.
I would like to offer a new name for all of these unions that are not grounded in biology: The Created Union.
This name offers all kinds of possibilities and all kinds of romance. It offers creating unions, both biological and non-biological, based on values. The first question that arises is “Why are you creating THIS union?” And that is something the two people of every union should know.
This reformulation would then place gays back in their valuable role of breaking down old ways of thinking and seeing the world in wider, more conscious and potentially more meaningful terms. Instead of relegating gays to the epistemological trash heap of the confused as to how sex really works or the moral trash heap of inverted values, they actually have here a possibility of offering the world something of value – a new way of looking at lifelong unions that can be a source of positive purpose producing growth and happiness.
I can see all people wanting a Created Union. It’s a possibility that is that attractive.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thanksgiving and the Declaration of Independence
The Founding Fathers were deists, not Christians, in the conventional sense of that term. They believed that God created a person but that when he was born, his life was his responsibility and should be free to make it whatever he could.
On Thanksgiving eve, driving to the grocery, I listened to Herman Cain, a local talk show host on WSB radio.
In honor of Thanksgiving, he was going through the Declaration of Independence pointing out the clauses that have sourced this country to be great. The one that piqued my interest is highlighted. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Notice the word before creator: THEIR! It is not the word THE nor OUR. ONE'S CREATOR IS WHOEVER OR WHATEVER THE INDIVIDUAL PERSON CLAIMS IT TO BE!! This is indeed great and puts the lie to the idea that we were formed as a Christian nation. We are a nation formed to honor the rights, not the circumstances, of each individual human being.
Mr. Cain, for his part, didn't rise to the occasion regarding his explanation of UNALIENABLE RIGHTS. Unalienable means inseparable. These Rights are absolutely necessary in order to be fully human to the limit of that possibility and live in a society of human beings.
The Rights which are unalienable are those necessary for a man to function as man. If he were on a desert island, he would act using them although in that situation they wouldn't be distinguished. He would be pursuing the aims of his life in full freedom for his happiness. He cannot be a human being in the full meaning of that term without them.
Ultimately this boils down to MAN MUST BE FREE TO USE HIS FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS, his rational mind. He must be free to use his means of survival, the attribute that distinguishes him from the other animals.
I thank Herman Cain for his emphasis on the word THEIR. I had never noticed this before and it increased my respect for the Founding Fathers' consistency in grounding this country in a new vision for mankind on this side of a line drawn in the sand - inside the borders of this country there shall be a new possibility for man. And to the extent we have been consistent with that vision, our people armed with this possibility and our union have fluorished.
But don't let it go.
There are forces at work to overthrow or move us away from this vision. Positive Rights, e.g., mean enslavement to not freedom from other men. More than ever, if you choose to live as man, I urge you to espouse, speak for, argue for and stand for these principles lest this vision pass from the possibility for man.
On Thanksgiving eve, driving to the grocery, I listened to Herman Cain, a local talk show host on WSB radio.
In honor of Thanksgiving, he was going through the Declaration of Independence pointing out the clauses that have sourced this country to be great. The one that piqued my interest is highlighted. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Notice the word before creator: THEIR! It is not the word THE nor OUR. ONE'S CREATOR IS WHOEVER OR WHATEVER THE INDIVIDUAL PERSON CLAIMS IT TO BE!! This is indeed great and puts the lie to the idea that we were formed as a Christian nation. We are a nation formed to honor the rights, not the circumstances, of each individual human being.
Mr. Cain, for his part, didn't rise to the occasion regarding his explanation of UNALIENABLE RIGHTS. Unalienable means inseparable. These Rights are absolutely necessary in order to be fully human to the limit of that possibility and live in a society of human beings.
The Rights which are unalienable are those necessary for a man to function as man. If he were on a desert island, he would act using them although in that situation they wouldn't be distinguished. He would be pursuing the aims of his life in full freedom for his happiness. He cannot be a human being in the full meaning of that term without them.
Ultimately this boils down to MAN MUST BE FREE TO USE HIS FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS, his rational mind. He must be free to use his means of survival, the attribute that distinguishes him from the other animals.
I thank Herman Cain for his emphasis on the word THEIR. I had never noticed this before and it increased my respect for the Founding Fathers' consistency in grounding this country in a new vision for mankind on this side of a line drawn in the sand - inside the borders of this country there shall be a new possibility for man. And to the extent we have been consistent with that vision, our people armed with this possibility and our union have fluorished.
