If you are born onto planet earth, know that it is a giant globe with no predetermined encumbrances. Everything created by mankind is not a part of the planet but an assumed conveyance that some presumed authority demands that you obey. You always exist as a free being and you can always act freely.
Presumed authority hates this and that is why you are subject to their murdering ways. You always have two choices...your individual freedom or their tyranny and slavery which in either case you risk death. I'd rather die free than die as a slave to a bunch of idiots and morons.
It just comes down to cost-benefit analysis, though. At what point do you draw a line and give up your life rather than acquiesce to tyranny? Like, I hate the fact that I have to pay the town five bucks to have a garage sale permit. But is that the hill I want to die on, literally?
This is a very crucial point for me. I abhor violence. I believe I am capable of it when it becomes unavoidable to defend life and certain lines that I cannot be forced to cross. After Sept. 11 2001 I simply refused to any longer support the corrupt murderous regime that was killing so many in our name. I therefore closed my bank account, did not renew my CDL which they informed me was now requiring a SSN and biometric identifier in order to renew. In fact I decided I would no longer ever again pay into that corrupt ponzi scheme or use the number for any purpose. I loaded everything important to me into an economy pickup which I did not register, and with no DL I headed out to Texas which was the only place I could find after an extensive search on the internet where you could buy a cheap piece of land with no property restrictions, building codes and only 20 dollars or so in yearly property tax. That was still a small enough contribution for some services that were beneficial, so even though it was still enforced by coercive threats for non payment, as you say it was not the "hill I wanted to die on." I not only drove to Texas, to a piece of land I bought sight unseen online with out any government issued ID, but drove for around fifteen years building a minimalist little cabin and infrastructure to live off the grid and build a reputation for dependability and honesty in the local community. I had few and minimal skills, but always managed to find work of some kind for cash, even without putting out fliers, taking any jobs that required ID, and have managed to survive comfortably. In 2008 on July 4th I even sent by certified mail a notice of intent followed by a constructive notice informing the county judge, sheriff, state governor and even us president that I had withdrawn my consent to be governed by their corporations and itemized the reasons for my decision. I gave them 21 days to respond. I informed them that a failure to respond I would take as an agreement with my decision and that I would no longer be resonsible for any of their statutes or authority, and offered an extension if they needed it. Of course none ever responded. There is much more to the story, but I have written enough for now. Recently they raised the local property tax, which had been about the same for twenty years by about 500%. So once again I have to wonder whether this is worth fighting for or accepting.
You have tried very hard to live your principles. I admire that.
So many difficult questions here.
All government is the initiation of coercive force, and thus technically actionable as such. But what action?
1. Opt-out where possible
2. Negotiation
3. Violence
What other choices do we have? We ignore, we negotiate, or we fight.
Fighting is futile unless it is widespread. Also, while fighting might not violate the NAP, since it would be fighting in response to initiated force, it is still violence, and that makes it undesirable in general.
Negotiation does not seem like it holds much short-term promise. Long-term, maybe. Gradual. But in the short-term, they are going to say no. Or cite Texas vs. White or whatever.
The kind of one-sided negotiation you did seems tempting, but does it actually work? It seems to me that if they decide to use force against you, they will—your notice to them notwithstanding.
Opting out where possible, ignoring them as much as possible counter economics, parallel institutions, etc. are a way to go. Slow, steady move away. Establish numbers and clout.
Yes, I chose to opt out as long as that seemed possible and practical. I felt that since I sincerely had faith that there is a Higher Power that supports the right, even though in what seems like very subtle ways that do not violate our option to believe whatever we want, although does not block the consequences of bad or faulty thinking, decisions or the subsequent actions, it will provide surprising support for good decisions based on moral principles, which gave me the courage to take this leap of faith that led me to where I am now. Despite the heavy handicaps I decided to take on, many marvelous serendipitous events conspired to make it possible. Although I sacrificed some important rights I also gained many and got the satisfaction of setting an example of what is possible without violence if determined. I have not had to deal with bureaucracies, beg for permission to live as I choose, fill out paperwork, pay many taxes, license fees, inspection fees, certifications, etc. My attempt at "one sided negotiation and notification" was more for my own desire to be able to demonstrate that I did my part, not surreptitiously, but so I could honestly say that I did my part. You know very well that if you do not answer or object to their notices or requirements they will take that as acquiescence or an actual contractual agreement with their demands. Now I can show that they are the ones who do not live according to the rules they make for us and the frauds they expect us to ignore. The main problem I see is that like the fisherman's wife they are never satisfied, and one success at coercion leads to more and more. Sooner or later those last dire lines will be crossed unless at some point there is staunch and unwavering resistance.
It doesn't even take a lot of violence, in fact I think that is what they really want to justify overwhelming force and violence in response. It does take a willingness to sacrifice the comfortable, the convenient, the path of least resistance. If enough people just quit cooperating and funding them it would probably work far more easily than most would believe. They do not have the resources if there is just widespread clever, consistent resistance to paying supporting and complying their whold charade would soon collapse. However this takes a lot of pain or amazing leadership to inspire and wake people enough up to take those actions.
I am just glad to know that there are intelligent people like you giving this problem some diligent rational thought. I think homeschooling support with a curriculum that exposes these frauds is so important. Some kind of freedom of education movement to replace the controllers indoctrination institutions.
How did you come to that decision? I read what you wrote above but for you to so comprehensively abandon this whole way of life the idea must have been there and waiting to come to full flower.
Absolutely. And it is all actionable, morally, by protective force. But does one deploy actual protective physical force against the 25 year old working behind the counter at the village government offices? Does one not pay and then wait for the cops to show up, and then fight the cops? This is the problem: it is insidious and complicated. Morally complicated. Pragmatically complicated. What do we do?
That's a good, good question. I think we should start by stepping outside the framework of that a bit. Who is this 25-year-old, a local or an import, as it were? What's the village like? Where are the focal points for most people?
Yes, the "death of a thousand cuts" begins with just a little one. Like the story of the camel getting its nose in the tent, or Pinocchio's nose, it grows and grows. Someone said once "there is nothing more permanent than a government program." A quick look at the story of the income tax reveals the whole playbook.
I love whenever I stumble upon the expression “a group of individuals calling themselves government“ (or something similar), which I think you stole from Spooner :)
I do not remember seeing it any one specific place. It must’ve just seeped into my consciousness. That is why I mentioned that Latin expression. Once I heard the notion, it instantly became commonplace in my psyche.
Well that is the beauty of that expression. As Watson loosely translates it in “The Red-Headed League,” “everything becomes commonplace through explanation.” If I sound like Spooner, it is only because Spooner was correct, and what he said is so true that it is, or ought to be, common knowledge.
Me too. The whole crock of shit has been mythified, magnified, glorified, euphemized, and slathered with so much BS for so long, we can barely think straight about it. Strictly speaking, *governments do not exist*, no more than the gods ruling humankind from Olympus exist. What actually exists are people operating under delusions; equipment they created under those delusions; the physical structures and infrastructures they created while operating under those delusions; the real estate on which they build those structures that, in their deluded minds, they pretend to "own"; the "systems" (accepted/legitimated patterns of behavior -- including laws and "ownership") that, in their delusions, restrict and "control" us; and a bunch of absolutely abstract, imaginary constructs of delusion that "exist" only in their delusionary mental worlds. None of that makes any of their delusions and the contents of those delusions "real". Just a small group (relatively speaking) of assholes and psychopaths pretending they're gods of the world, when in fact they're little, feeble, poor excuses for men (mostly) hiding behind curtainsm, running their pyrotechnic displays to convince us that they're some kind of all-powerful divinities. No, they're not.
Proofreader here (ha ha). Am I reading this wrong, or is there a typo in this sentence?
"Each individual human thus has license to engage in any thought, choice, experience, or action that does violate the self-ownership of any unwilling another."
Thinking it should be: "...that does NOT violate..."
Happy to help. I know what it's like to be drafting quickly, my fingers trying to keep up with my thoughts. Easy for such things to slip through. :-) (And as a publisher, I'm intimately familiar with how typos can slip past a dozen editorial passes and several proofreaders, so there's that, too.)
Right there with you on all of that. It’s crazy how easy it is. I am still finding typos in my other book, and I have edited that….well, like you say, just about a dozen times!
Thanks for this. I did not require any convincing, but still good to have this innate truth communicated. When enough of us get this, really get this, the world will change.
First, self-ownership is a confusion of terms. We are ourselves. Not only don't we "own" ourselves, we cannot own ourselves, because ownership involves 2 parties, not one: the owner and the property. Aside from the dehumanization inherent to framing people as property (especially ourselves), the idea violates conventional laws of identity. We cannot own ourselves any more than a bicycle can own itself, or a non-human animal can own itself. On examination, this usage of "ownership" turns out to be a matter of borrowing a concept from one domain and applying it in another domain where it doesn't fit. Ownership is a legal concept created to justify the attachment of desirable to someone(s) that controls it. Ownership is not necessary in order to control a desirable. Ownership is only a necessity for justifying exercise of control. Period.
An even deeper problem with "self-ownership", even if we ignored the above, is that the quintessence of ownership of every type is preemptive, principled, exclusive privilege of universal deprivation of an "owned" desirable. Besides the horrors that this practice has practically led to, (and I'd argue *inevitably* led to,) there is something wrong in the head about making deprivation priority #1 to the exclusion of alternatives like sharing. Or, what about the alternative of predicating our relationship to desirables and fellow humans as a function of *provision*, not deprivation?
The 2nd thing is: what if "ought" is an artifact of delusion? What if the entire concept of normalization as rules-constraint (as opposed to negotiated acceptance or habit) is bogus, itself a symptom of psychological pathologies which induce fear of the uncontrolled? What if the very impulse/desire/will to normalize is psychopathological?
That said, there is no talking me out of my belief in self-ownership 🤣🤣 We would be here long after the cows came home, and the chickens came home to roost, and the sun turned to cheese, and I still would not stop believing in it.
For what it's worth, I will just quickly explain why I don't think it's quite like property in the normal sense.
