The Role of Government

Man’s nature as a moral being necessitates Rights, moral principles “defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” The only fundamental Right is man’s right to his own life. Ayn Rand correctly identifies life as “a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life.”

The most basic corollary of the Right to life is the Right to property. The Right to property makes all other Rights possible. Why? Because man is a rational being. To quote Shaun Connell over at Reason and Capitalism: “Man does not have the brute strength to kill deer, he is not born with fangs to poison his prey, or claws to use as weapons. Man has only his mind. It is his mind that separates man from the animal.” The product of man’s own creative effort is his property. Without the unlimited control over the disposition of his own property, man has no means to sustain his life fully, as he sees fit. “The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.”

The only way to deny this is to resort to a form of collectivist thinking; that the property of some people belongs to other people; that other people can make unearned demands on your property through: sheer weight of numbers (majoritarianism), force, or a duty-sense of morality (such as the bankrupt Kantian imperative, all religions, utilitarianism etc). However, Rights apply to the actions of individuals; society is not an individual and it is not a superbrain that emerges when two or more people assemble, and it is not a Borg Collective. There are only individuals, and there are only individual Rights. Taking the property of a person by unprovoked force is a violation of Rights, and therefore a criminal act. It is a crime whether it is done by another individual, a majority of individuals, or a State. Only a moral subjectivist would assert that a crime becomes acceptable when it is sanctioned by the power of a majority vote, such as democracy. (Moral subjectivism reduces to moral nihilism and should be ignored.) Democracy gives the majority the power to violate the Rights of the minority. The only way to check the power of a democratic government is with constitutional guarantees, such as are present in the United States Constitution. But what does the Constitution guarantee? Individual rights. But you cannot morally justify violating some rights and not others. It is a contradiction; either we have individual Rights or we don’t, and who decides what Rights we forfeit and those we don’t? Well, certainly not the individual in a democracy. No other current system of government does any better though, and most of them are even worse.

So do we even need a government? In a word, yes. I am not a Libertarian nor an anarchist. Those who proffer that we don’t need government are irrational. The only question is: what is the proper role of government? The answer: one that fully respects individual Rights, and whose power is limited to performing only its necessary tasks. What are government’s necessary tasks?

First, consider individual rights. The only way to violate the Rights of a person is by physical force. That is why people must be stopped from using any use of force against their neighbours, with equal or greater force. So the only legitimate use of force is in response to those who initiate its use; those who have violated the Rights of individuals and forfeited their own. Except in an emergency case of self-defence, the issue of what constitutes necessary retaliatory force can be capricious and whimsical; it is in order to guarantee individual rights that the use of retaliatory force be objectively defined and objectively employed. This is why it cannot be left to the whim of an individual. A moral society invests the use of force in a government whose actions are dictated by objective laws. That is why it is necessary to have an objective legal system. But note that all these governmental actions serve one ultimate purpose: to protect the Rights of its citizens. So what are the only legitimate services of government? Protection of citizens against internal or external threats, and a fair objective legal system to mediate disputes between men and define what constitutes a crime or not.

Since government has a monopoly on the use of physical force, its power must be limited to very specific tasks. Government is the only institution that has the power, at the point of a gun, to make demands of an individual. Government exists to protect us from criminals who would violate our rights, therefore it cannot be such a criminal itself. “The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.” – TVOS

“Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted.

This is the means of subordinating “might” to “right.” This is the American concept of “a government of laws and not of men.”” – TVOS

Taxation is the forced expropriation of individual property. As such, it is an immoral and illegal use of governmental power. The redistribution of wealth is the implementation of mass unearned demands on the property of others; it reduces men to parasites of other men. It is based on the notion that man has a duty to sustain the life of others, but this is patently false. The Right to life means the Right to take action to sustain your life, it does not mean that others must hand you everything you desire. Whether you are unable or unwilling to support your life is either unfortunate or immoral, but one person’s bad luck or laziness is not a burden on anyone else, no matter what the circumstances.

As to what happens to the disabled in such a society is a topic for another discussion, or I direct you to an excellent article here. As to how government is financed in a properly free society is again, a discussion for another article. These issues properly belong to the philosophy of law, but they should start from a foundation of individual rights.

Now, even if it could be argued that taxation was moral and necessary, and that redistribution of wealth was moral and necessary (both of which are grossly incorrect), would that make it acceptable to enforce it? No. Remember that man is a moral being; morality being a code of values to guide actions. Where choice is impossible, value is impossible; where value is impossible, morality is impossible. The only way to render choice impossible is by the use of force. So whilst redistributing wealth to others may be moral (it isn’t), doing so at the point of a gun is immoral. There is nothing generous or moral about someone who is forced to give his property to those who may or may not have earned it. “Mutual consent” is an expression that becomes meaningless in a society where the refusal to consent is met with a loaded gun. Enforcing a system you believe to be moral is contradiction of the most heinous sort.