But don't let it go.
There are forces at work to overthrow or move us away from this vision. Positive Rights, e.g., mean enslavement to not freedom from other men. More than ever, if you choose to live as man, I urge you to espouse, speak for, argue for and stand for these principles lest this vision pass from the possibility for man.
The Immorality of Fractional Reserve Banking
Here's a 40 minute lecture by Paul McKeever on fractional reserve banking and Ayn Rand's ethics of rational self-interest. Paul is especially good at explaining banking in everyday common sense terms.
When I call the fractional reserve banking practice immoral, I mean that the bank does not obtain your consent in order to use your money for its purposes. Thus in this way it sets up the boom/bust cycle since you, the original owner of the money, have no check on the bank if you see it doing something stupid with your money. (There may be other causes of the boom/bust cycle. I'm not an economist. But I bet that at root they are always caused by an immoral action, not a lack of nor inability to obtain knowledge.)
This is another example that the use of force, which is what is going on when the bank uses your money without your consent, nullifies responsibility. It nullifies the individual's responsibility, i.e., to look ahead at potential consequences and take appropriate action to either accept or reject those potential consequences, for the safekeeping of his money by the bank.
When I call the fractional reserve banking practice immoral, I mean that the bank does not obtain your consent in order to use your money for its purposes. Thus in this way it sets up the boom/bust cycle since you, the original owner of the money, have no check on the bank if you see it doing something stupid with your money. (There may be other causes of the boom/bust cycle. I'm not an economist. But I bet that at root they are always caused by an immoral action, not a lack of nor inability to obtain knowledge.)
This is another example that the use of force, which is what is going on when the bank uses your money without your consent, nullifies responsibility. It nullifies the individual's responsibility, i.e., to look ahead at potential consequences and take appropriate action to either accept or reject those potential consequences, for the safekeeping of his money by the bank.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Reasoning for Human Freedom
I wrote this to a friend regarding some political issues. He brought up the issue of abortion so I spoke to that. Then I spoke to the issue of the economy and political freedom in general.
__________________________
The current politics and categories are so polluted with conflicting positions that it is impossible to even use the terms liberal and conservative and convey any meaning. Further, both parties are statist and therefore fascist in the philosophical meaning of that term. I hate those terms and wince whenever anyone applies them.
I've finally come down to this. "I'm for individual rights and that's it. You sort it out!"
Individual rights include the right of a woman to her body. The minute she gets pregnant, she isn't to be a slave to government's edicts the next 9 months - forced to gestate a fetus. She has to evaluate whether she wants or is able to raise a child or to provide for the child in some other way. Sometimes abortion is the appropriate choice.
The entire idea of life beginning at conception, the position of many conservatives, is a major injustice to women and their closest piece of property, their body, and it causes a big legal mess. Rights are something that apply to independent, living human beings. Ultimately they are grounded in the fact that a man has a particular kind of consciousness that requires freedom to think and choose. The creation of a right by the government on the part of a fetus now places the pregnant woman legally in conflict with her own body. Whose rights dominate? The woman or her fetus? How ridiculous is that?
The entire regulation of the economy is a sham too. All the economy is at root is a person responding to his circumstances in order to make a living and survive as a human being to the best of his ability. Some people find a job which someone else has created when he started a business. Other people start a business and perhaps create a job. Their existence depends on them continually responding to their circumstances. This is especially true for the business owner who has more at stake in that he has to keep his business going which, as a consequence, keeps his employees going.
The idea that a government can pass laws that will work to improve this process is ludicrous with a minute's thought, yet no one questions this. The individual must respond to his circumstances and the government says it has to be a certain way. For the individual, this just becomes another part of his circumstances and so he seeks a way to survive given that.
Since the government's regulations are for purposes other than any particular individual's survival, they never match because the government cannot operate at the level of looking at the situation on the ground, so to speak. Further they introduce the issue of force and this sets off another, very harmful factor.
Given that a human being has free will, he depends on his mind to determine the best course for his well-being, in the fullest possibility of the meaning of that term. He is constantly making plans and choosing among alternatives. Once force is introduced, he is no longer fully able to do that. His plans become distorted by the fact that he has to do a particular thing that the government forced upon him. Thus the choices available become different and they become limited and skewed from what they could have been had he been free. This is the consequence of compulsion.