The purpose of the concept of self-ownership is to establish the fact that no one else attempt to exercise control over the body, life, and being of another. It's one of those concepts that is unimportant except in relation to others.
I have personal control over my own thoughts, actions, and choices. That control is naturally inalienable. Someone else can use violence to sever me from the >enjoyment< of that control, but they cannot actually actuate their own control over my thoughts, actions, and choices. As a natural fact, I, and I alone, have dispositive decision-making power over my own body, life, and being.
Dispositive decision-making authority is similar to a property right: an owner of a thing has dispositive decision-making authority over that thing. I made a broom out of a stick and some straw. It's my broom. I can break it if I wish, or sweep up a pile of acorns, or whatever. My broom. My body. My life.
I would very much like you to put the idea that I'm trying to convince you or talk you in or out or anything of the sort. I bring up salient points, and what I'd love is if you'd think them through, and if they seem valid, tell me how they affect your previous thinking (if at all) -- or if they seem erroneous, invalid, problematic, tell me *how* specifically. This is about learning for me. I have no interest in defending or defeating beliefs.
I could put it more negatively, though. If you have beliefs that are resistant to change upon receiving new information and/or new perspectives, you've got a problem my friend, as I do if I'm clinging too tight to some familiar or favorite idea.
I go where the information takes me, not where my "beliefs" tell me to go.
I'm very much a proponent of "Occam's razor" when it comes to epistemics. If a, b, and c are *required* to explain Z, then a, b, and c it will be. But if I can see that all you really need are a and b, it immediately raises questions:
1. What made you think that c is required/important?
2. What does c give you that a and b don't -- otherwise you wouldn't treat c as necessary/required?
3. What's the downside to losing c?
Answering those questions gives excellent food for thought to all parties to a discussion, and hopefully moves them closer together. What I often find is that people rarely have answers to those questions. That's also very informative.
I've never been a fan of "agree to disagree". Who that wants to know and understand what's really going on would opt for that?
That's all to say:
There are all kinds of forms and degrees of *attachment*: attraction, association, pairing, devotion, connection, bonded, belonging, reliance, etc. Ownership is not like any of those, because those all involve experiences that come with their own feelings. Ownership is a designation and a legal status. It's in a completely different category.
First, almost no one is careful about keeping those forms of attachment distinct. Almost no one even pays attention to them. And almost no one gives the ontological/psychological difference in kind between attachment and ownership the recognition it warrants.
I've worked on this point for a long time, talked and written about it lots. At this point, I have no doubt that "ownership" is c, that we could talk about all forms of attachment in our relationship to desirables without needing it, so why insist on it? No one has yet given me a decent answer to that question. Maybe you can. I just don't see it.
//
I can break it if I wish, or sweep up a pile of acorns, or whatever. My broom. My body. My life.
//
Think about suicide in connection to that sentiment. "It's my life, I can kill me if I want to!"
If you talk to surviving family and friends of a suicide **who made the decision and carried it out alone**, one thing that's practically universal is: they strongly don't agree with the "it's my body and I'll do what I want with it" sentiment. We're all connected. Women tend to see this more easily than men. Ask your wife what she thinks about this.
There’s another point with which I like. People have often considered me to be (putting it very nicely) “hardheaded” because, unless I’m feeling generous, when anyone has said, “OK, well then I guess we agree to disagree”, I will almost always reply, “NO! We don’t agree to anything here. We don’t even agree to disagree! We just disagree!”
First, I don’t understand what’s so bad about disagreeing if we argue based on principles. And secondly, why try to weasel in some sort of agreement when we clearly do not agree??
It's never made sense to me either. When people do it it always strikes me as a cop out. All they're really doing is saying, "Let's agree to stop trying to understand why we disagree." Fuck no! There's no way in hell I'm ever going to stop trying to understand why we disagree. Shrinking back from the truth is on them. No way I'll go along with it.
Just because one is free to do a thing with one’s own life, body, and being doesn’t make that thing a good thing. Suicide is an example of that.
So let me ask you—why is it that no one else may enslave me, kill me, etc.? On what grounds do you justify the notion (if you do) that that is an evil or impermissible act?
Exactly, which is precisely my point. "My broom. My body. My life." doesn't just logically rationalize suicide. It motivationally enables an entire spectrum of detrimental behavior of which suicide is an extreme, precisely because—in light of the interconnectivity, interrelationship, and interdependence of all things—is frankly just not how the dang thing works. No parent is their own, for example. They belong to their children. No, "My body, my choice" is **absolutely** wrong—precisely because **it is not just a pregnant woman’s body**. She is *carrying* a *second* body that is not her own—but "pro-choice" cancels that body from consideration.
Your question is great. It gets to the crux of one of the paradigmatic difference in the way I approach what are known as "morals" and "morality". I have jettisoned all rules-based normative propositions, period. So, people assume I make no "moral" difference between kissing a forehead and bashing it with a mallet. Those are the only 2 options they're aware of. That's not my problem. This is where that "Deceptive Nature of Rules" paper is relevant, but that's just a part of it. Morals, ethics (in both philosophical and enterprise senses), laws, codes of conduct, "natural law", etc., are all rules-based propositions. If you know of any that aren’t rules-based, the following doesn’t apply to them, and I would LOVE to talk with you about them.
Living “morally” necessarily means living hypocritically, when hypocrisy is understood as doing one thing while *being* another without the slightest interest in changing what we are. (The old saw about saying one thing and doing another is a version of “hypocrisy” that’s got a sophistication level fit for 10-year-olds.)
A moral person is someone who has prioritized rules over themself. For simplicity, let’s take a person whose set of moral rules (morals) are perfect: every obligation their morals require results in only good things, and every prohibition prevents only bad things. So, where their psyche already jives with their morals, they can afford to be authentic and probably are. When their psyche diverges, contradicts, or opposes their morals, it indicates *psychological dysfunction*—they’re currently wired to do what their morals prohibit. By compelling their behavior to line up with their morals, they necessarily compel it to diverge from their psyche as it’s currently configured. This is the definition of inauthentic. We refer to methods of doing this as conditioning, training, habituation, behavior modification, programming, etc. I’ll call it habituation, since that’s pretty much the goal of all of them.
Habituation isn’t inherently hypocritical. It affects the psyche and can in fact rewire our psyche in such a way that the psychological pathology/dysfunctionality is resolved. But when it *substitutes* for psychological change, habituation is patently hypocritical. This is how morals enable hypocrisy.
There’s a lot to say about this, such as the grand loop necessary to warrant any rules-based system as non-deceptive and non-arbitrary. Every account I’ve ever read that tries to ground a moral system appeals to innate, intuitive, instinctive experience, just like you do. We’ve all experienced infliction of harm. We all have very similar reactions to infliction of harm. So, we justify a set of codes or rules or “laws” prohibiting infliction of harm and demanding “moral” behavior as good and right if it lines up with those common types of experience. Then why make the loop from experience through derived generalizations of experience and back, imposing the generalizations on our experience as a governor at all? Why not just operate on the original basis at the same level—the immanent experiential level—and cut the loop out with Occam’s razor?
There are two telling reasons why we don’t. First, from a “leader’s” perspective, it would structurally abolish the potential for supremacism. Second, for traumatized people, it’s scary as shit: just you, the world, and what you do about it, your only rationale and your only justification being that doing it is the only honest expression of who you are. But the fact remains that this immanent, bilateral/multilateral, mutual experience of each other is the only real thing that’s going on in the kinds of relationships we want and cherish.
What this boils down to is love and hate. I don’t call rape “immoral”—I’m very open that I hate it, and my hatred for it spits fire. I’d have no qualms about whacking a rapist upside the head with a 2x4 if that’s what it takes to stop him, and if he dies, I’m sorry. The *possibility* of irreparable harm to him doesn’t even come close to so little as balancing the scale with the *certainty* that he’s going to inflict irreparable harm to his victim, So, for me, it’s a black-and-white decision.
About my direct answer to your question, I take it to mean, “why is it *wrong* for anyone to enslave me, kill me, etc.?” not, “why is it that *no one else may* enslave me, kill me, etc.?” because, in fact, others could well, maybe even easily, enslave you or kill you. Morals don’t prevent them. The only thing that can prevent them is **taking action to prevent them**. As they’re abducting you to cart you off to the chop shop and harvest your organs, morals don’t do a damn thing. All morals are good for is *rationalizing* actions you want to take and *justifying* them after you’re done.
So, in light of this, my answer to, “why is it that no one else may enslave me, kill me, etc.? On what grounds do you justify the notion (if you do) that that is an evil or impermissible act?” is: I don’t. I don’t refer to rules or laws to prove that killing and enslaving are wrong. They are wrong because I fucking hate them, like I do all forms of violation and harm. To moralists, a kidnapper-murderer **violates the rules**. For me, they **violate people**. That’s a huge fucking difference with all kinds of implications. The difference in those two perspectives hints at a key aspect of the paradigmatic difference I mentioned. I have a completely different orientation and a completely different *kind* of standard when it comes to dealing with human actions.
I’ve chosen to approach all this by redeeming the concept of “evil” from the swamp of superstition it’s long floundered in. It’s the only word that packs the kind of primal punch that comes close to the impact of the actions and experiences it refers to.
I start with evildoing: evildoing is **deliberate action intended to harm**. (This implies that you can do evil to “property”, like a work of art or a house or vehicle, or even Earth herself.) It’s empirically observable, reportable, and quantifiable.
“Evil”, then, denotes the psychological configuration and dynamics responsible for motivating us to deliberately intend to harm. This, also, is observable (somewhat: MRI, EEG, etc.), reportable (if only we’d be honest), and quantifiable.
Imagine that: *quantifying* evil and *quantifying* evildoing. Just think of all the senseless polemical gyrations that this would peace out, lol.
With that in mind, the replacement for morals is passion (also empirically observable, reportable, and quantifiable), which is *extremely* simple: a spectrum between love and hate with indifference in the middle.
