A GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF OBJECTIVISM David King 58 Spring Valley Drive Milford WY 82520 It is my intention to present an introduction, from the perspective of a scientist, to the ideas of this philosophy, a guide to other sources of these ideas, and some applications of the ideas to important problems. In order to promote the maximum dissemination of these ideas, I have decided to place all my writings into the Public Domain. I grant permission to anyone to use my writings, or any parts of them, in any way that may help to further the spread of reason in our society. All my essays can be obtained from me on computer disk. Send me a 3 1/2 inch floppy, IBM/MS-DOS format, and I will load it up for you. The files are all in straight ASCII text. Please copy this floppy. This guide consists of these five files, and several essays which are titled CHAPTRnn. Throughout these works I use *'s in a careful way so that computer searches can easily be run. INTRODUCTION AN OBJECTIVIST DICTIONARY A HANDBOOK OF LOGICAL FALLACIES BOOKLIST A KEYWORD INDEX OF: The Objectivst Newsletter Basic Principles of Objectivism The Objectivist Principles of Efficient Thinking The Ayn Rand Letter The Psychology of Romantic Love The Objectivist Forum Atlas Shrugged The Virtue of Selfishness The Fountainhead Chapter 1 AYN RAND AND OBJECTIVISM - PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE Starting with a critique of Rand, I move into a presentation of Objectivism, then to a consideration of the connection between Science and Philosophy, with some additional comments in which I try to make the scientific mentality a little less mysterious to people who have not been explicitly schooled in a scientific field. * Randism vs Objectivism * Rand's incorrect definition of selfish * Rand's personal statist views * Rand's failure to distinguish between politics and economics * What is Objectivism? * The Relationship Between Philosophy and Science * How Scientists Can Build Bombs * The Scientific Attitude of Mind * Some History of Science * Miscellaneous Comments on the Nature of Science * Examples of the Scientific Attitude applied * Some Critiques of Science Chapter 2 THINKING * Tools of Thought * Language * Strength And Leverage * IQ As A Potential * The Major High-IQ Societies * Useful Thinking Techniques * Procedures for Carrying on a Discussion * Criticism * The Scientific Method * The Military Staff Study * Notes on the Significance of Intellectual Context * Faulty Thought Processes * Piagetian Operational Stages * The Use Of Emotions As Tools Of Cognition * Orwell - Newspeak - Brainwashing - Prolefeed Chapter 3 THE IMPORTANCE OF CORRECT DEFINITIONS * On the Importance of Correct Definitions * How to Make a Definition Some approaches to defining a few interesting concepts * Definition * Certainty * Probability * Expense * To Be * References * Envy * Instinct * Luck * Standard vs Purpose * Anarchy * Nonsense Chapter 4 ECONOMICS FROM AN OBJECTIVIST VIEWPOINT Part One: History - Property - Capitalism - Money * Objective vs Subjective Economic Value * History * The Corporate Enterprise * Political Power vs Economic Power * John Locke on Property * Some Questions about Property * Information as Property * Capitalism * Wealth * The Need For Money * The Evolution of Money and the Nature of inflation * The Effects of Inflation Chapter 5 ECONOMICS FROM AN OBJECTIVIST VIEWPOINT Part Two: Several miscellaneous issues * Foundations * Bootstrap Economics * Economic Calculations * The Tragedy of the Commons * The Public Goods Problem * Fascism-Communism * Marx * The Luddite Phenomenon * Liability * Productivity * Trade vs Theft Chapter 6 RIGHTS AND FREEDOM * Natural Rights * There is no such Thing as Freedom Chapter 7 THE ETHICS UNDERLYING SOCIAL STRUCTURE * Some Ethical Concepts Defined * Philosophy Underlies Society * Foundation of Law * Voting * Majority Rule * Stateolatry * Miscellaneous Ethical Topics * Abortion * Honesty vs Dishonesty * Link Between the Individual and the Group * What is a slave? * Profound Ethical Concerns * Coerced Compassion * Effect of Social Complexity on Statism * Dual Ideologies * Hallmark of a Conservative * Compromise * Libertarian Foreign Policy Chapter 8 GOVERNMENT * Government defined * Descriptions of Government * Corruption in Government * The Real Function of Government * What Government Responds to * Political Intentions are Irrelevant * Failures and Contradictions of Government * The War On Drugs * Self-Defense Chapter 9 BEYOND GOVERNMENT * Limited Government * Jury * Government is a Mistake * Arguments Against Anarchism * A Covenant for a Union of Sovereign Americans Chapter 10 RELIGION * Christianity vs Objectivism * Christianity vs the Lightning Rod * Christianity vs Women and Sex * Interview with God * Robert Ingersoll on Religion * Religious Roots of Evil * Attila and the Witch Doctor * Basic Principles of Objectivism - Nathaniel Branden - from Lecture #4 * The Case of God vs the Case of Reality * God as Big Daddy * Religion and Insanity Chapter 11 SPIRITUALITY, ART, AND BEAUTY * The Spirituality of a Scientist * The Credo of a Rational Man * Oath * Love * Marriage * Table Blessing * Art * Beauty * The Need for and Function of Art and Beauty * The Nature of Fiction * Music * Dancing * Some Writing Techniques * The Destruction of Art under Statism * Miscellaneous Comments on Art Chapter 12 THE DISASTROUS STATE OF AMERICAN EDUCATION * SAT score decline * High School dropout rate * Quality of Education * Quality of the Teachers * Futility of Reform * Principles underlying government schooling * Tragic consequences Chapter 13 THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATION * Alienation * Principles have Consequences * Freedom/Slavery schizophrenia * Financial Manipulation * Standard of Living * Dependency * Dictatorship American Style * Inheritance Chapter 14 LIBERTARIAN GUERILLA WARFARE * Rebellion against Government * The Peaceful Means Argument * Injustice is Everyone's Fight * The Problem of the Innocents * Questions to Determine Philosophical Orientation * Prerequisites of a revolution * Thoughts on Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare * Strategy * Tactics * Morale Chapter 15 TO SHRUG - AN ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE FOR AN INDIVIDUALIST * Underlying Philosophy * Historical Precedent * Implementation of Shrugging * A Different World-View * Escape from the moneylenders * A suitable dwelling * Lifetime supplies * Income reduction * Occupation * Security * The Moral is the Practical * Recommendations * Bibliography __ AN OBJECTIVIST DICTIONARY compiled by David King 58 Spring Valley Drive Milford WY 82520 Many of the items here are not, strictly speaking, definitions - but they do provide some useful insight to the meanings of the concepts. To find each word, search: * word REFERENCES AS :Atlas Shrugged (hardback). Basic :Basic Principles of Objectivism lectures DK :The cogitations of David King. DS :The Disowned Self (hardback). FNI :For the New Intellectual (paperback). HPD :How You Can Profit From the Coming Devaluation (hardback - index) IOE :Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (the original green book). PRL :The Psychology of Romantic Love (hardback). PSE :The Psychology of Self-Esteem (hardback - index) SEM :Recordings of seminars held by Nathaniel Branden about l970 Think :Principles of Efficient Thinking lectures VOS :The Virtue of Selfishness (hardback - index) WAR :Who Is Ayn Rand (paperback). YY/Mmm/pp (e.g.: 67/May/11) :The Objectivist Newsletter or The Objectivist MmmYY-pp (e.g.: Apr87-10) :The Objectivist Forum ------------------------------------------- * ABSURD That which denies the axiom of Identity. That which contradicts itself. That which contravenes an ostensive concept. * ACHIEVEMENT Journal of the Institute for Objectivist Studies May93 The creation of values. * ADMIRATION PSE-129 The pleasure a man takes in the character and achievements of another human being. * ALIENATION Avoid unpleasantness and then avoid the fact that you are avoiding. AS-833 They pretend to themselves that they are not pretending. * ALTRUISM 62/Jul/27 Man must make the welfare of others his primary concern and must place their interests above his own; he has no right to exist for his own sake. * ANXIETY 67/Jan/12 Response to the threatened loss of a value. 66/Nov/7 A state of dread experienced in the absence of any actual threat. What you experience when your body prepares for a challenge that is not here in reality. If the challenge actually exists your excitement and energy can flow into the activity of coping with the challenge. Since the challenge only exists in fantasy there is nothing you can actually do and all your energy and excitement gushes out in trembling and other symptoms of anxiety. This also happens if the challenge is present in reality but you don't dare attempt it yet. * ART 63/Oct/37 65/Apr/16 A selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgements. Metaphysical values are those which reflect an artist's fundamental view of the nature of man and the nature of the universe in which he lives. * ASTROLOGY See Chapter 3 * ATTRIBUTE Basic2 An aspect or characteristic of an object which can be isolated and identified conceptually but which in fact cannot be separated from an object and cannot exist by itself. * AUTHORITARIANISM is the tiny, unnatural wire that reaches out to connect one person's brain with another person's muscles. * AXIOM FNI-155 A statement that identifies the base of knowledge. * BEAUTY DK A concept of consciousness. It is the integration of one or more experiences of pleasure along with one or more observations of a manifestation of one's values. * BLASPHEMY is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth. What last year's leaf says to this year's bud. * CAPITAL Accumulated stock of value in excess of immediate consumptive requirements. * CAPITALISM 63/Nov/44 65/Oct/47 65/Nov/54 A social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, and in which all property is privately owned. The process of using wealth not for immediate consumption but for the creation of more wealth. See Chapter 4 * CAUSALITY 66/Mar/9 AS-1037 The law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entity that acts; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature. * CELEBRATION Basic16 An action undertaken not as a means to an end but as an end in itself, for the purpose of giving an objective expression to the enjoyment of a value achieved in the past. It objectifies the pleasure of consumption after the successful production of a value. * CENSORSHIP 62/Mar/9 A government edict that forbids the discussion of some specific subjects or ideas. * CERTAINTY DK A state of mind in which a person perceives a correlation between his mental images and Reality. See Chapter 3 * CONFIDENCE AS-1019 Basic10 The knowledge that the judgement of one's mind is valid. * CHAOS * RANDOM Compare the behavior of commuters dashing through a train station at rush hour with the behavior of a large, terrified crowd. The activity of the commuters resembles chaos in that although an observer unfamiliar with train stations might think people were running every which way without reason, order does underlie the surface complexity: eveyone is hurrying to catch a specific train. The traffic flow could rapidly be changed simply by announcing a track change. In contrast, mass hysteria is random. No simple announcement would make a large mob become cooperative. * CHARACTER 67/Mar/4 The sum of the principles and values that guide a man's actions in the face of moral choices. * PERSONALITY PRL-75 The externally perceivable sum of all the psychological traits and characteristics that distinguish a human being from all other human beings. 67/Mar/4 The superficial mannerisms by which his principles are acted out. * COGNITIVE * NORMATIVE 65/Mar/10 65/Apr/15 Cognitive abstractions identify the facts of reality. Normative abstractions evaluate the facts, thus prescribing a choice of values and a course of action. Cognitive abstractions deal with that which IS; normative abstractions deal with that which OUGHT TO BE (in the realms open to man's choice). Cognitive abstractions form the epistemological foundation of science; Normative abstractions, of morality and of art. * COINS HPD-178 Real money transformed into a recognizable shape and weight in order to facilitate exchange. * TOKEN HPD-180 A money substitute in metallic form rather than paper. * COMMON GOOD 65/Dec/55 An undefinable concept. "Good" and "Value" pertain only to a living organism - to an individual living organism - not to a disembodied aggregate of relationships. If taken literally its only possible meaning is: the sum of the good of all the individual men involved. But in that case the concept is meaningless as an ethical criterion: it leaves open the question of what is the good of individual men and how does one determine it? The concept becomes an ethical blank check for those who use it. It means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others. * COMMUNICATION DK Transfer of information from one mind to another such that both minds recognize the meaning of the information. * COMPLEX A complex system is one comprised of many agents, each of which interacts with its neighbors and can adapt to change. * COMPROMISE 62/Jul/29 64/Jan/1 An adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. This means that both parties have some valid claim and some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a base for their deal. It is only in regard to concretes or particulars implementing a mutually accepted basic principle that compromise can occur. * CONCEPT IOE-17 A mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s) with their particular measurements omitted. 65/Apr/15 A mental integration of two or more perceptual concretes which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by means of a specific definition. 67/Jun/7 The meaning of a concept consists of the units - the existents - which it integrates, including all the characteristics of these units. * ANTI-CONCEPT The Ayn Rand Letter pg 1 An unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The use of anti-concepts gives the listener a sense of approximate understanding. * CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS IOE-33 A mental integration of two or more instances of a psychological process possessing the same distinguishing characteristics with the particular contents and the measurements of the action's intensity omitted. * CONCEPTUALIZE 66/Dec/13 To organize an indiscriminate perceptual chaos in terms of essential characteristics. * CONSCIOUSNESS PSE-3 5 The faculty and state of awareness. The condition of an organism in cognizing, perceiving, or sensing. WAR-63 The function of consciousness is perception, cognition and the initiation and direction of action. * COURAGE - BASIC10 The knowledge that to act on the judgment of one's mind is practical. AS-1019 The practical form of being true to existence. * CURRENCY HPD-178 Money substitutes in paper form. * DECIDOPHOBIA The fear of making the decisions that give shape to one's life. * DEDUCTION IOE-30 The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept. * DEFLATION HPD-178 A decrease in the amount of money substitutes that are in excess of the stored stock of real money. * DEFINITION 63/Jan/3: Identify the specific meaning of a concept by isolating the facts of reality to which the concept refers and of which the concept is a mental integration. The purpose of defining one's terms is to afford oneself the inestimable benefit of knowing what one is talking about. 67/Jul/9: To keep a concept distinct from all others, to keep it connected to a specific group of existents. HPD-29: To draw a sharp line between what IS a certain thing and what isn't. BASIC6: A statement that identifies the essential characteristics of the aspect of reality which a concept denotes. IOE-76: A statement that identifies the nature of a concept's units. See Chapter 3 * DEMAND DEPOSIT HPD-178 the storing of your money in a bank but still available on demand, for which you usually pay a fee. * DEPRESSION HPD-178 62/Aug/33 The liquidation period following a prolonged inflationary cycle and/or a liquidation period in which governmental restraint of trade prevents orderly liquidation thereby prolonging a recession. * DEPRESSION 67/Jan/12 Response to the accomplished loss of a value. Dec85- 9 "I want something that I value very highly, something that I believe is crucial to my happiness, and I don't think I can ever have it." Included in the evaluation is a strong element of hopelessness about the future. If the conclusion applied only to the present - only to not achieving some value for the time being - the resulting emotion would be sadness, hurt, and disappointment, but not depression. * SUFFERING 62/Jan/3 The emotion that results from the frustration of one's desire or the destruction of one's values. * DESPAIR Gandalf: Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. * DETERMINISM 63/May/17 Denies the existence of any element of freedom or volition in man's consciousness. It holds that every action, desire and thought of man is determined by forces beyond his control. But if man believes what he HAS to believe; if he is not free to test his beliefs against reality and to validate or reject them; if the actions and content of his mind are determined by factors that may or may not have anything to do with reason logic and reality; then he can never know if his conclusions are true or false. If his capacity to judge is not free there is no way for a man to discriminate between his beliefs and those of a raving lunatic. (Or to assert as truth the postulate of determinism.) * DEVALUATION HPD-178 Repudiation of the government's promise to honor its money substitutes at the stated rate of exchange. * DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM WAR-16 AS-320,952 Man's mind and its content are determined by the material factors of production existing at a given time. Discovery of Freedom by R. W. Lane: The communist is looking for the Authority that controls men and taking it for granted that since the man does not control himself then the Authority that controls him must be his situation. * DISSOCIATION The failure of the power to recall things which normally should be remembered; an interruption or repression of memory. * DOGMA A set of beliefs accepted on faith. * DUTY 70/Jul/3 The distinction is between realistic necessity (obligation) and human whims (duty). A debt you owe to yourself to fulfill. Obligations you have assumed voluntarily. See Integrity, * ECONOMICS is the production, transportation, exchange and consumption of wealth. It is also the study of these activities. There are two broad divisions of economics: Personal (in which a person produces wealth and then consumes that wealth himself) and Social (in which more than one person is involved in the production or consumption of wealth). Macroeconomics: the study of the money supply, the GNP, and the regulation of credit on a nationwide scale. (A lecture on mass transit systems.) Microeconomics: the study of the aggregate of individual market transactions. (A study of the average gas mileage of the local buses.) Picoeconomics (Browneian economics): the study of the relationship of individual human beings to the economic world each lives in. (Directions to the nearest bus stop.) * EGO - PSE-148 161 A man's ego is his mind - his faculty of awareness - the faculty that preserves the inner continuity of his own existence and generates his sense of personal identity. Ego and mind denote the same fact of reality: that which knows, judges and feels. * EGOISM 62/Sep/39 Holds that man is an end in himself; that ethically the beneficiary of an action should be the person who acts. WAR-31 Holds that self interest is man's proper moral goal. * EMERGENCY * CRISIS 63/Feb/6 An unchosen unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible. In an emergency situation man's primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions. Man cannot live his life by the guidance of rules applicable only to conditions under which human survival is impossible. * EMOTION 62/Jan/3 The psychosomatic form in which man experiences his estimate of the relationship of things to himself. The psycho-somatic embodiment of a value judgement. VOS-27 Estimates of that which furthers man's values or threatens them. 66/Jan/14 Reactions to the appraisal of perceptions, as opposed to feelings which are reactions to the appraisal of sensations. DK States of consciousness produced by actual or anticipated change in the relationship between a person and his values. * EMOTIONAL OPENNESS - SEM 13 Communication of the value-significance of things and events. * ENVY The motive of a man who is willing to make himself worse off in order to bring another down to his level. See Chapter 3 * EPISTEMOLOGY 64/Oct/41 The science that studies the nature and means of human knowledge. Its primary