The Ohio Libertarian Blog

My Understanding of Frederic Bastiat's 'The Law'

2011-09-23T15:57:00.001-04:00

Before reading my musings, you should take it upon yourself to read Frederic Bastiat's 'The Law'. This excellent (and free!) edition is provided by the ever-helpful Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Humans derive three rights from their natural state and needs. Life, liberty, and property. Life is self-evident. Liberty is needed to act in a manner fitting to sustain life. Property is needed to shape into the tools of sustenance for life.

The non-aggression principle derives from these rights. While each human has the inalienable right to life, liberty, and property, he or she may not (in good moral order) violate these rights of others. Aggression here is not defined simply as physical violence. Plunder as well as murder constitutes aggression.

The natural drive to avoid pain and sustain and improve life causes man to resort to plunder and murder. It is evident that any person may act to defend their rights against the aggression of others. The theory of collective action stems from the ability of a group of individuals to pool their resources to more effectively defend their rights against the aggression of others. However, this collective does not take on 'rights' of its own. It is merely a tool for protecting each individual within it. An appropriate analogy is an armored car, rather than a cell. The occupants retain individuality.

The law, then, is an extension of this collective defense against rights violations. Or, at least, that is the purest intention of the law. In reality, however, the law is an instrument of plunder, a means of including unwilling members to a (probably arbitrary) collective group, and then extorting from them their resources and violating their basic rights. The justification for this is always the 'good of the collective'. This is an inherently flawed notion. There is no such thing as the 'good of the collective'. Remember that the collective is only a means of defending individual rights. As soon as that collective violates the individual rights of anyone within it for the benefit of the rest, it ceases to exist as a moral entity. It becomes a mechanism of violence and plunder with no root whatsoever in the rights of man.

The mistreatment of members of the collective aside, these entities will look outward for more profitable plunder. As other such entities (societies) exist, conflict between them becomes inevitable. Hence the origin of war: externalized plunder and murder for the benefit of the false collective.

There is no inherent injustice in the concept of a collectively provided system of public goods, from roads and power to health care. However, this system is only tenable if all members of the collective agree to provide this. Clearly, in a modern national sense, this is not the case. We are born, if not unwillingly then without conscious consent, into a pre-existing collective. This collective has taken it upon itself to provide certain goods in advance, and does not bother to ensure individual consent before plundering to pay for these services. It also often holds a monopoly on the goods which it presumes to provide.

This national collective is also extraordinarily jealous of its power. Should an individual or group of individuals dare to exercise their right to remove themselves from the collective or try to operate in a collective manner countering the national collective, the 'legal' retribution is swift and furious. Examples of this range from the sweeping, cataclysmic American Civil War to the the small-scale abuse of individuals in the modern day attempting to 'drop out of the grid'. Apparently, the concept of truly private property within the national collective is abhorrent to its perverse, plundering nature.

Motivation and a Glorious Heritage

2011-03-15T16:58:00.000-04:00

I recently purchased a copy of 'Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays' by Murray N. Rothbard in order to begin brushing up on my academic libertarianism. I found the conclusion to a particular essay so moving that I feel I need to share it. The essay is 'Left and Right: The Prospect for Liberty'. Originally penned in 1965, Rothbard's call for awareness and activity is still poignant nearly a half-century later.

(I know, I know, its a wall of text. Maybe, if you think it'd make this more easily digestable by more people, I'll do a summary/TL;DR).

"What is needed, then, is simply the "subjective conditions" for victory; that is, a growing body of informed libertarians who will spread the message to the peoples of the world that liberty and the purely free market provide the way out of their problems and crises.

...

The modern Libertarian has forgotten that the Liberal of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries faced odds much more overwhelming than those which face the Liberal of today; for in that era before the Industrial Revolution, the victory of liberalism was far from inevitable. And yet the liberalism of that day was not content to remain a gloomy little sect; instead, it unified theory and action. Liberalism grew and developed as an ideology and, leading and guiding the masses, made the revolution which changed the fate of the world. By its monumental breakthrough, this revolution of the eighteenth century transformed history from a chronicle of stagnation and despotism to an ongoing movement advancing toward a veritable secular utopia of liberty and rationality and abundance. The Old Order is dead or moribund; and the reactionary attempts to run a modern society and economy by various throwbacks to the Old Order are doomed to total failure. The Liberals of the past have left to modern Libertarians a glorious heritage, not only of ideology but of victories against far more devastating odds.

...

For the Libertarian, the main task of the present epoch is to cast off his needless and debilitating pessimism, to set his sights on long-run victory and to set out on the road to its attainment. To do this, he must, perhaps first of all, drastically realign his mistaken view of the ideological spectrum; he must discover who his friends and natural allies are, and above all perhaps, who his enemies are. Armed with this knowledge, let him proceed in the spirit of radical long-run optimism that one of the great figures in the history of libertarian thought, Randolph Bourne, correctly identified as the spirit of youth."

This has really motivated me to get more active, and I'd love to get feedback from you all on it.

A Little Belated Thought on the Iranian Revolution

2010-09-13T21:29:00.000-04:00

Hi readers. Its been a long time since I felt the motivation to put a blog post together, but this one felt short and sweet enough to post about without spending hours analyzing and re-analyzing what I had written. I hope you enjoy the insight, and take a minute to remember the Iranian people.

"Now, I am against sending troops to Central America. They are simply not needed. Given a chance and the resources, the people of the area can fight their own fight. They have the men and women. They're capable of doing it. They have the people of their country behind them. All they need is our support. All they need is proof that we care as much about the fight for freedom 700 miles from our shores as the Soviets care about the fight against freedom 5,000 miles from theirs. And they need to know that the U.S. supports them with more than just pretty words and good wishes. We need your help on this, and I mean each of you-involved, active, strong, and vocal. And we need more." - Ronald Reagan, remarks at Annual Dinner of the CPAC conference, 1985.

Not a whole lot to say about this, except that it reminds me of the situation with the Iranian protests last year. (Or was it earlier this year? My laziness is over-powering my fact-checking.) While sending American soldiers to support the Green Wave business would have been a catastrophe (and I don't think anyone was saying we should have), the Iranian people were reaching out to us. "You stand for government of the people. We are the people, trying to regain control of our government. Send us money, send us supplies, send us a good word."

I wish the U.S. government had, officially, even so much as spoken out in favor of these people. Obama has the respect of the world's people far more than Bush did. For him to have remained neutral was a shame.

(Side notes: 1. It was the Iranian protests/uprising that led me to Twitter in the first place. Watching the events unfold in real-time was a fascinating experience. 2. You can read the full set of remarked delivered by Reagan at that dinner here.)

Diabolus Ex Machina

2010-07-23T16:50:00.000-04:00

Despite the excellent irony of using my blog to complain about this, I'm so sick of technology today. I need to vent about it, and you're a patient, silent audience.