A legitimate government acts to protect individual rights against those who violate them first. It has no other moral role.

 

(All Ayn Rand quotes are taken from The Virtue of Selfishness, unless otherwise stated.)

Animals Have NO Rights

I’ve recently explained what morality is and where rights come from. When discussing what human rights mean, we must define exactly what we’re talking about, and justify our definition. When doing so, another interesting topic arises, which is that of animal rights. I have always held the belief that animals have rights, of a sort. For example, the right “not to suffer”. I was wrong, because animals have no rights at all.

First of all, consider individual rights. A human being is a creature that makes decisions based on reason. Unlike an animal which is automatically equipped with the knowledge to select its values, human beings must discover, through a process of reason, what is good for our lives and what is bad. We discover rational values with our ultimate value, life, as the standard. This code of values to guide our decisions is Objective Morality. Therefore, man, to function as a man, must be a moral being. If he is anything less he is living like a beast, not a human. But in order to make moral decisions he must be free to do so. A man who is coerced to do good or evil, at the point of a gun, is not being allowed to act like a rational being, in other words, like a human being. Where force is present, morality becomes impossible. A man needs his morality to guide his actions whether he is alone or in a crowd. However, when a man is in a social setting, he and the others around him need the freedom to act in order to function as rational beings. What guarantees a person the freedom to act without force in pursuit of his goals? Rights. Therefore, Rights are a moral principle that exist in a social setting to guarantee freedom of action for rational beings.

“There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfilment and the enjoyment of his own life.” – The Virtue of Selfishness

Because Rights are moral principles they apply only to moral beings. The purpose of government, in fact the only morally legitimate role of government, is to protect the individual rights of its citizens. To violate the rights of another innocent individual is to be a criminal. Now, because animals do not act based on morality, to give them legally-enforceable rights to guarantee their freedom of action is an egregious contradiction in terms.

Rights apply only to action; to the right to act. For example, no one has the “right to love” – one has the right to seek a mate and win the heart of a member of the opposite sex, but no one has a free entitlement to love. One has the right to sustain one’s life by any means necessary, assuming one doesn’t violate the rights of others; in order to live one needs a job. One is free to act to seek a job; one has NO right to a job. The right to support your own life does not incur an obligation on other people to support your life. Rights only impose a negative obligation on other people, that is: you may not violate MY rights, and I may not violate YOURS.

There is no such thing as the Right “to not suffer”. To quote Leitmotif:

“So, say we grant these animals the right to “protection from torture.” Are we now going to arrest all other animals who break this law by inflicting “torture” on these protected group of animals whom we have just granted these rights? Or does this law only apply to humans, to restrict human activity so that animals can “enjoy” greater freedom and “rights”?”

Suffering is the end result of a course of action, just as happiness is. But, a course of action is dictated by one’s morality. So using suffering or happiness as the standard is to flip the nature of morality on its head. This is the problem with utilitarianism (suffering) and hedonism (happiness). Just because something causes happiness does not make it right, and just because something causes suffering does not make it wrong.

To use an example (I can’t remember the source so any readers are welcome to elucidate): suppose we encounter a sapient alien with all the rational faculty of a human being, but without the capacity to experience any pain or harm. Would this creature still have rights? Of course it would, so the capacity to feel pain (or any level of it) is an invalid standard from which to derive morality, and therefore Rights.

Granting Rights to animals, that would be enforced by government, is to limit the activity of humans, in other words, to prevent the total freedom of mankind in doing whatever he sees necessary to further his life or allow him to flourish. But, remember that rights exist only to protect the action of moral beings. Granting rights to animals is necessarily to sacrifice the rights of humans, which is not only totally irrational, it is grossly immoral. It is immoral, because it treats humans like criminals.

This does not mean that it is “okay” for humans to torture animals. A human being who takes delight in torturing animals is immoral, and such people should be condemned. But there is a difference between the moral and the legal. Fox-hunting, bull-fighting, cock-fighting etc may be deemed immoral, but they are certainly not illegal.

 

(I’ve not gone into excessive detail here so that any minor issues can be settled in any discussion that follows…)

Edited to add the following, which I posted on a discussion forum on this topic. This is in response to the arguments from an environmentalist pro-animals rights position that tried to resort to evolutionary science to justify morality and animal rights:

“Misanthropic Scott is still ignoring everything I’ve said on this subject for the last few days. I have no problem with science explaining human behavioural trends from an evolutionary point of view. The problem, and this is the last time I’m going to say this, is that it is explaining the wrong thing.