purpose is to establish the criteria of knowledge and thus enable man to distinguish between that which he may and may not regard as knowledge. * ESSENCE IOE-49 The essence of a concept is that fundamental characteristic of its units on which the greatest number of other characteristics depend and which distinguishes these units from all other existents. * ESTEEM Dec86-5 The recognition of character traits or qualities which you judge to be of significant (moral) value. * ETHICS 65/Apr/15 70/Jun/4 VOS-15 The study of the proper values to guide man's choices and actions. * MORALITY 64/Jun/21 64/Nov/48 65/Mar/10 That branch of philosophy that studies values. An abstract conceptual code of values and principles. WAR-24 A code of values accepted by choice. (Morality in children: 65/Mar/9) Moral principles are requirements of man's survival proved by reference to the most fundamental aspects of his existence and to the deepest premises of philosophy. They are life-or-death absolutes. DK Morality describes intra-personal actions whereas Ethics describes inter-personal actions. * EUPHEMISM an inoffensive way of identifying an offensive fact. Or, more likely, a way of avoiding the necessity of identification. * EVALUATION PSE-91 The process of identifying the beneficial or harmful relationship of some aspect of reality to oneself. * EVIDENCE is suggestive or indicative information, frequently based on observations or oral statements. * DATA, on the other hand, usually take the form of numerical information, suitable for processing and analysis. * EXPENSE See Chapter 3 * EXPERIENCE 70/Mar/2 The evidence of man's senses. * EXPLANATION 68/Feb/9 To account for some aspect of reality which you do not understand on the basis of concepts which have already been validated. * EXPLOITATION DK involves the making of two judgements of a situation from two different perspectives. The person being exploited judges his situation and concludes that he is choosing a desirable alternative. The person who sees the situation as exploitative is judging that there are more preferable alternatives available. * FAIR - what informed people freely agree to. * FAITH 62/Mar/11 The acceptance of an idea without evidence or proof or in spite of evidence to the contrary. * FASCISM 65/May/19 A governmental system with strong centralized power permitting no opposition or criticism and controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.) * FAVOR 65/OCT/48 A favor means the unearned since the earned is a right not a favor. * FEAR 62/Jan/3 Your response to that which threatens your values. Fear is how you feel when you wait for something bad to happen, and fun is what you have when you figure out a way to make something good happen. * FEELING 66/Jan/14 A positive or negative internal state which is a direct and immediate effect of sensory stimulation. * FORCE The separation of a person from his rightfully achieved values without his voluntary consent. * FRAUD 63/Dec/46 Obtaining material values without their owner's consent under false pretenses or false promises. Receiving values then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession) not by right, and without the consent of their owner. * FREE WILL 64/Jan/3 64/Apr/15 holds that man is capable of performing actions that are not determined by forces outside his control; that man has the power of making choices which are causal primaries. Objectivism locates man's free will in a single action of his consciousness: to focus his mind or to suspend it. Man has the power to regulate the action of his own consciousness. * FREEDOM WAR-43 See Chapter 5 In a political-economic context it means only the absence of physical compulsion. A free society is that state of affairs where there are no man-made restraints on the release of creative human energy. * GENERAL PRICE LEVEL HPD-178 the available money supply divided by the goods and services available for sale. * GOOD 64/Nov/47 65/Dec/55 An evaluation of the facts of reality by man's consciousness according to a rational standard of value. The good is an aspect of reality in relation to man. It must be discovered, not invented, by man. Dec83-7 That which a man finds of value through the independent judgment of his rational mind. * GREATNESS AS-1145 To be master of reality in a manner no other has equaled. * HAPPINESS 62/Jan/3 AS-1014 the consequence of fulfilled desire. The emotion that results from the achievement of one's values. * HATRED 62/Jan/3 The consequence of fear. The wish for the destruction of that which endangers my values. * HONESTY PSE-219 AS-859,1019 The refusal to seek values by faking reality - by evading the distinction between the real and the unreal. * HUMANITIES - the study and/or evaluation of man and his actions. * HYPOCRISY - to assert the falsity of that which is real while asserting the reality of that which is false. * IDEA - A light turned on in a man's soul. * IDEALISM 66/Sep/10 Aspiration to any values above the level of the commonplace. * IMPLICIT knowledge is that which is available to your consciousness but which you have not conceptualized. Implicit knowledge is not a substitute for explicit knowledge. Values which you cannot identify, but merely sense implicitly, are not in your control. You cannot tell what they depend on or require, what course of action is needed to gain and/or keep them. And you cannot teach them to your children! Implicit knowledge, since it has not been identified, cannot be challenged. * INDEPENDENCE AS-1019 PSE-219 A commitment to one's own perception of reality as an absolute standard of thought and action. The acceptance of intellectual responsibility for one's own existence. * INDIVIDUALISM 62/Apr/13 As an ethical-political concept it upholds the supremacy of individual rights. The principle that man is an end in himself not a means to the ends of others. As an ethical-psychological concept it holds that man should think and judge independently, valuing nothing higher than the sovereignty of his intellect. Feb86-9 * INDUCTION IOE-30 The process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts. * INFATUATION 68/Jan/3 Selectively focusing on one or two aspects of a total personality while ignoring or being oblivious to the rest and responding as though the person were only those particular aspects. * INFLATION HPD-29 An increase in money substitutes above the stock of real money in storage. The counterfeiting of paper money. * INSANITY AS-567 A state where a person can't tell what's real. * INSIGHT like something beautiful boiling up inside me. * INSTINCT See Chapter 3 * INTEGRITY AS-1019 63/Feb/6 is the policy of acting in accordance with one's values - of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality. PSE-219 Loyalty in action to the judgement of one's consciousness. Heinlein: Your agreement with yourself to abide by your own rules. * INTELLECTUAL AMMUNITION Verbal bullets for Objectivists who want to shoot their mouths off. * INTELLIGENCE 70/Aug/6 The ability to deal with a broad range of abstractions. IOE-27 33 The standard of measurement that differentiates one type of consciousness from another is its range. It is a measurement of the range of their consciousness: the extent to which they are able to be conscious of the facts of reality, and able to form and manipulate concepts. * IRRATIONALISM 69/Oct/2 The doctrine that reason is not a valid means of knowledge nor a proper guide to action. * IRRATIONALITY 62/Jan/3 The relationship of cognition and evaluation - of reason and emotion - is that of cause and effect. Irrationality consists of the attempt to reverse this relationship: to let one's emotions - one's wishes or fears - determine one's thinking. To judge what is true or false by the standard of what is "pleasant" or "unpleasant." Philosophically this attempt is the cause of mysticism; psychologically it is the cause of neurosis. * IRRELEVANCY A topic not subsumed by the principle that underlies (explicitly or implicitly) the discussion. * JOLLY DK How you feel when you have just spent half an hour listening to the music of Scott Joplin. * JUDGE 62/Apr/15 To evaluate a given concrete by reference to an abstract principle or standard. * JUSTICE PSE-219 IOE-49 AS-737,1019 The practice of identifying men for what they are and treating them accordingly. The practice of recognizing causality and individual responsibility in social behavior. The law of causality and/or the law of Identity applied to human behavior. Maximizing virtue within the limits of human judgement. Notions of justice or injustice don't apply to the results of an impersonal process, only to the general rules that are enforced. * KNOWLEDGE 67/Aug/11 Correct identification of the facts of reality. Acquired not by logic apart from experience or by experience apart from logic but by the application of logic to experience. All truths are the product of a logical identification of the facts of experience. DK The content of a mind which corresponds to truth. * TRUTH IOE-46 The product of the recognition (i.e. identification) of the facts of reality. Basic1 The recognition of reality. An aspect of reality as perceived by a mind. * LANGUAGE 65/Apr/15 A code of visual-auditory symbols that serves the psycho-epistemological function of converting abstractions into concretes, or more precisely into the psycho-epistemological equivalent of concretes: to a manageable number of specific units. (Can be either a tool for identifying and understanding reality or a tool for manipulating one's social environment.) * LAW Basic13 A rule of action pertaining to the relationships of men inhabiting the same country. Tonie Nathan: Enunciations of principles of justice. An operative definition: Law is what government builds to assure its perpetuity. * LAW OF IDENTITY Basic3 Law of Identity: A is A. Law of Contradiction: a thing cannot be A and notA. Law of Excluded Middle: a thing is either A or notA. * LEADER * RULER There is a distinction to be made between a leader and a ruler. A leader is the lady who goes ahead with a torch, lighting the way for those who follow. A ruler is the man who comes behind with a whip, driving them onward. * LIBERTARIANISM is the statement of a political principle. As John Hospers described it: "a philosophy of personal liberty - the liberty of each person to live according to his own choices, provided that he does not attempt to coerce others and thus prevent them from living according to their choices. Libertarians hold this to be an inalienable right of man; thus, libertarianism represents a total commitment to the concept of individual rights." It is a political philosophy, concerned with the appropriate use of force. It asks one question: Under what conditions is the use of force justified? And it gives one answer: only in response to the prior use of force. This political principle is implemented through the social institution of * ANARCHY. See Chapter 3 and Chapter 7 * STATISM 65/May/19 The opposite of libertarianism is statism, the principle that it is proper for the community (or a selected subgroup thereof) to compel the behavior of its individual members. This political principle is implemented through the social institution of government. * STATEOLATRY The stateolatrist is a devout statist who views (usually implicitly) government as an object of religious worship. He regards government as being the ultimate foundation of morality and ethics, and as an absolute prerequisite to civilized human existence. * GOVERNMENT 63/Dec/45 Capitalism The Unknown Ideal pg 46 An institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area. Think8 A social agency that performs the task of formulating and enforcing the laws of a country. DK The strongest gang of agressors in a particular area at a particular time. Government should be defined as an institution that SEEKS exclusive power, not as one that HOLDS exclusive power. Just as a business is a profit-seeking firm, not necessarily a profit-making firm. * LIFE 63/Apr/13 The process of achieving values. Isaac Asimov: The ability to effect a temporary and local decrease in entropy by means of chemical reactions which are controlled by nucleic acid molecules. * LIQUIDATION HPD-179 Normally, the sale of a property. With regard to recessions and depressions it refers to the acceptance of losses and the closing of businesses that existed only because of the miscalculations caused by inflation. * LOGIC The art of non-contradictory identification of the facts of reality. * LOVE 62/Jan/3 65/Aug/37 Man's emotional response to that which he values. Desire is the consequence of love. PSE-129 Romantic Love is the highest expression of the most intense union of pride and admiration. Its celebration is sex. The psycho-somatic response to the integral of the behaviors that make the shared ecstasy of sex possible. * LUCK See Chapter 3 * MATURITY 65/Nov/53 Psychological maturity pertains to the successful development of man's consciousness; the ability to conceptualize. * MEASUREMENT IOE-13 The identification of a quantitative relationship by means of a standard that serves as a unit. * MEDIATION involves impartial third persons who help the parties in dispute reach agreement. * ARBITRATION involves impartial persons who are given authority to determine the outcome of the dispute. Mediators generally work toward a compromise, but arbitrators reach decisions based on the merits of the case. * ADJUDICATION is the clarification of existing property rights. * MEDIOCRITY WAR-67 85 AS-358 70/Oct/2 An average intelligence that resents and envies its betters. See THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES, 773. * MENTAL HEALTH 64/May/20 No clash between perception of reality and peservation of self-esteem. 67/Feb/11 PSE-94 The capacity for unobstructed cognitive functioning and the exercise of this capacity. Mental illness is the impairment of this capacity. * METAPHYSICS 65/Apr/16 The science that deals with the fundamental nature of reality. DK The study of the fundamental nature of the universe as epistemologically inferred rather than as existentially deduced. Metaphyscs is not the science of any particular thing; it is the science of everything. As such, it can have only very minimal principles because all the details have to be discovered on their own, each being a matter of scientific specialization. * MIGHT MAKES RIGHT 63/Jun/21 When "might" is opposed to right the concept of "might" can have only one meaning: the power of brute physical force which in fact is not a "power" but the most hopeless state of impotence; it is merely the "power" to destroy; it is the "power" of a stampede of animals running amok. * MINE is to extract a resource that is not replenished. To * HARVEST is to extract a resource that you then replenish. * MONEY HPD-10,12,15 A commodity accepted in exchange by an individual who intends to trade it for something else. The final argument is that you can always use the nails SOMETIME in the future; they won't lose their value. And if YOU don't use them SOMEONE will. If the money commodity didn't have a separate value you couldn't confidently accept it in trade for what you have produced for you wouldn't know the worth of what you received. Heinlein: The universal symbol for value received. DK: A medium for the measured exchange of wealth. * MONEY SUBSTITUTES Money receipts and demand deposits that are used in exchanges in place of real money. * MONOPOLY 62/Jun/23 COERCIVE: A grant of special privilege by the State reserving a certain area of production to one particular individual or group. The exclusive control of a given field of production so that those in control are able to set arbitrary production policies and charge arbitrary prices, immune from the law of supply and demand. Such a monopoly entails more than the absence of competition; it entails the impossibility of competition. Every coercive monopoly that has ever existed anywhere was created and made possible only by an act of government. NON-COERCIVE: May exist on the free market but is bound by the law of supply and demand (such as a small town with one drug store which is barely able to survive). No commodity can be indispensable to an economy regardless of price. It can be only relatively preferable to other commodities. * MYSTICISM A system of belief which attempts to show that a Supreme Deity is revealed through quiet contemplation and not through an attempt to understand philosophy and theology. The true mystic rejects reason and authority as a basis of the search for truth, employing only tuition and emotion. Basic3 The claim to a non-sensory non-rational form of knowledge. * NATIONALISM A devotion to the social institutions of some particular nation, often coupled with a desire that the favored nation should conquer all other nations militarily, and always coupled with a degree of indifference or even hostility to the social institutions of other nations. * CITIZENSHIP An attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part... and that the part should be willing to sacrifice itself that the whole may live. * NEED PSE-18 62/Mar/11 In order to maintain that something is a physical or psychological need one must demonstrate that it is a causal condition of the organism's survival and wellbeing. * NEUROSIS DS 90 An attempt to protect one's self-esteem and preserve one's survival by self-destructive means. * PSYCHOSIS Basic5 Loss of volitional control over one's rational judgement. * NONSENSE See Chapter 3 * NUMBER IOE-58 A mental symbol that integrates units into a single larger unit (or subdivides a unit into fractions) with reference to the basic number of "one" which is the basic mental symbol of "unit." * OBJECTIVE Basic1 Independent of consciousness. Reality is the OBJECT of consciousness. * OBJECTIVITY 65/Feb/7 Metaphysically it is the recognition of the fact that reality exists independent of any perceiver's consciousness. Epistemologically it is the recognition of the fact that a perceiver's consciousness must acquire knowledge of reality by certain means (reason) in accordance with certain rules (logic). * OBSCENITY 65/Oct/47 AS-901 A peculiar kind of embarrassment when witnessing a grossly inappropriate human performance, such as the antics of an unfunny comedian. It is a depersonalized, almost metaphysical embarrassment at having to witness so undignified a behavior on the part of a member of the human species. * ORIGINAL SIN AS-1025 To hold as man's sin a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. * OWNERSHIP DK The rightfully acquired ability to use and dispose of property. An individual justly owns whatever he has acquired without violating the principles of justice in acquisition and justice in transfer. * PROPERTY 64/Apr/13 Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort should be private property by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort. * PAPER MONEY HPD-179 Receipts for real money in storage. * PERCEPTS VOS-19 IOE-11 A group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain. PSE-27 Through the stimulation of his various sensory receptors man receives information which travels to his brain in the form of sensations (primary sensory inputs). These sensory imputs as such do not constitute knowledge; they are only the material of knowledge. Man's brain automatically retains and integrates these sensations thereby forming percepts. Percepts constitute the starting point and base of man's knowledge: the direct awareness of entities, their actions and their attributes. * PERFECT - Feb81-3 Flawlessly complete satisfaction of a standard of value. The best possible in a given context. A perfect sphere is a sphere that is flawless in the context of man's form of perception. All concepts are derived from the perceptual level of man's awareness, and all standards of perfection must be consistent with this fact. * PHILOSOPHY FNI-18 An integrated view of life. FNI-22 An integrated view of man, of existence, and of the universe. 