First, the touchscreen on my phone stops working. So I take it to AT&T to get a new one, and I'm told that unless I want to go to Mayfield Heights or Pittsburgh, I can't have it replaced on the spot. I have to call their customer service and have a mailer shipped to me along with a new phone. First of all, screw that noise. I know you have several of the kind of phone I have sitting in the back. Give me one, and order more. Dammit.

So I call the number, and finally, 5 minutes into the call, the robot informs me that I need the last four digits of the Social Security number of the primary account holder. Which would be fine, except that for my family its not me, its my mom. Who is at work. Fuck you, AT&T customer service. I should have had my new phone a week ago when I drove my ass to your store.

Next, Zipline goes down while I'm at work today (for the uninitiated, Zipline is UA's student homepage service). The ensuing mob of angry patrons has made my job quite difficult. My job isn't supposed to be difficult. This is minor, but its just one of the pieces of straw breaking my back.

Finally, my computer is evenly split between my Windows 7 partition and my Linux Mint partition. Now, I know all you techies insist on the superiority of Linux. And you know what? For what you're doing, you're right. For what I'm doing, I'll just stick with Windows 7. I wanted the 80-some gigs of space back from Linux, so I went to delete it from its partition and to set up a storage drive. Everything is good, except that Disk Manager refuses to let me create a new drive from the newly Linux-free partition. So, I think, oh, I'll just reboot, I'll bet it needs rebooted, reboot is always the answer!

GRUB loading.

error: no such partition

grub rescue> _

FUCK. I forgot that the boot menu was loading from the Linux partition. Now, this is all my fault. I'm the one that altered the boot file in the first place, and I'm the one that just straight-up deleted the Linux partition. But its still aggravating as hell. Now, I need to find my Linux Mint CD, live boot, and hope like hell that I can reinstall it to its old partition so that I can get the boot menu back.

Once I do all that, I'll still be down 80 gigs of useless, Linux-y space.

I want a new laptop. And a new phone. Someone want to get me both?

Tidbits

2010-06-11T03:02:00.001-04:00

Its late, I can't sleep, and I'm not coming up with any deep, profound thing to talk about like I want to. Also, I got tired of trying to properly format the formal book review I was doing. So instead, I give you some fun facts from the books I was GOING to review. I can assure you, though, that I thought that they were all excellent.

- Between the World Wars, it was easier (sort of) to be a bum in Paris than in England.

- Emperor Justinian I (or Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus, as his full name read), the last 'great' Roman emperor, had a wife named Theodora. Before becoming the Empress, she was a popular prostitute whose most famous trick involved some oats and a goose.

- Tom Hanks is still an awful choice to portray Dan Brown's character, Robert Langdon.

- Marcus Aurelius was a very, very chill dude. His collection of private scribblings, known as the Meditations, are good light reading.

- The Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (now Istanbul) was completed in five years. That's roughly 1/7 the amount of time it took to build some of the cathedrals of Western Europe, such as St. Peter, even though they were comparable in size.

- Also between the World Wars, Parisian waiters and hotel workers were more interested in appearance than in cleanliness.

- Apparently, the Albanian idea of a dystopia is a world in which a government agency reads your dreams, and base important decisions on the national dream-mood. Actually, that method of decision making is probably more effective than the methods of some of our real politicians. (Yes, Barry, I'm looking at you and your posse).

- Persians were totally cool with not sacking your city, if you gave them some cash. Occasionally, their army would just travel from city to city, look vaguely menacing, and demand some gold.

Well, I know I enjoyed this little compilation. Hopefully, I've made you all want to go out and read these four excellent books in their entirety.

Sauces:

Justinian's Flea, by William Rosen

Palace of Dreams, by Ismail Kadare

Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell

The Emperor's Handbook, by Marcus Aurelius

Finally, Inspiration

2010-05-18T04:05:00.002-04:00

I've been having trouble expressing myself lately. There are too many unfinished posts that I can't bring myself to finish. I believe my inability to write is a product of a deeper instability. Allow me to share with you, my wonderful readership, the literary product of these past few months:

" [...] "

Yes, I know, its a regular novel. I shouldn't be so verbose. My apologies. Thank you for reading.

On Welfare

2010-04-29T17:59:00.002-04:00

Disclaimer: In the past few months, I have read three novels and several essays penned by Ayn Rand. Her ideas of objectivism and the individualism that it results in have reignited in me a passion

"An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced." - Fransisco D'Anconia, Atlas Shrugged, Part II Chapter II.

What is the worth of the welfare check In terms of benefit, it provides him with a level of income and protection against the consequences of personal financial failure. However, it has robbed him of two things of immensely greater value: his self-worth and his motivation to create.

What kind of man does it take to say "No." to a government-'redistributed' payment? The answer is simple. It is the honest man, the capable man, and the man who knows the value of his own creative capacity. He understands the source of that money and rejects its principle outright.
Thus, the welfare system consists of the opposite sort of man: the lying man, the incompetent man, the sort of man who has no conception of his creative capacity (or no desire to use it).

Welfare-statism is the hijacking of government by the leech and the looter. This system views the wealth created by creative and productive men as a sort of 'natural resource' to be managed and redistributed. The creator of this wealth has increasingly little say in the matter as the notion of public ownership of wealth becomes more and more prevalent.

Welfare money is, in essence, dirty money. It is blood money stolen at the point of a legal gun by the 'government of the people'.

This post was intended to be longer and more comprehensive, but I seem to have run out of steam. I'll probably come back to it at some point.

References (all by Ayn Rand):
Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
Anthem
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Edit: I will DEFINITELY have to come back to this very soon. It needs a lot more explanation and depth before it actually represents my thoughts. Thanks to those who've pointed this out.

Music in the Meantime

2010-02-23T22:59:00.001-05:00

Hello, blog. It has been quite a while since my last update, as I've had something of a drought of ideas that I considered worth writing ab - out. I've wondered several times in the past several weeks whether my wellspring of ideas had run dry so soon. I don't really think it has, but once you fall out of the habit of writing new material it is difficult to restart.

With that in mind, I've decided to just post something simple for the time being. Hopefully, this will motivate me to come up with some more serious ideas. I've started listening to a ton of good bands since my last post, here's a list of some of that goodness.

Diablo Swing Orchestra (The Butcher's Ballroom, Sing Along Songs for the Damned and Delirious) - It's Swedish Avant-Garde Metal. I don't think I really NEED any other reason than that to listen to it. From what I can tell, it bears great similarities with Nightwish, but is more listenable. Also, they sing primarily in English, albeit with some pretty bitchin' songs in Latin and Spanish. Recommended songs: Balrog Boogie, Heroines, Wedding March for a Bullet, A Tap Dancer's Dilemma, and Stratosphere Serenade.

fun. (Aim and Ignite) - Headed by former The Format singer Nate Ruess, fun. lives up to its name. The songs all have an upbeat, occasionally even sing-song feel to them. I pick up on influences from the Beatles and Jack Johnson, although I've never looked to see who the band consider it's influences. There isn't a bad song on the album, definitely worth getting.

