As If

Over on the Rational side, I posted an excerpt from Greg Swann’s “Meet the Third Thing.” In my introduction, I mentioned that Greg has discovered the two fatally flawed premises that have misled men forever. “Meet the Third Thing” addresses the first—the ontological error of identifying a man as he is not. This is an elusive point, and quite counterintuitive. It’s so tough that I’d skip it altogether, except that it lends clarity to the other fundamental misidentification…the Fallacy of Tu Quoque, which has been the driving force of social ethics since social ethics were first considered.

Luckily that error–the error upon which we’ve built all societies so far–is much easier to see than the one addressed in “Meet the Third Thing.” However, because the two are related, I’ve decided to deal with first things first, and offer some comments on what I believe is the lesson of “Meet the Third Thing.” My analysis of this has not been endorsed, nor even verified as correct, by Mr. Swann.

A man is a rational, volitional being. This means that he is driven by his conceptual faculty. With the ability to abstract comes the ability to conceptualize that which isn’t. We can imagine things that never existed and never will…balls rolling uphill, unicorns, a Heaven with dancing virgins. You name it, and we can imagine it.

Among the more relevant things we can conceptualize are choices. We have the ability to imagine various courses of action and various likely outcomes from those actions. Indeed, once we raise ourselves above the level of purely perceptual animals seeking only physical survival, our ability to conceptualize choices is all we have. It is the cause of each and every action we take. There may be underlying instincts, and we are not immune from the animal drive to survive, but our exclusive causal factor is our own conceptualizing mind and the choices for which that mind decides to opt. We may do much of it out of habit, but it’s still volitionally motivated. A person who has no volition does not live as a person. We say “man qua man” and this means an animal driven by his conceptual, volitional faculty.

Ayn Rand addressed most of this. When officialobjectivism.com gets going, we’ll look at many of the things she said about this fundamental identification. But for now, we’re dealing with the misidentification most of us make, as we go about dealing with others. Like all mistakes, it takes the general form of “identifying a thing as it is not.”

A blade of grass is a very simple thing. Besides our advanced knowledge of the physics of its life-cycle, we also understand what it is and what it does. It’s a blade of grass; duh. However, we may treat a blade of grass as anything we wish. We could treat it as a pet…caring for it, protecting it, loving it. There is no limit to how we may treat a blade of grass, all the way up to and including taking it as God Himself. Like all things, this is a choice and there is not an entity in the universe that can literally stop you from treating a blade of grass as anything you wish. This is the wonder of volition.

But the point is obvious here. No matter how any person chooses to treat a blade of grass, it’s still just a blade of grass. It would be sort of silly to treat a blade of grass as a pet, let alone as some sort of god. Our treating something as what we choose, does not make it other than it is. This is the fundamental distinction between “X” and “thinking of X,” which I addressed early on, over on the Rational side.

If we pray to the blade of grass, we treat it as if it were a god. If we care for it as a pet, we are acting as if it were an animal that gives us comfort and loyalty. A horse is not a cow, but if you’re hungry enough, you will treat the horse as if it were a cow, slaughter it and live off the food it provides. This did not transform the horse into a cow, but you made a choice as if it were. We call this “justification,” and there could be various justifications for doing this, all of them driven by the underlying decision, “I wish to live, so I must treat the horse as if it were a cow.”

Now what of other humans? Ultimately, it is their nature that they too are volitional creatures, just like yourself. You can treat them as if they weren’t, but you won’t have changed them because of that decision…not any more than you changed the blade of grass or the horse. You can say you “justify” that decision, but it’s not a justification built of rational identification. Notice that the horse will end up providing you food, but the blade of grass won’t send you to Heaven. This is a very important distinction–the horse may not be a cow, but he did end up serving the purpose which you intended. The blade of grass did not end up serving the purpose for which you intended. We may call the first a sort of “rational justification,” while the second is an “irrational justification.” IOW, the blade of grass never provides what you wish, while in the extreme circumstance the horse does.

The fundamental decision you have to make with regard to other humans, is whether their presence helps you live, or inhibits you from living. The answer to this is, “They help.” You are better off living with the love and production of other humans, than without those things. Other rational beings are conducive to your own happiness—they offer rationality thereby increasing your own wisdom, as well as providing values for you to enjoy.

Many people like to say, “We are social creatures,” but that’s not technically correct. We are independent creatures who choose to interact socially. This is as opposed to strictly “social organisms” like ants or bees, that literally won’t live unless they all perform their respective tasks. Humans will live, even alone. We choose to be social, and that’s why it’s so critically important to correctly identify the others with whom we choose to live.