Evolution selects for the success of procreation, whether right or wrong. It has side-effects, whether right or wrong. The affinity of humans to think magically and superstitiously is undeniable, and yet a side-effect of our pattern-recognition faculty in our brains. The very thing that has allowed us to evolve as pattern-seeking creatures and drive our intelligence, has an unfortunate side-effect: magical thinking. Now, no one would call magical thinking “moral”, it is a part of our behaviour that can be explained evolutionarily.

Now, animals that do not attack each other; animals that form social contracts; animals that remember acts of generosity; animals that sacrifice themselves for the “collective good” etc; are NOT, and I repeat NOT acting morally. They are NOT acting immorally. They are acting as a result of evolutionary pressure to behaviour in a way that their genes have selected for. Richard Dawkins has shown that “selfish” genes can produce affects that are apparently “altruistic”, because it indirectly furthers the propagation of particular genes; natural selection will favour any system this is evolutionary stable (ESS).

Now, human behaviour that some people call “moral” can be explained in evolutionary terms. However, this is a faulty use of the term “moral”, and here we are talking past each other. The Objectivist ethics holds that morality is a system to be DISCOVERED, it is a philosophy for living on this earth; for each man and for every man; it is a code of values to guide actions. Morality is a topic that belongs in philosophy, but in seeking to explain what morality is and its source, one must check one’s philosophical premises. If one’s premise is that morality is altruistic/collectivist behaviour, one will seek to explain it scientifically, and how evolution selected for this behaviour. But if one rejects the notion that morality is altruistic, and that MORALITY is the rational decision making and action of thinking beings, any attempt to explain it evolutionarily is irrelevant, because, as I keep explaining, one is trying to explain the wrong thing.

It comes down to the fundamentals of one’s philosophy; the basis of morality for example. Now, the morality of altruism etc is rife in society today, and that is why Humanists and atheists, even the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens etc, accept it. We have the likes of Kant to thank for altruistic “duty” ethics, and altruism is at the core of religion ethics; it is curious that atheists don’t even realise this themselves. Altruism/collectivist ethics are subjective, and any subjective ethics reduce to nihilism, in which case morality becomes impossible. Only an objective morality can make morality possible. That is why we must reject any system of ethics that is not objective and not derived from reality. But we must make sure we’re talking about the right thing.

This talk of brain studies and human behaviour is largely irrelevant; morality is not acting in a way that evolution has selected for. Humans largely have the capacity to control their behaviour; this is because we can think rationally, something no other creature can do. ONLY a rational being can act morally, so only a human being can be a moral being. Therefore, Rights (legal protection against the use of force) can ONLY apply to moral beings, because it is only moral beings that need freedom for force in order to act as the TYPE OF BEINGS THEY ARE.

I encourage any further discussion to be centred philosophically on the concept of morality and rights, and leave the beauty of evolutionary science (of which I’m a fan) out of the discussion. One must start with one’s premise of morality. Using evolution to explain morality begs the question; it assumes that you know what morality already is: I’ve explained what Objectivist morality is, what is YOUR alternative?; that is the proper focus for discussion here. Any other comments about evolution that ignore what I’ve written here will just be ignored by me.”

My Top 10 TV Shows Of All Time

Breaking away from the serious discussions of late, I thought I’d write something more light-hearted. Here is my top ten television shows of all time, based on what I’ve enjoyed through my life. (In other words, there may be shows here I don’t watch anymore).

10 Family Guy

Bizarre and abstract at times, and with no regard for political-correctness, Family Guy is one of the few shows that can make me laugh out loud time and again, even on repeats. The way nothing is safe from being parodied is hilarious and very clever too.

9 FRIENDS

I’m not a fan of FRIENDS anymore, but I had to put this in as I was for many years, and in its first 4 seasons the show really was genuinely funny, moving, and original. In its later seasons, it tries to copy itself, and episodes and jokes become formulaic and, the worst sin of a sitcom, simply not funny. But FRIENDS’ early seasons, especially the humour of and between the three men, will always make me laugh.

8 Spaced

With only 14 episodes, I can’t put Spaced any higher, but surely one of the best sitcoms ever. Hilarious, in the really clever sense of the word, and included in that is watchability. Because the show is so rich in pop-culture references and side-jokes, there is always something that you missed the last time around. I can’t think of another show with so few episodes having so much “quotability” and laughing points. How they also manage to fit in great story with some touching moments is pure genius.

7 SCRUBS

This could be higher up, if only for the length and quality of the shows to come. Scrubs is the best sitcom of all time, at least it was in a first 4 seasons. Consistently funny, very clever, abstract and diverse at times, touching, moving; with pure quality writing and acting. Very few sitcoms get the balance right between humour and solemnity – Scrubs definitely does. Without ruining it for those who haven’t seen, the episode “My Screw Up” is Scrubs at its absolute best, and probably one of the best episodes of any TV show, ever. I mean that.