Manchester Orchestra (Mean Everything to Nothing) - Every song on this album is solid and enjoyable. What's regrettable is that the first half heavily outweighs the second in terms of catchiness and creativity. I never find myself skipping ahead to songs like Tony the Tiger or The River, even though these are good songs. That being said, I haven't been able to tear myself away from this album for over a week.

Monty Are I (Wall of People) - Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't enjoy a band like Monty Are I. During the choruses, the singing takes on the standard post-emo (post-hardcore?) style which many enjoy but that I can't stand. However, several songs on this album have redeeming factors that make me completely forget that post-emo/hardcore singing bothers me. The big factor is their expert use of a brass section. Dublin Waltz and Tie Off Your Veins are the two songs that really show this off, and are my favorites.

Portugal. The Man (The Satanic Satanist)-The second entry with inexplicable punctuation in the name that throws of my spell-check. Portugal. The Man shows that a laid-back, classic-rock era sound can still be appealing in an age when Auto-Tune is the preferred instrument and 'Shots' by LMFAO is iconic of the times. Songs like Lovers in Love, The Sun, and Mornings stand out.

So, there's your good music fix for the week.

Book Review #3 - Mother's Milk

2009-12-16T20:22:00.000-05:00

Mother's Milk by Andrew Thomas Breslin

(Link to Mother's Milk)
***** (5-star)
-------------------------

Mother's Milk was, simply put, a blast to read. It is the story of a young lawyer named Cindy Kichlklug (a last name contrived by the author, I am convinced, purely to confound his readers for his own entertainment) who agrees to represent a fringe advocacy group called the True Foods Project. At first, they seem to be a harmless bunch of lunatics with a grudge against the dairy industry, but she quickly learns that there is far more their story, much to her dismay.

This is a story that I was really able to appreciate right from the beginning. It was written by an author with a vivid imagination and a deep appreciation of language. The story moves at an appropriate pace, not going from the mundane to the absurd so fast that its entirely implausible. The reader is gently (or occasionally explosively) walked through the layers of the plot. Breslin is a man inspired, mixing bits of trivia with a sharpened, sarcastic wit and an ability to tell a completely bizarre and yet somehow totally believable story. As the story progresses, it takes on an almost dystopian feel right out of Orwell, Huxley, or Zamyatin.

All things considered, I highly recommend Mother’s Milk to anyone who appreciates a well-written story. Even if you do not normally like the science-fiction genre, give this book a chance. You won’t be disappointed.

Book Review #2 - Into the Path of Gods

2009-12-03T19:16:00.001-05:00

Into the Path of Gods - Kathleen Cunningham Guler
(Link to Into the Path of Gods)

***** (5-star)
-------------------------

When I first recieved my copy of this book (courtesy of the LibraryThing Member Giveaway Program), I wasn't necessarily looking forward to reading it. It was the beginning of finals week at school and I assumed that I might get around to it eventually. By the time I finished reading the first page, I realized that I was quite wrong. I was unable to put this book down. It is well-paced, features engaging characters and a fascinating plot full of twists and turns, and draws the reader in to the timeframe.

The books shapes up to be an alternative take on the events surrounding the King Arthur/Merlin saga, following the lives of a powerful heroine with the gift of visions from the gods and a Prince who spends most of his time as a spy, fighting for the freedom of Britain. Their story, while very interesting in the King Arthur context, is well worth reading in its own right.

From the author's attempts to adhere as much as possible to names and words that would have actually been used in fifth-century Wales. One of the features that I've enjoyed ever since reading James Michener's 'Poland' is a pronunciation guide. Names such as Cunedda (Coo-neth-ah), Gwynedd (Gwih-neth), or Marcus ap Iorwerth (Yor-worth) would by horribly mangled by any modern reader not familiar with a Celtic language, but add a very Celtic feel to the whole book once you are pronouncing them in your head.

This book is absolutely worth the read, and I don't shy away from predicting that the other three books of the Macsen's Treasure Series are as well-written and as worthwhile as this. Five stars, and especially recommended for fans of the King Arthur story and of early British history.

A Sea Change

2009-12-02T03:35:00.000-05:00

Over the past few weeks this blog has seen more frequent posts (at least once a week now, for your reading pleasure!), a new name, and now a change in the color scheme. I'll probably keep playing around with the settings a bit until I get comfortable with the changes, and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Other than those rather mundane updates, I have a couple of reasons for posting anew. First, Chairman Steele has been staring at me accusingly ever since my last post yelling at the RNC. I may have learned something valuable about using pictures of people whom you're yelling at. They tend to look angrily at you after the fact. Second, it's just one of those nights. Three in the morning, I should have been asleep a long time ago, but I couldn't. Certain trouble kept me up, and now I need some productivity before I can succumb to sleep. I'm going to compose some short prose and then go to bed. (In case you were wondering, an excellent soundtrack to a moody night includes Another Time by Hurt, I Drive the Hearse and the entire second CD of The Incident by Porcupine Tree, and Stuck by The Heavy. Playlist, shuffle, repeat.)

(Also, Mogwai is good if you're writing and don't want to be distracted by bothersome lyrics.)

The world is blank from behind my eyelids. There is no image, only the gentle play of blurred light. The cold breeze blowing in across the waves pulls at my imagination, lifting it out of my body and far into the upper atmosphere. From there, to a soundtrack of oceanic rhythm, I look out over the bay upon whose sandy dress I stand.

My awe radiates outward. First, I marvel at the beauty of the surrounding mountains and ridges keeping the sea at bay. The snow dusting their peaks match the cold of the wind. It is a refreshing cold, not bitter.

Out past these rocky sentinels of the land, a thin white line of foam and sand. Water and earth embrace as old friends, as old as time. This is the threshold between one world and another, and it is magnificent.

Beyond all of this, beyond the tall mountains and the old friends stretches a field of the deepest blue. The sea is uniform, flecked by the foam of cresting waves. White, blue, white, blue, white blue. It matches the sky, a brighter blue softened by wisps of passing cloud. White, blue, white, blue, white blue.

I breathe deeply, filling my lungs with the fresh and salty air which washes over me. It is cleansing me. I let it. What trouble of life could carry itself proudly in this court? What burden could claim precedence over this vista? None. They are all driven out, unworthy.

I feel better now, in this place. I will return here when again the weight of the world presses down too heavily. It isn't going anywhere. Or perhaps it is, just with infinitely more stability and grace than myself.

RNC, The Party of Exclusion?

2009-11-24T17:04:00.000-05:00

Found here is an article about the RNC's latest ill-advised scheme.

Essentially, what we have here is a proposal by ten RNC Committee members to force candidates running for public office that want financial support and the endorsement of the RNC to adhere to at least eight of ten requirements. These requirements leave no room whatsoever for moderate candidates. They are (taken directly from the article linked above):

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

This may seem like a laundry list of basic conservatism, but the principle behind it is quite flawed. This leaves any potential candidate who disagrees with just three of these positions with three poor options:

(1) Maintain their integrity and either run as an independent or as a Republican without the financial support of their party.
(2) Sacrifice their honesty and lie on the application about their position in order to receive financing. Only after being elected could they reveal their true intentions.
(3) Defect and join the Democratic Party, who for all of their flaws don't systematically exclude moderates.