70/Jun/4 The science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence, the fundamental, universal principles of existence. DK A set of principles which provides a consistent and comprehensive frame of reference from which to judge entities and actions. * PITY The Fountainhead 583 The awareness of a man without worth or hope. A sense of finality; of the not to be redeemed. There was shame in this feeling - his own shame that he should have to pronounce such judgment upon a man and that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect. * PLEASURE DK The manifestation in consciousness of certain patterns of stimulation of the nervous system. * POLITICS 70/JUN/4 The study of the principles governing the proper organization of society. * PRAXEOLOGY History is a chronological continuum, not a logical one. Cause and effect are in the sequence, however the immediate post hoc effect is often the actual effect of an earlier more distant cause - hence causes and effects are often confused, particularly by those who take a short term perspective. Praxeology (the science of the basic motivations, nature and consequences of human action) is a logical continuum, not a chronological one. It accounts for and ranks the causal forces at work in human history and provides a logical system for anticipating their overlapping, often delayed effects. * PRECEDENT Precedent is merely the assumption that somebody else, in the past with less information, nevertheless knows better than the man on the spot. * TRADITION means to do things in the same grand style as your predecessors; it does not mean to do the same things. * PRESUPPOSE means that you cannot hold concept A unless you have first grasped concept B. * PRIDE 67/May/9 PSE-220 AS-1020 The pleasure a man takes in himself on the basis of and in response to specific achievements or actions. Self-esteem is "I can do." Pride is "I have done." * SELF-ESTEEM 64/May/17 67/Mar/1 67/Dec/1 It is the integrated sum of self-confidence and self-respect. It is the conviction that one is competent to live and worthy of living. AS-1057 Reliance on one's power to think. Pseudo self-esteem is an irrational pretense at self-value. * PRINCIPLE 64/Jan/1 A fundamental primary or general truth on which other truths depend. It is not the role of principle to provide particularized concretes for each individual but to enable their discovery. DK The fundamental distinguishing characteristic not of an object but of a set of interconnected actions. * PROBABILITY See Chapter 3 * PRODUCTIVENESS PSE-219 AS-1020 The act of bringing knowledge or goods into existence. 65/Nov/52 Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival. Combining his personal forces with the forces of nature in such a way that the cooperation leads to some particular desired arrangement of material. The transformation of naturally existing entities into material that enables the achievement of human values. The result of this act is * WEALTH * PROFIT The result of helping yourself (which entails self- responsibility). Those who hate profit hate the idea of self-betterment. They are anti-life. * PROOF Basic3 A process of inference. It establishes that a proposition is true by deriving it from previous knowledge. DK Demonstrate a correspondence between an idea and an observed fact. * PROPOSITION 67/Jun/7 A combination of concepts. * PSYCHO-EPISTEMOLOGY 64/Oct/41 The study of the mental operations that are possible to and that characterize man's cognitive behavior. 69/Jul/4 The study of man's cognitive processes from the aspect of the interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic functions of the subconscious. WAR-154 One's method of using his consciousness and considering intellectual issues. * PSYCHOLOGICAL VISIBILITY PSE-186 67/Dec/6 PRL-77 Man needs the experience of self-awareness that results from perceiving his self as an objective existent. He is able to achieve this experience through interaction with the consciousness of other living entities. As for social metaphysicians it is not visibility they seek from others but identity. * PSYCHOLOGY PSE-3,5 The science that studies the attributes and characteristics which certain living organisms possess by virtue of being conscious. The science that studies the attributes and characteristics which man possesses by virtue of his rational faculty. * RACISM 63/Sep/33 The notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage. The notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. A man is to be judged not by his own character and actions but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. * RATIONALIZE Basic6 To pick some random explanation to justify one's feelings and stick to it regardless of reason, logic, evidence or argument. Think 6 To attempt to justify conclusions that have already been accepted on the basis of one's feelings. * REASON 62/Jan/3 62/Mar/11 The faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the evidence of reality provided by man's senses. PSE-4 Man's ability to extend the range of his awareness beyond the perceptual concretes immediately confronting him. PSE-5 To project a chain of inference that is independent of immediate sensory stimuli. * RATIONAL 65/Dec/55 Derived from the facts of reality and validated by a process of reason. * RATIONALITY PSE-219 The unreserved commitment to the perception of reality, to the acceptance of reason as an absolute - as one's only guide to knowledge, values and action. * RECESSION HPD-179 The liquidation period following an inflation. * REDUCTION Dec86-4 The means of connecting an advanced concept to reality by traveling backwards through the hierarchical logical structure involved in the formation of that concept. * REFERENCES See Chapter 3 * REFLEX PSE-22 An automatic involuntary action which occurs as a consequence of a stimulus to a receptor. It does not involve the faculty of consciousness. * REPRESSION 66/Aug/8 A subconscious mental process that forbids entry into conscious awareness of certain ideas, memories, identifications and evaluations. An automatized avoidance reaction. * REVOLUTION A violent transfer of power from one faction to another faction within the same class is called a * COUP, and this changes nothing. A transfer of power from one class to another is called a revolution, and this does change things - although the changes are not necessarily the ones the revolutionaries sought. Revolutions are always violent, for tyrants will always kill to retain power. * RIGHT TO WORK LAWS 63/Jun/23 Forbid employers and unions from contractually agreeing to an all-union workplace. * RIGHTS 62/Feb/7 63/Apr/13 63/Jun/21 64/Apr/13 64/May/19 VOS-97 AS-1061 WAR-43 See Chapter 5 of my book Rights are the conditions of social existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. * ROMANTICISM 69/May/1 WAR-73 A category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition. * SACRIFICE Surrender of a higher value in favor of a lower value or of a non-value. * SCHIZOPHRENIA Basic6 Inability to hold the mind focused on a single purpose. No logical relationship between one thought and the next. Definition by non-essentials. DS-128 Oriented exclusively to the internal world of his own experience and disconnected from the external world. Said of Buckminster Fuller's speech: Non-linear endless improvisation. * SCIENCE PSE-2 The rational and systematic study of the facts of reality. Physics discovers what is; engineers turn this knowledge into things that have never been. * SELFISHNESS Concern with one's own well-being. See CHAPTER 1 for a discussion of this concept. * SENSATION VOS-18 The product of the automatic reaction of a sense organ to a stimulus from the outside world. * SENSE OF LIFE 65/Mar/10 A pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics. A subconsciously integrated appraisal of man's nature and the nature of reality, summing up one's view of man's relationship to existence. 66/Feb/1 3 The integrated sum of man's basic values. * SERVICE 63/Mar/12 Work offered for trade on a free market to be paid for by those who choose to buy it. The altruist definition is: unrewarded self- sacrificial unilateral giving while receiving nothing in return. * SIMILARITY IOE-18 The relationship between two or more existents which possess the same characteristic(s) but in different measure or degree. * SOCIAL METAPHYSICS 65/Feb/5 The psychological syndrome that characterizes an individual who holds the consciousnesses of other men, not objective reality, as his ultimate psycho-epistemological frame-of-reference. * SOCIAL SYSTEM 65/Nov/54 A set of ethical-political-economic principles embodied in a society's laws, institutions and government which determine the relationships - the terms of association - among the men living in a given geographical area. * SOCIALISM 62/Dec/53 65/May/19 A theory or system of social organization which advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production - capital, land etc. - in the community as a whole. * SOCIETY 62/Feb/7 For a New Liberty pg 37 A group or number of individual men who live in the same geographical area and who deal with one another. Society is not a separate entity endowed with some sort of autonomous existence apart from the individual men of whom it is composed. Society as such does not exist; only individual men exist. 63/Apr/14 A civilized society is one in which physical force is banned from human relationships and in which the government, acting as a policeman, may use force ONLY in retaliation and ONLY against those who initiate its use. * SOUL 66/FEB/3 A mind and its basic values. Aristotle: The inner meaning of the body's movement. See AS-858 for a discussion of the Soul-Body dichotomy. * SOVEREIGNTY The independent prerogative to determine your own values, actions, goals, thoughts and convictions. * SPIRITUALITY, The reverence one feels at the sight of a great accomplishment. The value a person places on the symbolic expression of the importance of purpose in human life. * STANDARD vs PURPOSE See Chapter 3 * SUBJECTIVE Basic1 Dependent on consciousness. Reality is the SUBJECT of consciousness. * SUBJECTIVISM 63/Jun/21 65/Feb/7 The belief that reality is not a firm absolute but a fluid indeterminate realm which can be altered in whole or in part by the consciousness of the perceiver i.e. by his feelings, wishes or whims. Pure subjectivism does not recognize the concept of identity i.e. the fact that man or the universe or anything possesses a specific nature. * SUICIDE 62/Sep/39 To save the life of a loved one (her death is the price). Fighting for freedom (slavery is the price). If life can have nothing more to offer him at that price then his dying is not a sacrifice. 64/Apr/15 He knows what human existence is and he will not accept anything less. He is unwilling to endure a non-human state of being with escape from death, not the achievement of life, as the best he can hope for. * TAUTOLOGY 67/May/13 Analytic truths represent concrete instances of the Law of Identity therefore are tautologies i.e. a proposition that repeats the same thing: 2+2=4. * TELEOLOGY IOE-34 The study of goal-directed behavior. * THINK PSE-38 39 A man is in focus when and to the extent that his mind is set to the goal of awareness, clarity, and intelligibility with regard to the object of his concern. To sustain that focus with regard to a specific issue or problem is to think. To be in focus is to set one's mind to the purpose of active cognitive integration. To focus is to move from a lower level of awareness to a higher level. To be in focus means that one must know what one's mind is doing. AS-1038 The process of defining identity and discovering causal connections. Leonard Reed: when you shut your mouth and your head begins talking to itself. * THINKING IN PRINCIPLES - Jun87-6 - To abstract the essence of a series of concretes, then identify, by an appropriate use of logic, the necessary implications or result of this essence. You thereby reach a fundamental generalization, a Principle, which subsumes and enables you to deal with an unlimited number of instances. * TIME 62/May/19 Time is a measurement of motion. Motion presupposes entities that move. If nothing existed there could be no time. Time is "in" the universe; the universe is not "in" time. See "On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" Part 1 for Einstein's view of simultaneity. To grasp the concept of Motion you have to grasp a change of spatial relationships among entities. If you see some stationary objects and one object that is moving, you grasp the fact that it is moving by seeing the changed relationship between it and the other objects, and that gives you the concepts of Time and Space. * TIME DEPOSIT HPD-180 The lending of your money to a bank not to be available for a specified period of time for which you receive a fee (interest). * TO BE See Chapter 3 * TOTALITARIANISM The deliberate use of institutionalized coercion. * UNIT IOE-12 An existent regarded as a separate member of a group of two or more similar members. Things viewed by a consciousness in certain existing relationships. * UNREAL AS-1017 That negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. * VALUE VOS-15 That which one acts to gain or keep or defend. See AS-1018 for a presentation of the supreme values of Reason, Purpose and Self-esteem. Basic values are abstractions - qualities such as rationality, independence, self-esteem, etc. Particular values are the actual people or entities one values. Something has intrinsic value when it is a direct source of pleasure. It has instrumental value when the pleasure is consequential. Value presupposes a valuer, and some purpose. It is only in relation to some valuer and purpose that something can be said to have value. * VIRTUE 67/Mar/4 AS-1012 1018 The action by which one gains and keeps a value. If you believe that you can have a value without there being an action involved, then you have been effectively deprived of that value. * VIBES DK Good vibes are when your perceptions correspond to your mental construct of what an enjoyable situation should be. Bad vibes are dissonant. * WHIM VOS-14 A desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause. __ A HANDBOOK OF LOGICAL FALLACIES compiled by David King 58 Spring Valley Drive Milford WY 82520 To find each fallacy, search: * name AD FIDENTIA AMBIGUOUS COLLECTIVE APPEAL TO IGNORANCE ARGUMENT FROM INTIMIDATION ARGUMENTUM AD POPULUM ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIAM ASSUMPTION CORRECTION ASSUMPTION BAREFOOT BARKING CAT BEGGING THE QUESTION BOOLEAN SYNDROME COMPLEXITY-SIMPLISTIC DETERMINISM DICTUM EX POST FACTO DISCARDED DIFFERENTIA DONUT ECLECTIC ELEPHANT EMPHATIC EXCLUSIVITY FALSE ALTERNATIVE FALSE ATTRIBUTION FALSIFIABILITY FALSIFIED INDUCTIVE GENERALIZATION FANTASY PROJECTION FLAT EARTH NAVIGATION SYNDROME FLOATING ABSTRACTION FROZEN ABSTRACTION GOVERNMENT ABSOLUTIST GOVERNMENT SOLIPOTENCE GRATUITOUS INCULPATION GRAVITY GAME HOMILY AD HOMINEM I-CUBED IGNORING HISTORICAL EXAMPLE IGNORING UNIT PERCENTAGES INSTANTIATION OF THE UNSUCCESSFUL JOURNALISTIC FALLACIES MEGATRIFLE MOVING GOALPOST SYNDROME NULL VALUE OVERLOOKING SECONDARY CONSEQUENCES PIGEONHOLING POST HOC NULLIFICATIO PRO TEMPERI PRETENTIOUS PRETENTIOUS ANTECEDENT PROOF BY SELECTED INSTANCES PROVING A NEGATIVE REIFICATION OF THE EXISTENT REIFICATION OF THE IMPROBABLE REIFICATION OF THE POSSIBLE RELATIVE PRIVATION RETROGRESSIVE CAUSATION SELECTIVE SAMPLING SELF EXCLUSION SHINGLE SPEECH SILENCE IMPLIES CONSENT SPURIOUS SUPERFICIALITY STOLEN CONCEPT SUPRESSION OF THE AGENT THOMPSON INVISIBILITY SYNDROME TREE/FOREST UNINTENDED SELF-INCLUSION UNKNOWABLES VARIANT IMAGIZATION WOULDCHUCK * AD FIDENTIA - (Against Self-Confidence) If you cannot directly refute someone's principles, you strike indirectly with an attack on their confidence in those principles. Question their certainty of the principles' validity: "How can you be sure you're right?" The AMBIGUOUS COLLECTIVE fallacy is the use of a collective term without any meaningful delimitation of the elements it subsumes. "We" "you" "they" and "the people" are the most widely used examples. This fallacy is especially devastating in the realm of political discussion, where its use renders impossible the task of discriminating among distinctly different groups of people. I often challenge those who commit this fallacy to eliminate from their discussion vocabulary all general collective terms, and each time they want to use such a term to use instead a precisely delimiting description of the group the term is intended to subsume. An antecedentless pronoun is an example in the singular of the Ambigious Collective fallacy. Here are two examples of the Ambiguous Collective fallacy: "Last November, 77% of us voted in favor of term limits." In this statement, who exactly are the "us"? The speaker wants to convey the idea that term limits are very widely supported, but if in fact the 77% refers only to those who voted, that subgroup may well be a quite small percentage of the total population. "We need to train doctors to teach us how to get and stay healthy." In this statement, who are the "we" and who are the "us"? Is the speaker trying to promote socialized medicine by advocating government control of the medical schools? When he says "we need to" does he really mean "the government should"? And is the "us" merely a subtle way of saying "me"? * ARGUMENTUM AD POPULUM - (bandwagon fallacy) "All societies require military service. We are a society. Therefore we should require military service." * ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIAM - The appeal to authority. Whose authority? If an issue is to be resolved by such an appeal, the authority must be one recognized by both parties. A justice system which does not recognize the rights of the individual will not provide a satisfactory solution. The only way to make this a viable resolution is if both parties can agree on a completely neutral, objective authority to decide the issue. Where does one exist? Only in the facts of reality. * ARGUMENT FROM INTIMIDATION (The Virtue of Selfishness, chapter 19) "Only the most degenerate, morally depraved, cretinous imbecile could fail to see the truth of my argument." * ASSUMPTION CORRECTION ASSUMPTION - He assumes (implicitly) that I will correct his mistaken assumptions. * BAREFOOT - "If government didn't exercise control over the manufacture, distribution, price and sale of shoes we would all go barefoot!" If "shoes" doesn't suit you, just substitute "police" or "fire protection" or "mail delivery" or anything else the government claims to provide. Nothing the government claims to provide cannot be provided in a more humane, just, and economical manner by free associations of individual people. * ELEPHANT "Hey, mister, you better buy a bottle of my Elephant Repellent. If you don't buy it, the elephants will come into the neighborhood and trample you! My proof that this stuff really works is that there are no elephants around here." for "Elephant Repellent" substitute the word "Government" and for "elephants" substitute the word "crime" or "Russians" or "poverty" or "chaos" or anything else the government claims to prevent. Nothing the government claims to prevent cannot be prevented in a more humane, just, and economical manner by free associations of individual people. * BARKING CAT (From "Free To Choose" by Milton Friedman) What would you think of someone who said, "I would like to have a cat provided it barked"? Yet your statement that you favor a government provided it behaves as you believe desirable is precisely equivalent. The biological laws that specify the characteristics of cats are no more rigid than the political laws that specify the behavior of government agencies once they are established. The way the government behaves and the adverse consequences are not an accident, not a result of some easily corrected human mistake, but a consequence of its constitution in precisely the same way that a meow is related to the constitution of a cat. * BEGGING THE QUESTION - A question that implies and/or uses its answer. "Why should you be good to people?" (He expects me to be good to him by answering his question.) * BOOLEAN SYNDROME - Choosing to view a continuum as represented by only its extremities. It consists in dividing a range of options exhaustively into the two extremes and then insisting that a choice be made between one or the other extreme, without regard to any of the intervening alternatives. * FANTASY PROJECTION - * CONTEXT IMPOSITION - An attempt to impose his own intellectual or moral context on another person by someone who has closed his mind to reality and manufactured his own fantasy, then expects others to share it and help him sustain it. He ignores the objective realities of the situation, concentrating instead on subjective perceptions that are false. "If you were terminally ill, you too would advocate life preservation." "There are no atheists in foxholes." By naming her opinion in advance he would make her unable to alter it. Imposition of the Slave Mentality: "Aren't you thankful that they allow this?" (I am expected to limit myself to the context of "their" allowables.) The proper answer is, "No, I am resentful that they forbid other freedoms I should possess." They have a six-inch knife and have stuck it four inches into me. Should I be thankful they have not shoved it in the final two inches? Or resentful that they have shoved it in four inches? (I am expected to accept their behavioral context and to judge my situation from within that context.) * I-CUBED - You assume that your adversary is Ignorant, Incompetent, and/or Inexperienced and then impose this context on the discussion. I almost always encounter this from astrologers, who admonish me to "examine this before you reject it!" They always assume I have not done so. * PIGEONHOLING - An attempt to subsume something into a frame-of-reference that is too small to incorporate the thing. You call me a name so you don't have to see me - you just see the name that you call me. * DISCARDED DIFFERENTIA - Define by using the Genus only. * DONUT - A