See where this is going? This, in fact, reflects the relationships and interactions between loving parents and their children, or loving partners, so much better than morals ever could, it’s laughable. To me, moralizing or trying to devise the perfect morality/moral system (or whatever we want to call it) isn’t just futile—because no generalization will fit all sizes—but it completely misses the point in the same way that trying to write the perfect script completely misses the point if the author thinks that the most important thing of all is the play. What’s the point this misses? Living real life.
The other aspect of morals I detest is that no normative proposition of any type ever provides the necessary motivation to fulfill its requirements, because normative propositions do not engage the aspects of human psyche involved in motivation. Bribes and punishments *extort* normativity by *exploiting* motivations completely irrelevant to the intended norm. The approach I take, being driven by passion, is rife with inherent motivation.
This is a great. Very well thought and articulated. I align with it greatly from my point of view but I’m sure there are differences. I do believe that it is correct to hate unloving actions or people. I cannot love (or accept) those that intend to cause harm and take action to do so; therefore, I will inherently hate them and/or such actions. People seem so charged on the word “hate”, like it’s some unallowable point of view while they are using that POV themselves to exclude or hate others.
I do however, thing that evil is beyond instances of causing harm (but is inclusive of such).
I agree, evil can't be reduced to the mere actions of evil doing, but it was a tactical decision to use evildoing as the starting point and anchor because it's the the most obvious, tangible, and easiest to quantify. My objective is to eradicate evil from Earth. We don't need to understand the origins and esoteric nature of evil as the motivator of evildoing in order to eradicate evildoing. The more we understand, of course, the more effective we'll be, but we don't need to wait for a full understanding or answer all the questions or resolve all the quagmires about the nature of evil before we start eradicating it's effects. And, given the absolute innocence of every infant born, the genesis of the evil in every person (aside from woo-woo explanations) can only be the evildoing they suffered from very young ages that generated the poisons (neurochemicals) that damaged and destroyed portions and degrees of their neurological functionality, resulting in conditions we are all learning about like lack of empathy and psychopathy. These conditions arose over time as the result of repetitive damage, so it's realistic to expect that reversing the damage will require repetitive remediation over time, too. I don't believe in silver bullets and, although I've experienced miracles, miracles by definition are exceptions. You can't build a life or carry out an endeavor reliant on exceptions. Great when they happen, but the pretense that there's nothing else we can do cuz we don't know how to do it, so our only hope is miracles or God's intervention, is just another cop out.
Thank you for writing so clearly and with such detail. Very interesting to read!
So, please let me see if I understand correctly: **deliberate action intended to harm** is what you hate, and what causes you to act, out of passion, in response. Is that a reasonable summation?
Thanks man! That're really encouraging. I might not have said, yet, how much I admire you for the work you've done so far. The fact that we disagree on some things doesn't detract from the fact that you've done an IMMENSE job of exceptional work with exceptional value. I'm so glad we connected!
To your question, that's a reasonable summation of half of the picture, yes, pretty much. Here I'm focusing on evil. I've said nothing much about good and love. All our heads were twisted around backwards and stuffed into fishbowls about all these things. People treat love and hate as peers. They're not. All my hatred is inspired by love. When love is inspired by hatred, we call it addiction. An addict doesn't love their substance/activity of choice as a function of simple, direct attraction, but as a function of insulating them from whatever hell they live in and enabling temporary relief/escape. A person with CSBD does not love sex-making in the way that loving intimate partners love lovemaking. These are two types of attachment, but they're not two types of love, any more than a knock-off is the same as the genuine article. Addiction-love is derivative. I liken it to the relief we feel after a really painful bowel movement. I imagine it's true for a woman in childbirth right after the baby comes out. It's not true pleasure, but the pain reduction is so dramatic, in the moment it *feels* pleasurable in contrast. And it's very short-lasting. It's pain-reduction masked as pleasure.
It just struck me: derivativeness, i.e., "in contrast to" or "inspired/evoked by", is the key. When "good" and "love" are taken *in contrast to* something worse, it's not intrinsically good -- it's only good in contrast to what's worse: relative goodness. That's one of the most common arguments I get from people objecting to change: "But these problems are so much less prevalent than they used to be! Even poor people are better off than their ancestors! Why can't you admit we're making progress?" Well, yeah, if we get down on our hands and knees on a gravel road, we can still "make progress". How does that constitute an argument, though, against making bicycles for everyone? "But then we might fall down!!!" 🤣 Just can't make this shit up.
So, good and evil, love and hate are not yin/yang kinds of things because they're not the same kinds of things. Evil and hate are derivative. I hate what harms the people I love and care for. If the harm stops, so does my hate. If harm has potential, I hate its potential. If there's no potential, there's nothing for me to hate. Why would I do that when there's so much to love?
I like this first point. I don’t believe that anyone (not even myself, or even God) owns me. I’m not ownable. Psychopaths, like the government, probably believe otherwise. On the second point, I do know that words like “ought” or “should” often (maybe always) have some implied (or underlying) guilt component. I think it depends on the context and who is saying it to whom, e.g., “I ought to take out the trash before it starts to stink.” (etc.)
Language has become loose but certain terms like “own”, are very strong.
Exactly. Owning any person involves objectification of that person. That alone is despicable. So the logic of self-ownership is, essentially: I'm going to objectify myself in order to take control of myself in order to prevent everybody else from objectifying me and taking control of me. Makes no sense to me.
Yes, I get that. But I wasn't talking about how you see self-ownership or experience it. I was talking about the concept. Are you saying that you don't see how the ownership metaphor is intrinsically objectifying when applied to people as "the owned", i.e., as though they were property?
Yes, I get it. But the negative connotation of ownership is the notion that one person might be owned by another. That is bad. But self-ownership says that one can only “own” oneself. I do not have a negative view of property ownership. I like owning my own home, for example. So the notion of an ownership metaphor for me is not a bad thing. I believe it is good that I can exclude the rest of the world from the use of my home, and I think it is good that I can exclude the rest of the world from the use of my body.
I'm glad you're addressing the deprivational nature of ownership. There are two separate issues here, and people consistently have conflated them in other conversations I've had.
Ownership as a legal entitlement to universally deprive is one thing. An actual act of deprivation is a completely different thing. People talk about this as if the two are naturally, inherently connected to each other. They are not.
It is a good thing that we do not allow other people to take our homes away from us or invade them and occupy them. But the assumption in owner speak is that ownership enables us to stop others from doing those things. It doesn't.
Tell someone who is forcing their way into your home that you own the home and see how powerful that is in deterring them. The things that actually would work to deter them are things that we can do without any regard to the question of ownership.
The only real role of the ownership entitlement in the context of theft/invasion is as justification after the fact. If I own the property and you try to steal it or invade it and I do you harm in the act of preventing you, I won't get in trouble for it unless it is deemed in excess of what was necessary to stop you. That's it. That's all ownership does.
I like how you fleshed out your understanding of natural rights. I attempted the same, less thoroughly, in my first Substack post:
"""
Because underlying true anarchism is the substance of natural human rights: valid claims that any person can make, pre-politically, simply by virtue of being human.
What valid claims can people make, pre-politically?
A claim to one’s own person (life).
A claim to one’s intentional actions and consent-based, voluntary interactions with others (liberty).
A claim to cultivated and duly obtained material goods not already validly claimed by another person (property).
The authority of personhood, of conscience, and of proprietorship all exist and are just, honorable, and defensible. But any attempt to assert an alleged “authority” to initiate violations of anyone else’s natural human rights, is unjust.
I see no justification for making ownership of a person good in one case and bad and another merely because one is me and the other is someone else. As applied to ourselves, self-ownership is just a loose way of talking, precisely because the nature of what we do with and to ourselves as owners of ourselves isn't remotely relevant to what owners of other people do with them and to them. Otherwise, self-ownership would amount to self enslavement. So the ownership involved in either case is completely different, using the same word to refer to completely unlike phenomena. That's a decided form of ambiguity/equivocation.
I do hold ownership as inherently negative, but in this respect my criticism has nothing to do with that. It's a matter of simple rational consistency and clarity. The same problem comes up with the concept of authority. People want to tell me that there's good authority and bad authority. So my response is, why the hell would you use the same word to refer to something bad and to something good that in effect completely disintegrates the bad version? It's like calling both sugar and arsenic "sweet powder". When differences become important enough, the demand separate terms to avoid confusion and shenanigans. People are Lowe's to come up with a different word for the so-called good kind of authority precisely because they'd lose the connotation of compulsion and obligation they want to reserve. They want to smuggle rhetorical power in where they actually don't belong.
I have personal control over my thoughts, actions, and choices, as a natural fact: dispositive decision-making authority over my own body, life, and being. No one else can think my thoughts or make my choices. All they can do is use violence and coercion in an attempt to limit my choices or control my actions. Such efforts are, in essence, an attempt to use me for their purposes. To gain control of, manipulate, extract resources from, occupy, or otherwise use my body, life, and being, against my will. I may rightly exclude them from this. The ability to exclude others from the use of a thing, and dispositive decision-making authority over that thing, is very similar to the quality of a property right, as the concept of property is generally understood. That is why people have long described it as self-ownership.
If you prefer a different term to describe that phenomenon, then that’s fine; I would be happy to entertain such a terminological distinction. If you believe that that phenomenon does not exist, or that others should be able to use my body, life, and being without my consent, then we simply disagree, and it is hard to see how that disagreement can be resolved. The belief that I may rightly exclude all others from the use of my body, life, and being is at the very foundation of my worldview.
I have the same personal control over my body, and no one else can think my thoughts or make my choices, agreed -- but it's got nothing to do with "authority". It's just physics, dude. Why couch it in legal terms? I see no necessity for that. I understand what you're saying, and I've been pointing out the implications and problems involved in taking your words as accurately reflecting your thoughts. I'm trying to disambiguate and clarify what we're trying to talk about so that we can talk about it.
I've made no claims pro or con "that that phenomenon does not exist, or that others should be able to use my body, life, and being without my consent..." Inferring claims when I haven't made them and they're not necessarily implied by what I've said is a mistake. I don't "prefer" a different term -- I've been pointing out problems I see in the way you've already used the terms you volunteered.
//
The belief that I may rightly exclude all others from the use of my body, life, and being is at the very foundation of my worldview.