As a tentative Republican and a moderate to boot, it pains me to see my party acting in such a poor, exclusionary way. I have met Chairman Steele and he seems fairly level headed. I can only hope that he sees through this nonsense and convinces his fellow Republicans of the foolishness of this move. If not, this pushes the GOP one unfortunate step closer to a schism or, even more frightening, complete irrelevance.

This proposal cites, of all people, Republican hero Ronald Reagan as its inspiration and justification. Somehow, I have trouble believing that Ronald Reagan, were he still alive today, would support this move. For the sake of Ronald Reagan's good name, let's hope that the RNC backs away from this.

Book Review #1 - The Alphabet Challenge

2009-11-23T21:03:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the Rambling's first ever book review! From now on, I will be posting reviews of books that I read (and I read a LOT of them) for your pleasure. So I hope you enjoy reading these reviews and hopefully trying the good books out for yourself. If there is a book you like which you want me to read and write up a review for, just say so. I can't promise anything, but if I can fit it in, I will!

The Alphabet Challenge - Olga Gardner Galvin
(link to The Alphabet Challenge)
-------------------------
Brilliant! The Alphabet Challenge portrays New York City in the year 2061, at a time when political correctness and social welfare have been escalated to levels of absurdity. The U.S. Congress, supposedly locked in permanent, four-party gridlock, still manages to find the consensus to constantly add more and more federal laws protecting people from all sorts of discrimination and oppression, both real and imagined. In a world where driving without insurance will get you a slap on the wrist, but failing to recycle empty bottles or comply with zoning regulations will get you years in prison, Howell Langston Toland is trying to make a living. All he wants is to earn enough money to move with his ex-in-laws to Australia and to live a first-class life there, free of the oppressive regulation of the United States. He starts an organization called The Alphabet Challenge which promotes the equality of people whose names begin with letters in the second half of the alphabet. His attempt to scam people out of their money earns him national fame, a fight with the omnipresent corporation PeopleCare which resorts to strong-arm tactics to maintain control of the nation’s many activist groups, and an activist group of his own that he can’t seem to get rid of.

The Alphabet Challenge combines humor, potent social satire, and a very creative history of the U.S.A over the next fifty years to create a politically-charged, clever and hard-to-put-down story! This is a promising first effort by Olga Gardner Galvin, and I look forward to her future literary efforts.

Abstract Thought is Better Than You

2009-11-22T23:42:00.000-05:00

These are some thoughts written down while I was sitting around thinking about things the other night. It turns out, writing on paper makes the thoughts flow much more clearly.

Is this the pinnacle of human existence? Sitting in the quiet which only culture and society could provide, unworried by the uncertainty of the external world, thinking? I like to think so. MY admiration for the profundity of this achievement is Sagan-esque in quality. As our very existence is a cosmic near-impossibility, so too is the security of a quiet moment of profound thought nearly impossible on the cosmic level. Abstract thinking at all, beyond the basic evolutionary functions of primal instinct (eat, sleep, mate, survive, etc.), is hard to fathom. What evolutionary purpose does higher thought serve, what need does it satisfy? Clearly, as the advances of humanity prove, it serves a very great evolutionary purpose. It elevates humanity above all else in its sphere of existence.

If primal instinct provides the desire, and if higher thought provides the means (the will and the way), what can be derived? First, let us divide higher thought into two sub-categories to enhance the theory. Abstract thought, the first sub-division, is lingual in nature. The ability to condense ideas, actions, items, and everything else to be had in the physical world into words is a great advantage. Words allow for an accessible compilation of past experiences and thoughts, which can be easily referred to at a later point when they are needed. They can also be manipulated with far greater ease than the physical world itself. These factors allow for reason.

Quantitative thought, the second sub-division, is numeric in nature. As reason provides a system for understanding the world, quantitative thought allows for it to be interpreted, codified, and manipulated in the physical world. Here, reason is the method, quantity the input. For example, effect A operates as it does due to the interaction of input X and input Y. Reason allows us to identify these parts. Once we have done so, a quantitative calculation allows us to identify how best to alter X and Y to change the outcome. Let us say that outcome B is preferable to outcome A. Outcome A is a result of X=1 and Y=2. Through quantitative thought, we can identify that outcome B can be produced if X=2 and Y=3. We can then codify the numeric truth that A becomes B if X+1 and Y+1. In this way, the effect (outcome A) has been controlled to the specification (X+1 and Y+1) of the controller to a more desirable effect (outcome B).

We can now return to the question of what is derivative of the combination of primal thought, abstract thought, and quantitative thought. The answer has now become clear. Primal instinct provides the power for the whole process, reason provides the focus of that power, and quantitative thought provides direction for how the power should be used. What is derived from this process is a means of accomplishing tasks and goals far beyond the scope of any other cognitive creature in humanity’s sphere of existence. The applicability of this formula for control extends as far as this writer imagines human endeavor expanding.

I hope you all enjoyed these thoughts.

Briefly, Argument against Excessive Government Debt

2009-11-13T17:22:00.002-05:00

The argument against the government running up an excessive debt to be paid off at some later date has always been both an interesting philosophical debate and a pertinent real-world one. Does the government have any right to spend beyond the means provided it by its revenue? I may follow up later with a more comprehensive argument, but for now I'm just going to share a passage from Tom Paine's Rights of Man, Part One that struck me as being particularly applicable to the topic.

"Man has no property in man. Neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow. The parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period, has no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to bind or to control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or the people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this world, he has no longer any authority in directing who chall be its governors, or how its government shall be organized, or how administered." (The italics are Paine's). *

Now, I acknowledge that the specific topic which Paine addresses is NOT economic in nature, but rather whether or not the English monarchy has a hereditary right to rule over the English people. However, he argues from the logical base that inter-generational control is invalid, and emphasizes this as a broad truth with the words "in any shape whatever".

By running up a debt, and especially one as large as the current one, the government is promising that the American people are responsible for paying it back at some point. One might argue that the American government is responsible for this debt, not the people, but is not our government by the people and for the people? Therefore, the operating budget for the government is limited to what it is allotted by the people through taxes. However, according to the U.S. Treasury website, the United States has not had a balanced budget since the Eisenhower administration in 1957. So already, the American taxpayer is responsible for a debt imposed by the previous generation, and is set to impose an exponentially larger debt on the next generation through the actions of the government. I, personally, don't find this to be a tenable situation.

I believe remarks were also made about the unacceptability of imposing debt on future generations somewhere in the Federalist Papers. I'll have to look it up.

*Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part One, p. 438

Shake the Hand of Any Published Author You Know

2009-11-06T16:49:00.002-05:00

It turns out that once a person goes from the general "I want to write something, sometime" phase to the actual act of sitting down and writing, things get very complicated. I now understand what Jeff Smith-Luedke (himself a twice-published author) meant when he railed against people who are going to write a novel "once they have the time." There are so many more thing involved than time.

I'm starting to appreciate that as I'm transitioning from my general desire to be a writer to actually doing it. The ideas only connect themselves into something even remotely worthwhile after hours and hours of painfully refusing to cooperate. If the first sentence didn't take hours, its probably no good.

So as I begin this long and difficult process of pulling this story out of my mind and expressing it just so on paper, wish me luck. Here I go.

The Art of Footnotes

2009-08-30T19:10:00.002-04:00

Today's entry will seem a light and summery dish compared with the heavy food for thought that I usually post. For this I make no apologies. It is a relief to post something (for once) that won't require days and days of contemplation to piece together.

For a Political Thought class that I'm taking this semester, one of the required reading books is The Republic of Plato. The copy that I purchased is a very nice edition translated by Allan Bloom. He writes a very well thought out introductory essay and interpretive essay.

In the introduction, Bloom mentions that he has many things to add about the dialogue, but consigns them all to footnotes and the interpretive essay. I agree with him on this point, the translation should in no way be affected by the translator's personal thoughts or opinions.

So, excited for what promises to be a good reading, I flipped to Book I of the Republic itself. Trouble. Apparently Mr. Bloom has a lot of thoughts. Enough that Book I alone has 45 footnotes, mostly concentrated to towards the first ten pages or so of the book. This in itself isn't a problem, I appreciate the fact that Bloom is taking such care to make his translation transparent. The trouble lies in where he PUTS these footnotes. At the back of the book. I had to flip to the back of the book three times before the first sentence was complete. Needless to say, this makes it difficult to follow the overall arc of what's going on in the dialogue. Sort of an extreme case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Personally, I think he should have adopted the footnote style of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago' (or at least, the edition that I read. I'll re-update with WHICH edition and publisher I read once I look it up). All of the footnotes (and there are a lot, and they are very lengthy) can be found on the bottom of each page. Sometimes this means that there is very little of the actual text on the page, but it allows you to read or at least skim over the notes without having to flip away from the page you're reading from.

I suppose for the casual reader who may want to avoid any extra reading, this system of placing the footnotes in the middle of the text would be a potential annoyance. However, Bloom specifically states in his introduction that Plato is a difficult work at best, and that his translation is aimed to be most useful for 'serious scholars'.

Thoughts on the Iranian Affair

2009-06-19T13:15:00.009-04:00

First of all, I want to congratulate the Iranian people for taking to the street to protest against a government that clearly no longer represents their interests. It reminds us Americans of our own core principles that so often get lost in the cynical political maneuvering of today.

If the unconfirmed reports of Iranian military personnel being arrested for expressing a desire to support or even join the people's 'green' movement, its entirely possible that any moves by the establishment to crush these protests in a Tiananmen Square-style military move will collapse. With any luck, we can witness a fairly bloodless revolution like the one that broke apart the Soviet Union and brought down the Berlin Wall. Sadly, from the pictures that I have seen, there seems to be no end of street thugs willing to take hints from the government and crack some heads at the demonstrations.

I'd also like to comment on the use of technology by the Iranians to announce and expand their movement. I find it particularly interesting that a nation as repressive as Iran has such a dense population of bloggers. With the Iranian government actively repressing global media, sites such as Twitter and countless foreigners are reaching out to help these bloggers carry their story to the world. The international support they are garnering will be invaluable.

Politicians in the U.S. are currently pushing President Obama to declare official support for the reformists in the street. While I applaud their enthusiasm, I do have to agree (rather to my dismay) with the opinion of an article in the ultra-liberal magazine The Nation. They point out the fact that Americans are more than capable of showing their public support for the reformists without needing a government proclamation. An official government stance on the matter would only give the Iranian government a target for its blame. It would allow them to stir up anti-Western sentiments, blaming the unrest on 'western lackeys' and whatnot.

So, best of luck to the Iranian reformers, lets just hope that they can take hold of this opportunity to secure their FULL rights as people and not just oust a dictator in favor of a more subtle dictator.

Peace and strength to those on the streets tonight fighting for their rights,

Jaedon

Some interesting links:

http://bit.ly/iraJc

http://301.to/23o

Morality Revisited

2008-11-19T03:00:00.002-05:00

This is a research paper written for my English Composition class at the University of Akron. Enjoy!

Humanity’s collective memory reaches back far into its past, pushing into the fog of the long ago and recalling scenes of a simpler time. Humans, of course, do this individually. Everyone has vague recollections of their formative years, of undemanding times when the expectations of society have yet to exert their full pressure. In these years you see a more pure personality, one that hasn’t yet been sugar-coated with those social niceties that dress up our base instincts. Humanity as a whole underwent a similar process. In a primitive world where civilizations were separated effectively by large distances and seemingly insurmountable geographical hurdles, systems of morality and values were absolute. This child-like certainty of truth and goodness was often incompatible with the truth and certainty developed under widely varied circumstances by a different group. What is necessary for the desert folk of North Africa to survive may seem appalling to the highland folk of Northern Scotland and vice versa, but this potential denigration of one’s cultural practices by another culture does not give the weight of authority to either. This is because there is no ‘authority’ to be had. What follows here is a clear argument in defense of the notion that right and wrong are not universal truths but, rather, that morality and ethics are dependent on perspective and only gain the weight of authority in those societies, cultures, and groups to which they apply.

Deep within a forest, there exists a clearing. At the center of this clearing, there exists a tree. The tree in question is old, its branches gnarled, twisted, and blackened by brush fire and lightning alike. The forest with the clearing with the tree is the home of two tribes of natives. To the south of the tree is the South tribe. The South Tribe lives in a relatively calm and mild climate. In this climate all sorts of berries, edible roots, nuts, and pleasant clear-water springs provide a bountiful existence for those lucky enough to live there. The pleasant simplicity of this southern lifestyle breeds many things, but organized violence is not one of those things. What need has the tribe for organized violence when the land provides them with all of the necessities for survival? Many miles to the north, past the clearing of the tree, live the Northern Tribes. The northern climate is much harsher. The biting cold and resulting scarcity of thriving flora and fauna makes life much more difficult for the inhabitants of the area. These inhabitants of a harsher world are harsher people, having to provide for their families and communities by whatever means available. The instinctive will to survive introduces violence into the population, causing factions of these rival tribes to raid each other’s communities for food, supplies, and whatever other useful things they can lay their hands on. The economy of survival makes these people calculating, cynical, and crafty.