form of false dichotomy. Insists that all donuts be divided into two piles: large donuts and sugar donuts. * ECLECTIC FALLACY - Eclecticism consists of selecting the good parts from a set of ideas and discarding the bad parts. But this process implies that you already know how to do the selecting, and have a standard of judgment to use for evaluating the ideas. If you in fact do, then there is no problem and eclecticism is a valid intellectual process. But if you approach a set of ideas in a state of ignorance then you are not intellectually equipped to pick and choose from among them. You could not know whether what you accepted is true or false. Herein lies the danger of eclecticism - if you are going to pick and choose you must already have enough knowledge to do the selecting. * SPURIOUS SUPERFICIALITY - When a disputant allows himself to be sidetracked by irrelevancies, ignoring his opponent's logic and evidence. He cannot grasp the whole of the issue - or the principle underlying it - so he focuses on some small part (usually just one word) and directs his rebuttal to an attack on that tiny bit which is all he can perceive. "What do you mean by ------?" Where ------ is any word included in your presentation, usually a quite ordinary word which your opponent uses without any difficulty in other contexts. He views things through his specialized eyes, extracts a part of the truth and refuses to see more, sometimes quoting your least significant statements, in order to make it appear that you have said nothing better. Some Ad Hominem arguments probably have the same source: He can't see your ideas so he directs his rebuttal at your person. Or will simply start talking about something he CAN understand - the result being a jarring change-of- subject in the discussion. He seizes upon one instance and constructs a generalization from it: Observing that I don't like clams, he concludes that I have an aversion to sea food in general. She sees something happen once or twice and concludes that it is a regularly-occuring phenomenon. These responses are not consciously deliberated, but result from his inability to perceive the focal idea of the discussion. His only alternative to one of these responses would be bovine immobility - unless he possessed a sufficient degree of intellectual acumen to realize his lack of comprehension, and a sufficient degree of self-esteem to admit to it. * HOMILY AD HOMINEM - Appealing to a person's feelings or prejudices, rather than his intellect, with a trite phrase designed to reinforce a subjective rather than objective view of a situation. If the homily is not accepted in answer to the situation, the next thing that will be done is to attack the person's character rather than answer his argument. * EMPHATIC FALLACY - To emphasize one element of a set at the expense of other equally significant elements. Or to place emphasis on a spurious aspect of a situation. You see this when people react violently to comparatively minor troubles but are seemingly unshaken by really serious ones. It is a sort of being at a loss for a proportionate emotional reaction - a shivering at shadows. * MEGATRIFLE - Take a small, inconsequential effect and magnify it to become all-encompassing in its supposed influence. These are people whose fear of the snake in the grass is so great that they are unable to see the bear that is about to eat them. * COMPLEXITY-SIMPLISTIC FALLACY - If someone comes up against a large bundle of particular facts, but has no general principles with which to integrate those particulars, and is not in the habit of thinking in principles, the multiplicity of facts will appear so complex to him that he will not be able to deal with the situation analytically. You will hear him say: "This is too complex a situation to yield any easy solution!" "Unfortunately, no easy answers exist. The solution to the problem will turn out to be as complex as the problem itself." "That's a simplistic view of a complex situation." For him it is indeed too complex - he has no way to sort the facts, to identify their distinguishing characteristics, and to grasp the fundamentals underlying them. Without integrating principles he just cannot cope. His solution will be an Ad Hoc solution that will fail to address more than a few of the particulars. He will manifest a Descriptive (rather than Analytical) intellectuality. (The descriptive person believes that his description IS an analysis.) He does not think in principles, but focuses his attention on the presentation of specific phenomena only. Complexity does not make something unintelligible, any more than the complexity of the symptoms of a disease make the cause of those symptoms unintelligible. What makes the phenomenon unintelligible is the attempt to analyze it without reference to fundamental principle - to a unifying cause. Abstraction offers a method for thinking about complicated issues in a precise way. By resorting to particularizing rather than generalizing, pragmatists are left floundering in a mire of complexity. The contention that principles are simplistic is a spurious one; it is only by means of principles that man is able to retain and make use of the vast storehouse of knowledge relevant to any given issue. Concretes by themselves are meaningless, and cannot even be retained for long; abstractions by themselves are vague or empty. But concretes illuminated by an abstraction acquire meaning, and thereby permanence in our minds; and abstractions illustrated by concretes acquire specificity, reality, the power to convince. * FLOATING ABSTRACTION - (Barbara Branden's lectures, Principles of Efficient Thinking - lecture #4) a generalization subsuming no particulars. * GOVERNMENT ABSOLUTIST - This consists of making comparative judgments (usually of people's behavior) that are based not on any moral or ethical principle but are made by reference to a government (invariably one's own government). The consequence is to make a spurious distinction between two people (or groups) who in fact manifest identical behavior. Tom Clancy: "Terrorists don't relate to the people around them as being real people. They see them as objects, and since they're only objects, whatever happens to them is not important. Once I met a man who killed four people and didn't bat an eye; but he cried like a baby when we told him his cat died. People like that don't even understand why they get sent to prison; they really don't understand. Those are the scary ones." What Clancy cannot see is that any policeman or any soldier of any country manifests exactly the same behavior that Clancy has condemned as terrorism. William Buckley: "The Cold War is a part of the human condition for so long as you have two social phenomena which we can pretty safely denominate as constants. The first is a society that accepts what it sees as the historical mandate to dominate other societies - at least as persistently as microbes seek out human organisms to infect. And the second phenomenon, of course, is the coexistence of a society that is determined NOT to be dominated or have its friends dominated." Buckley does not realize that a Soviet analyst would make precisely the same identification that Buckley has made, but with the roles reversed. * GRATUITOUS INCULPATION * SPURIOUS CAUSATION "The consumer will have to pay the bill for the oil spill." "Scientists are responsible for the danger of nuclear war." "The advance of modern medicine underlies the present population explosion." "Henry Ford is responsible for air pollution." "Taxpayers are forced to finance policies that many of them would oppose." The taxpayer does not do the financing - the government does. The statement implies that the taxpayer is performing some positive action, when in fact he is the passive victim. These seem to be variants of the POST HOC fallacy. The selected element is contributory but is certainly not a sufficient cause. An attempt is being made to transfer blame onto someone who is only marginally (or not at all) responsible. * EXCLUSIVITY FALLACY - Trying to make an idea of limited applicability extend in its coverage to the inclusion of an overly large range: "All human experience can be explained by a study of energy flows." * FALSE ALTERNATIVE - Assuming that only one alternative exists in a given situation, when in fact, a second and usually more fundamental alternative exists. * OVERLOOKING SECONDARY CONSEQUENCES - To consider only the immediate results of an action, ignoring the long-term effects. Along with this is the fallacy of * IGNORING HISTORICAL EXAMPLE. People who do not look into the future beyond the end of their nose also do not look into the past beyond yesterday (and sometimes not even that far). If they did, they would readily see that the previous implementation of their schemes was invariably a failure. Not only do they fail to see that the scheme WOULD BE a failure, they fail to see that it HAS BEEN a failure. * FALSE ATTRIBUTION - The Straw Man syndrome. Present a false description of your adversary and then base your repudiation on that description. "Objectivism advocates infanticide, therefore Objectivism is evil." * FALSIFIABILITY - (Karl Popper) A conjecture or hypothesis must be accepted as true until such time as it is proven to be false. Popper maintains that scientists approach the truth through what he calls "conjecture and refutation." In actuality, scientists approach the truth not through conjecture and refutation, but through conjecture and CONFIRMATION - the demonstration, by means of careful experiment, that a hypothesis corresponds to the facts of reality. Until the phenomenon is proven TRUE there is no obligation to base my attitude toward it on the assumption that it MIGHT be true. If there were such an obligation, then I would be obliged to give serious consideration to every crackpot notion that has ever been put forward. * FLAT EARTH NAVIGATION SYNDROME - Devoting a lot of time and energy to solving problems that don't exist, such as figuring out ways to navigate on a flat earth. Generalizing from a hypostatization. Looking for an easy way out of a dilemma that does not exist. Theology is a study with no answers because it has no subject matter. * FROZEN ABSTRACTION - (The Virtue of Selfishness, chapter 10) Substituting a particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs - such as using a specific ethics (e.g., altruism) for the wider abstraction "ethics." * GOVERNMENT SOLIPOTENCE - If the government is not doing something about a problem, then nothing can be done about it. Only the government can solve society's problems. * GRAVITY GAME - This consists of demanding that an idea be proven over and over again indefinitely before its validity is acceptable. (The name was conceived while watching an infant throw her toy onto the floor over and over and over again.) An open mind does not grant equal status to truth and falsehood. Nor does it remain floating forever in a stagnant vacuum of neutrality and uncertainty. * INSTANTIATION OF THE UNSUCCESSFUL - To insist on implementing something which is known to have failed. "What we need is government control of the economy!" * MOVING GOALPOST SYNDROME - "Computers might be able to understand Chinese and think about numbers but cannot do the crucially human things, such as...." - and then follows their favorite human specialty - falling in love, having a sense of humor, etc. But as soon as an artificial intelligence simulation succeeds, a new "crucial" element is selected (the goalpost is moved). Thus the perpetrators of this fallacy will never have to admit to the existence of artificial intelligence. * NULL VALUE - A statement (or question) that gives (or elicits) no cognitively meaningful information: "Are you honest?" If he's honest, he'll say 'Yes' - but if he's a liar, he'll say 'Yes' You learn nothing in either case. * POST HOC NULLIFICATIO PRO TEMPERI - (Temporal nullification of a previous phenomenon) Unless you can specify the exact moment I made a certain statement, then you must concede my insistence that I never made that statement. "When did I say that?" For a clever (and bewildering) retort reply: "About 20 minutes past 2 on Thursday afternoon." * DICTUM EX POST FACTO The alteration of history by personal decree. This is done by the sort of person who tries to rewrite history with his tongue. * PRETENTIOUS - Here the speaker assumes omniscience in respect to the subject under consideration. He assumes also that he speaks for the entire human race. "We don't know what life is" (or insanity, intelligence, etc). "We can't conceive of personal death." Any attempt to refute this fallacy will usually elicit its corollary, The Falsifiability Syndrome. * PRETENTIOUS ANTECEDENT - Having made a brief reference to a phenomenon, you later assert that the phenomenon has now been fully explained. * PROOF BY SELECTED INSTANCES - Richard Feynman: "Many years ago I awoke in the dead of night in a cold sweat, with the certain knowledge that a close relative had suddenly died. I was so gripped with the haunting intensity of the experience that I was afraid to place a long-distance phone call, for fear that the relative would trip over the telephone cord (or something) and make the experience a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, the relative is alive and well, and whatever psychological roots the experience may have, it was not a reflection of an imminent event in the real world. After my experience I did not write a letter to an institute of parapsychology relating a compelling predictive dream which was not borne out by reality. That is not a memorable letter. But had the death I dreamt actually occurred, such a letter would have been marked down as evidence for precognition. The hits are recorded, the misses are not. Thus human nature unconsciously conspires to produce a biased reporting of the frequency of such events. If enough independent phenomena are studied and correlations sought, some will of course be found. If we know only the coincidences and not the unsuccessful trials, we might believe that an important finding has been made. Actually, it is only what statisticians call the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances." * FALSIFIED INDUCTIVE GENERALIZATION - Restrict a wide abstraction to a narrow set of particulars and then conclude that an attribute of these particulars must be definitive of the abstraction, thus negating the entire principled structure underlying the abstraction. A similar fallacy is that of equating opposites by substituting nonessentials for their essential characteristics. "They concluded that a free market, by its nature, leads to its own destruction - and they came to the grotesque contradiction of attempting to preserve the freedom of the market by government controls; to preserve the benefits of laissez-faire by abrogating it." * PROVING A NEGATIVE - (The Objectivist Newsletter, April 1963) "Proving the non-existence of that for which no evidence of any kind exists. Proof, logic, reason, thinking, knowledge pertain to and deal only with that which exists. They cannot be applied to that which does not exist. Nothing can be relevant or applicable to the non-existent. The non-existent is nothing. A positive statement, based on facts that have been erroneously interpreted, can be refuted - by means of exposing the errors in the interpretation of the facts. Such refutation is the disproving of a positive, not the proving of a negative.... Rational demonstration is necessary to support even the claim that a thing is possible. It is a breach of logic to assert that that which has not been proven to be impossible is, therefore, possible. An absence does not constitute proof of anything. Nothing can be derived from nothing." If I say, "Anything is possible" I must admit the possibility that the statement I just made is false. (See Self Exclusion) Doubt must always be specific, and can only exist in contrast to things which cannot properly be doubted. * REIFICATION OF THE POSSIBLE - Regarding a possible effect as being a certainty, when making an evaluation of a cause. This has two significant variants: * Reification of the Improbable, and * Reification of the Existent, which consists of basing one's criticism of a scheme on the observation that one possible outcome of that scheme might lead to a state of affairs that already exists under the present circumstances. * RELATIVE PRIVATION - To try to make a phenomenon appear good, by comparing it with a worse phenomenon, or to try to make a phenomenon appear bad, by comparing it with a better phenomenon. Consider junkfood. A very nutritionally-conscious person has a rather low opinion of junkfood. But what would be your attitude toward a greasy hamburger if you hadn't eaten for three or four days? You can malign junkfood because your nutritional standards are high enough to permit you to do so. But an Ethiopian would like nothing better than to have access to MacDonald's, Hardee's or Wendy's and, in fact, such access would be the best thing that could happen to the Ethiopian. Because you have alternatives that the Ethiopian does not have, he is in a position of relative privation when compared to you. In just the same way, the people who labored in sweatshops at the turn of the century were in a state of relative privation when compared to you. Because your alternatives are different (and much better), the sweatshop seems to you to be an abomination, but in fact the sweatshop was immensly preferable to the alternatives available to them. "Eat your carrots! Just think of all the starving children in China." "I used to lament having no shoes - until I met a man who had no feet." The real danger from this last example of the fallacy is that if people believe that their own situation really is ameliorated by such a comparison, they will naturally conclude that their own situation can, in practice, actually BE ameliorated by MAKING somebody else worse off! * RETROGRESSIVE CAUSATION - An interview with a young woman who had seven children - all of them "crack babies": Interviewer: "Didn't you ever think about the effect your drug use was having on your children?" Woman: "Yeah, that thought entered my mind now and then. Whenever it did, I got high so that I wouldn't have to think about it." The cause (drug use) has an effect (remorse). She invokes the cause in order to eliminate the effect. Thus the effect acts retrogressively to induce further implementation of the cause. * SELF EXCLUSION - This is a form of the Stolen Concept fallacy. It denies itself. "Nothing makes any difference." (including this statement?) "Music is the only genuine form of communication." (but this statement, meant to be a communication, is not music) "True knowledge is impossible to man." (but this statement is meant to be knowledge) "There are no absolutes." (except this one, of course) "Words have no validity." To say that "one should not make judgments" is to make a judgment. "There are questions whose truth or untruth cannot be decided by men; all the supreme questions, all the supreme problems of value are beyond human comprehension." .... Nietzsche David Kelley: "To assert 'what is known depends on the knowledge of it' is to offer that very thesis as something known, and therefore as a statement that subsumes itself. But this is manifestly not what the proponent of the thesis intends. That facts depend on our belief in them, he implies, is objectively true, a fact of reality about consciousness and its objects, made true by the nature of things, not by his believing it. Otherwise he would have to allow that objectivity is a fact for the objectivist. He would have to allow that the primacy of consciousness is both true, because he believes it, and false, because the objectivist denies it. [But the Marxist multi-logic dialectic does indeed assert this very notion.] To avoid this, he must assert that the objectivist is wrong, which means asserting the primacy of consciousness as a fact he himself did not create. He thereby contradicts his own thesis. It is an inner or performative contradiction, like that of the person who denies the axiom of action - the denial itself being an action." * SHINGLE SPEECH - Agglomerating several different superficial aspects of a subject, in hopes that the resulting verbal structure will be comprehensible. * STOLEN CONCEPT - (The Objectivist Newsletter, Jan 1963) Using a concept while ignoring, contradicting or denying the validity of the concepts on which it logically and genetically depends. "All property is theft." "The axioms of logic are arbitrary." (something is arbitrary only in distinction to that which is logically necessary.) "All that exists is change and motion." (change is possible only to an existent entity) "You cannot prove that you exist." (proof presupposes existence) "Acceptance of reason is an act of faith." (faith has meaning only in contradistinction to reason) * SUPRESSION OF THE AGENT - "During the economic crisis, millions of people were thrown out of work." Who threw them out? The