(By the way, if the government is so all powerful and wise and our leader-in-waiting practically deified, why are they and he not taking responsibility for the effects of their actions? Ever think about that?)
Responsibility is only possible if a man is able to choose. What this means is that he has to deal with the consequences, the effects, of his choices. If he is forced to do something, then there is no question of right or wrong or of a good or bad choice. He is compelled to comply. (It is free will, by the way, that gives rise to morality, the science of right and wrong, good and bad. A moral code is a set of principles that guide a person in making sound choices for his life, a human life.)
Thus force deprives a man of responsibility in a particular area. In one respect, he is no longer human. A being without free will is not a human being.
(And this gives us an insight as to why our leaders are never really responsible for their choices. Force present anywhere in a society dehumanizes all who allow it. As Martin Luther King so aptly said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." It is actually more than just a threat. To the degree it is allowed, it becomes man's inhuman being.)
Thus we see an increasing amount of human life not being responsible - not being fully human, if you get my drift. The more force is involved in a society, it means that increasingly people are unable to be responsible because they are not able to evaluate alternatives and then choose what they consider is the best one given their situation. Thus we see, and will increasingly see, human beings acting more like the lower animals rather than human beings. They don't think because it is not a value in a force dominated society. Since it is less and less possible to be fully human, then why bother. Bring on the sex, drugs and rock & roll.
Thus, I am for the complete separation of church and state, health and state, education and state, architecture and state, economy and state, everything and state. The purpose of the state is to protect individual rights and the right of every human being to freely choose the course of his life and thus be responsible for the consequences of his choices.
So called "helping" people then is not the role of the government. It is the role of private individuals and their organizations who want to do that. In a free society, the standard of living rises increasingly quickly over time and is real since the dead weight of government is not present. Thus increasingly there are resources to help the poor and the least among us. But to use the government to force this result ultimately means that all of us become dependent on the government. At that point, we are all poor and the "least among us." In fact, we are not really human beings although we may look like and talk like human beings do.
It is one of the great ironies of human society that the more force is lived with in a society, the more the calls for benevolence, generosity, love for one's fellow man and all kinds of calls for taking care of each other.
The turning point for any man occurs when he accepts it. It isn't the enforcer that makes the essential difference. Evil has no ultimate power. It can exist only as long as his victim accepts his power. It is essentially parasitic. So long as a man fights against force with every fiber of his being, his spirit is still that possible to a human being. The minute he accepts it, he's done. He's a "dead man walking."
If that isn't radical, I don't know what is. Call me a radical for freedom. I stand for the possibility of all people realizing, to the fullest extent possible, what it is to be human.
Does this make sense to you?
__________________________
The current politics and categories are so polluted with conflicting positions that it is impossible to even use the terms liberal and conservative and convey any meaning. Further, both parties are statist and therefore fascist in the philosophical meaning of that term. I hate those terms and wince whenever anyone applies them.
I've finally come down to this. "I'm for individual rights and that's it. You sort it out!"
Individual rights include the right of a woman to her body. The minute she gets pregnant, she isn't to be a slave to government's edicts the next 9 months - forced to gestate a fetus. She has to evaluate whether she wants or is able to raise a child or to provide for the child in some other way. Sometimes abortion is the appropriate choice.
The entire idea of life beginning at conception, the position of many conservatives, is a major injustice to women and their closest piece of property, their body, and it causes a big legal mess. Rights are something that apply to independent, living human beings. Ultimately they are grounded in the fact that a man has a particular kind of consciousness that requires freedom to think and choose. The creation of a right by the government on the part of a fetus now places the pregnant woman legally in conflict with her own body. Whose rights dominate? The woman or her fetus? How ridiculous is that?
The entire regulation of the economy is a sham too. All the economy is at root is a person responding to his circumstances in order to make a living and survive as a human being to the best of his ability. Some people find a job which someone else has created when he started a business. Other people start a business and perhaps create a job. Their existence depends on them continually responding to their circumstances. This is especially true for the business owner who has more at stake in that he has to keep his business going which, as a consequence, keeps his employees going.
The idea that a government can pass laws that will work to improve this process is ludicrous with a minute's thought, yet no one questions this. The individual must respond to his circumstances and the government says it has to be a certain way. For the individual, this just becomes another part of his circumstances and so he seeks a way to survive given that.