And ultimately, each and every one of those other humans is exactly like yourself in this respect—they too are conceptual, volitional creaturs driven exclusively by their own decisions. This is not the time to go into excruciating detail why the proper way to deal with a conceptual, volitional creature is through persuasion and not physical coercion. If it’s not readily obvious to you, then you can read Rand or just figure it out for yourself. I’ll address this very important issue, but not presently.

So here’s the point I take away from “Meet the Third Thing.” When you deal with another person coercively, you are treating him as he is not. Period. At this stage, I’m not talking about justice or self-interest or capitalism or any of that. I am speaking exclusively of the creature’s nature. The blade of grass is a blade of grass, the horse is a horse and the person is a person. There can be no rational justification for treating the blade of grass as a pet, because it won’t return to you the values that a pet does. You can still do it, of course, but it wouldn’t be rational. If you treat the horse as a cow, this can be rationally justified if you’re hungry enough.

So what of treating a person as a non-person? The simple fact is that no matter what the situation, the person will have more to offer you if you treat him as a person than if you don’t. Naturally there are very extreme situations where it might be justified to treat the person as a cow or, if the person chooses to act like a cougar, as a cougar. But absent these extreme situations, it is never justifiable to treat a person as a non-person. Simply put, he will always have more to offer you as a person than anything else; hence it is rational to treat him as a person.

Everything else is intellectual muck. We believe that a person acting other than we think he should, “deserves” to be treated as a non-person. This is false…he may deserve many bad things, but his poor behavior is not cause for you to treat things as they are not. Another person’s irrationality is never justification for your own irrationality. There is no such thing as “justification for irrationality;” the very utterance is oxymoronic. And ultimately, as Aristotle noted long ago, the hallmark of rationality is treating things as they are, not as they are not.

This POV is frequently misunderstood as pacifism, since the assumption is that the rational person would never use force against an entity whose nature he believes precludes coercion. This is false, and one has nothing to do with the other. Pacifism is itself a philosophy, which claims that the actor should never use force, period. Naturally this is not a rational take on the matter since if you’re never willing to use force, it’s only a matter of time until some nitwit comes along to set you down and take your stuff.

Egoism is not pacifism. Egoism is the understanding that your own life is the highest value you can rationally have, and that nothing can trump it except what you choose. An imbecile who threatens your life or property is destructive to that highest value, of course, and so must be dealt with. The thing is, this is an extraordinarily rare occurence and is not found in normal day-to-day living. What is found in normal day-to-day living, almost ubiquitously, is the idea that if a person chooses to act irrationality and not go along with the simplest standard of human decency, that he therefore deserves to be treated as other than a rational animal. This is seriously false from a genuinely egoist perspective. The only thing that could justify your treating him as other than a rational being, is an immediate real-time threat to your very existence or property. Otherwise, he remains as he is, a rational being who is choosing not to be very rational. His choice of this, is not cause for you to treat him as he is not. There is never a justified cause for treating things as they are not, even as there can theoretically be a justified cause for putting him down anyway. The two situations are not similar, and it’s a fundamental error to believe that with a series of words and/or thoughts, we can make them so. If you eat the horse, you are not really misidentifying the horse; you’re just making an exception in how you normally deal with horses. You treat it “as if” if were a cow, but you don’t convince yourself that it’s really a cow.

As we shall see as we move along, this is a recurring error among people…the belief that a series of “arguments” can literally change that which is, to that which it is not. For the moment, I rest only upon the point that a person is a person, and a person is ultimately a volitional being. As Greg writes, to believe otherwise is to stipulate some sort of “Third Thing” present, which transforms each of you into something that neither of you actually are. Obviously this is a fantasy, and it’s a fantasy that has led many men to act irrationally…primarily on the basis that if they can imagine what justice is, then they can therefore mete it out. As we’ll discover later, this is not the nature of justice and another man’s irrationality is not cause for your own irrationality.

In and of itself, this particular error would not be sufficient to cause the damage that it has. The problem occurs because of some of the irrational conclusions that derive from it, primarily the fallacy of Tu Quoque. This shall be dealt with in the near future, since it is this which has taken our societies down a road from which there seems no return. Once you believe that there is something–anything–which transforms other people into something other than people, then you have abandoned rationality. And once you abandon rationality, then you have chosen to take yourself out of the realm of “being human” and using your mind properly. It is this which is killing people, not the occasional thug or even statist who is ostensively the problem.

Two out of Three Ain’t Bad

“…that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Okay, not everyone is going to agree with everything. There are even some who say it’s debatable whether or not we’re even here. Joke’s on you…you pay some of them to teach your kids!