first answer to this would probably be, "their employers." The statment certainly invites the readers to infer this. But in fact, government, which destroyed the unfortunate workers' industries by means of taxation and regulation, is the causal agent that the passive construction of the statement suppresses or banishes from the mind. Dehumanization of the Action: "During the first two years of Garcia's administration, the economy grew rapidly." This sentence establishes a strong, though implicit, causal connection between Garcia's interventionist programs and good economic news. "But inflation escaped the government's control and the economy soon began to contract." Economic developments are now pictured as things with their own, non-human, principles of action. They are not caused by anything that humans like Garcia do, but proceed on their own way. * THOMPSON INVISIBILITY SYNDROME - (Atlas Shrugged Part3 Chap8 pg1076) Someone so far removed from your frame of reference that he is psychologically invisible. * TREE/FOREST Fallacy: People who don't think in principles will not be able to see the principles underlying a philosophy. Usually, all they will be able to see is the behavior of individuals who call themselves adherents of that philosophy. * UNINTENDED SELF-INCLUSION (from James P. Hogan) "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell. Why didn't he put "I think" at the end of it? By omitting the "doubt- qualifier" Russell is unintentionally describing his own attitude. * UNKNOWABLES (The Objectivist Newsletter, Jan 1963) "That which, by its nature, cannot be known. To claim it unknowable, one must first know not only that it exists but have enough knowledge of it to justify the assertion. The assertion and the justification are then in contradiction. To make the assertion without justification is an irrationalism." Branden's argument implies that the unknowable must be a particular, specifiable entity. I maintain that it can be merely an aspect of existence that consciousness cannot perceive. To assert that all things CAN be known is to imply that existence is subsumed by consciousness. I claim that there are unknowables. Not any particular, specifiable unknowable items (for that would indeed be the contradiction noted above), but merely aspects of reality that are unperceiveable. (You cannot simultaneously perceive both sides of your cat.) My justification for this assertion is the primacy of existence over consciousness. Thus Quantum Indeterminacy is a genuine phenomenon. It is the closest we can come to specifying an aspect of reality that is unknowable: the simultaneous perception of position and momentum. * VARIANT IMAGIZATION - Generating dissimilar images from similar concepts. Certain kinds of crops, such as corn, are "harvested", but other kinds, such as trees, are "slashed" or "devastated". Who would forbid farmers to "harvest" a crop of beets? But who would willingly allow men armed with chainsaws to "devastate" the ecology? * WOULDCHUCK FALLACY - If you take the old tongue-twister: "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" and make a slight homonymous substitution: "How much would could a wouldchuck chuck if a wouldchuck could chuck would?" you arrive at a description of a certain kind of dissertation made by people who are trying to "prove" an idea for which they have no factual corroboration. This is a description of much of scientific belief before the time of Galileo. For instance, it was believed that if you dropped a 5-pound rock and a 10-pound rock simultaneously, the 10-pounder WOULD hit the ground first because, being heavier, it WOULD therefore be pulled down harder and WOULD therefore travel faster. Notice the use of the word "would" in those statements. This expression of conditional probability is chucked around as though it were an assertion of factual reality. Implicit to such statements is the assumption that what seems plausible is therefore true and requires no further proof. I became acutely aware of this "Wouldchuck" argument while reading the Tannehills' book, "The Market For Liberty." The entirety of Part2, which sets forth in detail their view of a free-market society, consists of the Wouldchuck argument. Here is a typical example: "This insurance would be sold to the contracting parties at the time the contract was ratified. Before an insurance company would indemnify its insured for loss in a case of broken contract, the matter would have to be submitted to arbitration as provided in the contract. For this reason there would be a close link between the business of contract insurance and the business of arbitration." Sounds plausible, doesn't it? Yes... BUT, no proof of these conjectures is offered. They are nothing more than unsubstantiated hypostatizations. The proponent of a program, through the use of this argument, can articulate a comprehensive framework within which the implementation of his program seems undeniably plausible. But if the framework itself has no other foundation than this WouldChuck supposition, the whole scheme rests on a very shaky basis. * APPEAL TO IGNORANCE - Assertions based on what we do NOT know: "No one knows precisely what would happen if a core was to melt down." And the compounding of arbitrarily asserted possibilities. What COULD happen is what is possible. The burden of proof is on the skeptic to provide some specific reason to doubt a conclusion that all available evidence supports. It is not true that "coulds" and "maybes" are an epistemological free lunch that can be asserted gratuitously. The case against the skeptic is that doubt must always be specific, and can only exist in contrast to things which cannot properly be doubted. * SILENCE IMPLIES CONSENT Consent to what? Just what is it I consent to when I do NOT vote? To the policies of Bush? To the policies of Clinton? To the policies of Marrou? To the policies of all those whose principled disagreement with the electoral system precludes their participation in it? The process of implication contains a causal relationship. For one thing to imply another thing, there must be a causal sequence between the two things. People who make the assertion "silence implies consent" never propose any chain of logical connection between the silence and the consent. Precisely how does consent arise from silence? How can dead men be said to consent to anything? If my silence does imply consent, then how far does that implication reach? Am I considered to consent to all things about which I am silent? Even those about which I am completely ignorant? To the fact that someone in Calcutta beats his wife? If I must express disapproval of all things with which I do NOT consent, for fear of reproach resulting from my silence about any of them, there would not be sufficient hours in the day for such a plethora of denials. * DETERMINISM (The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1963) - "The doctrine of determinism contains a central and insuperable contradiction - an EPISTEMOLOGICAL contradiction - a contradiction implicit in any variety of dererminism, whether the alleged determining forces be physical, psychological, environmental or divine. In fact, Man is neither omniscient nor infallible. This means: (a) that he must work to ACHIEVE his knowledge, and (b) that the mere presence of an idea inside his mind does not prove that the idea is true; many ideas may enter a man's mind which are false. But if man believes what he HAS to believe, if he is not free to test his beliefs against reality and to validate or reject them - if the actions and content of his mind are determined by factors that may or may not have anything to do with reason, logic and reality - then he can never know if his conclusions are true or false....But if this were true, no knowledge - no CONCEPTUAL knowledge - would be possible to man. No theory could claim greater plausibility than any other - including the theory of psychological determinism." One of the catches to determinism is that you cannot argue with it. To argue is to make an attempt to induce someone to alter the actions or content of his mind. The determinist enters the argument with the claim that such alteration is impossible - that he has no power to volitionally change his state of consciousness. He says, and means literally, "My mind is made up - don't confuse me with the facts!" Biologists have tacitly assumed that when they have understood the operation of each molecule in a nerve membrane, they will understand the operation of the mind. But both the digital and the analog paradigms of computation make it clear that this assumption is wrong. After all, a computer is built from a completely known arrangement of devices whose operation is understood in minute detail. Yet it is often impossible to prove that even a simple computer program will calculate its desired result or, for that matter, whether the computation will even terminate. Wilder Penfield explored the brain with electrical probes. By stimulating different parts of the brain he could cause a subject to turn his head, blink his eyes, move his limbs and a host of other things. But though he could make the patient's hand move he could never make the patient feel that he had WILLED the hand to move. Penfield found that the effects of consciousness could be selectively controlled by outside manipulation. But however much he probed, he could not enter consciousness itself. He could not find the mind and invade its autonomy. The fundamental question of free will does not involve Man's physical behavior but his psychological behavior. It concerns Man's ability to control the functioning of his own mind. On the Determinist premise, men are not merely unfit for freedom, they are metaphysically incapable of it since they do not have fundamental control over the choices made in their minds. Political issues become matters of pure pragmatism: there is no right or wrong, but only effective or ineffective techniques of social manipulation. * JOURNALISTIC FALLACIES: Some subtle methods of media distortion: use of emotionally loaded images, isolation of events from their historical context, limitation of debate to "responsible" options, framing of dissident viewpoints in ways that trivialize them, personification of complex realities (Saddam = Iraq), objectification of persons ("collateral damage") * SELECTIVE SAMPLING - "The death rate among American soldiers in Vietnam was lower than among the general population." But the soldiers in Vietnam were young and healthy. You are comparing them with a data base including non-young and non-healthy people. * IGNORING UNIT PERCENTAGES - "You are safer walking down a dark alley than sitting in your living room with friends, because most murders are committed in the victim's home by his acquaintances." This ignores the fact that most people spend much more of their time at home than walking down alleys. __ SOURCE MATERIAL FOR THE STUDY OF OBJECTIVISM Some of the authors cited here are not Objectivists, nonetheless many of their ideas are excellent expressions of Objectivist principles. * General Philosophy * Epistemology * Psychology * Morality * Ethics * Politics * Economics * Esthetics * Education * Science Fiction as an introduction to the study of Science * Science Fact * Books and Movies in the Romantic Art Form * Miscellaneous good stuff Most of this stuff can be purchased from: LAISSEZ FAIRE BOOKS 938 Howard St #202 San Francisco 94103 Write and ask them for their catalog. The lectures are on cassette tapes. For more information on any of these subjects, contact: David King 58 Spring Valley Drive Milford WY 82520 * General Philosophy THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS - Ayn Rand & Nathaniel Branden (Signet book #AE2931) ATLAS SHRUGGED - Ayn Rand - Random House THE OBJECTIVIST NEWSLETTER, THE OBJECTIVIST, THE AYN RAND LETTER, THE OBJECTIVIST FORUM A series of monthly journals published from 1962 to 1985 by Rand et al. BASIC PRINCIPLES OF OBJECTIVISM - 20 lectures by N. Branden FOR A NEW LIBERTY - Murray Rothbard - Libertarian Review Foundation An excellent application of libertarianism to all aspects of social existence. Everything is nicely explained by detailed reference to the non- aggression principle. * Epistemology PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENT THINKING - 10 lectures by Barbara Branden 1984 - George Orwell - New American Library (Signet) 451 CY688 This is the most prophetic book of the 20th century. Orwell's concepts of Newspeak and Prolefeed are indispensable to an understanding of the development of American culture during the last half of this century. A thorough knowledge of Newspeak, as it has been implemented in America, is the best means by which one can avoid an immense quagmire of faulty thinking. INTRODUCTION TO OBJECTIVIST EPISTEMOLOGY - Rand - Ed. by Binswanger and Peikoff - Penguin 452-01030-6 EVIDENCE OF THE SENSES - David Kelley - Louisiana State Univ. Press L-261 TRUTH AND TOLERATION - David Kelley * Psychology PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-ESTEEM - Nathaniel Branden - Bantam 23449 If you haven't read this book, you don't really know what psychology is. In this work Psychology has found an Aristotle to organize its material, systematize its problems and define its fundamental principles. THE DISOWNED SELF - N. Branden - Bantan 22794 ROBIN AND MARIAN - James Goldman - Bantam T2772 Is the screenplay for the movie starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn (the story of how Robin Hood died). The introductory essay, on the subject of heroes, is magnificent. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ROMANTIC LOVE - 16 lectures by N. Branden * Morality HOW I FOUND FREEDOM IN AN UNFREE WORLD - Harry Browne - Macmillan Practical procedures for achieving as much personal freedom as possible in an authoritarian society. * Ethics LIBERTARIANISM - John Hospers - Nash, 1971 (out of print) LIBERTARIANISM IN ONE LESSON - David Bergland - Orpheus Publications Clearly shows the fundamental differences among the Liberal, Conservative, and Libertarian ethical views. EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION - Robert Axelrod - Basic Books Explains how cooperation can emerge among self-seeking individuals when there is no central authority to police their actions. Not surprisingly, the most practical way of dealing with the Prisoners' Dilemma is to use a technique based on the libertarian ethic. (Axelrod is not a libertarian.) MARKET FOR LIBERTY - Morris and Linda Tannehill - Laissez Faire Books, 1970 Contains some excellent statements of principle, but all else consists of the WouldChuck argument. THE ENTERPRISE OF LAW contains the proof for the principles presented in this book. FOR A NEW LIBERTY fills in the principled basis. * Politics CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE - Henry Thoreau (in "Walden and Other Writings", Bantam 21246) A classic portrayal of the anarchist principle. ENTERPRISE OF LAW - Bruce Benson - Pacific Research Institute There is a lot of sloppy thinking in this book, but nevertheless it is a very good documentation of the historical rise and development of government law, the present disastrous state of government law, and the present nature of private law. This book is a good answer to the question "What is government?" A strong case is made that government in the USA is a tool of coercion used by special-interest groups to effect wealth transfers. THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS - Robert Heinlein - Berkley 0 425 06262 7 A colony on the Moon is Earth's "Botany Bay." The central managing computer becomes a conscious entity and it, along with a few of the humans, stage a revolution, freeing Luna from Earth's control. The best SF story ever written. It contains some of Heinlein's best political philosophy. THE GREAT EXPLOSION - Eric Frank Russell - Avon (Equinox) 23820 Includes a portrayal of a society without government VOYAGE FROM YESTERYEAR - James P Hogan - Ballantine Del Ray 29472 Portrayal of a society without government THE SYNDIC - C.M. Kornbluth - Avon (Equinox) 20586 The government has been driven out of America, and the country is ruled by a consortium of the Mafia et al. THE PROBABILITY BROACH - L. Neil Smith - Ballantine 28593 What would America be like today if the Whiskey Rebellion had been successful, Washington executed, the Constitution abolished, and the political ideals of the Anti-Federalists implemented? * Economics HOW YOU CAN PROFIT FROM THE COMING DEVALUATION - Harry Browne - Arlington House, 1970 (out of print) Despite its unfortunate name, this is an excellent textbook on economics. ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON - Henry Hazlitt - Harper & Row This book is an excellent refutation of many economic errors. But that's all it is. The entire work is a criticism of economic error and an apology for the institution (government) that perpetrates that error. He nowhere proposes what might be the proper course of economic endeavor. I think this would make a good primer - something that would clear away the mistaken beliefs in a person's mind. CAPITALISM THE UNKNOWN IDEAL - Rand et al. - Signet E9227 HOW THE WEST GREW RICH - Nathan Rosenberg and L.E.Birdzell, Jr. - Basic Books This is a fascinating and illuminating history of the economic growth of our society, from the demise of the feudal system of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. This book is an excellent starting point for a study of economic history. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AMERICAN BUSINESS - Ed. by John Brooks - Doubleday PANICS AND CRASHES - Harry Schultz - Pinnacle Books 230516 This is an excellent history book, with lots of fascinating documentation, but not much at all in the way of principled guidance. THE ECONOMIC TIME BOMB - Harry Browne - St. Martin's Press, 312-92133-0. Browne argues that the larger danger in a crisis situation is not the crisis itself but the potentially destructive effect of any legislation that might be enacted to deal with it. This applies not only to real crises, but also to imagined ones. As such "non-problems" as the trade deficit, stock market declines, and America's new status as a debtor nation are exploited as excuses for more government, the probability of catastrophe increases. Another aspect of this analysis is that government might already have taken actions (prior to the crisis) that preclude an alleviation of the crisis. For example: Environmental laws passed prior to the California earthquake made it illegal for Route 1 to be repaired. PUBLIC GOODS & MARKET FAILURES - Ed by Tyler Cowen - Transaction Publishers Only the third section of this book (Case Studies) has any real value. But it is pricelessly valuable! It consists of examinations, in the real world, of situations contemplated theoretically in the first two sections. It clearly shows the tremendous difference between the fantasy of economic theory and the reality of economic fact. TRIUMPH OF CONSERVATISM - Gabriel Kolko; Quadrangle Books, Chicago 1967 Shows how a political-industrial complex came into being in America during the early years of the 20th century as businessmen tried (successfully) to use the federal government as a tool of coercion in the marketplace. This book is good for background but not as a primary source. It corroborates the "special- interest" thesis in THE ENTERPRISE OF LAW. FREE TO CHOOSE - Milton & Rose Friedman - Avon 52548 The best - and really the only useful - parts of this book are chapters 7 and 8, where the Friedmans critique government intervention in the marketplace. These two chapters have a lot of useful historical analysis. * Esthetics THE ROMANTIC MANIFESTO - Rand * Education Home Schooling is really quite easy in the state of Wyoming. A law passed in 1986 (Wyoming Statute 21-4-101) specifies that parents desiring to home- school their children need merely inform the local school board of their decision and, each year, specify the curriculum they will use. Private schools in Wyoming are not required to register nor be accredited in order to operate. They may award their own diplomas, and are not required to have certified teachers. The Rutherford Institute is a service that monitors state schooling regulations throughout America. Information on any state can be obtained from The Home Education Reporter, Box 510, Manassas VA 22110. HOME EDUCATION MAGAZINE Box 1083 Tonasket WA 98855 AERO-GRAMME, 417 Roslyn Rd, Roslyn Heights NY 11577 (516)621-2195 TAKING CHILDREN SERIOUSLY - Sarah Williams, 23 Whitley Road, London N17 6RJ A bi-monthly British journal on home schooling and other parenting issues. DR. MONTESSORI'S OWN HANDBOOK - Maria Montessori - Schocken SB98 For working with children aged about 3 to 6. LIBERATING SCHOOLS - ed. by David Boaz FAMILY MATTERS - David Guterson SUPER PARENTS, SUPER CHILDREN - Frances Kendall HOW TO RAISE A BRIGHTER CHILD - Joan Beck HOMESCHOOLING FOR EXCELLENCE - David and Micki Colfax CAPITALISM FOR KIDS - Karl Hess THE OX CART MAN - Donald