6 Babylon 5

Not your typical episodic “reset-button” sci-fi bilge; Babylon 5 is a show replete with flawed and unlikely heroes, and deep villains. Politics, religion, intrigue, drama, humour, ideology, evil, good, tough decisions etc are all themes, and most importantly, they are very real human themes. Set against a background of ancient aliens, dramatic space battles, and a very realistic future vision of earth, B5 made a lasting impression with hundreds of millions, including me.

5 Angel

I really like this show, but it’s simply not as addictive as three of the shows above which is why I can’t place it any higher. Typical Joss Whedon, and by that I mean every episode is fantastically written, rich in dialogue, never short of humour be it obvious or subtle, full of action, and intriguing with its mix of villains, demons, creatures, and overriding cataclysmic themes. It’s a shame it didn’t get a full 7 seasons like its predecessor as I think it could have got even stronger.

4 Prison Break

I didn’t like the “idea” of Prison Break before I watched it, even though I don’t really know what I was expecting. But if you want a show with constant drama, and an addictiveness rating to leave heroin in the shadows, you need look no further. Prison Break is probably the equal-top most addictive show I’ve ever watched. I simply cannot express how good this programme is. I remember the first time I watched the first season, smiling with delight at having “discovered” the show, (although my arm was twisted into watching it). It keeps you going, every minute of every episode, and just clambering for more.

3 24

This is a show that I have called “the best TV show ever!!”, and for many it is. There is no more addictive show in the world. Minute to minute, episode to episode, season to season, no time is wasted. 24 is a quality show in every aspect: acting, writing, score, drama, suspense, and realism. 24 doesn’t cut corners, it doesn’t patronise you, and it will hook you from the first episode. Has there been a single greater hero than Jack Bauer?? I can’t think of one! The best thing I can say about 24 is that it could be interchangeable with my remaining two as the best ever.

2. Star Trek

So many versions over such a long time, it would be unfair to break them into individual incarnations. Star Trek is a TV show that did, without any exaggeration, change the world. Many of the themes of television about different cultures coming together, drawing strength from their mutual differences and advantages, to meet friends and battles enemies, all started with Star Trek. In the 1960s, consider a black female officer on the bridge of a ship, a Russian, an Asian, even an American southerner; and the first interracial kiss on TV. The first NASA shuttle was named Enterprise after the Federation Starship. The Next Generation (TNG) had its moments, and it is a good show, but it is too sterile, too episodic, and the characters too flat to grab me. DS9 was a great improvement when it finally got going: darker, dirtier, more macabre; proper full-length space battles and a realistic enemy with depth, DS9 isn’t classic Star Trek, but it’s great fantasy and science-fiction. Voyager is the most like the original Trek: one ship with a determined flamboyant captain, encountering new races every week, proper banter between characters, great enemies, great fight scenes, without the same level of inane techno-bullshit that TNG regurgitated every week, and an overriding story arc makes it one of the best. The less said about “Enterprise” the better.

1. Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

I recently finished re-watching this show all the way through, and it confirmed its status for me as best TV show ever. Buffy is a show that grows up as its audience does. From 15-16 years old, the problems of the characters in Buffy mature as they do, from high school and real life issues of friendship, first crush/love, unrequited affection, social skills, unpopularity, to adult ones of death, responsibility, sex, betrayal, and sacrifice. Monsters and demons are metaphors for personal demons; we don’t have to fight literal demons like Buffy does, but we do have to fight every day at times against our own fears and the troubles that life throws at us. There are very few real-life concerns that Buffy doesn’t deal with, and for that, I think there is something in it for everyone.

Buffy has consistently brilliant writing and acting. Every episode is packed with content; no line gets wasted. And it could win awards for its humour alone! The idea of a female superhero who rescues the boy and saves the day seems acceptable now, but it was revolutionary when Buffy first came out. Tru Calling, Dark Angel, and all the others that feature a strong woman with powers, were all inspired by Buffy.

No character on Buffy just “fills in”; each has episodes of their own to shine, but the truth is that most of the characters could have entire shows to themselves, (which Angel did end up getting). Buffy has watchability, duration, addictiveness, and diversity; it can be silly, outrageous, solemn, haunting, scary, dramatic, and genuinely touching. The reason I give Buffy top spot is simply because it has all the great things that other TV shows have between them, except all in the one place and in such quantity! Quite simply, television at its best.

 

I might do a similar top 10 in a year’s time and see what it looks like then!

Humanist Symposium #12

Humanist Symposium #12

DEDICATED TO BLUE LINCHPIN

Greetings one and all. It is my pleasure to present this Humanist Symposium, the last one of the year.