The gnarled blackened tree stands between these two societies of people. For the Northern Tribes, the tree stands as a symbol of prosperity. The northern people see the tree as a battle-scarred omen of good fortune as they pass through on occasional raids of the South Tribe. To them the tree symbolizes their harsh, calculating survival. The members of the South Tribe, of course, see a different picture. To them, the tree is a foul omen. For such people of prosperity and good living, the tree symbolizes the bitter foreign land to the north and the unpleasant raiders that often come out of it. Such association with negativity leads the southern people to imagine that the tree is cursed. The essential point here is that these two different groups of people see the tree in very different ways, although the tree is the same. For a member of the Northern Tribes, the tree absolutely represents good because it represents survival and the prosperity to be had in the South. The people of the South Tribe will likely assert that the tree absolutely represents evil because it represents the harsh men and life of the north and the bane that these people present to prosperous society. As a spectator far removed from either side of this conflict, the reader can see that each side’s belief is relative to its situation. The important question to apply here is to ask why the spectator, armed with this realization of relativity, cannot apply the theory to his own situation.

The first subject that must be dealt with when addressing the issue of moral relativity is that of religion. The majority of the world’s population today adheres to one of the variations of three major religions: Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. The basic foundation that all three of these religions have in common is that they all center on the concept of monotheism. Historically speaking, monotheism is the latest of two religious formats, the other being pantheism. Pantheism involves the worship of many gods with each god having its own realm of control while monotheism suggests that combining these petty, conflicting gods into a single deity. In terms of morality, this transition is an important marker in a shift in thought. Most pantheons had gods which engaged in seemingly petty arguments, laid wagers, used humans as pawns to do their bidding, and even engaged in sexual activity with humans and spawned half-godly offspring as a result. For example, in Greek lore the god Zeus was known to have frequent sexual relations with mortal women. Rather than appealing to some heavenly sense of right and wrong, societies based their moral conduct on more practical grounds. Indeed, how could behavior such as murder or sexual activity be condemned by humans in terms of ultimate good and evil when their own gods participated in such activity with an appetite! What’s more, when pantheons collided (as with the expansion of the Roman Empire), they tended to be fairly capable of accommodating new gods without sacrificing the worship of the old. By uniting the powers and responsibilities of all of the gods in a single god, monotheistic religions make the jump from the relativity of competing gods and cultures being embraced under a single religion to creating a single, universal standard by which to adhere. New gods that could easily fit into a pantheon would most likely contradict in some way the absolute standards of the new monotheism. As a single deity cannot argue and quarrel in the way that multiple deities can, room for disagreement or competition between ideas rapidly disappears. A single God encompasses all of the supernatural power of the world and so must be omnipotent; similarly the morality of this single God must also be the absolute morality.

With this transition we can observe the polarization of competing ideas into those of absolute good and absolute evil. The neutral underworld, the final resting place of souls in Greek and Roman religion, becomes the purifying Hell of Christianity in which sinners must suffer for violating the absolute good. Similarly, the negative and positive aspects of life become blessings and punishments for abiding by or violating an absolute sense of good. The trouble with the idea of monotheistic absolute good is that the very existence of more than one monotheistic religion an underlying relativity to the whole affair.

In his book, A Primer on Postmodernism, Stanley Grenz explains that ever since the Enlightenment the pursuit of truth has been viewed as inherently good. “The modern scientist, for example,” he points out, “considers it axiomatic that the discovery of knowledge is always good.” (Grenz, 4) He goes on to explain that the postmodernist intellectual movement holds that truth and, by extension, good and evil are always relative and not inherent. The shift in the intellectual community towards postmodernism helps to address some of the more difficult conflicts between modernist science and ethics. During the twentieth century the early rumblings of moral relativism and postmodernism could be heard in the thoughts of men such as Sir Isaiah Berlin and Max Weber. They recognized that at least within a single society that there are “a plurality of values, equally genuine, equally ultimate, above all equally objective […]” (Lukes, 98) Values within societies and between them are experiencing a reevaluation as the very frame of intellectual and philosophical thought evolves.

Being that morality is often tied to religion, discovering scientifically that the predisposition for religion is hard-wired somehow into the human brain and that small differences from brain to brain would result in different religious outcomes would go a long way in supporting the idea of moral relativism. Professor and biologist Richard Dawkins attempts to do this, to some extent. In his book, The God Delusion, Dawkins elaborates on the idea that aspects of the mind (which he refers to as ‘modules’), like other aspects of nature, evolved through a Darwinian process. “There is a model for dealing with kinship, a module for dealing with reciprocal exchanges, a module for dealing with empathy, and so on. Religion can be seen as a by-product of the misfiring of several of these modules, for example the modules for forming theories of other minds, for forming coalitions, and for discriminating in favor of in-group members and against strangers.” (Dawkins, 208). The resounding scientific refutation of religion on all fronts that Dawkins seeks probably will not occur any time soon, but the postulation of thoughts, ideas, and scientific research in the search for that refutation can and will clearly have an impact on how we look at our own perception of the world and begin to comprehend how this system of perception that we exist in actually works.

With these thoughts in mind, the question of the relativity of morality becomes a simple one. Yes, morality certainly is relative. When a system of moral absolutism is in effect, the very existence of a second system of absolutism makes the first relative to the second. All that remains is whether or not to dogmatically assert the absolute and total goodness and righteousness of a certain standard over other societies, communities, and cultures. Whether it be a reversion to pantheism, a progression towards atheism, or simply the advent of greater scientific understanding of the mind and the dynamics of group perception, monotheism cannot reasonably continue to insist that its single moral absolute, its single Truth, is applicable everywhere and all of the time. Eventually the postmodern shift and everything that comes with it will cause monotheism to adapt, and even to evolve in the Darwinian fashion towards a more competent system that can operate in the postmodern world.

Works Cited

Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. New York: Houghton, 2008.

Grenz, Stanley. A Primer on Postmodernism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.

Lukes, Steven. Moral Relativism. New York: Picador, 2008.

Videotape

2008-10-06T02:50:00.011-04:00

I want to step back from the verbose philosophical thoughts that go into this blog (although a lot of them never make it past the draft stage) for a moment. A lot of my thoughts and emotions on any subject are often driven by a beautiful piece of music, and the vague yet somehow profound images of Radiohead's song 'Videotape' from their album 'In Rainbows' are just the sort that nudge me over the edge into deep thought.

Although the riveting percussion rhythm found on the album isn't present in this live recording, you really get a feel for the emotion Thom Yorke puts into the song. I urge you to listen to the album version as well, and hope you enjoy the solemn beauty of this as much as I did.

When I'm at the pearly gates
This'll be on my videotape
My videotape

When Mephistopheles is just beneath
and he's reaching up to grab me

This is one for the good days
And I have it all here
In red blue green
Red blue green

You are my centre when I spin away
out of control on videotape
On videotape

This is my way of saying goodbye
Because I can't do it face to face
So I'm talking to you after its too late
From my videotape

No matter what happens now
I won't be afraid
Because today is the most perfect day I've ever seen

The Language Catalyst

2008-06-29T17:03:00.004-04:00

The following paper was my senior research paper in high school. While there are quite a few topics in it that I would eventually like to expand upon, this is the paper in its original text.