Since the government's regulations are for purposes other than any particular individual's survival, they never match because the government cannot operate at the level of looking at the situation on the ground, so to speak. Further they introduce the issue of force and this sets off another, very harmful factor.
Given that a human being has free will, he depends on his mind to determine the best course for his well-being, in the fullest possibility of the meaning of that term. He is constantly making plans and choosing among alternatives. Once force is introduced, he is no longer fully able to do that. His plans become distorted by the fact that he has to do a particular thing that the government forced upon him. Thus the choices available become different and they become limited and skewed from what they could have been had he been free. This is the consequence of compulsion.
(By the way, if the government is so all powerful and wise and our leader-in-waiting practically deified, why are they and he not taking responsibility for the effects of their actions? Ever think about that?)
Responsibility is only possible if a man is able to choose. What this means is that he has to deal with the consequences, the effects, of his choices. If he is forced to do something, then there is no question of right or wrong or of a good or bad choice. He is compelled to comply. (It is free will, by the way, that gives rise to morality, the science of right and wrong, good and bad. A moral code is a set of principles that guide a person in making sound choices for his life, a human life.)
Thus force deprives a man of responsibility in a particular area. In one respect, he is no longer human. A being without free will is not a human being.
(And this gives us an insight as to why our leaders are never really responsible for their choices. Force present anywhere in a society dehumanizes all who allow it. As Martin Luther King so aptly said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." It is actually more than just a threat. To the degree it is allowed, it becomes man's inhuman being.)
Thus we see an increasing amount of human life not being responsible - not being fully human, if you get my drift. The more force is involved in a society, it means that increasingly people are unable to be responsible because they are not able to evaluate alternatives and then choose what they consider is the best one given their situation. Thus we see, and will increasingly see, human beings acting more like the lower animals rather than human beings. They don't think because it is not a value in a force dominated society. Since it is less and less possible to be fully human, then why bother. Bring on the sex, drugs and rock & roll.
Thus, I am for the complete separation of church and state, health and state, education and state, architecture and state, economy and state, everything and state. The purpose of the state is to protect individual rights and the right of every human being to freely choose the course of his life and thus be responsible for the consequences of his choices.
So called "helping" people then is not the role of the government. It is the role of private individuals and their organizations who want to do that. In a free society, the standard of living rises increasingly quickly over time and is real since the dead weight of government is not present. Thus increasingly there are resources to help the poor and the least among us. But to use the government to force this result ultimately means that all of us become dependent on the government. At that point, we are all poor and the "least among us." In fact, we are not really human beings although we may look like and talk like human beings do.
It is one of the great ironies of human society that the more force is lived with in a society, the more the calls for benevolence, generosity, love for one's fellow man and all kinds of calls for taking care of each other.
The turning point for any man occurs when he accepts it. It isn't the enforcer that makes the essential difference. Evil has no ultimate power. It can exist only as long as his victim accepts his power. It is essentially parasitic. So long as a man fights against force with every fiber of his being, his spirit is still that possible to a human being. The minute he accepts it, he's done. He's a "dead man walking."
If that isn't radical, I don't know what is. Call me a radical for freedom. I stand for the possibility of all people realizing, to the fullest extent possible, what it is to be human.
Does this make sense to you?
Monday, November 24, 2008
Don’t Say Grace, Say Justice
An op-ed from The Objective Standard.
by Craig Biddle
The religious tradition of saying grace before meals becomes especially popular around the holidays, when we all are reminded of how fortunate we are to have an abundance of life-sustaining goods and services at our disposal. But there is a grave injustice involved in this tradition. It is the injustice of thanking an alleged God for the productive accomplishments of actual men.
Where do the ideas, principles, constitutions, governments, and laws that protect our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness come from? What is the source of the meals, medicines, homes, automobiles, and fighter jets that keep us alive and enable us to flourish? Who is responsible for our freedom, prosperity, and well-being?
Is freedom a gift from God? It is not. Freedom, the absence of physical coercion, is a political condition resulting from the rational, principled thought and action of men—men such as Aristotle, John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Frederick Douglass, and American soldiers.
Did God make the ambrosia that melts in your mouth, or the asthma medicine that keeps your child alive, or the plush recliner in which you relax, or the big-screen TV on which you watch your favorite show? Did God create the jetliners that bring friends and family from afar, or the stealth bombers that keep the barbarians at bay, or the music that warms your heart and fuels your soul?