Before we go any further, I would like to take this opportunity to dedicate this Humanist Symposium to Blue Linchpin. Her last post was June 11^th and she had been struggling with cancer for some time. This would be a tragedy no matter who it was, but when it happens to someone so young and so intellectually alive, it seems all the more unfair. After silence for so long, I think we all fear the worst.

 

I couldn’t think of a particularly unique or clever way to present this Symposium (!), so I’ve decided to offer each submission with my personal reflections on each article.

Let’s get started:

 

A Load of Bright presents a treatise On Patriotism. This is a brief but excellent summation of the arbitrary nature of nationality, and why the author identifies himself as a citizen of earth first and foremost, instead of referring to the accidental place of birth. This article echoes my personal opinions on the matter too.

Greta Christina’s Blog – A Relationship Between Physical Things: Yet Another Rant on What Consciousness and Selfhood Might Be

This is a succinct, eloquent, and very enjoyable read about the nature of human consciousness; blowing dualism out of the water.

Wild Philosophy – Humanism – Nietzsche and Camus

An interesting insight into one humanist’s political and moral positions, inspired by Camus. I agree with hardly anything said in this controversial article but it’s definitely worth a read.

Spanish Inquisitor – My Reunion

I had the pleasure of reading this article when it was first posted on Span’s blog which I frequent. This is a beautiful and touching story that I strongly recommend everyone read.

An Apostate’s Chapel – Words of Wisdom from Walt Whitman

A nice poem, and a few words from the blogger about how he feels being an humanist means a connection and a responsibility with and to all people, and the planet itself.

Sharp Brains – Robert Emmons on The Positive Psychology of Gratitude

This article is a question and answer session with Robert Emmons, Professor of Psychology at UC Davis, on the positive mental and physical effects of holding a better psychological approach in life.

Next up, we have Greta Christina again, with If You Weren’t an Atheist, What Would You Be?

Here, Greta asks if we can we find the good things in religion but without all the rubbish that goes with it. In doing so, she looks at all the major religions and some minor ones, and gives her personal opinions on them. This is well researched and nicely put together. A definite must-read.

Richard, at Philosophy, et cetera talks about Critical Values …and defends the value of rational disagreement, something I strongly agree with!

Ranaban in the article Brian May Not Like This…briefly talks about the slaughter of whales and why he thinks the suffering of animals should give them the right to not be harmed.

Next, is Reason and Capitalism with an excellent article entitled Cold Reason. I gave a big thumbs up to the monitor after reading this very brief but eloquent passage!

Skeptic’s Play presents a short essay explaining why life has Meaning Without God. From the article itself: “just because the universe is uncaring doesn’t mean we have to be. We may be invisible from just a few light-years away, but we’re not a few light-years away—we’re right here.”

Next, we have Shaun Connell again over at Reason and Capitalism with The Pursuit of Happiness.  I really like this short article, explaining what true happiness is from a Randian point of view; realising our values, with morality (based on reason) and reality (objective non-contradiction) as our permanent guides and checkpoints in achieving those goals, and therefore achieving happiness.

The Urban Monk treats us to a really interesting and quite contemplative article Love and Loneliness – Unravelling the Ego and Pride. This is an unusual submission for the Humanist Symposium but the sentiment is quite catching; self-love, pride, self-esteem, ego, from a non-theistic spiritual point of view.

Innovation Politics presents Democratizing Politics, which contrasts “typical” democracy that we’re used to today with a novel concept called “Open Politics”, which sounds quite revolutionary.

Get into the seasonal spirit with Letters From A Broad and Festive Carols for a Merry (Secular) Christmas and other Happy Holidays!

Atheist Revolution presents Responding to Anti-Atheist Bigotry. This top class article is best summed up by its own closing words: “Perhaps we should strive for a more balanced approach by increasing the proportion of offensive to defensive responses. The last thing we want to do is foster the already prevalent view that religious belief is somehow exempt from criticism. Atheism, when one understands what it is and what it is not, needs no defense. On the other hand, faith-based belief is simply indefensible.”

Atheist Ethicist presents a case for objective non-religious morality based on values and human desires. Read it here.

Finally, I present my own article Standing On The Shoulders of Giants. From the dawn of man through the ages and all the greats that have come and gone, I consider being alive in this modern era as a privilege akin to sitting at the feet of the masters of history, with no boundary on what we can learn, or what the human race can achieve.

 

Thanks to all for ‘attending’. This will probably be my last submission to the Humanist Symposium for the foreseeable future, but it was a privilege to host it, and thanks to Ebonmuse for some hand-holding through the process!