The Language Catalyst:

How the Language You Learn Affects How You Think

Since the beginning of civilization, humans have been trying to understand the world around them. This understanding has two basic elements: perception and comprehension. The senses take in sensory data and send it to the brain to be sorted out into understandable facts. If the eyes perceive an object to be red, the brain will comprehend this object as red. However, this basic recognition of this color is only useful to the individual who is doing the perceiving and only so long as he or she can recall the specifics of the object later. Also, in this raw format the information acquired is impossible to transfer to another individual, quite a barrier for a social creature such as the human. To overcome these obstacles an organizer and communicator is required. This comes in the form of language. Language allows the individual to assign all the nuances and complexities of the perception of the color a simple name: red. It also allows for the transfer of this information to another individual: “This object is red.” More complex thoughts such as “These two objects are both red,” or “This object is not red, but that object is,” become exponentially easier to process, retain, and share.

It quickly becomes obvious that language is integral to comprehension, but this raises important questions. Is language an inactive factor in the comprehension process, merely organizing and communicating without influence? Does its central role allow it to directly influence how the incoming information is processed? What is the method by which language alters the final information? How is being aware of this alteration of perception crucial to the higher study of the world around us? These questions will become the focal points of this paper.

In 1884 a child named Edward Sapir was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Lauenburg, Germany. Sapir and his family immigrated to the United States in 1889 and he went on to earn a Ph.D. at Columbia University. His passion was in the field of anthropology and he came under the influence of fellow German and anthropologist Franz Boas. [Landin] During his later teaching career, he mentored a particularly bright student named Benjamin Lee Whorf who shared the same passions and interests as himself. The result of their combined work is known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. [Swoyer] The Hypothesis, also known as the theory of linguistic relativity, suggests that differences in language are related to differences in perception. Sapir had a particularly strong interest in the cultural aspects and impact of this theory, and devoted much of his personal studies to the application of the theory to the languages of the American Indian tribes. [Landin] Additionally, he looked at speech from a physical point of view, considering the functions of the organs required to create speech. He suggests that biologically speaking we are not fitted primarily to talk. Rather, speech is the result of the careful development of secondary functions of the organs involved. [Sapir, Section I] These studies which he was so passionate about led him to the conclusion that speaking and comprehending the world in a different language than someone else can affect the very perception of that world. The difference between the hypothesis of Sapir and Whorf and the theory of linguistic determinism, which this paper considers, is that linguistic determinism is semantically different, placing a higher importance on language in the overall composition of factors that impact perception.

One of the most visible pieces of evidence supporting linguistic determinism is the fact that not only do languages reflect the environment around its speakers, the speakers perceive their world differently due to the structure laid down by their language. For example, the language of the indigenous people of Lapland and northern Finland has twenty-seven separate words for snow. Thick snow, powdery snow, wet snow, and various other possibilities all have their own word in the language of these people. However, there is no single word for ‘snow’. In the mind of these natives, a light, powdery snow is a completely different thing than a thick, wet snow. Through the use and differentiation of these words, they actually gain a heightened understanding of the snow. To them, the variations in snow are as diverse as the differences in species of trees are to us. The major difference between the two cultures here is that languages such as English have developed a broader sense of the word ‘tree’. An American could point to a maple and an oak and have the lingual ability to articulate the overall concept of ‘tree’ that connects them. A Lapp in the same situation with two variants of snow does not have this option, and is thus essentially unaware of it.

Consider for a moment a language much closer to home. The Germans have developed a word, Schadenfreude, which essentially means ‘malicious joy’. Due to the fact that English and German language structure is extremely similar, an English-speaking person has the ability to translate Schadenfreude roughly into malicious joy and gain a basic understanding of its meaning and the correlation to their own situation. However, the German has an easier access to this idea both linguistically and mentally through the word. This ease of access heightens awareness, and this heightened awareness has the potential to affect the very analysis of any given situation, and thus the overall worldview of the person involved.

A recent study involving the Pirahã, a tribe of hunter-gatherers who make their home on the banks of the Maici River in

Brazil

, has provided another piece of information supporting the theory. The number system in the Pirahã language is very limited, consisting of words for ‘one,’ ‘two,’ and ‘many’. Such “one, two, many” languages are often found in association with primitive cultures in which the need to count any higher than two is rarely, if ever, encountered. The study placed members of the tribe in a matching exercise with a scientist in which the scientist would lay out a given number of objects and the Pirahã would attempt to match the number of objects. When the numbers moved much beyond three, the tribe member found themselves incapable of distinguishing exactly how many objects had been placed before them. [Biever] This indicates that the language structure of their culture has not provided them with the necessary tools to perceive differences between amounts beyond their very limited system of numbering. Clearly this aspect of their language has substantially affected their thought process, disabling the cognitive power of the brain to perceive larger numbers though disuse and subsequent unawareness that the talent even exists. Linguistic determinism, therefore, plays a key role in deciding which of the human brain’s innate abilities will be developed. Just as the Pirahã develop limited number skills via their language because they have little need for the skill in their environment, the speakers of the more advanced languages have far more developed number systems to accommodate a larger need to count in their environments.

Sapir once proposed that language has a tendency to drift on its own due to various changing factors of the environment of the speakers. [Landin] However, with the dramatic influence of language on thought highlighted by studies such as the Pirahã number study, an important question arises: If the Pirahã miss the perception due to their language structure, what am I missing? The global academic community has long known that to acquire a greater understanding of any given field, one must gain a basic understanding of the language of the preeminent scholars of the field. This exchange of ideas between scholars of different native languages is crucial to progress as it allows ideas to be viewed from a different perspective and language structure. The expedient progress of academia in the future will rely as much on bridge-building between the scholarly communities of different languages as it will on the innate talent of the scholars themselves. [Barany]

While a complete overhaul of the academic languages may one day be feasible to through off the yoke of the more burdensome aspects of current language structure, the sciences are going to need a more immediately practical solution for overcoming the language barrier. The short-term solution lies in the liberal redefining of words or phrases in order to convey ideas fluidly that ordinarily would get caught up in diction and lose their original potency. Philosophy, for example, is a field of academia so immersed in abstract concepts that a newcomer to its texts would need to be fluent in several languages and have a list of redefinitions on hand just to fully understand the nuances of some of the proposals. While this departure from simple language may be daunting to a newcomer, it makes the philosopher’s conveyance of thoughts infinitely easier.

With the modern world moving faster than ever before, the relevance of linguistic determinism and its influence on progress is growing. With solid evidence coming in from Northern Finland to Germany to Central Brazil and lucid minds such as Sapir, Whorf, and their successors laying down the groundwork for a greater understanding of how our own language affects our worldview, the global academic community cannot afford to continue coercing brilliant minds into the parochial structure of broken English as a common language. Language is central to perception and understanding and allows or denies new perspective on old ideas. As the world looks to the future it should take care not to allow itself to fall into patterns of language and thought that inhibit significant forward progress. Let hard sciences such as physics free themselves willingly of the lingual norms which abstract sciences such as metaphysics and philosophy have cast off out of necessity.