Since God is responsible for none of the goods on which human life and happiness depend, why thank him for any such goods? More to the point: Why not thank those who actually are responsible for them? What would a just man do?
Justice is the virtue of judging people rationally—according to what they say, do, and produce—and treating them accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves. If someone spends the day preparing a wonderful meal, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for doing so. If someone provides his family with a warm, safe, comfortable home, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for providing it. If a policeman or fireman or doctor saves someone’s life, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked. If a loving spouse or child or parent or friend provides you with great joy, justice demands that he, not God, be acknowledged accordingly. If a philosopher discovers the principles on which freedom depends—and if others put those principles into practice—justice demands that they, not God, be given credit.
To say grace is to give credit where none is due—and, worse, it is to withhold credit where it is due. To say grace is to commit an act of injustice.
Rational, productive people—whether philosophers, scientists, inventors, artists, businessmen, military strategists, friends, family, or yourself—are who deserve to be thanked for the goods on which your life, liberty, and happiness depend. This holiday season—and from now on—don’t say grace; say justice. Thank or acknowledge the people who actually provide the goods. Some of them may be sitting right there at the table with you. And if you find yourself at a table where people insist on saying grace, politely insist on saying justice when they’re through. It’s the right thing to do.
by Craig Biddle
The religious tradition of saying grace before meals becomes especially popular around the holidays, when we all are reminded of how fortunate we are to have an abundance of life-sustaining goods and services at our disposal. But there is a grave injustice involved in this tradition. It is the injustice of thanking an alleged God for the productive accomplishments of actual men.
Where do the ideas, principles, constitutions, governments, and laws that protect our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness come from? What is the source of the meals, medicines, homes, automobiles, and fighter jets that keep us alive and enable us to flourish? Who is responsible for our freedom, prosperity, and well-being?
Is freedom a gift from God? It is not. Freedom, the absence of physical coercion, is a political condition resulting from the rational, principled thought and action of men—men such as Aristotle, John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Frederick Douglass, and American soldiers.
Did God make the ambrosia that melts in your mouth, or the asthma medicine that keeps your child alive, or the plush recliner in which you relax, or the big-screen TV on which you watch your favorite show? Did God create the jetliners that bring friends and family from afar, or the stealth bombers that keep the barbarians at bay, or the music that warms your heart and fuels your soul?
Since God is responsible for none of the goods on which human life and happiness depend, why thank him for any such goods? More to the point: Why not thank those who actually are responsible for them? What would a just man do?
Justice is the virtue of judging people rationally—according to what they say, do, and produce—and treating them accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves. If someone spends the day preparing a wonderful meal, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for doing so. If someone provides his family with a warm, safe, comfortable home, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for providing it. If a policeman or fireman or doctor saves someone’s life, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked. If a loving spouse or child or parent or friend provides you with great joy, justice demands that he, not God, be acknowledged accordingly. If a philosopher discovers the principles on which freedom depends—and if others put those principles into practice—justice demands that they, not God, be given credit.
To say grace is to give credit where none is due—and, worse, it is to withhold credit where it is due. To say grace is to commit an act of injustice.
Rational, productive people—whether philosophers, scientists, inventors, artists, businessmen, military strategists, friends, family, or yourself—are who deserve to be thanked for the goods on which your life, liberty, and happiness depend. This holiday season—and from now on—don’t say grace; say justice. Thank or acknowledge the people who actually provide the goods. Some of them may be sitting right there at the table with you. And if you find yourself at a table where people insist on saying grace, politely insist on saying justice when they’re through. It’s the right thing to do.
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Answer to Marxism
With Obama saying "I want to grow the economy from the bottom up" and "I want to increase taxes in order to spread the wealth around" he is advocating and says he intends to carry out the Marxist principle, namely the Labor Theory of Value. (See Karl Marx's book: Das Kapital.) It is crucial for all of us - especially those at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder - that this be answered.
Thanks to Ayn Rand, it has already been answered. I quote her from Atlas Shrugged delivered by the character, John Galt, who stopped the motor of the world.
"Look beyond the range of the moment, you who cry that you fear to compete with men of superior intelligence, that their mind is a threat to your livelihood, that the strong leave no chance to the weak in a market of voluntary trade. What determines the material value of your work? Nothing but the productive effort of your mind - if you lived on a desert island. The less efficient the thinking of your brain, the less your physical labor would bring you - and you could spend your life on a single routine, collecting a precarious harvest or hunting with bow and arrows, unable to think any further. But when you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.