//
I have no such beliefs, because while beliefs are involved in asserting the validity of intended actions and justifying the validity of past actions, I couldn't care less about *all* of that. I don't operate on a codependent basis anymore, as best I can thus far. What I think, decide, and do revolve around my best judgment at the time about what the outcomes of thinking, choosing, and doing them will be. I don't need beliefs for that. In fact, beliefs just get in the way of that process of info intake, evaluation, and judgment, because it's a real-time assessment of all available information I can handle moment by moment, tweaked to track changing events and circumstances as they develop and shift.
Beliefs lie completely outside that process and serve completely different, justificatory purposes, like I mentioned. Choosing to think, decide, and act by limiting myself to what I imagine I could justify to others -- constituting codependence on them -- has, in my experience, always been a mistake. At best, its outcomes are sub-optimal. They can even be the opposite of what I intended. Operating without regard to how I'll be judged (I try) doesn't guarantee wonderful outcomes -- I'm human, after all -- but it's far more honest, authentic, and carries in it a power that I feel and others sense. They can sense our codependence, and they can sense when we're being authentic and not fucking around.
When it comes to dealing with authoritarians and supremacists, I've found that approaching them confidently "depite" being naked of rights and beliefs is far more powerful and effective in disrupting and even stopping their efforts. (I put "despite" in quotes because I don't experience any such nakedness or vulnerability which I must act in spite of. Just the opposite. Those are *presumed* by people who haven't tried dropping all that "clothing" and "armor". Just being me, the genuine me, no codependent buffer/insulation/protection, does what the armor pretends to do, only better.)
Here is a thought: maybe *rights*, the word itself has become corrupted, a helpful tool for the sleight-of-hand that the government has done on us, or we have allowed to be done. Ironically, "inalienable rights" actually suggests that rights may be alienable and distinct from the person. Whereas *humanity* and *free will* are integral. As you have put it, "They are an outgrowth of natural facts. They are woven into the fabric of everything."
People are not things, and thus we shall resist being treated as things by those who are, after all, people as well, albeit very evil ones.
More than one person has pointed out to me that Fr Nicolai Berdayev makes a great distinction even between “individualism” and “personalism,” with the latter being rooted very much in the infinite mystery and concrete non-thingyness of each person.
Interesting, I was going off Catholic theology (pre-New Order, Chesterton/Belloc/Knox/Newman), this guy is new to me. I may have come across his name before in some translated Gulag survivors’ memoirs though, will take a look.
Christopher... I believe this is the beginning of the book you are writing about returning to a non-governmental society wherein everyone deals with everyone else in agreement and trade for goods and services. I think you have called this anarchocapitalism... yes? I love this post because destroying the idea that a government 'gives' you your rights as opposed to you having them as inherent to your being. It is a great way to get people to understand their personal freedoms and a great counter to the Marxist idea of the people having a 'contract' with their government; that the government 'gives' them things in exchange for power. I am excited to see the rest!
What I missed a little from this is the connection to a larger force; an almighty force. I don't think you need to go down a theological hole or bring an overt level of religiosity to this but the writers of our constitution and Bill of Rights (I know you are wary of government and it's declarations) were among the first to put the freedom you speak of in our founding documents. And they did so because they were men of faith. Is it worth making this connection in your writing if for nothing else but to say - many people of faith should consider the idea that we are inherently free because we are made in the image of a force more powerful than any government?
Unfortunately many people need to feel that their feet are on solid ground before they strike out and do something individual. The power that they get from the belief that they are large and the government is small is hard to put into words. Ninety nine percent of the people on the planet are afraid of their government. And one of the first things an all powerful government will do is remove religion from those they wish to oppress. Because faith gives power.
Just a thought... carry on. You are doing a wonderful thing.
Thanks for the thoughts, ideas, and encouragement.
I generally tend to avoid grounding anything in Divine/supernatural/extraworldly causes. There are a few reasons for this.
1. I believe that God made the laws of nature so that they make sense and are intelligible to us. As such, every principle we come up with can be justified through logic. I don't believe that God would create any sort of arbitrary, "because I said so" morality. It has to make sense. I does make sense.
2. As such, I never want to ground any points as "Because God said so" or "Because God made it that way." If I cannot find the logic that justifies it, then I should not espouse it. God would not do that to me, I do not believe, and I should not do it to others.
3. I want to avoid the squabbles associated with religion. Atheists can follow the logic. Theists can believe that the ultimate source of the logic is God. I avoid getting into it either way.
I also want to avoid the confusion associated with introducing extra-worldly things when it comes to concepts like self-ownership. I once told someone that they owned themselves and someone overheard and yelled, "WRONG God owns you." To which I calmly replied (since we were at a nice dinner) that I am strictly referring to other humans. No other HUMANS own you. I am not making any claims about your, or anyone's, relationship with God.
So these are why I have generally steered clear. Make sense?
Makes tons of sense. I was only thinking of a dispassionate inclusion of the power of faith (for some, certainly not even close to a majority) because often reason is not enough - even for those who are non-believers. So I was suggesting you do both - reason and faith. Faith doesn’t work for those who are not faithful. Reason does not work for those who are unable to reason. They are not opposed to each other. They help one another. A different way to look at including faith might be: underdogs in a fight believe they can win despite all odds (faith); loving one another (love is an act of faith) such that we come together and self-govern is another; Anyway…you get the point. Just an idea. Write on. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
It is a minefield, though. I had this one sub, praising me up and down, telling others about me in glowing terms, etc. Then I wrote a piece that said that I am not an atheist. Not only did he summarily unsub, he made an insulting comment on his way out. That was his one-issue litmus test for intelligence and worthiness.
Not saying that that experience is dispositive of the matter. Just a funny story about what a minefield it is. Naturally, I have run into similar situations from theists. Just another day in the life, I suppose!
I do get it. You know I am only sending thoughts and ideas. NONE have to be taken or even considered. Write away. Will not unsub. Too bad for that guy.
typo in this line: Each individual human thus has license to engage in any thought, choice, experience, or action that does violate the self-ownership of any unwilling another.
fwiw: the word "dispositive" is uncommon enough that either adding a definition or picking a different word might be prudent. Most of your potential readers grew up in the public school system and speak American, so...
I didn’t know that was an option… maybe it is on my phone… I will try it later. (I used google to verify the meaning for myself) ultimately most people are lazy and will assume that they have a good enough understanding based on context. That is adequate in almost all cases.
In your case, “good enough” might not be good enough. You are attempting to move a mountain, and ultimately a significant portion of the population will need to shift. You write with in a clear and easily understood manner, so most people will easily follow your logic and reach the same conclusions you lay out.
My comment was intended to be a cautionary note to remind you that half of the people are less educated than average, and that it doesn’t require much to leave them behind in a quagmire of slightly misunderstood concepts.
Your point is very well-taken, and I appreciate that you are taking the time to make it. I do know that while I keep my syntax simple, I am going to have times when the content (or vocabulary) goes to another level.
One thought occurs to me, though—while half of the general population have IQs below 100, I highly doubt that half the people reading my writing do. Might that not make some difference in this regard?
I agree that the large majority of your readers are highly educated and highly intelligent. That is also the best target market for your book, and writing for that audience and not "dumbing it down" is obviously going to sell more books. I have to assume that getting your ideas widely spread is a priority. I have to assume that receiving some kind of return on the investment you are making in mental sweat equity is a priority. These are reasonable priorities.
The flip side of the coin is the other priority... changing the world. The bitter reality is that tens of millions of poorly educated people will need to buy in, and someone will need to write the pamphlets that present the logic that they will understand and accept. I don't want to do it... so I'm encouraging you to attempt to walk the razors edge between your intelligent audience and the milling masses of mundane humanity.
I don't know that any single document can meaningfully communicate with both groups simultaneously. It's a BIG gap.
Regardless, this is a distracting tangent and you have better places to invest your mental energy. Back to writing!
Good thinking, clear and to the point. You and I are looking at the same things and want the same things. The only real difference I see is that I'm going for the jugular, so to speak: to eliminate the preconditions that enable violations to occur in the first place. Rights don't do that, not even if everyone in the world were induced to respect them. I'm not saying that promoting rights isn't a good thing, let alone that there's a problem with it per se -- in the same way I'd never say that putting anti-itch cream on a rash is a problem. The problem would lie in thinking that putting cream on it is all we can do. Band-Aids don't cure. Rights are basically a symptom-management response. When it comes to the evils in the world perpetrated by some against the rest, the problem isn't lack of understanding or lack of respect for the truth, others, and their rights. It's the result of addiction. Rights can't address their addiction for the same reason that telling a junkie they're ruining their life and health and relationships and will end up all alone, sick or dead won't get them to stop shooting up. It's as simple as the fact that neither legal nor moral remedies will address or resolve psychosomatic addiction.
If you are born onto planet earth, know that it is a giant globe with no predetermined encumbrances. Everything created by mankind is not a part of the planet but an assumed conveyance that some presumed authority demands that you obey. You always exist as a free being and you can always act freely.
Presumed authority hates this and that is why you are subject to their murdering ways. You always have two choices...your individual freedom or their tyranny and slavery which in either case you risk death. I'd rather die free than die as a slave to a bunch of idiots and morons.
It just comes down to cost-benefit analysis, though. At what point do you draw a line and give up your life rather than acquiesce to tyranny? Like, I hate the fact that I have to pay the town five bucks to have a garage sale permit. But is that the hill I want to die on, literally?