The next Humanist Symposium will be over at Faith In Honest Doubt on January 6^th, 2008. You can submit articles here.

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants

A simple ribonucleic acid string replicates itself. Genes compete in a ruthless environment for selection. Simple, at first, and then more complex machines are constructed unconsciously by genes to further their survival. These survival machines reproduce and compete. Competition for sustenance and procreation forces genes to engineer better machines. These machines, very slowly over eons, increase in complexity. Some machine parts are phased out, some machine parts are phased in or upgraded, becoming interdependent on other parts. Some of these natural machines become very good at detecting and interacting with the world around them, and they process and store these experiences in a vast network of complex interrelated fibres and cells. In one variety of machine, the machine’s structure allows this plexus to increase in complexity and sophistication. The processing and analytic power of this machine’s encephalon steadily increases over time. Slowly, and at some temporally indiscernible juncture, something prodigious happened. Something that might have never happened before in the history of the universe, and something that is not guaranteed to happen again: this machine become aware of its own existence.

Each step of the way, the progress of life balances on the previous rung of the ladder just long enough to take another step. Life teeters on the edge of a branch, stretching precariously without slipping to just reach for the next one.

Everything that went before, (and a high price in lives was paid indeed), did not so much pave the way for progress, but provided a stepping block for the next generation. We move upwards, sometimes slipping, but if the blocks are high enough then even our fall only takes us down a few steps and not crashing to the very bottom.

From such ignoble beginnings has the human race came, and through what contumelious and opprobrious corridors have we had to, and are having to, walk!

But as we look behind us, back down the amaranthine staircase of the ages, we can still see people looking up at us. Look, squint, and see near the bottom: it is Lucy. A long way up I can see Plato, and then Aristotle. Further and further up we see, every now and then, a famous face. Look, there is Copernicus proving, (not for the first time) that the earth is not flat. Descartes is not long after, thinking himself into existence. Hobbes, Pascal, and the great Spinoza follow almost immediately, and next, holding his apple is Sir Isaac Newton who we see gives a huge leg-up to those that follow. Up and up we go, and it would be brusque not to give Berkeley, Hume and Kant a mention, although neither might be absolutely certain about your existence. (Yet, despite their scepticism, the staircase exists!)

And long overdue, Mary Wollstonecraft reminds us that woman have just as much a place on this illimitable staircase as men. Many great men and women follow, but one stands out. The next one we see in this temporal flight lays a cumbrous step before himself that all others will, and must, stand on, for this single step is so large and scopic it gives any who pass by on it the chance to peer over the edge, all the way down to the very first step and see the staircase forming. This ingenious individual is Charles Darwin. The faces and names come thick and first after the masterful Darwin, who elucidated to us the nature of the staircase itself!

The next step is one that was laid after its progenitor’s passing; how important Gregor Mendel’s work turned out to be. He is rightly called the father of modern genetics. How many great accomplishments and breakthroughs couldn’t have been made since, without this sturdy stone being laid?

Albert Einstein follows shortly after, changing the world with 5 characters, and rewriting the understanding of physics and spacetime brilliantly articulated by Newton only a few centuries earlier. Alan Turing, who arguable did more to win the Second World War than any other single individual, stands tall and proud with the modern computer revolution his everlasting legacy. Would that he had been born just a little later, and not have to suffer for the “crime” of being homosexual, a suffering that he decided to end himself with a cyanide-laced apple. A victorious Nazi-free Europe and an internet-dependant society bids you post-humus thanks, Alan.

Smashing the vacuous bricks that Hume and Kant laid, is Ayn Rand. Demonstrating the primacy of existence and an objective rational worldview, Rand set stones that many have bypassed. Perhaps she came before her time, or, as I suspect, she didn’t come early enough! At least she came at all however, and would that more stabilised their feet on her sturdy Objectivism.

As we look ever closer to our own time, the people on the following steps are but a handshakes’ distance away. But what exciting times we live in when the staircase grows and winds so fast. Steven Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins are within talking range, but alas the former can hear us no longer. What the latter has to say about the wondrous step Darwin laid fascinates and awes us, and he will not shy away from exposing those who would jeopardise these beautiful advancements of society.

Next we have Stephen Hawking, who will give us a history of time, very briefly of course. A modern-day Einstein, a true genius, a transcendent thinker.

I see Christopher Hitchens standing very near me, and what a writer, debater, and thinker he is! I look around and see like-minded free thinkers and we exchange a knowing smile with Hitchens, glancing back down the Staircase of Ages at those who made it all possible.