"When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom you spend your time denouncing.
"The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of your time. If you worked as a blacksmith in the mystics' Middle Ages, the whole of your earning capacity would consist of an iron bar produced by your hands in days and days of effort. How many tons of rail do you produce per day if you work for Hank Rearden? (Hank Rearden was the premier steel producer in novel.)
"Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but it's only the degree to which he thinks that determines the degree to which he'll rise. Physical labor as such can extend no further than the range of the moment. The man who does no more than physical labor, consumes the material value-equivalent of his own contribution to the process of production, and leaves no further value, neither for himself nor others. But the man who produces an idea in any field of rational endeavor - the man who discovers new knowledge - is the permanent benefactor of humanity. Material products can't be shared, they belong to some ultimate consumer; it is only the value of an idea that can be shared with unlimited numbers of men, making all sharers richer at no one's sacrifice or loss, raising the productive capacity of whatever labor they perform. It is the value of his own time that the strong of the intellect transfers to the weak, letting them work on the jobs he discovered, while devoting his time to further discoveries. This is mutual trade to mutual advantage; the interests of the mind are one, no matter what the degree of intelligence, among men who desire to work and don't seek or expect the unearned.
"In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus all of all their brains. Such is the nature of the 'competition' between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong.
"Such was the service we had given you and were glad and willing to give. What did we ask in return? Nothing but freedom. We required that you leave us free to function - free to think and to work as we choose - free to take our own risks and to bear our own losses - free to earn our own profits and to make our own fortunes - free to gamble on your rationality, to submit our products to your judgment for the purpose of a voluntary trade, to rely on the objective value of our work and on your mind's ability to see it - free to count on your intelligence and honesty, and to deal with nothing but your mind. Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high. You decided to call it unfair that we, who had dragged you out of your hovels and provided you with modern apartments, with radios, movies and cars, should own our palaces and yachts - you decided that you had a right to your wages, but we had no right to our profits, that you did not want us to deal with your mind, but to deal, instead, with your gun. Our answer to that, was: 'May you be damned!' Our answer came true. You are."
She also penned an answer to socialism, Marx's dream society based on his Labor Theory of Value and view of political economy. (See Marx & Engels' The Communist Manifesto. This is based on the pernicious idea that history is fundamentally the struggle of economic classes against each other and that the good society would get rid of all the means of one man getting ahead of another. Capitalism, on the other hand, demonstrates that there is no actual class struggle because each man participates in society at the level he chooses. Thus we have numerous stories about people who rose from the lowest of circumstances to the upper reaches of society and those at the top descending to the bottom.)
You can read her answer here. A former employee of the now ruined Twentieth Century Motor Company tells what the community became organized according to Marx's vision.
Thanks to Ayn Rand, it has already been answered. I quote her from Atlas Shrugged delivered by the character, John Galt, who stopped the motor of the world.
"Look beyond the range of the moment, you who cry that you fear to compete with men of superior intelligence, that their mind is a threat to your livelihood, that the strong leave no chance to the weak in a market of voluntary trade. What determines the material value of your work? Nothing but the productive effort of your mind - if you lived on a desert island. The less efficient the thinking of your brain, the less your physical labor would bring you - and you could spend your life on a single routine, collecting a precarious harvest or hunting with bow and arrows, unable to think any further. But when you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.
"When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom you spend your time denouncing.
"The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of your time. If you worked as a blacksmith in the mystics' Middle Ages, the whole of your earning capacity would consist of an iron bar produced by your hands in days and days of effort. How many tons of rail do you produce per day if you work for Hank Rearden? (Hank Rearden was the premier steel producer in novel.)
"Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but it's only the degree to which he thinks that determines the degree to which he'll rise. Physical labor as such can extend no further than the range of the moment. The man who does no more than physical labor, consumes the material value-equivalent of his own contribution to the process of production, and leaves no further value, neither for himself nor others. But the man who produces an idea in any field of rational endeavor - the man who discovers new knowledge - is the permanent benefactor of humanity. Material products can't be shared, they belong to some ultimate consumer; it is only the value of an idea that can be shared with unlimited numbers of men, making all sharers richer at no one's sacrifice or loss, raising the productive capacity of whatever labor they perform. It is the value of his own time that the strong of the intellect transfers to the weak, letting them work on the jobs he discovered, while devoting his time to further discoveries. This is mutual trade to mutual advantage; the interests of the mind are one, no matter what the degree of intelligence, among men who desire to work and don't seek or expect the unearned.