This is a very crucial point for me. I abhor violence. I believe I am capable of it when it becomes unavoidable to defend life and certain lines that I cannot be forced to cross. After Sept. 11 2001 I simply refused to any longer support the corrupt murderous regime that was killing so many in our name. I therefore closed my bank account, did not renew my CDL which they informed me was now requiring a SSN and biometric identifier in order to renew. In fact I decided I would no longer ever again pay into that corrupt ponzi scheme or use the number for any purpose. I loaded everything important to me into an economy pickup which I did not register, and with no DL I headed out to Texas which was the only place I could find after an extensive search on the internet where you could buy a cheap piece of land with no property restrictions, building codes and only 20 dollars or so in yearly property tax. That was still a small enough contribution for some services that were beneficial, so even though it was still enforced by coercive threats for non payment, as you say it was not the "hill I wanted to die on." I not only drove to Texas, to a piece of land I bought sight unseen online with out any government issued ID, but drove for around fifteen years building a minimalist little cabin and infrastructure to live off the grid and build a reputation for dependability and honesty in the local community. I had few and minimal skills, but always managed to find work of some kind for cash, even without putting out fliers, taking any jobs that required ID, and have managed to survive comfortably. In 2008 on July 4th I even sent by certified mail a notice of intent followed by a constructive notice informing the county judge, sheriff, state governor and even us president that I had withdrawn my consent to be governed by their corporations and itemized the reasons for my decision. I gave them 21 days to respond. I informed them that a failure to respond I would take as an agreement with my decision and that I would no longer be resonsible for any of their statutes or authority, and offered an extension if they needed it. Of course none ever responded. There is much more to the story, but I have written enough for now. Recently they raised the local property tax, which had been about the same for twenty years by about 500%. So once again I have to wonder whether this is worth fighting for or accepting.
You have tried very hard to live your principles. I admire that.
So many difficult questions here.
All government is the initiation of coercive force, and thus technically actionable as such. But what action?
1. Opt-out where possible
2. Negotiation
3. Violence
What other choices do we have? We ignore, we negotiate, or we fight.
Fighting is futile unless it is widespread. Also, while fighting might not violate the NAP, since it would be fighting in response to initiated force, it is still violence, and that makes it undesirable in general.
Negotiation does not seem like it holds much short-term promise. Long-term, maybe. Gradual. But in the short-term, they are going to say no. Or cite Texas vs. White or whatever.
The kind of one-sided negotiation you did seems tempting, but does it actually work? It seems to me that if they decide to use force against you, they will—your notice to them notwithstanding.
Opting out where possible, ignoring them as much as possible counter economics, parallel institutions, etc. are a way to go. Slow, steady move away. Establish numbers and clout.
What other options do we have?
Yes, I chose to opt out as long as that seemed possible and practical. I felt that since I sincerely had faith that there is a Higher Power that supports the right, even though in what seems like very subtle ways that do not violate our option to believe whatever we want, although does not block the consequences of bad or faulty thinking, decisions or the subsequent actions, it will provide surprising support for good decisions based on moral principles, which gave me the courage to take this leap of faith that led me to where I am now. Despite the heavy handicaps I decided to take on, many marvelous serendipitous events conspired to make it possible. Although I sacrificed some important rights I also gained many and got the satisfaction of setting an example of what is possible without violence if determined. I have not had to deal with bureaucracies, beg for permission to live as I choose, fill out paperwork, pay many taxes, license fees, inspection fees, certifications, etc. My attempt at "one sided negotiation and notification" was more for my own desire to be able to demonstrate that I did my part, not surreptitiously, but so I could honestly say that I did my part. You know very well that if you do not answer or object to their notices or requirements they will take that as acquiescence or an actual contractual agreement with their demands. Now I can show that they are the ones who do not live according to the rules they make for us and the frauds they expect us to ignore. The main problem I see is that like the fisherman's wife they are never satisfied, and one success at coercion leads to more and more. Sooner or later those last dire lines will be crossed unless at some point there is staunch and unwavering resistance.
It doesn't even take a lot of violence, in fact I think that is what they really want to justify overwhelming force and violence in response. It does take a willingness to sacrifice the comfortable, the convenient, the path of least resistance. If enough people just quit cooperating and funding them it would probably work far more easily than most would believe. They do not have the resources if there is just widespread clever, consistent resistance to paying supporting and complying their whold charade would soon collapse. However this takes a lot of pain or amazing leadership to inspire and wake people enough up to take those actions.
Thank you for all of this. It is a lot to think about.
I really do think that they would love the opportunity to justify overwhelming force. We must not give that to them.
I am just glad to know that there are intelligent people like you giving this problem some diligent rational thought. I think homeschooling support with a curriculum that exposes these frauds is so important. Some kind of freedom of education movement to replace the controllers indoctrination institutions.
How did you come to that decision? I read what you wrote above but for you to so comprehensively abandon this whole way of life the idea must have been there and waiting to come to full flower.
Yes Iris, it is a long story, perhaps I will write a book someday.
Wow. Hat off. I sure would like to hear more of your story.
Yeah, but you also know by this point that it starts with the five bucks... and there are many simultaneous starts.
Absolutely. And it is all actionable, morally, by protective force. But does one deploy actual protective physical force against the 25 year old working behind the counter at the village government offices? Does one not pay and then wait for the cops to show up, and then fight the cops? This is the problem: it is insidious and complicated. Morally complicated. Pragmatically complicated. What do we do?
That's a good, good question. I think we should start by stepping outside the framework of that a bit. Who is this 25-year-old, a local or an import, as it were? What's the village like? Where are the focal points for most people?
All good questions. But violence gets blurry and messy quickly. I hope that we can evolve in peace—I really do!
I don’t but I like that dream.
Yes, the "death of a thousand cuts" begins with just a little one. Like the story of the camel getting its nose in the tent, or Pinocchio's nose, it grows and grows. Someone said once "there is nothing more permanent than a government program." A quick look at the story of the income tax reveals the whole playbook.
I love whenever I stumble upon the expression “a group of individuals calling themselves government“ (or something similar), which I think you stole from Spooner :)
Did I? Not consciously, but it’s easy to do with such a perfect expression!
Omne ignotem pro magnifico.
Where do you have it from? The oldest text I read this in was “No Treason“ from Spooner.
I do not remember seeing it any one specific place. It must’ve just seeped into my consciousness. That is why I mentioned that Latin expression. Once I heard the notion, it instantly became commonplace in my psyche.
Ah, I see—here we are, comparing you to Spooner again
Well that is the beauty of that expression. As Watson loosely translates it in “The Red-Headed League,” “everything becomes commonplace through explanation.” If I sound like Spooner, it is only because Spooner was correct, and what he said is so true that it is, or ought to be, common knowledge.
Me too. The whole crock of shit has been mythified, magnified, glorified, euphemized, and slathered with so much BS for so long, we can barely think straight about it. Strictly speaking, *governments do not exist*, no more than the gods ruling humankind from Olympus exist. What actually exists are people operating under delusions; equipment they created under those delusions; the physical structures and infrastructures they created while operating under those delusions; the real estate on which they build those structures that, in their deluded minds, they pretend to "own"; the "systems" (accepted/legitimated patterns of behavior -- including laws and "ownership") that, in their delusions, restrict and "control" us; and a bunch of absolutely abstract, imaginary constructs of delusion that "exist" only in their delusionary mental worlds. None of that makes any of their delusions and the contents of those delusions "real". Just a small group (relatively speaking) of assholes and psychopaths pretending they're gods of the world, when in fact they're little, feeble, poor excuses for men (mostly) hiding behind curtainsm, running their pyrotechnic displays to convince us that they're some kind of all-powerful divinities. No, they're not.
Proofreader here (ha ha). Am I reading this wrong, or is there a typo in this sentence?
"Each individual human thus has license to engage in any thought, choice, experience, or action that does violate the self-ownership of any unwilling another."
Thinking it should be: "...that does NOT violate..."
Oh my goodness—thank you! That’s two I missed in this piece. I really appreciate the fact that you care enough to let me know.
Happy to help. I know what it's like to be drafting quickly, my fingers trying to keep up with my thoughts. Easy for such things to slip through. :-) (And as a publisher, I'm intimately familiar with how typos can slip past a dozen editorial passes and several proofreaders, so there's that, too.)
Right there with you on all of that. It’s crazy how easy it is. I am still finding typos in my other book, and I have edited that….well, like you say, just about a dozen times!
Thanks for this. I did not require any convincing, but still good to have this innate truth communicated. When enough of us get this, really get this, the world will change.
Agreed!
By the way, I like your tree-lady pic.
2 more points I'd like to mention:
First, self-ownership is a confusion of terms. We are ourselves. Not only don't we "own" ourselves, we cannot own ourselves, because ownership involves 2 parties, not one: the owner and the property. Aside from the dehumanization inherent to framing people as property (especially ourselves), the idea violates conventional laws of identity. We cannot own ourselves any more than a bicycle can own itself, or a non-human animal can own itself. On examination, this usage of "ownership" turns out to be a matter of borrowing a concept from one domain and applying it in another domain where it doesn't fit. Ownership is a legal concept created to justify the attachment of desirable to someone(s) that controls it. Ownership is not necessary in order to control a desirable. Ownership is only a necessity for justifying exercise of control. Period.
An even deeper problem with "self-ownership", even if we ignored the above, is that the quintessence of ownership of every type is preemptive, principled, exclusive privilege of universal deprivation of an "owned" desirable. Besides the horrors that this practice has practically led to, (and I'd argue *inevitably* led to,) there is something wrong in the head about making deprivation priority #1 to the exclusion of alternatives like sharing. Or, what about the alternative of predicating our relationship to desirables and fellow humans as a function of *provision*, not deprivation?
Here's a convo I had to crystalize my basic thinking on ownership and make it shareable. If you're already signed up with DeepSeek, you should be able to see it via a direct link: https://chat.deepseek.com/a/chat/s/23d8855d-1c31-4dd5-b291-72b5d833b410
If you're not signed up, here's a link to a PDF of the convo: https://1drv.ms/b/c/549fb173ed0468e5/EX807rqCFPVOjcBrx2QEspEBC2GJGYLQvvM3yejQp_p3dg?e=nERvcK
The 2nd thing is: what if "ought" is an artifact of delusion? What if the entire concept of normalization as rules-constraint (as opposed to negotiated acceptance or habit) is bogus, itself a symptom of psychological pathologies which induce fear of the uncontrolled? What if the very impulse/desire/will to normalize is psychopathological?
That is all some very deep stuff. Respect!
That said, there is no talking me out of my belief in self-ownership 🤣🤣 We would be here long after the cows came home, and the chickens came home to roost, and the sun turned to cheese, and I still would not stop believing in it.