And here we are. The times when repression and superstition totally ruled the world are over. Paying homage to Turing I can use my computer to learn what Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato wrote. I can understand exactly why there is life, and how it works, thanks to Darwin, Wallace, Mendel, Gould, and Dawkins. I am free to seek out and associate with fellow open minds. We can enquire and reason for ourselves, but we can do it in light of all who have gone before. If all those listed above, and more, could come forward to the time of me and you, could fly suddenly or leap abruptly to our step, what incredibly envy they would have for us! It is not just the knowledge that mankind possesses today, it is the limitless access to knowledge that would have the Greats of yore salivating with covetousness.

My passions are numerous and include science, philosophy and sport. But each of these alone can be subdivided into vast and deep categories, each one impossible to master in a lifetime. Not so long ago I stumbled across articles on String Theory and Quantum Mechanics and I realised: I don’t know anything! If you’re anything like me, and indeed Socrates, all we know is the extent of our own ignorance. But perhaps we should take heart from the words of Hitchens that “This to me is still the definition of an educated person.”

But what interests me might not interest you. It doesn’t matter. The universe is too grand, nature too vicarious, and life too brief to even get to work on the iceberg. But even if people like us cannot directly get involved, we can watch and learn from those hammering away at the tip, whatever that particular knowledgeberg might be.

This is why we are lucky to be alive at the time we are. Never underestimate the potential you have to accomplish your goals in this day and age. Never take for granted the freedom of education and inquiry you have; many greater minds dithered in ignorance and withered in torture for what should be and is now, an inalienable human right. Never take for granted freedom of speech or your ability to be politically active.

We can learn about distant galaxies and the birth and death of our own universe. We can experiment with and understand the fundamental particles of the universe. We can be one of the incredibly rare people in the history of the world to say “I know where life came from”. We can virtually sit at the feet of all the experts throughout humanity and understand how and why. And we can be humbly confident that if we don’t have the answer, there is every reason to think we might one day. But even if we can’t, as Gotthold Lessing said, the search for truth is often more important than truth itself; humanity will “always and forever err in the process”.

All of human knowledge is in our past and present. We are here on the most recent and highest stair in time. How much farther indeed we can see, when standing on the shoulders of giants!

What is Morality and what are Rights?

Humans are not like animals. It is not our level of intelligence that differentiates us from animals; it is the nature of our intelligence. Humans think and reason on a conceptual level, whereas animals no matter how higher their brain functions, operate at the perceptual level. Without the ability to abstract and form concepts, rational thought is not possible.

Animals act on instinct, and have the necessary behaviour that allows them to survive. An animal will hunt, and prey, flee, or build a nest, based on instinctive behaviour. Humans are not like this; we must discover how to survive. We must think, create, produce. To live as a man means to live as a rational being. Man cannot live as a man without thinking. A man who rejects reason surrenders himself to life as an animal, with only luck ensuring his survival.

How does man think his way to survival? He must discover what is good for his life or not. He must discover what is of value to him or not. Implicit in this discovery is the reality that some things are good and some things are bad TO HIM. This is where the fact of morality appears. Good or bad, based on what? What is the objective standard for a man to determine what is good or bad; what is moral or immoral? His own life. A rational man necessarily holds his life as his highest value, and judges all other values against that objective standard. Some of these values are necessary and some are optional. What are the necessary values? Ayn Rand identifies them as Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem.

“Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.” –
For the New Intellectual

A man must decide what is good or bad for his own life; whether he is alone or in a crowd; whether in the centre of a bustling metropolis or abandoned on a desert island.

From For The New Intellectual again:

“You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today—and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.”

A common mistake made by some is that there is a difference between ‘good’ and ‘moral good’. This is patently false: nothing has intrinsic value. What is good, if it is not good FOR someone? What is bad, if it is not bad FOR someone? Value cannot be divorced from the valuer; value without consciousness is meaningless.

Since man must freely and rationally choose his own actions, morality is a personal system for every man, for all men. On a desert island or in a city, man needs to think: he needs to discover food, shelter, clothing. He needs purpose. He needs fulfilment. He needs those things that enrich his life and allow him to flourish. He needs to decide what is of value to his life, in other words, what is GOOD. So to talk of a kind of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ outside the context of morality is to steal the concept of good and bad from their source: a code of values to guide decisions, videlicet morality.

From this, we see that morality is not a social construct or mystical phenomenon that emerges magically whenever two or more people congregate. That way lies the path of moral relativism; can two people decide that poison is good? Can two people decide that man should not reason? Can two people decide that rape and murder are good? No.

Therefore, in order for man to act like a man; a reasoning volitional being, he needs a morality. Man, to be a man, must be a moral being. A man who is not allowed to act like a moral being is no man at all, but rather, an animal. In a social setting (two men or more) men must agree to allow each other to act like moral beings, otherwise coexistence and life would be impossible. How is the morality of man guaranteed? Rights. Whereas morality is an individual concept and guide to personal actions, rights only exist in a social context. A man on a desert island has no need for rights, but he still needs a morality.