"In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus all of all their brains. Such is the nature of the 'competition' between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong.
"Such was the service we had given you and were glad and willing to give. What did we ask in return? Nothing but freedom. We required that you leave us free to function - free to think and to work as we choose - free to take our own risks and to bear our own losses - free to earn our own profits and to make our own fortunes - free to gamble on your rationality, to submit our products to your judgment for the purpose of a voluntary trade, to rely on the objective value of our work and on your mind's ability to see it - free to count on your intelligence and honesty, and to deal with nothing but your mind. Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high. You decided to call it unfair that we, who had dragged you out of your hovels and provided you with modern apartments, with radios, movies and cars, should own our palaces and yachts - you decided that you had a right to your wages, but we had no right to our profits, that you did not want us to deal with your mind, but to deal, instead, with your gun. Our answer to that, was: 'May you be damned!' Our answer came true. You are."
She also penned an answer to socialism, Marx's dream society based on his Labor Theory of Value and view of political economy. (See Marx & Engels' The Communist Manifesto. This is based on the pernicious idea that history is fundamentally the struggle of economic classes against each other and that the good society would get rid of all the means of one man getting ahead of another. Capitalism, on the other hand, demonstrates that there is no actual class struggle because each man participates in society at the level he chooses. Thus we have numerous stories about people who rose from the lowest of circumstances to the upper reaches of society and those at the top descending to the bottom.)
You can read her answer here. A former employee of the now ruined Twentieth Century Motor Company tells what the community became organized according to Marx's vision.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Regulation Means Totalitarianism
I was so disgusted with Alan Greenspan when he testified before the House Oversight Committee. I had always held the hope that he was a free market man and that he would do the right thing in order to protect markets. I hadn't paid enough attention to him and what he had been saying all along.Alas I was wrong.
What was Greenspan's fatal flaw?
I went back to the article he wrote in 1962, "Assault on Integrity" which appeared in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, published by The New American Library in 1966.
"Since the market value of a going business is measured by its money-making potential, reputation or "good will" is as much an asset as its physical plant and equipment. The loss of reputation through the sale of a shoddy or dangerous product would sharply reduce the market value of the company, though its physical resources would remain intact.
"Reputation, in an unregulated economy, is thus a major competitive tool.... It requires years of consistently excellent performance to acquire a reputation and to establish it as a financial asset. Thereafter, a still greater effort is required to maintain it: a company cannot afford to risk its years of investment by letting down its standards of quality for one moment or one inferior product; nor would it be tempted by any potential 'quick killing.'
"Government regulation is not an alternative means of protecting the consumer. It does not build quality into goods, or accuracy into information. Its sole 'contribution' is to substitute force and fear for incentive as the 'protector' of the consumer. At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun. What are the results?
"To paraphrase Gresham's Law: bad 'protection' drives out good. The attempt to protect the consumer by force undercuts the protection he gets from incentive. First, it undercuts the value of reputation by placing the reputable company on the same basis as the unknown, the newcomer, or the fly-by-nighter.
"The government's 'guarantee' undermines this necessity; it declares to the consumers, in effect, that no choice or judgment is required - and that a company's record, its years of achievement, is irrelevant.
"Regulation - which is based on force and fear - undermines the moral base of business dealings."
So, Greenspan understood that government intervention into markets takes away the businessman's concern for his level of quality in every respect that he is responsible for in a completely free market.
Thus, if Greenspan knew that the businessman didn't have to worry about quality in the same way, what was he to do? He had but one choice. Force the businessman to provide whatever quality he identified as missing.
But this would then change the businessman again as force always removes responsibility. The necessary end result would have to be totalitarianism - total economic planning and regulation - in short, total enslavement of the businessman.
Greenspan's fatal flaw was that he did not go into his position as regulator of finance as a totalitarian from the outset.
Thus we witnessed the spectacle of a tiny little coward. A coward, no matter what he has done to cause a businessman to act without the same responsibility that he would in a free market, would always blame the businessman as greedy. And that's what he did.
Ayn Rand's nickname for Alan Greenspan when he was a part of her circle of intellectuals was The Undertaker. So apt.
Cartoon by John Cox. Here.
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