For what it's worth, I will just quickly explain why I don't think it's quite like property in the normal sense.
The purpose of the concept of self-ownership is to establish the fact that no one else attempt to exercise control over the body, life, and being of another. It's one of those concepts that is unimportant except in relation to others.
I have personal control over my own thoughts, actions, and choices. That control is naturally inalienable. Someone else can use violence to sever me from the >enjoyment< of that control, but they cannot actually actuate their own control over my thoughts, actions, and choices. As a natural fact, I, and I alone, have dispositive decision-making power over my own body, life, and being.
Dispositive decision-making authority is similar to a property right: an owner of a thing has dispositive decision-making authority over that thing. I made a broom out of a stick and some straw. It's my broom. I can break it if I wish, or sweep up a pile of acorns, or whatever. My broom. My body. My life.
That's all. But I get that you disagree.
I would very much like you to put the idea that I'm trying to convince you or talk you in or out or anything of the sort. I bring up salient points, and what I'd love is if you'd think them through, and if they seem valid, tell me how they affect your previous thinking (if at all) -- or if they seem erroneous, invalid, problematic, tell me *how* specifically. This is about learning for me. I have no interest in defending or defeating beliefs.
I could put it more negatively, though. If you have beliefs that are resistant to change upon receiving new information and/or new perspectives, you've got a problem my friend, as I do if I'm clinging too tight to some familiar or favorite idea.
I go where the information takes me, not where my "beliefs" tell me to go.
I'm very much a proponent of "Occam's razor" when it comes to epistemics. If a, b, and c are *required* to explain Z, then a, b, and c it will be. But if I can see that all you really need are a and b, it immediately raises questions:
1. What made you think that c is required/important?
2. What does c give you that a and b don't -- otherwise you wouldn't treat c as necessary/required?
3. What's the downside to losing c?
Answering those questions gives excellent food for thought to all parties to a discussion, and hopefully moves them closer together. What I often find is that people rarely have answers to those questions. That's also very informative.
I've never been a fan of "agree to disagree". Who that wants to know and understand what's really going on would opt for that?
That's all to say:
There are all kinds of forms and degrees of *attachment*: attraction, association, pairing, devotion, connection, bonded, belonging, reliance, etc. Ownership is not like any of those, because those all involve experiences that come with their own feelings. Ownership is a designation and a legal status. It's in a completely different category.
First, almost no one is careful about keeping those forms of attachment distinct. Almost no one even pays attention to them. And almost no one gives the ontological/psychological difference in kind between attachment and ownership the recognition it warrants.
I've worked on this point for a long time, talked and written about it lots. At this point, I have no doubt that "ownership" is c, that we could talk about all forms of attachment in our relationship to desirables without needing it, so why insist on it? No one has yet given me a decent answer to that question. Maybe you can. I just don't see it.
//
I can break it if I wish, or sweep up a pile of acorns, or whatever. My broom. My body. My life.
//
Think about suicide in connection to that sentiment. "It's my life, I can kill me if I want to!"
If you talk to surviving family and friends of a suicide **who made the decision and carried it out alone**, one thing that's practically universal is: they strongly don't agree with the "it's my body and I'll do what I want with it" sentiment. We're all connected. Women tend to see this more easily than men. Ask your wife what she thinks about this.
There’s another point with which I like. People have often considered me to be (putting it very nicely) “hardheaded” because, unless I’m feeling generous, when anyone has said, “OK, well then I guess we agree to disagree”, I will almost always reply, “NO! We don’t agree to anything here. We don’t even agree to disagree! We just disagree!”
First, I don’t understand what’s so bad about disagreeing if we argue based on principles. And secondly, why try to weasel in some sort of agreement when we clearly do not agree??
PS. "You are so stubborn! You always think you're right! When have you ever admitted that you're wrong?!!!"
Sound familiar? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Been hearing it since I was maybe five or six years old LOL.
It's never made sense to me either. When people do it it always strikes me as a cop out. All they're really doing is saying, "Let's agree to stop trying to understand why we disagree." Fuck no! There's no way in hell I'm ever going to stop trying to understand why we disagree. Shrinking back from the truth is on them. No way I'll go along with it.
Just because one is free to do a thing with one’s own life, body, and being doesn’t make that thing a good thing. Suicide is an example of that.
So let me ask you—why is it that no one else may enslave me, kill me, etc.? On what grounds do you justify the notion (if you do) that that is an evil or impermissible act?
Exactly, which is precisely my point. "My broom. My body. My life." doesn't just logically rationalize suicide. It motivationally enables an entire spectrum of detrimental behavior of which suicide is an extreme, precisely because—in light of the interconnectivity, interrelationship, and interdependence of all things—is frankly just not how the dang thing works. No parent is their own, for example. They belong to their children. No, "My body, my choice" is **absolutely** wrong—precisely because **it is not just a pregnant woman’s body**. She is *carrying* a *second* body that is not her own—but "pro-choice" cancels that body from consideration.
Your question is great. It gets to the crux of one of the paradigmatic difference in the way I approach what are known as "morals" and "morality". I have jettisoned all rules-based normative propositions, period. So, people assume I make no "moral" difference between kissing a forehead and bashing it with a mallet. Those are the only 2 options they're aware of. That's not my problem. This is where that "Deceptive Nature of Rules" paper is relevant, but that's just a part of it. Morals, ethics (in both philosophical and enterprise senses), laws, codes of conduct, "natural law", etc., are all rules-based propositions. If you know of any that aren’t rules-based, the following doesn’t apply to them, and I would LOVE to talk with you about them.
Living “morally” necessarily means living hypocritically, when hypocrisy is understood as doing one thing while *being* another without the slightest interest in changing what we are. (The old saw about saying one thing and doing another is a version of “hypocrisy” that’s got a sophistication level fit for 10-year-olds.)
A moral person is someone who has prioritized rules over themself. For simplicity, let’s take a person whose set of moral rules (morals) are perfect: every obligation their morals require results in only good things, and every prohibition prevents only bad things. So, where their psyche already jives with their morals, they can afford to be authentic and probably are. When their psyche diverges, contradicts, or opposes their morals, it indicates *psychological dysfunction*—they’re currently wired to do what their morals prohibit. By compelling their behavior to line up with their morals, they necessarily compel it to diverge from their psyche as it’s currently configured. This is the definition of inauthentic. We refer to methods of doing this as conditioning, training, habituation, behavior modification, programming, etc. I’ll call it habituation, since that’s pretty much the goal of all of them.
Habituation isn’t inherently hypocritical. It affects the psyche and can in fact rewire our psyche in such a way that the psychological pathology/dysfunctionality is resolved. But when it *substitutes* for psychological change, habituation is patently hypocritical. This is how morals enable hypocrisy.
There’s a lot to say about this, such as the grand loop necessary to warrant any rules-based system as non-deceptive and non-arbitrary. Every account I’ve ever read that tries to ground a moral system appeals to innate, intuitive, instinctive experience, just like you do. We’ve all experienced infliction of harm. We all have very similar reactions to infliction of harm. So, we justify a set of codes or rules or “laws” prohibiting infliction of harm and demanding “moral” behavior as good and right if it lines up with those common types of experience. Then why make the loop from experience through derived generalizations of experience and back, imposing the generalizations on our experience as a governor at all? Why not just operate on the original basis at the same level—the immanent experiential level—and cut the loop out with Occam’s razor?
There are two telling reasons why we don’t. First, from a “leader’s” perspective, it would structurally abolish the potential for supremacism. Second, for traumatized people, it’s scary as shit: just you, the world, and what you do about it, your only rationale and your only justification being that doing it is the only honest expression of who you are. But the fact remains that this immanent, bilateral/multilateral, mutual experience of each other is the only real thing that’s going on in the kinds of relationships we want and cherish.
What this boils down to is love and hate. I don’t call rape “immoral”—I’m very open that I hate it, and my hatred for it spits fire. I’d have no qualms about whacking a rapist upside the head with a 2x4 if that’s what it takes to stop him, and if he dies, I’m sorry. The *possibility* of irreparable harm to him doesn’t even come close to so little as balancing the scale with the *certainty* that he’s going to inflict irreparable harm to his victim, So, for me, it’s a black-and-white decision.
About my direct answer to your question, I take it to mean, “why is it *wrong* for anyone to enslave me, kill me, etc.?” not, “why is it that *no one else may* enslave me, kill me, etc.?” because, in fact, others could well, maybe even easily, enslave you or kill you. Morals don’t prevent them. The only thing that can prevent them is **taking action to prevent them**. As they’re abducting you to cart you off to the chop shop and harvest your organs, morals don’t do a damn thing. All morals are good for is *rationalizing* actions you want to take and *justifying* them after you’re done.
So, in light of this, my answer to, “why is it that no one else may enslave me, kill me, etc.? On what grounds do you justify the notion (if you do) that that is an evil or impermissible act?” is: I don’t. I don’t refer to rules or laws to prove that killing and enslaving are wrong. They are wrong because I fucking hate them, like I do all forms of violation and harm. To moralists, a kidnapper-murderer **violates the rules**. For me, they **violate people**. That’s a huge fucking difference with all kinds of implications. The difference in those two perspectives hints at a key aspect of the paradigmatic difference I mentioned. I have a completely different orientation and a completely different *kind* of standard when it comes to dealing with human actions.
I’ve chosen to approach all this by redeeming the concept of “evil” from the swamp of superstition it’s long floundered in. It’s the only word that packs the kind of primal punch that comes close to the impact of the actions and experiences it refers to.
I start with evildoing: evildoing is **deliberate action intended to harm**. (This implies that you can do evil to “property”, like a work of art or a house or vehicle, or even Earth herself.) It’s empirically observable, reportable, and quantifiable.
“Evil”, then, denotes the psychological configuration and dynamics responsible for motivating us to deliberately intend to harm. This, also, is observable (somewhat: MRI, EEG, etc.), reportable (if only we’d be honest), and quantifiable.
Imagine that: *quantifying* evil and *quantifying* evildoing. Just think of all the senseless polemical gyrations that this would peace out, lol.