A Blasphemy Against Humanity

2007-11-28T22:10:00.000-05:00

Although I am a non-believer in a higher entity, I have the deepest respect for those who exercise their right of faith in a higher power, so long as their faith is based on a personal meditation and consideration. I have no arguments with religion of quiet, personal faith.

It is events such as this that I cannot hold the same peace with organized, fudamentalist religion. Gillian Gibbons, a British teacher at a private school in the Sudan, has been arrested for allowing her students to name a toy bear Muhammed. The quasi-legal basis of her arrest lies in Sudanese Legal Code, which is based heavily on Islamic Sharia law. Apparently, allowing a toy bear to be named after the Islamic prophet is blasphemy. Coming from the society that riots and threatens murder when an artist a continent away depicts the Prophet in picture, this really isn't surprising. Now, of course, the Sudanese people have every right to believe that such depiction is blasphemy. But I cannot restrain myself to respect of a practice that subjects a person of a different ethnicity and belief to such base and barbarous punishment as is called for in Sharia Law. 40 lashes, imprisonment and a fine for the perceived blasphemy of a teddy bear? This theocratic departure from reason and logic to impose irrational beliefs upon an innocent person strains the patience and diplomacy of every nerve in my humanist body.

I don't usually get this ruffled over any issue, but this latest blatant infringement on the basics of human rights by a government notorious for blatant infringement of human rights cannot be answered with a silent acceptance. Thus, I join my American voice with the chorus of British outcry. Release Gillian Gibbons from the bonds of illogic and injustice. If British governmental intervention is not enough to step between a radical religion and its victim, a battle for the introduction of humanity into the Sudan will have been lost.

Perhaps a little over-dramatic in it's presentation, but reader, I hope you will understand my outrage and feel similarly provoked.

Of Progress and Self-Control

2007-11-06T22:20:00.000-05:00

This essay is the result of an assignment given to my English III class my junior year of high school. We were instructed to mimic the series of contemplative essays by Sir Francis Bacon. For my topic I chose humanity's progress through the ages and the advantages and dangers of being so advanced a species. The following is the result of my musings.

Ever since the Neanderthal and his even earlier counterparts discovered their ability to shape the nature around them to their advantage, humanity has set itself on a course for unmatched progress. From the bone dagger and the wheel to electricity and space travel, he has been slowly but surely finding new ways to better his own life and gain more knowledge about the world he is changing. This cycle of knowledge and betterment has been going on for millions of years. But what if he has come to learn so much that it destroys him? For whatever reason, man has always had a tendency towards the destruction of his fellow man. When the Neanderthal, after a millennia of slow development, fashioned himself an ax, it almost immediately became a tool not only for work, but also for fighting. This development took millions of years. However, as humanity comes to understand more and more about the world it now rules, the time lapse between the creation of an idea and its terrible byproduct has decreased exponentially. It took less than 500 years for simple iron cannonballs to become a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the planet that had nurtured its creators since the beginning of time. Several times over. As a rule, humans will continue to discover the world around them and realize the possibility for tremendous and terrible power capable of destroying everything he knows. His thirst for understanding, while potentially fatal, is not necessarily so. It does not need to end in disaster. However, before humanity equips itself with the wondrous technology and terrifying power of the near future, it must learn self-control. Any civilization with the means to destroy its own planet cannot be burdened down by sudden primal urges to kill his fellow man. He would inevitably destroy himself.

Moral Relativity

2007-10-03T01:11:00.000-04:00

Last night in the together4peace chat room, an interesting discussion took place concerning morality and its relativity. Do the concepts of good and evil exist outside of the realm of human perception? As usual, an excellent discussion ensued (albeit with a few minor disruptions). The basic ideas of this discussion (as I perceived them to be) are laid out below.

Is it possible for concepts like good and evil to exist outside of the human experience? For example, a twisted, blackened tree in the middle of a forest that is deemed an "evil" tree by the natives who live there. If the natives find reason to abandon the forest for better land or some equally mundane reason and human knowledge of the tree fades and eventually disappears, is the tree still evil? Does it still possess this metaphysical quality of evil, or is the catalyst of human interpretation necessary to give the tree such a quality? While I, positioned where I am within human experience, can never truly be certain of the answer to such a question, I'm going to venture to use my wonderful power of inference and experience to try and give an answer to this question.

The human brain is complex. While this is a terrible understatement, it gives me a jumping-off point to begin. Man and his amazing capacity for complex thought have revealed to him the limitations of his own understanding. While religion has attempted for thousands of years to satisfy the resulting hunger for explanation of that which is beyond our comprehension with mystical deities and beings. When we could not understand what caused the seasons to change or the sun to rise and set, we developed complex stories and divine spirits to explain away the invisible forces that drove these phenomena. Of course, humanity has come to find the true, physical reasons behind these events and thus come to discard Apollo with his sun chariot and Persephone and the forbidden pomegranates as logical explanations.

Any astute reader will immediately point out, "But those are physical phenomena! We're discussing metaphysical concepts such as good and evil!" While the distinction is applicable from a human perspective (we do not feel the rising and setting of the sun in the same way that we feel horror at an atrocity), one must step outside of these boundaries to note the similarities. A human itself is merely the blood and nerves and tissues and muscles that make up its mass. So if within our illusion of consciousness caused by the complex workings of our very physical brain we are presented with that feeling of horror, is it not at its root a physical event rather than a metaphysical one?

With that in mind we can begin to strike at the heart of the topic: the relativity of morality and other metaphysical events. The evil tree image invoked earlier can be applied here, taking into consideration three varying scenarios:

Prima is a native living in the forest. He subconsciously relates the twisted, blackened nature of the tree to some bad experience he has had in the past. He consequently deems the tree evil in nature. The tree is therefore assigned the quality of "evil" in Prima's mind.

Secunda is a native of a different, far more violent tribe living in the same forest. He likens the trees physical qualities to his defeated foes. Deeming this a positive omen for his tribe's continued victory in battle, the tree is therefore assigned the quality of "good" in Secunda's mind.

Years later, the tree remains unchanged but both Prima and Secunda and their tribes have long since left the area, leaving it devoid of human comprehension. The physical aspects of the tree are not subject to the interpretation of human experience, therefore remain unassigned to any abstract qualities that the human brain might develop. The tree is thus neither "good" or "evil", merely existent.

In all three scenarios the tree has been subjected to a variation of human comprehension. Yet, in all three cases the result was different. For the tree to be proven "evil", the evil quality must withstand any variation in perception. For example, the physical constants of the tree itself, such as its twisted shape and blackened color, remain unchanged from example to example. The constant of a moral affiliation is physical, yes, but not in relation to the tree itself. The concept of an "evil" tree is the physical result of the workings of Prima's mind, just as the concept of a "good" tree is the physical result of the workings of Secunda's mind.

Thus, morality and similar concepts are proven not only to be physical rather than metaphysical, but also relative to the human perceiving them.