Hall - Viking Penguin Press A children's book portraying free enterprise. * Science Fiction as an introduction to the study of Science One of the best ways to engender an interest in science in the minds of young people is to introduce them to it through works of good science fiction. Arthur Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and James Hogan are authors who combine science fact with thoughtful scientific speculation into well-written, intelligently imaginative stories. These seven books are by James P. Hogan. (All are Ballantine Del Ray books.) All are a rare combination of excellent science and excellent fiction. INHERIT THE STARS - #31792 \ THE GENTLE GIANTS OF GANYMEDE #32327 - a Trilogy GIANTS' STAR #32720 / THE GENESIS MACHINE #30576 THE TWO FACES OF TOMORROW #32387 THRICE UPON A TIME #32386 CODE OF THE LIFEMAKER #30549 RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA - Arthur C. Clarke - Ballantine #345 24175 4 The investigation of an uninhabited space ship wandering through the Solar system. Excellent science exposition in this book. THE SENTINEL - Arthur C. Clarke - Berkley #6183 THE DEEP RANGE - Arthur C. Clarke - Bantam #28925 TRUE NAMES - Vernor Vinge - Bluejay #94444 For computer programmers, hackers, and those interested in Artificial Intelligence. ROBOT VISIONS - Isaac Asimov - Penguin #45064 An integrated collection of both science essays and robot stories. Many of the stories are parables illustrating the problems in logic encountered when dealing with machine intelligence, and the essays deal with the idea of computer intelligence and its significance to human society. THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW - Robert Heinlein - Berkley #10223 * Science Fact Isaac Asimov has written dozens of volumes of science essays. I know of no better way to get a broad general education in science than by reading those essays. THE INTELLIGENT MAN'S GUIDE TO THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES - Isaac Asimov Pocket Cardinal #95004 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Box 3186 Harlan Iowa 51593-2377 $34.97 per year RELATIVITY FOR THE MILLION - Martin Gardner - Macmillan, 1962 This is a clear and simple exposition of the Special and General Relativity. WHEELS, LIFE AND OTHER MATHEMATICAL AMUSEMENTS - Martin Gardner - W.H. Freeman & Co., 1983 TIME TRAVEL AND OTHER MATHEMATICAL BEWILDERMENTS - Martin Gardner - W.H. Freeman & Co., 1988 THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE - George Gamow - Bantam #5863 QED - Richard Feynman - Princeton Univ. Press. A non-mathematical presentation of Quantum Electro-Dynamics (the way in which light interacts with matter). RANDOM HOUSE BOOK OF 1001 WONDERS OF SCIENCE This one is for children. * Books and Movies in the Romantic Art Form I will begin by naming the principle that underlies those works of literature that I, as an Objectivist, find esthetically appealing. The thing they all have in common is a manifestation of VALUES; to be precise: a striving to achieve important values in the face of great adversity. The defining characteristic of Romantic Art is that it portrays Man as a volitional being whose choices are significant determining factors in the course of his life. For a full philosophical explanation of what values are and why they are a fundamental necessity of life, you should read Ayn Rand's essay "The Objectivist Ethics", which appears in her book THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS. When a person strives to achieve great values - and is successful - that person is a HERO. Indeed, it is precisely this behavior that is the defining characteristic of a hero. So, to put it quite simply, since I am a man whose life is built around very firmly and explicitly held values, I love stories about heroes. Stories which show me, in symbolic form, the achievements of others and thus help give me the spiritual strength to work toward my own goals. For a magnificient description of heroes - and why we don't have them anymore - you should read James Goldman's screenplay for ROBIN AND MARIAN. There is one more attribute a good story should have: it should be a well- told story: a story that consists of a believeable world - one that is internally coherent and can induce in the observer an appropriate mental frame-of-reference. J.R.R. Tolkien described this attribute as a condition of "...literary belief, the state of mind that has been called 'willing suspension of disbelief.' What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful 'subcreator.' He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed." Tolkien's masterpiece, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, is by far the best example of the sort of Romantic Art described here. It is a magnificient fairy tale about a fabulous land, Middle Earth, where the forces of Good war against and are victorious over the forces of Evil. A land where the Kings have majesty, the Heroes have grace, and even the Villains have stature. DOWN THE LONG HILLS - Louis L'Amour - Bantam #02038 One of L'Amour's best - the hero is a 7-year-old boy. ON THE BEACH - Nevil Shute - Bantam #S3875 THE GIRL WHO OWNED A CITY - O.T. Nelson -Dell (Laurel Leaf) #92893 A plague takes all human adults, leaving only the children. THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA - Hemingway - Scribner #SL104 CYRANO DE BERGERAC - Edmond Rostand - Bantam HT4650 THE MIRACLE WORKER - William Gibson - Samuel French, Inc. How Annie Sullivan taught the child Helen Keller to be a human. One of the very few works of literature that have an explicitly epistemological theme. ANTHEM - Ayn Rand TOILERS OF THE SEA - Victor Hugo WATERSHIP DOWN - Richard Adams Here are some of the movies that are excellent portrayals of heroism (I think it unfortunate that many of them have a setting of war and violence, but human society being what it is, this context is what gives rise to much of the heroism in fiction): Black Stallion Firefox Spartacus Man From Snowy River Dam Busters Great Escape Muppet Movie Swiss Family Robinson Dark Crystal High Noon Train Philadelphia Experiment Dark Victory Lassiter Raid on Entebbe Somewhere in Time Dragonslayer Last Unicorn Watership Down Benji the Hunted These three movies I take special note of, because they portray a rarely- encountered hero - a strong-willed, self-assertive woman: Conan the Barbarian Time Rider Yentl * Miscellaneous good stuff FULL CONTEXT - a monthly journal from The Objectivist Club of Michigan. 2317 Starr Rd. D-1, Royal Oak, MI 48073 Institute for Objectivist Studies 82 Washington St #207 Poughkeepsie NY 12601-9768 IOS issues a bi-monthly journal written by David Kelley and his associates. Cato Institute 1000 Massachusetts Ave NW Washington DC 20001 Cato is a libertarian think tank. ROLLING HOMES - Jane Lidz - A&W Publishers A beautiful picture book - showing how buses and trucks have been artistically converted into handmade houses on wheels. THE VINTAGE MENCKEN - ed. by Alistair Cooke - Random House (Vintage) #V-25 Mencken was one of the greatest masters of the English language. THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY - Ambrose Bierce - Dover #T487 In the form of a dictionary, this is some of Bierce's strange humor. To unlock the power of your computer: The Public (software) Library P.O.Box 35705 Houston, TX 77235-5705 An immense quantity of computer software, both public domain and shareware. Send them $2 for their catalog. Specify MS-DOS or MAC Computer networks: Institute for Global Communications 3228 Sacramento St San Francisco 94115 (415) 9230900 An anarchist computer network. Compuserve, GO ISSUES, Section 3, Library 3 on individualism __ This is a key-word index of some Objectivist source material. It is designed for computer searches. Just search for the word you want. *********** REFERENCES ************ ARL :The Ayn Rand Letter B# :The lectures on Basic Principles of Objectivism given by N. Branden L# :The Psychology of Romantic Love lectures RAA :The Revolt Against Affluence RPP :Role of Philosophy in Psychotherapy T# :Lectures on Principles of Efficient Thinking given by Barbara Branden. TEC :Tax-exempt Church TOA :Textbook of Americanism TOF or MmmYY-pp (Apr87-10) :The Objectivist Forum TPI :The Playboy Interview VOS :The Virtue of Selfishness (hardback - index) YY/Mmm/pp (67/May/11) :The Objectivist Newsletter or The Objectivist ********* Objectivist Newsletter ************* Abortion; 69/Feb/3; ARL383 (feticide); Jun81-3 Agnosticism; 63/Apr/15; Dec87-6 Alienation; 65/Jul/29 Altruism; 62/Jul/27; 63/Oct/39 Ambition; ARL51 American Philosophical Association; 70/Jun/1 Amoralist; ARL205 Amundsen:Roald; Apr87-10 Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy; 67/May/11 Anderson:Benjamin (Economics and the Public Welfare); 65/May/21 Anderson:Martin (The Federal Bulldozer); 66/Apr/8 ANDERSON:MARTIN; 65/May/21 Anthropology; Feb81-10 Anti-concept; ARL1; ARL197; ARL205 Anti-Industrial Revolution; 71/Jan/1 Antitrust; 62/Jan/1; 62/Feb/5; Jun80-6 Anxiety; 66/Nov/7 Apollo 11; 69/Sep/1; 69/Dec/1 Apollo 8; 68/Nov/16 Apollo; ARL157 Appeasement; 66/Jan/1 Arbitrary; Dec87-1 Architecture; Dec85-10 Argument from Intimidation; 64/Jul/25; ARL374 Arnold:Magda (Emotion and Personality); 66/Jan/12 Art/Cognition; 71/Apr/1 Art; 65/Apr/15; 66/Mar/1; 68/Nov/5: Dec82-1; TPI-11 Axiomatic Concepts; Feb87-4 Balance of Trade; Aug87-14 Barron:John (KGB Today:The Hidden Hand); Oct83-12 Barron:John (MIG Pilot); Aug80-10 Barzun (The American University); 68/Nov/11 Beck:Joan (How to Raise a Brighter Child); 68/Sep/11 Behaviorism; Feb80-10 Berlin; 62/Jan/4 Bessemer:Henry; Jun85-12 Beyond Freedom and Dignity; ARL33; ARL70 Biology Without Consciousness-And its Consequences; 68/Feb/5 Blanshard:Brand (Reason and Analysis); 63/Feb/7 Bludge mentality; Apr84-11 BLUMENTHAL:ALLAN; 69/Jun/6 BLUMENTHAL:JOAN; 64/Mar/11; 68/Nov/5 Bork:Robert; Oct87-7 Born Free (movie); 66/Sep/14 BRANDEN:BARBARA;62/Jan/2; 62/Mar/11; 62/Dec/54; 63/Jun/23; 66/Feb/14; 66/Sep/12; 66/Oct/7; 67/Apr/11 BRICK:AVIS; 67/Jun/13; 68/Jun/12; 68/Jul/8 Bucher:Lloyd; 69/Feb/1 Bullit (movie); 69/Jun/13 Buy American; Apr87-1 Capital Punishment; 63/Jan/3 Capitalism; 63/Nov/44; 65/Oct/47; 65/Nov/51; ARL338 Capote (In Cold Blood); 66/Feb/15 Capuletti:Jose Manuel; 66/Dec/12 Causality; 66/Mar/8 Censorship; ARL70; ARL229 Certainty; ARL286 Charly (movie); 69/Jun/11 Chess; ARL111 Child labor; 62/Apr/14 Christ; TPI-10 Chu:Valentin (Ta Ta Tan Tan); 63/Nov/42 Collectivism; TOA-3 Collins and Tamarkin (Marva Collins' Way); Aug86-11 Communism; ARL86 Competition; 68/Aug/8 Comprachicos; 70/Aug/1 Compromise; 62/Jul/29; 64/Jan/1 Conflicts of interests; 62/Aug/31 Consensus; 65/May/19; ARL85 Conspiracy; 69/Jan/10 Constitution; Nov67-9; Dec87-8 Consumerism; 65/Oct/47 Cooke:Janet (Jimmy's World); Aug81-2 Copyrights; 64/May/19 Core Evaluations; Feb85-3 Corruption Fallacy; ARL92 Covenant; ARL121; ARL375 see also the Covenant file folder Crane:Philip (The Democrat's Dilemma); 65/Oct/49 Creationism; Apr81-13 Creative; ARL178 Crocker:George (Roosevelt's Road to Russia); 64/Jan/2 Cultural Barometer; 66/Feb/14 et seq. Cultural Value-Deprivation; 66/Apr/1 Czechoslovakia; 68/Jul/8 Dear John (movie); 66/Sep 13 Democratic National Convention; ARL95 Depressions; 62/Aug/33 Determinism; 63/May/17 Draft; 67/Oct/10 Drury (Capable of Honor); 66/Oct/7 Drury (Preserve and Protect); 68/Dec/11 Drury (The Throne of Saturn); 71/May/11 DRURY:ALLEN; 69/Jan/9 Duty; 70/Jul/1 East Minus West = Zero (Keller); 62/Nov/48 Economics; 68/Aug/8; ARL337; Aug80-3; Aug82-3; Apr87-7; Aug87-12; TEC Education:Traditional/Progressive/Montessori; Jun84-10 Education; Aug82-10; Aug83-2; Oct83-1; Oct84-1; Aug86-11 EFRON:EDITH; 62/MAY/18 ;62/Nov/48; 63/Jul/26; 64/May/18 EFRON:ROBERT; 66/Jan/12; 67/Mar/8; 68/Feb/5 Egalitarianism; ARL333 Ekirch:Arthur (Decline of American Liberalism); 62/Jul/28 Election 1972; ARL133 Electrical Conspiracy; 62/Jan/1; 62/Feb/6 Ellis:Albert; 67/Dec/11 Emotions/Actions; 66/Jun/7 Emotions/Repression; 66/Aug/8 Emotions/Values; 66/May/1 Emotions; 62/Jan/3; Oct87-3 Energy Crisis; ARL257 Envy; 71/Jul/1 Epistemology; 66/Jul/1; 70/Mar/1; Oct84-3; Aug85-1; Dec86-1; Feb87-1 Establishment; ARL70 Esthetics; 62/Nov/49; 63/Oct/37; 65/Jan/1 Ethics of Emergencies; 63/Feb/5 Ethics; 63/Jan/1; 65/Feb/7 Existentialism; ARL291 Extremism; 64/Sep/35 F.C.C.; 62/Jan/1; 62/Mar/9; 63/Jul/25 Facts of Reality; Feb87-7 Fair Trade; Apr87-8 Fairness Doctrine; ARL77; ARL82 Falsifiability; Aug82-4 Fascism; ARL86 Federal Reserve; 66/Jul/14 Fertig:Lawrence (Prosperity Through Freedom); 62/Mar/10 First cause; 62/May/19 Fleming:Harold (Ten Thousand Commandments); 62/Apr/14 Flynn:John (Roosevelt Myth); 62/Dec/54 Force; the Covenant file folder Foreign aid; 62/Sep/37 Free Will; 64/Jan/3 Freud; Feb80-11 Friedan (Feminine Mystique); 63/Jul/26 Galbraith:John Kenneth (The Affluent Society); RAA Georgia Sodomy; Dec87-7; Oct86-13 Gish (Lillian Gish: The Movies Mr. Griffith and Me); 69/Nov/7 Goldwater:Barry; 64/Dec/49 Government financing; 64/Feb/7 Government; 63/Dec/45; TOA-7; TPI-12; CGG statism Gravity game; ARL292 Great White Hope (drama); 69/Apr/7 Greatest Good For the Greatest Number; TOA-10 GREENSPAN:ALAN; 62/Jan/4; 66/Jul/11 Hacker:Louis (The World of Andrew carnegie); 69/Apr/12 Hahn:Otto; Dec83-5 Hainstock (Teaching Montessori in The Home); 71/Jul/13 Hansel (ESP:A Scientific Evaluation); 67/Mar/8 Hardwick; Oct86-13; Dec87-7 Hazlitt (Economics in One Lesson); 62/Feb/6 Hedonism; 62/Feb/7; TPI-8 Hegel; Feb86-12 Heraclitus; Feb86-12 HESSEN:BEATRICE; 64/Jan/2; 66/Apr/8; 68/Jan/12; 68/Sep/11; 70/May/12; 71/Jul/13 HESSEN:ROBERT; 62/Feb/6; 62/Apr/14; 62/Jul/28; 62/Nov/51; 63/Nov/42; 68/Nov/11; 69/Apr/12; 70/Jan/9; 70/Aug/11 Hippies; ARL201 History; Oct85-1 Hoffman:Banesh; (The Tyranny of Testing); 64/Mar/11 HOLZER:ERIKA(PHYLLIS); 68/Dec/11; 69/Jun/10 HOLZER:HENRY and PHYLLIS; 67/Oct/10 Horror File; 65/Jun/25 et seq. HUAC testimony; Aug87-1 Hugo (Ninety-Three); 62/Oct/42 Hugo (The Man Who Laughs); 67/Dec/9 Humanae Vitae; 68/Sep/1 Huntford:Roland (The Last Place on Earth); Apr87-10 I Am Curious (yellow) (movie); 69/Dec/12 Ibsen:Henrik; 71/Apr/10 Idealism; 69/Jan/3 Imaginary numbers; Aug85-7 Imitation; ARL228 In the Heat of the Night (movie); 68/Jan/10 Individualism; 62/Apr/13; Feb86-9; TOA-3 Industrial Revolution; 62/Nov/51 Inflation; ARL301; ARL337; Aug80-8 Inherited Wealth; 63/Jun/22 Innocents; Dec83-6; TPI-10 Instincts; 62/Oct/43 Intellectual honesty; ARL287 Introspection; ARL289; Dec85-2 Irrationalism; 63/Jul/27 Jones:Joyce (Citizenship Education); 67/Jun/13 Jones:W.T. (A History of Western Philosophy); 64/Sep/36 Journalism; 69/Jan/9; Dec80-8; Aug81-1; Oct82-9 KAMM:HENRY; 69/Jan/1 Kant; 71/Sep/4; ARL290; ARL377; Jun87-3 Kaufmann (Philosophic Classics); 64/Sep/36 Keller:Werner (East Minus West = Zero); 62/Nov/48 Kennedy:J.F.; 62/May/17; 62/Jun/21 Kidder:Tracy (The Soul of a New Machine); Feb82-5 Knight:Frank H.; Jun80-6 Knowledge; Apr81-8 Kudirka:Simas; 71/Jan/13 Labor Unions; 63/Nov/43 Law of Comparative Advantage; Aug87-11 Law; Jun83-8 Libertarianism; Aug81-11 Linguistic Analysis; ARL291 Literary style; Jun84-6 Literature; 68/Jul/1 Lithuanian Sailor; 71/Jan/13 Logic; ARL287; Dec86-8 Love Story (movie); 71/Jun/10 LUDEL:SUSAN; 69/Jan/9; 69/Oct/8; 70/Mar/11; 70/Jul/10; 71/May/11 Lyons:Eugene (Workers' Paradise Lost); 68/Jan/12 Man for all Seasons (movie); 68/Jan/9 Man in the Glass Booth (drama); 69/Jul/12 Man of La Mancha (drama); 69/Apr/10 Marchenko (My Tesimony); 70/Jul/10 Marcuse:Herbert; 70/Sep/7 Marginal Utility; RAA-5 Marilyn Monroe; 62/Oct/45 Marxism; Apr80-8 Maturity; 65/Nov/53 McGovern; ARL85; ARL125 Medicine; 62/Jun/25; 63/Mar/11; Apr85-3 MELTZER:JOAN; 65/Oct/49 Mental Health; 63/Mar/9; 67/Feb/8 Merwin-Webster (Calumet K); 67/Oct/6 Metaphysical vs Man-made; ARL177; ARL287 Midnight Cowboy; 69/Dec/11 Mill:John Stuart; ARL252 Minow:Newton; 62/Jan/1; 62/Mar/9; 63/Jul/25 Miracle Worker; 70/Mar/7 Missing Link; ARL204 Mixed economy; 62/Mar/9 Money; 66/Jul/11; ARL338; Oct80-9 Monopolies; 62/Jun/23 Montessori Education; Jun84-7 Montessori; 70/May/12 Moral Grayness; 64/Jun/21 Movies; Feb83-9 Muttnik; 67/Dec/2 Nazism; 69/Feb/5; 69/Oct/1; 70/Apr/1; 71/Jan/8 NELSON:JOHN; 69/Aug/3 New Left; 70/Sep/7 Newspeak; ARL115; ARL357; ARL376 Nietzsche:Friedrich; Feb86-8 Ninth Amendment; Nov67-9 Nixon-China; ARL58 Nixon; 68/Jun/1; ARL5 Nuclear power; Dec80-2 O'CONNOR:FRANK; 69/Nov/7 Obituary; Feb82-1 Objectivism; 62/Aug/35; Jun82-8; Aug83-2 Open mind; ARL292 Oppenheimer:J Robert; Dec83-5 Our Man Flint (Movie); 66/Feb/14 Parents/Children; 62/Dec/55 Patents; 64/May/19 Paterson:Isabel (The God of the Machine); 64/Oct/42 Peaceniks; 62/Oct/44 Peikoff (Thirty Years with Ayn Rand); Jun87-1 Peikoff:Leonard (The Ominous Parallels); Apr82-9 PEIKOFF:LEONARD; 62/Feb/7; 62/Jun/25; 64/Sep/36; 69/Feb/5; 69/Oct/1; 70/Apr/1; 71/Jan/8; 71/Sep/4 Perfection; Feb81-1 Perry Mason; ARL225 Personal identity; Feb84-2 Philosophy: Who Needs It; ARL277 Philosophy; TPI-5 Pleasure; 64/Feb/5 Polarization; ARL1 Political crime; 70/May/1 Politics; 62/Jan/1; 66/Oct/12; Dec83-13; CGG Populorum Progressio; 67/Jul/1 Pornography; ARL230 Primacy of Existence; ARL177 Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (drama); 69/Apr/9 Proof; Dec86-8; Dec87-4 Property; 69/Aug/4 Property Rights; 64/May/19 Prove a Negative; Apr81-11 Pseudo-Self-Esteem; 64/May/17 Psycho-Epistemology; 64/Oct/41 Psychoanalysis; Feb80-11 Psychological Visibility; 67/Dec/2 Psychologizing; 71/Mar/1 Psychology; ARL179; Oct82-5; Feb85-3 Psychotherapy; 69/Jun/6; RPP-1 Public interest; 62/Mar/9 Public Television; ARL151 Pueblo; 69/Feb/1 Purchase; ARL351 Quotas; ARL92 Radio; 64/Apr/13 Rand's Razor; Dec86-10 Randall:John (Aristotle); 63/May/18 Rationalization; ARL289; ARL290 Rattigan:Terence; 71/Mar/9 Rawls; ARL168 Reagan:Ronald; ARL382; Jun81-1 Reason; Oct87-1 Reds (movie); Feb82-9 Reduction; Dec86-4 Reflections in a Golden Eye (movie); 68/Jan/8 Rehnquist; ARL23 Reinforcer; Feb80-14 Reisman:George (The Government Against the Economy); Apr80-13 REISMAN:GEORGE; 68/Aug/8 Religion; Jun86-2; TPI-10 Report to Readers; 63/Dec/47; 64/Dec/51; 65/Apr/17; 65/Dec/57; 66/Apr/17 Representative Government; ARL91 Repression; 66/Aug/8 Right-to-Work; 63/Jun/23 Rights; 63/Apr/13; 63/Jun/21; ARL180; Oct82-3 Risking one's life; 64/Apr/15 Romantic Realism; Jun84-6 Romanticism; 69/May/1; 69/Aug/1 Rousseau; 69/Aug/7 Russell:Bertrand; Feb84-13 Ryan's Daughter (movie); 71/Jun/9 Samenow:Stanton (Inside the Criminal Mind); Apr84-8 Scheibla (Poverty is Where the Money Is); 69/Aug/9 Scholarships; 66/Jun/11 Schools; 63/Jun/22; ARL52 Schwab:Charles; ARL387 Science vs Ethics; 62/Oct/41 Science; ARL179; Aug85-8 Scott:Robert; Apr87-10 Sculpture; 69/Feb/10 Self-Esteem/Romantic Love; 67/Dec;1 Self-Esteem; 67/Mar/1 Selfish; 62/Sep/39 (Isn't Everyone Selfish?) Selfishness; Intro to VOS Sense of Life; 65/Mar/9; 66/Feb/1; 66/Mar/1; ARL15; Feb85-6 SeventeenSeventySix (drama); 70/Feb/10 Sex; ARL251; Aug84-1 Shockley:William; ARL255 Shrugging; 64/Aug/29; TPI-15 Shute:Nevil; Feb85-10 Simplistic-Complex; ARL119 Skinner; ARL33; ARL70; Feb80-10 SMITH:KAY NOLTE; 68/Oct/6; 69/Apr/7; 69/Jul/9; 69/Dec/9; 70/Feb/10; 71/Mar/9; 71/Apr/10; 71/Jun/7 Social; ARL87; ARL89; ARL123; ARL291; ARL301; Jun84-11; Oct85-5 Social Contract; 69/Aug/7 Socialism; 62/Dec/53 Social Metaphysics; 62/Nov/47; 64/Jul/27; 65/Feb/5; 67/Oct/1 Sorokun:Andrey; Oct86-1 South Pole; Apr87-10 Spassky; ARL111 Spillane (Day of the Guns); 64/Oct/43 Spillane (Girl Hunters); 62/Oct/42 Sports; Aug83-8 ST.JOHN:JEFFREY; 67/Jun/10 Stolen Concept; 63/Jan/2; Dec86-7 Student Rebellion, Berkeley; 65/Jul/27 Student violence; 69/Mar/1; 69/Aug/3 Supreme Court; ARL229 SURES:MARY ANN; 69/Feb/10 Surface Ideology; Oct85-8 Sutton (Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development); 70/Jan/9 Taiwan; ARL61; ARL65 Tax credits for education; ARL52 Tea Party (drama); 69/Jul/11 Teaching; ARL285; ARL292; ARL337; Oct85-7 Telepathy; Aug84-7 Television; 69/Oct/8; 70/Mar/11 Terrorism; Oct81-8 Thales; Aug84-7 The Oscar (movie); 66/Sep/12 The Simplest Thing in the World; 67/Nov/1 Theater; 68/Oct/6 Theory of Types; Feb84-13 Theory; ARL286 To Whom It May Concern; 68/May/1 Toledano (The Greatest Plot in History); 64/May/18 Tony Rome (movie); 68/Jan/8 Tribalism; ARL200; ARL205 True Grit (movie); 69/Dec/9 Truth; ARL286 Two Thousand and One (movie); 69/Jun/14 Universities; ARL79 Unknowable; 63/Jan/3 Untouchables; 62/Aug/36 Verbal proficiency; ARL115 Volition; 66/Jan/7; 66/Mar/8 Volitional Consciousness; 64/Apr/15 Von Mises (Anti-Capitalistic Mentality); 62/May/18 Von Mises (Omnipotent Government); 70/Aug/11 Von Mises (Planned Chaos); 62/Jan/2 Von Mises (Planning for Freedom); 62/Sep/38 Wage-price freeze; ARL5 WALSH:GEORGE; 70/Sep/7 War; 66/Jun/1; ARL361 Watergate; ARL187; ARL202; ARL209 We Bombed in New Haven (drama); 69/Jul/9 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (movie); 66/Sep/14 Windelband (A History of Philosophy); 64/Sep/36 Woman President; 68/Dec/1 Woodstock; 70/Jan/1 Wright:Frank Lloyd; Dec83-4 Wuthering Heights (movie); 71/Jun/8 Yeager and Janos (Yeager:An Autobiography); Apr86-12 ****** THINK ****** T#1 Introduction to thinking. Why a science of thinking is necessary. The myth that everyone "just knows" how to think. Prevalent manifestations of the failure to think efficiently. Consequences of faulty thinking methods. The relation between efficient thinking and intelligence. Problems in retraining methods of thinking. The philosophical presuppositions of efficient thinking. T#2 Focusing and problem-solving. The nature of intellectual focusing. The various levels of inadequate mental focus. Perception without conceptualization. Perception without judgment. Selective focusing. The failure to do new thinking. The state of full mental clarity. The motives and the consequences of the failure to focus mentally. The role of purpose, specificity and question-asking in problem-solving. T#3 The automatic functions of the mind. The nature of the subconscious. The subconscious as a Univac. Cognitive and evaluative functions of the subconscious. The proper use of the subconscious. Common failures to use the subconscious properly. Subconscious integrations and the emotions. Creative thinking and the subconscious. The psychology of inspiration. T#4 The conceptual level of consciousness. The nature of the conceptual level of consciousness. Concepts as the microfulm of the mind. The nature of intelligence. Thinking in principles. Thinking in essentials. Concrete-bound thinking. Counterfeit thinking in principles: the use of floating abstractions. T#5 The conceptual level of consciousness. The socialized consciousness and the destruction of language. The importance of knowing the source and validation of one's concepts. The role of integration in thinking. Evasion as the sabotaging of consciousness. Context-holding and integration. The subconscious as the holder of context. T#6 Emotions as tools of cognition. The manner in which wishes and fears can distort the thinking process. Emotional-perceptual thinking; its nature, causes, mechanism and consequences. Methods of correcting emotional-perceptual thinking. T#7 Language and definitions. Language as the tool of thought. The substitution of images and emotions for language. Non-verbal and sub-verbal thought. The dangers of equivocation in thinking. The nature and importance of exact definitions. Basic principles of definitions. The objectivity of language. T#8 Common aberrations in thinking and consequent mental habits. The fallacy of equating an abstraction with a concrete. Holding absolutes not open to re-examination. Failures of discrimination in thinking. Intellectual package-dealing. Thinking in a square. Psycho-epistemological Platonism. The misuse of analogy. T#9 The fallacy of the Stolen Concept. The meaning of the stolen concept. Analysis and refutation of common examples of the fallacy: "All property is theft";"I think, therefore I am"; "Who created the unvierse?"; "The acceptance of reason is an act of faith"; "The axioms of logic are arbitrary"; "How do you know that you exist?" The reasons for the prevalence of the fallacy. T#10 Psychological causes of inefficient thinking. The surrender of the will to efficacy. Failure of self-esteem. The malevolent universe premise. Social metaphysics. Emotional repression. The source and conditions of intellectual certainty. ******* BASIC ****** B#1 The role of philosophy. What is philosophy? The historicl role of reason. The bankruptcy of today's culture. Objectivism vs subjectivism. B#2 What is reason? The process of abstractionn and concept-formation. The subconscious. Reason and emotions. B#3 Logic and mysticism. Identity and causality. The validity of the senses. Reason vs mysticism. B#4 The concept of God. Is the concept meaningful? Are the arguments for the existence of God logically defensible? The destructiveness of the concept of God. B#5 Free will. The meaning and nature of volition. The fallacy of psychological determinism. Free will as the choice to think or not to think. B#6 Efficient thinking. The nature of clear thinking. Pseudo-thinking. The nature of definitions. Common thinking errors. B#7 Self-esteem. Why self-esteem is man's deepest psychological need. The consequences of the failure to achieve self-esteem. B#8 The psychology of dependence. The independent mind vs the socialized mind. Social metaphysics. The revolt against the responsibility of a volitional consciousness. B#9 The Objectivist ethics. Foundation of the Objectivist ethics. Man's life as the standard of value. Rationality as the foremost virtue. Happiness as the moral goal of life. B#10 Reason and virtue. Independence, honesty, integrity, productiveness. Their relation to survival and mental health. B#11 Justice vs mercy. The nature of justice. The importance of passing moral judgments. The virtue of pride. B#12 The evil of self-sacrifice. The ethics of altruism. Altruism as anti- man and anti-life. B#13 Government and the individual. The principles of a proper political system. Individual rights. Freedom vs compulsion. B#14 The economics of a free society. Basic principles of exchange. Division of labor. The mechanism of a free market. Profits and wealth. The pyramid of ability. B#15 Common fallacies about captalism. Monopolies, depressions, labor unions, inherited wealth. B#16 The psychology of sex. A person's sexual choices as the expression of his deepest values. Sex and self-esteem. B#17 Romanticism, naturalism and the novels of Ayn Rand. Naturalism and fatalism. Romanticism and free will. The literary method of Ayn Rand. B#18 Romanticism, naturalism and the novels of Ayn Rand. B#19 The nature of evil. Why evil is impotent. What makes the "victory" of evil possible. The sanction of the victim. B#20 The benevolent sense of life. Why many human beings repress and drive underground, not the worst within them, but the best. A benevolent vs malevolent sense of life. ******* PSYCHOLOGY OF ROMANTIC LOVE ****** L#1 "Love" in primitive societies. The Greek and Roman view. The Christian attack on sexuality. Individualism, capitalism and the birth of romantic love. L#2 The nature of love. The attacks on romantic love by psychologists. The crisis in marriage. Psychological visibility. Love as self discovery. L#3 Healthy love vs neurotic love. The psychological preconditions of being able to love. Distinguishing healthy from neurotic love. L#4 Love and sex. The meaning of pleasure. The psychological meaning of the sexual experience. L#5 Misconceptions about masculinity and femininity. Common fallacies about the nature of man and woman. The Freudian view. The conspiracy against woman. L#6 The meaning of masculinity and femininity. The psychological consequences and expression of man and woman's biological differences. The criteria of authentic masculinity and femininity. L#7 The challenge of masculinity and femininity. The biological basis of male and female sex roles. Aggressiveness and passivity in man and woman. L#8 Fear of masculinity and femininity. Selfishness and healthy sexuality. Fear of one's sexual role. Problems of a superior man or woman. The revolt against masculinity and femininity. L#9 The goals of a romantic relationship. The characteristics of a good romantic relationship. Communicating psychological visibility. L#10 The failure to project psychological visibility. Why romance so often vanishes. The importance of thought and effort to sustain a relationship. The importance of leisure. L#11 Emotional repression. The nature and causes of repression. The symptoms of repression in a romantic relationship. L#12 Dealing with emotional repression in marriage. Repression and communication. Repression and sexual problems. Breaking through repressive blocks. L#13 Communicating dissatisfactions. Constructive complaining. Defensiveness. The harmful effects of repressing grievances. L#14 The nature of sexual interaction. The importance of selfishness in sex. The importance of understanding oneself sexually. Homosexuality. L#15 Problems in the area of sex. Impotence and premature ejaculation. The non-orgasmic woman. Common misconceptions concerning sex. L#16 The concept of marriage. Unrealistic expectations concerning marriage. The problem of infidelity. Is romantic love for everyone? ******* FORD HALL FORUM ******** 14Nov71 6-1-168 (Rand's speech was ARL Vol1 #2 and #3) R.A. Childs' essay Comprachicos - why stay in school free will fedgov to pay taxes to local Government capital punishment should groups do what individuals shouldnt do homosexuality ethics - saints Objectivism - Randism is Objectivist Government possible - no, must be lengthy changeover 1972 elections - endorsement of Nixon libertarians application of Objectivism to foundations of math businessman's defiance of fedgov expose of pentagon papers why do you still hold hope for the country - sense of life new constitution foreign policy - what is it abortion - define human being - starts at birth gun control - not important issue - no threat comprachicos - advice to parents - Montessori new novel? cancel subscriptions major work on epistemology - favorite sculptor - did Venus de Milo or Michaelangelo - comprachicos - Montessori - public - how to cope - cause of hatred for capitalism - why is the male dominant? try to figure it out - rebuilding of America - start with philosophy 1972 7-1-155 Nixon McGovern campaign - proudest achievement - what is a sanction - why is taxation bad - altruism - Veatch - importance of political involvement - must vote but phil. education most important - libertarians - Hospers - Nixon not a power-luster - Ideal & Think Twice - Film of AS - chess - film AS - new book - free will - amnesty for draft dodgers - they must willingly accept prison - justify non-Government in AS - Declaration of Independence - common law - nuclear weapons - there are no innocent people in war - what about the untalented masses - no such thing - if so they deserve no interest - William Buckley *** Institute for Objectivist Studies IOS Journal *** IOS-May93 - environmentalism achievement power prestige enjoyment virtue ********** ATLAS SHRUGGED ************ Total elapsed time of the story is 3 years 5+ months All page numbers are in the hardback edition Who is John Galt? 153 178 517 the tramp's story 660 5 Eddie Willers Oak tree 7 James Taggart 12 Pop Harper's typewriter 31 Rearden's motivator 61 cigarettes 74 Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule 90 Francisco 146 FA thanks HR 155 Bracelet 287 finding the motor 313 I have never made a profit 320 dialectical materialism 952 323 the Starnes plan 324 William Hastings 328 Dagny meets Hugh Akston 358 mediocrity 410 money is the root of all evil 436 Government makes criminals 448 look here, Reardon 455 to shrug 464 sanction of the victim 479 476 Rearden's trial 489 Francisco on sex 497 for want of a nail 534 536 bastards stand still 538 10-289 548 the guiltless man 573 Hank meets Ragnar 579 death & taxes vs life & production 702 crash the gate 760 marriage 785 being a mother 786 Part 3 Chapter 2 Galt's question 811 irrevocable decision 859 consequence of a lie 1019 907 Cherryl's end 919 Anconia copper nationalized 989 Tony's end 994 comprachicos 1009 Galt's speech 1025 original sin 1044 origin of mysticism 1048 exploitation 1064 1066 Galt's call to Shrug 1076 There's no such thing, said Mr Thompson 1090 Galt's garret 1092 1103 how will your gun make me do that? 1104 why don't vote 1126 the xylophone 1167 Aristotle *** THE FOUNTAINHEAD *** From CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: "They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountainhead." These notes are from Sep92. I had not read the book for many years and came away from it with an attitude different from any I have held in the past. I now find Dominique to be the most contemptible fictional character I have ever encountered. It is sad to see a character such as Keating, who has only a rare spark of decency - it is pitiful to see a character such as Catherine, who hasn't a shred of human stature (she is the truly selfless character) - it is frightful to see Toohey, who is a thoroughly vicious creature - but it is downright disgusting to see Dominique, who has the makings of a first-class person, but who deliberately chooses to deprave herself into a slut. I will probably never read the book again. It is a distressing experience. the real Toohey 242 274-5 287-8 307 663 665 vii Romanticism ix the goal of Rand's writing xi rationally justifiable spirituality 92 nudity 101-2 anarchy according to Austen Heller 114 the world will get what's coming to it 121 Roark meets Austen Heller 129 a motto carved over the entrance 131 the nature of celebration 132 the determining motive of a house 140 celebration 160 There was no such person as Mrs. Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the postcards she had seen, the novels she had read. 249 sacrilege 255 You're not the worst of the world. You're its best. That's what's frightening. 267 Always be what people want you to be. Then you've got them where you want them. 268 It was not a man to him, but only a force. 269 what she saw in his face, what made it the face of a god to her, was not seen by others. 270 the style of a soul 279 289 Dominique's philosophy of sex 287-8 Atlases 288 anyone for whom we can't feel sorry is a vicious person 291 Dominique's motive 315 the quality of a dream 317 loyalty to the best within themselves 319-20 committees 331 the Ambrosian view of love 337 heroic art 338 I am grateful for what you are 340 do you understand about the men who see genius and don't want it? 340 in a sealed cell with a brain-dead monster 341 a statue for the Stoddard Temple 343 365 the Stoddard Temple - exaltation 353 journalism 356 Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? 366 casting pearls with no pork chop 367 they won't say that they hate you. They will say that you hate them. 373 the social worker 374 Why is it that I set out honestly to do what I thought was right and it's making me rotten? 375 altruism 388 To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.' 401 But I don't think of you. 421 Go buy yourself a screw. 421 Maggy Kelly 422 every piece of swill I write 423 the foundation of the Banner 424 definition of news 440 you have to flatter people you despise in order to impress other people who despise you 443 self-respect can't be killed 463 the New York skyline 464 518 human smallness vs the size of nature 470 human change (growth) 489 490 value depravation 511 to destroy the capacity for the sublime 512 the devil is many and smutty and small 528 show me your achievement - and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. 527-30 the boy on a bicycle 545 openness 553 the difference between Wynand and Roark 564 the ownership in admiration 569 Wynand's kitten 575 the foundation of purpose 581 If everybody were compelled to have the proper kind of education, we'd have a better world. If we force people to do good, they will be free to be happy. 589 He felt something dark and leering in the manner with which people spoke of Prescott's genius; as if they were not doing homage to Prescott, but spitting upon genius. 596 You can devote your life to pulling out each single weed as it comes up - and then ten lifetimes won't be enough for the job. Or you can prepare your soil in such a manner that it will be impossible for weeds to grow. 599 It's not surprising that you have slipped from the top - because there was never any reason why you should have been at the top. 603 To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. To keep your soul is much harder. 604 Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. 605 a cause of homelessness 605 how can he be so sure that the plan adopted will be his own. And if it is, what right has he to impose it on the others? And if it isn't, what happens to his work? 609 pity 626 the sin is that I hadn't done what I wanted 626 the responsibility of desires 627 It's not an act - one can't put on an act like that - unless it's an act inside, for oneself, and then there is no limit, no way out, no reality. 632 What else can one do if one must serve the people? If one must live for others? Either pander to everybody's wishes and be called corrupt; or impose on everybody by force your own idea of everybody's good. 633 selflessness the second-hand soul 635 the independent man kills them - because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. 635 We haven't even got a word for the quality I mean - for the self- sufficiency of man's spirit. 640 They didn't do it on purpose. That's what makes it worse. 654 Hell is paved with good intentions. Could it be because you have never learned to distinguish what intentions constitute the good? Never have there been so many good intentions so loudly proclaimed in the world. And look at it. 669 collectivism 673 711 fountainhead 709 hates those who robbed him of his courage 711 the collective mind 713 the nature of altruism __ Chapter 1 AYN RAND AND OBJECTIVISM - PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE * Randism vs Objectivism * Rand's incorrect definition of selfish * Rand's personal statist views * Rand's failure to distinguish between politics and economics * What is Objectivism? * The Relationship Between Philosophy and Science * How Scientists Can Build Bombs * The Scientific Attitude of Mind * Some History of Science * Miscellaneous Comments on the Nature of Science * Examples of the Scientific Attitude applied * Some Critiques of Science * Randism vs Objectivism When Nathaniel Branden was asked (in 1971) if he were an Objectivist, he replied: "If you mean, do I agree with the broad fundamentals of the philosophy of Objectivism, I would answer, 'Yes.' But if you mean, as Miss Rand might very well wish you to mean, do I agree with every position that Miss Rand has taken and do I regard the sum total of Miss Rand's intellectual pronouncements as being equal to what is meant by the philosophy of Objectivism, then I am not an Objectivist." I would like to introduce these two terms: A Randite is a disciple of Ayn Rand. Randism is the set of ideas that were Rand's personal beliefs. (This includes, of course, some - but not all - of the precepts of Objectivism.) There is a very important distinction to be made between Randism and Objectivism. Randism asserts the congruency of Rand's statements with the principles of Objectivism: "what Rand says and only what Rand says is Objectivism." (Or, as Peikoff puts it: "Objectivism is a closed system.") The fact that Rand has made incalculably valuable identifications of certain philosophical principles does by no means convey upon her exclusive or infallible domain in the further identification or application of those principles; nor, on the other hand, do Rand's incorrect identifications or improper applications in the least diminish the truth or usefulness of the principles of Objectivism. A big difference between the Objectivists and the Randites is that the Objectivists do not view Objectivism as a dogma i.e., a set of ideas to be accepted without question. We see it as an intellectual tool that is useful in helping us to understand the world, in much the same way that the Scientific Method is. From this point of view, the idea that someone can be "an enemy of Objectivism" (one of Leonard Peikoff's favorite denunciations) is as ridiculous as the idea that someone can be "an enemy of the Integral Calculus." There are many parallels to be drawn between Rand/Objectivism and Newton/The Calculus. In each case an immensly powerful, beautiful and useful intellectual tool was derived by a human being who possessed some of the foibles of humanity. In each case the tool was jealously clung to and possessively circumscribed by its creator. In each case the tool was rejected and reviled by some reactionary people. And in each case (as time will eventually demonstrate) the power and utility of the tool will outlast the small-minded people who criticize it. Alongside these parallels there is a significant difference: it would be rather farfetched to regard a set of mathematical principles as a religion, but it is quite possible (and is indeed the practice of some people) to regard a set of philosophical principles as a religion. There are those who adulate Rand almost as if she were a deity and who regard Objectivism as a sacred dogma. I believe the important aspects of her life are the philosophical achievements, not her personal attributes. Her personal foibles will eventually fade into the oblivion of historical forgetfulness - like Aristotle's male chauvinism, or Newton's alchemy, or Einstein's socks - and what will be left for future generations are the valuable philosophical identifications she made. I would say this to the Randites: Abandon the attitude that the principles of Objectivism and the pronouncements of Ayn Rand are congruent sets. Realize that Objectivism, like the Scientific Method, is an open-ended set of principles rather than a closed and rigidly defined dogma. Recognize the importance of the work being done by those scholars who are trying to develop the ethical and political implications of the Objectivist Ethics. Until you do this, you will only be ostracizing yourselves from the living and powerful body of philosophy that is growing on the foundation of Ayn Rand's magnificent achievements. * Rand's incorrect definition of selfish You will observe that in my essays I do not use the term "selfish," but use instead "self-interested." Here is why. From the introduction to THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, by Ayn Rand: The title of this book may evoke the kind of question that I hear once in a while: "Why do you use the word 'selfishness' to denote virtuous qualities of character, when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things you mean?".... there are others, who would not ask that question, sensing the moral cowardice it implies.... There are, roughly speaking, three classes of people: 1. Those concerned with their own advantage without any regard for others. 