It is man’s identity as a moral being that makes rights necessary. What are these rights? Specifically, a man’s right to his own life. The corollary of that is the right to sustain his life by any and all means necessary. This entails the right to property, and to pursue those values that give his life meaning and happiness. A rational being recognises the necessity of rights in a social context and respects the rights of others. (Incidentally, this is why animals have no rights). To do otherwise would be to invite the violation of one’s own rights, but since a rational being knows that his own rights are non-negotiable, he does not violate other’s. A man is free to violate the rights of others, of course, but in doing so he is not free from the consequences of doing so, and in doing so is not being rational.

The right to one’s one life does not grant any man the “right” to subsist off the life of another. Your right to exist and your right to sustain your own existence does not mean I have any duty to sustain your life. A man has a right to find food; he has NO right to demand food from others. A man has the right to create or find shelter, property, and love, but there is absolutely no obligation on any other rational being to provide these things for him. Note: I said obligation, which implies a compulsion, which means action coerced by force. Force is the only way to infringe individual rights; it is the only way to stop man acting freely, in other words, like a moral being. (Morality therefore becomes impossible when force is present.)

From this, we see that any collectivist/altruist theory of politics or ethics are deeply immoral because the only way these systems can function is to violate individual rights by violating man’s freedom over his own actions and his own property. What systems would this include? Communism, socialism, totalitarianism, democracy, any religion, and utilitarianism.

Objectivism and Me

For the past two months I’ve been reading a lot about Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. I’ve also had the pleasure of interacting with an Objectivist on his blog and over e-mail.

Immediately I was struck by how many viewpoints (political, philosophical, and ethical), resonated with me; I had held them explicitly or implicitly for a long time but was unable to articulate them or justify them properly. There were also many consequences of these viewpoints that disturbed me at first, especially political. However, as a free-thinker, consequences of truth do not bother me as much as truth itself.

I wanted to refrain from writing about Objectivism until I was knowledgeable enough to argue it properly; I have a responsibility to myself to make sure I know what I’m talking about. After being prompted by A Load of Bright though, I’ve decided to comment on it “as I go”, but I will avoid referring to myself as an Objectivist or debating the philosophy deeply for now. This is only fair to my readers and myself.

I have been very disappointed with how poor the quality of counter-arguments against Objectivism are. As well as reading about Ayn Rand, I have of course (to avoid confirmation bias) sought out opinions on Objectivism from non-Objectivists. Some of them were very balanced and generous. Some of them were blatantly hostile. But, for someone who has only been studying it for a month or two, I found I could already refute most of the nonsense they were saying. A common misrepresentation of Objectivism is: “every man for himself”, or “survival of the fittest”. This is false.

Objectivism is an entire philosophical system that accounts for knowledge, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. It is grounded on axioms of existence and sensory validity. Any attempts to deny these axioms involve their utilisation, which is self-refuting. From these, and the identity of man as a kind of being that acts volitionally, everything else follows.

The fundamental right, the only existing non-reducible right that exists, is man’s right over his own life. As a moral being, this is a necessary corollary of that status, otherwise it would be impossible for men to live together. Therefore, the politics of Objectivism are based on the realisation of the individual rights of men. The individual rights of men are non-negotiable, until and only if a man initiates the use of force against others; in doing so he has attempted to violate the rights of others and so forfeits his own.

I have come across people who reject the consequences of Objectivism; usually they appeal to an altruist or collectivist theory of ethics, or just emotion. In my limited experience talking about Objectivism, I’ve noticed these people find it hard (or impossible) to reject the premises of Objectivism, but will still disagree with the (usually) politic corollaries, not realising they’re blatantly contradicting themselves.

As I adopt more and more the philosophy of Objectivism, I am finding it harder and harder to identify myself as a Humanist. I disagree with the opinions of some humanists on a variety of issues (such as animals rights, environmentalism, and politics), and whilst Humanists do not necessarily have to agree on everything (it’s not a religion after all), it is some of the foundations of Humanism that I am at odds with, and I believe it is incomplete as a worldview. This will not stop me of course hosting the Humanist Symposium on 16^th December, which I volunteered for. But I thought I would talk about how my philosophy and politics are progressing, and the direction I am heading.

Finally, Objectivism is appealing to me for several reasons: it emphasises the necessity of rationality and logical thinking; it ennobles humans by forcing us to think for ourselves, and means that we must face the consequences of our actions; it treats men as adults that aren’t entitled to a free lunch or to parasitize off other people; it provides an epistemology and morality that are universal and objective; it dispenses with the nihilism of philosophical scepticism; and it respects individual rights to the core.