With that in mind, the replacement for morals is passion (also empirically observable, reportable, and quantifiable), which is *extremely* simple: a spectrum between love and hate with indifference in the middle.
See where this is going? This, in fact, reflects the relationships and interactions between loving parents and their children, or loving partners, so much better than morals ever could, it’s laughable. To me, moralizing or trying to devise the perfect morality/moral system (or whatever we want to call it) isn’t just futile—because no generalization will fit all sizes—but it completely misses the point in the same way that trying to write the perfect script completely misses the point if the author thinks that the most important thing of all is the play. What’s the point this misses? Living real life.
The other aspect of morals I detest is that no normative proposition of any type ever provides the necessary motivation to fulfill its requirements, because normative propositions do not engage the aspects of human psyche involved in motivation. Bribes and punishments *extort* normativity by *exploiting* motivations completely irrelevant to the intended norm. The approach I take, being driven by passion, is rife with inherent motivation.
This is a great. Very well thought and articulated. I align with it greatly from my point of view but I’m sure there are differences. I do believe that it is correct to hate unloving actions or people. I cannot love (or accept) those that intend to cause harm and take action to do so; therefore, I will inherently hate them and/or such actions. People seem so charged on the word “hate”, like it’s some unallowable point of view while they are using that POV themselves to exclude or hate others.
I do however, thing that evil is beyond instances of causing harm (but is inclusive of such).
I agree, evil can't be reduced to the mere actions of evil doing, but it was a tactical decision to use evildoing as the starting point and anchor because it's the the most obvious, tangible, and easiest to quantify. My objective is to eradicate evil from Earth. We don't need to understand the origins and esoteric nature of evil as the motivator of evildoing in order to eradicate evildoing. The more we understand, of course, the more effective we'll be, but we don't need to wait for a full understanding or answer all the questions or resolve all the quagmires about the nature of evil before we start eradicating it's effects. And, given the absolute innocence of every infant born, the genesis of the evil in every person (aside from woo-woo explanations) can only be the evildoing they suffered from very young ages that generated the poisons (neurochemicals) that damaged and destroyed portions and degrees of their neurological functionality, resulting in conditions we are all learning about like lack of empathy and psychopathy. These conditions arose over time as the result of repetitive damage, so it's realistic to expect that reversing the damage will require repetitive remediation over time, too. I don't believe in silver bullets and, although I've experienced miracles, miracles by definition are exceptions. You can't build a life or carry out an endeavor reliant on exceptions. Great when they happen, but the pretense that there's nothing else we can do cuz we don't know how to do it, so our only hope is miracles or God's intervention, is just another cop out.
Thank you for writing so clearly and with such detail. Very interesting to read!
So, please let me see if I understand correctly: **deliberate action intended to harm** is what you hate, and what causes you to act, out of passion, in response. Is that a reasonable summation?
Thanks man! That're really encouraging. I might not have said, yet, how much I admire you for the work you've done so far. The fact that we disagree on some things doesn't detract from the fact that you've done an IMMENSE job of exceptional work with exceptional value. I'm so glad we connected!
To your question, that's a reasonable summation of half of the picture, yes, pretty much. Here I'm focusing on evil. I've said nothing much about good and love. All our heads were twisted around backwards and stuffed into fishbowls about all these things. People treat love and hate as peers. They're not. All my hatred is inspired by love. When love is inspired by hatred, we call it addiction. An addict doesn't love their substance/activity of choice as a function of simple, direct attraction, but as a function of insulating them from whatever hell they live in and enabling temporary relief/escape. A person with CSBD does not love sex-making in the way that loving intimate partners love lovemaking. These are two types of attachment, but they're not two types of love, any more than a knock-off is the same as the genuine article. Addiction-love is derivative. I liken it to the relief we feel after a really painful bowel movement. I imagine it's true for a woman in childbirth right after the baby comes out. It's not true pleasure, but the pain reduction is so dramatic, in the moment it *feels* pleasurable in contrast. And it's very short-lasting. It's pain-reduction masked as pleasure.
It just struck me: derivativeness, i.e., "in contrast to" or "inspired/evoked by", is the key. When "good" and "love" are taken *in contrast to* something worse, it's not intrinsically good -- it's only good in contrast to what's worse: relative goodness. That's one of the most common arguments I get from people objecting to change: "But these problems are so much less prevalent than they used to be! Even poor people are better off than their ancestors! Why can't you admit we're making progress?" Well, yeah, if we get down on our hands and knees on a gravel road, we can still "make progress". How does that constitute an argument, though, against making bicycles for everyone? "But then we might fall down!!!" 🤣 Just can't make this shit up.
So, good and evil, love and hate are not yin/yang kinds of things because they're not the same kinds of things. Evil and hate are derivative. I hate what harms the people I love and care for. If the harm stops, so does my hate. If harm has potential, I hate its potential. If there's no potential, there's nothing for me to hate. Why would I do that when there's so much to love?
I like this first point. I don’t believe that anyone (not even myself, or even God) owns me. I’m not ownable. Psychopaths, like the government, probably believe otherwise. On the second point, I do know that words like “ought” or “should” often (maybe always) have some implied (or underlying) guilt component. I think it depends on the context and who is saying it to whom, e.g., “I ought to take out the trash before it starts to stink.” (etc.)
Language has become loose but certain terms like “own”, are very strong.
Exactly. Owning any person involves objectification of that person. That alone is despicable. So the logic of self-ownership is, essentially: I'm going to objectify myself in order to take control of myself in order to prevent everybody else from objectifying me and taking control of me. Makes no sense to me.
I don't see my self-ownership as objectification of myself. I see it as a NO TRESPASSING sign to all those who seek to objectify me.
Yes, I get that. But I wasn't talking about how you see self-ownership or experience it. I was talking about the concept. Are you saying that you don't see how the ownership metaphor is intrinsically objectifying when applied to people as "the owned", i.e., as though they were property?
Yes, I get it. But the negative connotation of ownership is the notion that one person might be owned by another. That is bad. But self-ownership says that one can only “own” oneself. I do not have a negative view of property ownership. I like owning my own home, for example. So the notion of an ownership metaphor for me is not a bad thing. I believe it is good that I can exclude the rest of the world from the use of my home, and I think it is good that I can exclude the rest of the world from the use of my body.
I'm glad you're addressing the deprivational nature of ownership. There are two separate issues here, and people consistently have conflated them in other conversations I've had.
Ownership as a legal entitlement to universally deprive is one thing. An actual act of deprivation is a completely different thing. People talk about this as if the two are naturally, inherently connected to each other. They are not.
It is a good thing that we do not allow other people to take our homes away from us or invade them and occupy them. But the assumption in owner speak is that ownership enables us to stop others from doing those things. It doesn't.
Tell someone who is forcing their way into your home that you own the home and see how powerful that is in deterring them. The things that actually would work to deter them are things that we can do without any regard to the question of ownership.
The only real role of the ownership entitlement in the context of theft/invasion is as justification after the fact. If I own the property and you try to steal it or invade it and I do you harm in the act of preventing you, I won't get in trouble for it unless it is deemed in excess of what was necessary to stop you. That's it. That's all ownership does.
Hear hear! Can never be said enough!
🔥🧡🔥
I like how you fleshed out your understanding of natural rights. I attempted the same, less thoroughly, in my first Substack post:
"""
Because underlying true anarchism is the substance of natural human rights: valid claims that any person can make, pre-politically, simply by virtue of being human.
What valid claims can people make, pre-politically?
A claim to one’s own person (life).
A claim to one’s intentional actions and consent-based, voluntary interactions with others (liberty).
A claim to cultivated and duly obtained material goods not already validly claimed by another person (property).
The authority of personhood, of conscience, and of proprietorship all exist and are just, honorable, and defensible. But any attempt to assert an alleged “authority” to initiate violations of anyone else’s natural human rights, is unjust.
"""
Solid stuff—I like!
It kind of feels like five rules should be enough, doesn't it? I mean, I am not sure, but I have toyed with the notion:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/five-rules-govern-any-society
I see no justification for making ownership of a person good in one case and bad and another merely because one is me and the other is someone else. As applied to ourselves, self-ownership is just a loose way of talking, precisely because the nature of what we do with and to ourselves as owners of ourselves isn't remotely relevant to what owners of other people do with them and to them. Otherwise, self-ownership would amount to self enslavement. So the ownership involved in either case is completely different, using the same word to refer to completely unlike phenomena. That's a decided form of ambiguity/equivocation.
I do hold ownership as inherently negative, but in this respect my criticism has nothing to do with that. It's a matter of simple rational consistency and clarity. The same problem comes up with the concept of authority. People want to tell me that there's good authority and bad authority. So my response is, why the hell would you use the same word to refer to something bad and to something good that in effect completely disintegrates the bad version? It's like calling both sugar and arsenic "sweet powder". When differences become important enough, the demand separate terms to avoid confusion and shenanigans. People are Lowe's to come up with a different word for the so-called good kind of authority precisely because they'd lose the connotation of compulsion and obligation they want to reserve. They want to smuggle rhetorical power in where they actually don't belong.
I have personal control over my thoughts, actions, and choices, as a natural fact: dispositive decision-making authority over my own body, life, and being. No one else can think my thoughts or make my choices. All they can do is use violence and coercion in an attempt to limit my choices or control my actions. Such efforts are, in essence, an attempt to use me for their purposes. To gain control of, manipulate, extract resources from, occupy, or otherwise use my body, life, and being, against my will. I may rightly exclude them from this. The ability to exclude others from the use of a thing, and dispositive decision-making authority over that thing, is very similar to the quality of a property right, as the concept of property is generally understood. That is why people have long described it as self-ownership.
If you prefer a different term to describe that phenomenon, then that’s fine; I would be happy to entertain such a terminological distinction. If you believe that that phenomenon does not exist, or that others should be able to use my body, life, and being without my consent, then we simply disagree, and it is hard to see how that disagreement can be resolved. The belief that I may rightly exclude all others from the use of my body, life, and being is at the very foundation of my worldview.