Still, everyone recognizes that everyone else has a Right to live. We don’t need to debate what a Right is, since it turns out that it’s only the recognition anyway. I am speaking, as always, of the class of humans. You acknowledge that the next guy, and everyone else in the absence of any direct cause to the contrary, ought to be allowed to live, at least as far as you’re concerned.

So let’s move on. Pretty much everyone–everyone normal and decent, that is–understands that Liberty is automatic too. They may convince themselves to do and agree otherwise, but it’s no secret any more what freedom and liberty are all about, and what they end up producing. Or should I say, what the entities that are alive and free, produce. If a billion Chinese people understand this, considering their “education,” then almost everyone understands it.

This leaves the last…”the Pursuit of Happiness.” Why the argument with that? What is there about that, that doesn’t ring quite as obviously true as the other two? It’s clearly anti-altruist, since one can only acheive happiness for one particular person, oneself. And it’s also anti-sacrifice, since happiness is nothing but a personal, selfish emotion.

But we’re taught, nearly from the moment we can form a word, that the measure of good is what we do for others and what we give up ourselves. So is this a fancy way of saying that the Founders had two right, but missed the boat on the last?

Or is the claim that we actually become happy by sacrificing ourselves and doing for others more than we would do for ourselves? What would that mean, anyway? How would one pursue it…would you try to figure out what the next guy wants and then try to do that? Seems kinda roundabout, just on a practical basis!

Yet usually it’s the practical basis that’s offered as the justification. “How else shall we be happy unless we control what everyone else does?” IOW if I don’t make others act as I wish, then how shall I be able to pursue my own happiness?

Whoops, but then we’re back around to pursuing our own happiness as the good. If it’s good, then why not acknowledge it in the first place? What’s the function of the altruism and sacrifice?

And so ’round and ’round it goes.

Maybe the Founders were right, and maybe this really means something. Maybe the pursuit of happiness is indeed just as self-evidently natural as life and liberty themselves. Quite obviously it was to them, so what’s the problem now?

The Founders Speak (Sentence 2)

Here’s the other sentence from the Declaration of Independence, following the one presented on the Rational side here…

“But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”

Hmm…sounds like an “ought” to me. Downright duty, they say.

And what’s the “ought”? Well, there’s “to throw off such Government” and there’s “provide new Guards for their future security.” But even Juvenal caught this paradox…

Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

“But who is to guard the guards themselves?”

Get a grip; there is no paradox. Guards are hired to protect what their employers wish protected…maybe their property, their lives, their land, whatever. A good guard doesn’t need to be guarded; that’s why he’s a guard! If his employer wants him guarded, then he hires two guards, or whatever it takes.

Somehow when this gets institutionalized, the relationship gets twisted—it’s from the guard that the employer needs the most guarding. There are many reasons for this beyond the scope of this single posting, so suffice it to say that if an employer needs his  guarding from his guard, then he did a very poor job of hiring that guard!

So poor, in fact, that it’s completely obvious that he should have no say at all in helping you choose your guards. Indeed, he may be so stupid that he himself should be guarded against!

Now how big of an idiot do you feel like, knowing that quoting two sentences from the Declaration of Independence might actually be considered by some people, to be treason? What the hell sort of guards did you hire?

Here’s the secret of egoism. You don’t want to feel like an idiot, and you especially don’t want to be an idiot. The secret is how much effort it takes to make this happen, which is <1% of the energy it takes to eat a hamburger.  Just don’t do it, that’s all.

“There, done.”

Creativity, Friendship and a Secret

Here’s a train of thought. Vonvegas was kind enough to leave a comment at the homeblog, to which I’ll partially respond later, there. My passion in philosophy is epistemology and when it comes to that, there are none better than vonvegas. I can’t say that he makes no mistakes in that arena, because I don’t really know. I can say I haven’t caught any relevant ones, and that he has an unparalleled insight into the topic IMO.

What makes vonvegas different, and most of the people I admire most, is his ability to think with his own mind…to come up with things that no other mind has ever thought before. And I mean things that actually say something, that actually understand something, that actually identify something. That’s why I don’t know whether he’s completely right or not; I don’t pretend to understand everything he says. And on ethics, I’m not even close to understanding or agreeing, but there too I know I haven’t found any mistakes.

Ultimately creativity is what we’re about in many different ways, but if that were all there were to this, I’d post it under “Rational,” for epistemology. But then I started thinking about the sort of person von must be. We’ve never met. We’ve exchanged a few EMails and been involved in several lengthy (endless?) discussions on hpo.