I have the same personal control over my body, and no one else can think my thoughts or make my choices, agreed -- but it's got nothing to do with "authority". It's just physics, dude. Why couch it in legal terms? I see no necessity for that. I understand what you're saying, and I've been pointing out the implications and problems involved in taking your words as accurately reflecting your thoughts. I'm trying to disambiguate and clarify what we're trying to talk about so that we can talk about it.
I've made no claims pro or con "that that phenomenon does not exist, or that others should be able to use my body, life, and being without my consent..." Inferring claims when I haven't made them and they're not necessarily implied by what I've said is a mistake. I don't "prefer" a different term -- I've been pointing out problems I see in the way you've already used the terms you volunteered.
//
The belief that I may rightly exclude all others from the use of my body, life, and being is at the very foundation of my worldview.
//
I have no such beliefs, because while beliefs are involved in asserting the validity of intended actions and justifying the validity of past actions, I couldn't care less about *all* of that. I don't operate on a codependent basis anymore, as best I can thus far. What I think, decide, and do revolve around my best judgment at the time about what the outcomes of thinking, choosing, and doing them will be. I don't need beliefs for that. In fact, beliefs just get in the way of that process of info intake, evaluation, and judgment, because it's a real-time assessment of all available information I can handle moment by moment, tweaked to track changing events and circumstances as they develop and shift.
Beliefs lie completely outside that process and serve completely different, justificatory purposes, like I mentioned. Choosing to think, decide, and act by limiting myself to what I imagine I could justify to others -- constituting codependence on them -- has, in my experience, always been a mistake. At best, its outcomes are sub-optimal. They can even be the opposite of what I intended. Operating without regard to how I'll be judged (I try) doesn't guarantee wonderful outcomes -- I'm human, after all -- but it's far more honest, authentic, and carries in it a power that I feel and others sense. They can sense our codependence, and they can sense when we're being authentic and not fucking around.
When it comes to dealing with authoritarians and supremacists, I've found that approaching them confidently "depite" being naked of rights and beliefs is far more powerful and effective in disrupting and even stopping their efforts. (I put "despite" in quotes because I don't experience any such nakedness or vulnerability which I must act in spite of. Just the opposite. Those are *presumed* by people who haven't tried dropping all that "clothing" and "armor". Just being me, the genuine me, no codependent buffer/insulation/protection, does what the armor pretends to do, only better.)
Well, one must approach authoritarians and supremacists with confidence because they don't believe in our rights either. Just in their own privileges.
Here is a thought: maybe *rights*, the word itself has become corrupted, a helpful tool for the sleight-of-hand that the government has done on us, or we have allowed to be done. Ironically, "inalienable rights" actually suggests that rights may be alienable and distinct from the person. Whereas *humanity* and *free will* are integral. As you have put it, "They are an outgrowth of natural facts. They are woven into the fabric of everything."
People are not things, and thus we shall resist being treated as things by those who are, after all, people as well, albeit very evil ones.
All good points.
“ People are not things”
More than one person has pointed out to me that Fr Nicolai Berdayev makes a great distinction even between “individualism” and “personalism,” with the latter being rooted very much in the infinite mystery and concrete non-thingyness of each person.
Interesting, I was going off Catholic theology (pre-New Order, Chesterton/Belloc/Knox/Newman), this guy is new to me. I may have come across his name before in some translated Gulag survivors’ memoirs though, will take a look.
I really need to read his book. I will one day…
Christopher... I believe this is the beginning of the book you are writing about returning to a non-governmental society wherein everyone deals with everyone else in agreement and trade for goods and services. I think you have called this anarchocapitalism... yes? I love this post because destroying the idea that a government 'gives' you your rights as opposed to you having them as inherent to your being. It is a great way to get people to understand their personal freedoms and a great counter to the Marxist idea of the people having a 'contract' with their government; that the government 'gives' them things in exchange for power. I am excited to see the rest!
What I missed a little from this is the connection to a larger force; an almighty force. I don't think you need to go down a theological hole or bring an overt level of religiosity to this but the writers of our constitution and Bill of Rights (I know you are wary of government and it's declarations) were among the first to put the freedom you speak of in our founding documents. And they did so because they were men of faith. Is it worth making this connection in your writing if for nothing else but to say - many people of faith should consider the idea that we are inherently free because we are made in the image of a force more powerful than any government?
Unfortunately many people need to feel that their feet are on solid ground before they strike out and do something individual. The power that they get from the belief that they are large and the government is small is hard to put into words. Ninety nine percent of the people on the planet are afraid of their government. And one of the first things an all powerful government will do is remove religion from those they wish to oppress. Because faith gives power.
Just a thought... carry on. You are doing a wonderful thing.
Thanks for the thoughts, ideas, and encouragement.
I generally tend to avoid grounding anything in Divine/supernatural/extraworldly causes. There are a few reasons for this.
1. I believe that God made the laws of nature so that they make sense and are intelligible to us. As such, every principle we come up with can be justified through logic. I don't believe that God would create any sort of arbitrary, "because I said so" morality. It has to make sense. I does make sense.
2. As such, I never want to ground any points as "Because God said so" or "Because God made it that way." If I cannot find the logic that justifies it, then I should not espouse it. God would not do that to me, I do not believe, and I should not do it to others.
3. I want to avoid the squabbles associated with religion. Atheists can follow the logic. Theists can believe that the ultimate source of the logic is God. I avoid getting into it either way.
I also want to avoid the confusion associated with introducing extra-worldly things when it comes to concepts like self-ownership. I once told someone that they owned themselves and someone overheard and yelled, "WRONG God owns you." To which I calmly replied (since we were at a nice dinner) that I am strictly referring to other humans. No other HUMANS own you. I am not making any claims about your, or anyone's, relationship with God.
So these are why I have generally steered clear. Make sense?
Makes tons of sense. I was only thinking of a dispassionate inclusion of the power of faith (for some, certainly not even close to a majority) because often reason is not enough - even for those who are non-believers. So I was suggesting you do both - reason and faith. Faith doesn’t work for those who are not faithful. Reason does not work for those who are unable to reason. They are not opposed to each other. They help one another. A different way to look at including faith might be: underdogs in a fight believe they can win despite all odds (faith); loving one another (love is an act of faith) such that we come together and self-govern is another; Anyway…you get the point. Just an idea. Write on. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
I will consider your words!
It is a minefield, though. I had this one sub, praising me up and down, telling others about me in glowing terms, etc. Then I wrote a piece that said that I am not an atheist. Not only did he summarily unsub, he made an insulting comment on his way out. That was his one-issue litmus test for intelligence and worthiness.
Not saying that that experience is dispositive of the matter. Just a funny story about what a minefield it is. Naturally, I have run into similar situations from theists. Just another day in the life, I suppose!
I do get it. You know I am only sending thoughts and ideas. NONE have to be taken or even considered. Write away. Will not unsub. Too bad for that guy.
Thank you for your thoughts and kindness, as always!
typo in this line: Each individual human thus has license to engage in any thought, choice, experience, or action that does violate the self-ownership of any unwilling another.
THANK YOU!
I am writing these so fast, and moving on to the next—I really appreciate the extra eyeballs!
fwiw: the word "dispositive" is uncommon enough that either adding a definition or picking a different word might be prudent. Most of your potential readers grew up in the public school system and speak American, so...
Can’t they just right-click on “Look up” if they don’t know it?
I didn’t know that was an option… maybe it is on my phone… I will try it later. (I used google to verify the meaning for myself) ultimately most people are lazy and will assume that they have a good enough understanding based on context. That is adequate in almost all cases.
In your case, “good enough” might not be good enough. You are attempting to move a mountain, and ultimately a significant portion of the population will need to shift. You write with in a clear and easily understood manner, so most people will easily follow your logic and reach the same conclusions you lay out.
My comment was intended to be a cautionary note to remind you that half of the people are less educated than average, and that it doesn’t require much to leave them behind in a quagmire of slightly misunderstood concepts.
Your point is very well-taken, and I appreciate that you are taking the time to make it. I do know that while I keep my syntax simple, I am going to have times when the content (or vocabulary) goes to another level.
One thought occurs to me, though—while half of the general population have IQs below 100, I highly doubt that half the people reading my writing do. Might that not make some difference in this regard?
I agree that the large majority of your readers are highly educated and highly intelligent. That is also the best target market for your book, and writing for that audience and not "dumbing it down" is obviously going to sell more books. I have to assume that getting your ideas widely spread is a priority. I have to assume that receiving some kind of return on the investment you are making in mental sweat equity is a priority. These are reasonable priorities.
The flip side of the coin is the other priority... changing the world. The bitter reality is that tens of millions of poorly educated people will need to buy in, and someone will need to write the pamphlets that present the logic that they will understand and accept. I don't want to do it... so I'm encouraging you to attempt to walk the razors edge between your intelligent audience and the milling masses of mundane humanity.
I don't know that any single document can meaningfully communicate with both groups simultaneously. It's a BIG gap.
Regardless, this is a distracting tangent and you have better places to invest your mental energy. Back to writing!
I tested this “lookup” option on the word “dispositive” and it gave me a wikipedia entry for a “dispositive motion”. A poor solution in this case.
Yeah, that is poor. 🤕
Good thinking, clear and to the point. You and I are looking at the same things and want the same things. The only real difference I see is that I'm going for the jugular, so to speak: to eliminate the preconditions that enable violations to occur in the first place. Rights don't do that, not even if everyone in the world were induced to respect them. I'm not saying that promoting rights isn't a good thing, let alone that there's a problem with it per se -- in the same way I'd never say that putting anti-itch cream on a rash is a problem. The problem would lie in thinking that putting cream on it is all we can do. Band-Aids don't cure. Rights are basically a symptom-management response. When it comes to the evils in the world perpetrated by some against the rest, the problem isn't lack of understanding or lack of respect for the truth, others, and their rights. It's the result of addiction. Rights can't address their addiction for the same reason that telling a junkie they're ruining their life and health and relationships and will end up all alone, sick or dead won't get them to stop shooting up. It's as simple as the fact that neither legal nor moral remedies will address or resolve psychosomatic addiction.