So really, I know nothing about him, in a way. But in another way, I know enough about him that I could trust him. IOW were we to meet, I wouldn’t have to take precautions that he might try to rob me, or set me up for a scam, or something like that. I know little of his likes or dislikes, and I don’t really care except for what they might mean to him. It would be interesting to learn, but whatever they are, they’re no danger or threat to me. I know this up front.

The guy down the street is the same way…only he’d say that all this mental bullshit about epistemology is a total waste of time! And he’d have reasons too, some good ones—for him. That’s cool. I don’t talk philosophy with him; we talk about or do other stuff. But like von, I know that he too isn’t out to “get me” or hurt me, or want anything bad for me.

The other guy down the street too, and the people I see all the time at stores, or gas stations or restaurants…back when I used to eat out! None of these people seek bad for me, nor I for them. Most would help each other out in a pinch, or maybe not. Doesn’t matter, really, since none of us, as strangers basically, would ask any of the others for some giant favor or anything like that.

So the Big Secret should be obvious. You’re like that too, along with about 99% of the people out there. So is your neighbor, and the guy in the next block, and the next town and the next state. You get the idea. And yet, when you imagine people being free, you imagine a wild orgy of savagery and brutality. You imagine this because of an implicit premise that you’ve been taught…that people are basically evil and if left to their own choices, will run rampant.

That would be another of those “convenient beliefs” for you to have, if one were trying to convince you that you couldn’t live without being ordered how to live.

I’ve used the same response for years—”So would you be like that?” Would you be running out to steal other people’s stuff and molest others? How about your family…would most of them? Your friends? Neighbors? Co-workers? But somehow, this is what you imagine when you hear the word “anarchy.” That’s why I don’t like the word at all, even though I learned long ago that the very, very brightest people are, to nearly a one, anarchists. I was pretty surprised when I learned this decades ago, but I never lost my distaste for the word. This is why I’ve concluded that it’s a false concept anyway—the idea of “absence of something governing you” is sort of absurd. Naturally anarchists are only saying “the absence of something else governing you,” but I still think “indarchist” is highly preferable on many fronts.

So that’s the secret, as if every American shouldn’t know this anyway. The overwhelming majority of people just want to live peaceful lives with as much happiness and comfort as possible. They’re not out to hurt other people, or control other people…at least they weren’t until they learned that they ought to be that way. When freedom and liberty are ubiquitous, then societies do as this society did for quite a while. As freedom and liberty get choked out of existence, a society looks like ours does currently. When it gets to full strangulation…well, I think we have enough knowledge to know what happens then.

But I suppose there’s not much point in chasing that, until we have “Rational” nailed down. Because one thing I figure is that if you really saw what was happening before your eyes, then you’d do what you could to stop it. Decent people couldn’t do otherwise, and I’m 99% sure that you’re a decent person.

That’s how I know that you don’t really see what’s happening before your eyes, at least those of you who aren’t doing anything to stop it.

You’re Not Perfect?

Why the hell not? What is there about yourself that you wish were different? Why would you leave those improvements undone? What end, what value, are you getting by not changing that which you wish were different?

“Perfect” doesn’t mean “perfect in all respects irrespective of what I am.” Of course you can’t fly to Mars and back. But that would make you imperfect if you were a spaceship! “Perfect” means “ultimately proper as X.” The /perfect/ spaceship would not only fly to Mars, but into black holes as well.

I guess. It doesn’t really matter because I’m talking about perfection as a human. AS a human. Qua human, if you prefer. That doesn’t mean in physical form, because your physical form is not something you control AS a human.

Well, much of it you can…your fitness, your strength, your stamina. But much of it you can’t…the size of your frame, the color of your hair and skin, how fast your fingernails grow. Stuff like that. Or, there are deformities…some people are missing arms, or are paralyzed, blind, diseased, etc., etc. None of that says anything about them AS a human; that’s about their condition as a physical animal.

Humans are different, and they CAN make themselves as they wish, in all relevant aspects. This is the result of being able to abstractly conceptualize alternatives and choose from among them. Able to make goals, understand tomorrow, reminisce of yesterday…these are things other animals can’t do. They may have a form of memory, sure, but not the ability to abstractly represent those memories and work with those abstractions in creative ways.

Humans do things–effectively everything–with their /minds/. Even the physical stuff is pursuant to a decision, which is an abstractly volitional event.

So if that’s how we make ourselves as we are, AS humans, then what possible excuse could there be, for being as we wish we weren’t?

There can’t be a good one; that much is obvious. Indeed, what is being sacrificed for the choice not to be as you wish you were?

I think we’ll have to take a look at that sometime!