2. Those having no concern for self at all. 3. Those who are concerned with their own self-benefit and who are also aware of and concerned with their social context. Rand makes a good case for altruism's having falsely divided humanity into just two classes - the first and the second - leaving no room for the third category, the "self-respecting, self-supporting man - a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others." But if you consult the Oxford English Dictionary, you will find that Rand's use of the term "selfish" to designate the third category is not conclusively justified etymologically. Historically, the terms most often used to designate these three categories are: 1. Selfish: concerned with one's own advantage without regard for others. This has almost always been described as wicked. 2. Selfless: having no concern for self. This has always been described as being ethically laudable. 3. Self-interested: concerned with one's own well-being. This has only sometimes been described as a vice. These three usages are quite sensible terms of classification, enabling us to distinguish clearly among the three categories. Rand's insistence on using the term "selfish" to designate that third category is a mistake, both a cognitive mistake and a communications mistake. It is a cognitive mistake because when she usurps the term "selfish" she does not provide an alternative term for the first category. Thus she commits the same cognitive error for which she upbraids the altruist mentality: providing convenient terms for only two out of the three categories. It is a communications mistake because the three terms enumerated above are distinctly specified also in Webster's Ninth Collegiate dictionary, and thus are the terms most likely to be considered by educated Americans. It is certainly true that there are many people to whom "selfish" does not mean the things Rand means, and to question her usage of the term is not, as she so stridently claims, an act of "moral cowardice" but merely an attempt to preserve cognitive clarity and communications utility. Perhaps it is no coincidence that in THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, Rand places at the very last her essay on "The Argument From Intimidation." * Rand's personal statist views In the realm of politics we must make a careful distinction between Rand's personal views and the implications of the Objectivist ethics. The Objectivist stand is quite clear: "The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may INITIATE the use of physical force against others. No man - or group or society or government - has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man." (From "The Objectivist Ethics," in THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS.) But Rand's personal stand is fundamentally different. We can best see this in her answers to two questions put to her during her appearance at the Ford Hall Forum in 1972. Question: Have you heard of the Libertarian Party and would you consider endorsing John Hospers and Tonie Nathan as presidential candidates? Rand: Look, I would rather vote for Bob Hope or the Marx brothers, if they still exist, or Jerry Lewis - I don't know who is the funniest today, rather than something like professor Hospers and the Libertarian Party. Look, I don't think Henry Wallace is a great thinker but even he - he's pretty much of a demagogue, though with some courage - even he had the good sense to stay home this time if he wanted to some extent - if he had one ounce of sincerity and wanted some freedom for his country. To choose this year to start after personal publicity - and if Hospers and whoever the rest are get ten votes away from Nixon, which I doubt, but if they do it is a moral crime. Question: Will you comment on the issue of should amnesty be granted to draft dodgers? Rand: I think it is an improper question to be discussed while there is a war going on. It is a very complex question but you cannot, when men are dying in a war, say that you promise amnesty to those who refused. On the other hand I do not blame those who refused to be drafted if they did so out of general conviction, not necessarily religious, but if they oppose the state's right to draft them. They would have a case, and they would go to jail. And they would be willing to take that penalty. Both Rand and her disciples have continually asserted this strong opposition to the political implementation of libertarianism. And her acceptance of the legitimacy of government authority was repeatedly expressed both in word and deed. * Rand's failure to distinguish between politics and economics The last criticism I wish to present against Ayn Rand involves a failure that was expressed not just in her personal behavior but which also shows up in her philosophical writings. It is that she never made a distinction between Politics and Economics. She almost always referred to capitalism as "laissez- faire capitalism" or "free-market capitalism," thus inexorably integrating this primary economic concept with a political institution. In my writings I will try to make a clear distinction between the two realms of human activity, and provide definitions that will make it easier to think about them. * What is Objectivism? In considering the most fundamental ideas about the nature of the universe, there are two basically distinct ideas: One, known as subjectivity, asserts fundamentally that existence is created by consciousness. The other idea, known as objectivity, asserts fundamentally that there is indeed a real world that has its own existence, independent of any perceiving consciousness. Perhaps the best statement of this idea was made by Albert Einstein: "Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking." In the realm of scientific endeavor, objectivity (in the form of the Scientific Method) has predominated. But in other realms of human endeavor, such as Psychology, Ethics, and Politics, objectivity has had much less influence in human history, mainly because the lack of a solution to the Problem of the Universals precluded the sort of firm and direct linkage between concepts of consciousness and reality as exists between scientific concepts and reality (where truth prevails in a much more immediate and direct manner). But in the late 1960s the Problem of the Universals was solved by Ayn Rand. She showed that Definitions Are Not Arbitrary, and she demonstrated how to derive them directly from observations of reality. The same cognitive process that enables you to construct a correct definition also enables you to think in principles: to identify and classify things by reference to their fundamental distinguishing characteristics. This epistemological breakthrough enabled objectivity to be applied to ALL areas of human activity. The work of Rand and other philosophers who have taken up this effort has produced a set of principles now known as the Philosophy of Objectivism. These principles stand in distinct contrast to most of traditional philosophy and are, by and large, rather unpopular. (But that is to be expected of any set of ideas that is new and challenges the existing state of affairs. It has always been this way.) Objectivism is the only philosophy that is completely consistent with Physics. The ideas of Objectivism are founded upon a set of (Aristotelian) Axiomatic Concepts: Existence, Identity, and Consciousness, and are derived from those concepts by the intellectual procedure set forth in the Objectivist Epistemology. This is a scientific, rationalist method which subsumes the Scientific Method of determining truth. It extends the Scientific Method to include areas of inquiry not usually thought to be amenable to scientific analysis. In her essay "The Objectivist Ethics," Rand applies this intellectual procedure to identifying a rational basis for ethics and morality. Nathaniel Branden, in his book "The Psychology of Self-Esteem," applies the procedure to identifying the bases of human psychology. Harry Browne gives us a rational explanation of the nature of economics. Hospers and Rothbard carry the procedure into the field of politics. It is objectivity that is my area of interest, and Objectivism is the philosophical context within which I write. A philosophy is a set of principles which provides a consistent and comprehensive frame of reference from which to judge man and his environment. If a philosophy is to be a comprehensive frame of reference it must encompass the full scope of man's thoughts and activities. Especially must it include Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Morality, Psychology, Politics, Economics and Esthetics - since all of man's activities are founded on one or more of these fields of study. I will give a brief exposition of the Objectivist principles as they apply to each of these fields. In order to clarify my presentation I will in each case contrast the Objectivist position with its contrary or opposite. The general schema looks like this: Metaphysics objectivity vs subjectivity Epistemology reason vs faith Ethics egoism vs altruism Morality self-interest vs degeneracy Psychology free will vs determinism Politics libertarianism vs statism Economics free enterprise vs socialism Esthetics romanticism vs anti-romanticism Let us consider each of these terms and see what they mean. Metaphysics is the science that deals with the fundamental nature of reality. As I pointed out above, there are basically only two viewpoints in this matter. One, objectivity, maintains that there is a real, factual world which exists independently of the consciousness of any perceiving entity. This is not to say that there is no interrelationship between consciousness and reality, or that an acting conscious entity cannot alter and transform the entities of reality by acting in accord with the physical laws that describe reality, but rather that the facts of reality have their own existence whether we are aware of them or not. Subjectivity, on the other hand, maintains that reality, in its fundamental essense, is not a firm absolute but is instead somehow dependent on, or a function of, consciousness. The basis of subjectivity is a denial of the Law of Identity. (There is another, quite different, sense in which the term subjective is used: it refers to choices or decisions which are generated by reference to internal states of consciousness rather than by assessment of external factors. For example: the choice between chocolate or vanilla ice cream is a subjective choice. But the choice between an ice cream cone for me or a bottle of milk for my hungry baby should be an objective choice.) Epistemology is the study of the source, nature and validity of human knowledge. Here the Objectivist says that since there is a real world "out there" (outside myself) it is the job of my consciousness to identify it. To do this I make use of my faculty of reason - the ability to perceive, identify and integrate the evidence of reality provided by my senses. The source of all my knowledge lies in the rigorous adherence to logic, the art of non- contradictory identification of the facts of reality. The subjectivist, however, is bound to no such procedure. Since for him there is no firm, absolute "out there," his knowledge has its source in some form or another of introspection (revelation) and its validity is accepted on faith - that is, accepted without evidence or proof, or in spite of evidence to the contrary. Concerning Ethics and Morality I make this distinction: Morality describes intra-personal actions whereas Ethics describes inter-personal actions. For example: dope addiction is immoral (it is self-destructive) but it is not unethical. Stealing to support one's habit is, however, unethical. Drunkenness is merely immoral; blocking the sidewalk with your stupefied body is unethical. Refusing to think is immoral, but failing, through this intellectual laziness, to fulfil your obligations as a husband/father or wife/mother is unethical. As you probably infer, I believe that most unethical actions have their basis in immorality. I will save you the trouble of consulting your dictionary by telling you that this distinction is etymologically unjustifiable. Cicero was the first to use the term "morals" and as he did so he noted that he meant this term to have precisely the same meaning as the Greek term "ethics." Since that time the two terms have been used synonymously, but I think it clear that there is a distinction to be made between two kinds of behavior, and the most appropriate terms to use in labeling this distinction are Ethics and Morality. In the field of Ethics the Objectivist position is egoism: that man is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others, and that each man should live his own life for his own sake. The contrary position, altruism, holds that man must make the welfare of others the primary goal of his social relationships and that self-sacrifice is the highest virtue. At this point I am sometimes beset with an argument that starts out: "Do you mean to say that you're the sort of wretched brute who tramples all over other people to gain your ends?" and continues by proposing a kind of false dichotomy which divides all human intercourse into two categories: sadism and masochism, and then tries to sell me masochism on the grounds that sadism is my only alternative. Most people posing this argument refuse to recognize the existence of a third type of man - the independent, self-supporting, profit- making trader, who neither sacrifices others to himself nor himself to others. Morally, this sort of independently existing man is a self-interested person. That is to say, he is a man who is CONCERNED WITH HIS OWN BENEFIT. This implies, of course, that he knows what his own interests actually are. Is it in my own physical self-interest to be a drunkard or a dope fiend? Hardly, for these activities are clearly self-destructive. Is it in my own psychological self-interest to be a liar or a thief? Again, no, because these actions, although not as obviously self-destructive as alcoholism or other drug addiction, are saboteurs of the mind's most basic function: integration. You cannot integrate a contradiction and both lies and thefts are contradictions. (My second examples - liar/thief - are not merely immoral but unethical as well, and you can see from considering them that unethical actions are associated with immoral conditions.) What I'm trying to point out is that many actions which are usually called "selfish" (lies, thefts, or the wretched brute trampling on his poor fellow creatures) are not IN FACT in one's self-interest at all, and that the truly self-interested man is one who has carefully examined and rationally analysed his nature as a proper human being and thereby determined just what is IN FACT in his self-interest. The liar, thief and brute are not self-interested, they are actually self- destructive - they are degenerate. Objectivist morality has two fundamental bases: acceptance of life itself as the standard of values; and identification of the actions that are causally required by our nature to achieve that end - to sustain life. The primary task of morality is to identify the needs that must be satisfied to live successfully, and the capacities that we have for satisfying those needs. We prove that something is a proper value by showing that we need it; and we prove that some course of action is a virtue by showing that it is required for the proper exercise of our capacities. In the realm of Psychology, Objectivism holds that man is a creature of free will. This is to say that he is capable of making choices which are causal primaries. Determinism, on the other hand, is the principle that all of man's choices and actions are determined by forces (heredity, environment, etc.) which are outside of his control. In political issues Objectivists are promoters of the libertarian ideal. Their political goals are based on the ethical principle that no man or group of men has the right to initiate the use of force against the person or property of other people. We hold that there are only three proper functions of a governing agency: the military, to protect men against aggression by foreign criminals, the police, to protect men against aggression by domestic criminals, and the courts, to resolve disputes and disagreements, which even among just and rational men can at times arise. We hold that a governing agency has no right to restrict a person's activities in the moral area (thus we oppose drug laws, laws forbidding sex acts between consenting adults, and all other "victimless crime" laws) and that it can rightfully act in the ethical area only when force (or its derivative, fraud) have been initiated (thus we oppose all subsidies to business - or farmers - all tariffs and import/export restrictions, licensing laws, and all other laws restricting the freedom of production, transportation and trade). In brief, we advocate a political system wherein each individual has the right to do anything whatsoever which does not initiate force or fraud against anyone else, and in which the role of a governing agency is strictly restrained to the protection of that right. This is contrasted to the statist system, which is widespread and becoming ever more prevalent today, in which the State exercises predominant control over the actions of individuals, continually increasing the scope and intensity of its regimentation and by "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism." Corresponding to its political system, a society has an associated economic system. Considering the nature of libertarianism, it is clear that its associated economic system must have a strong foundation in the individual's right to own, control, use and dispose of his private property. Libertarians advocate a capitalist economic organization in which the means of production - land, capital, etc. - are owned and controlled by individuals (or voluntarily associated groups of individuals), and in which there are no restrictions on the freedom of production, transportation and trade. The opposite form of economic organization, socialism (of which fascism and communism are variants), is a system in which the economic resources are controlled by the State and in which individuals have little, if any, economic freedom. The last philosophical category I will consider is that of art forms. Here, as before, I divide the field into two major domains. One, subsumed by the term romanticism, includes all those works which are based on the recognition that man is a volitional creature - that he has the power to make choices and that those choices are major determinators of his life. The greatest portrayal of romantic heroism can be found in the novels of Ayn Rand. The major task of a romantic work of art is, as Aristotle said, "to show things as they might be and ought to be." The other esthetic domain (which, for lack of a suitable general label, I will simply call "anti-romanticism") shows things as they "must be" (or are seen to be) and depicts man as a creature who has, essentially, no power over his destiny. Anti-romanticism began with classicism, evolved into naturalism, and is in turn evolving into absurdism. The best such work of great classical literature is the Greek drama "Oedipus Rex." A good example of naturalism is "Death of a Salesman" and a typical representative of absurdism is "Waiting for Godot." If I were asked to express the essence of Objectivism in one short statement I could do no better than to quote Ayn Rand, the foremost identifier and expounder of these principles: "Man is a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." * The Relationship Between Philosophy and Science Scientists are very devoted to the scientific method, and they find that the scientific method is to be applied most successfully in the world that can be observed. That is not the world of moral values or the world of philosophical thought, but in the laboratory where ideas can be tested. So they regard science as the only really genuine form of knowledge. This leaves them with an empty spot in their lives. They're not practiced in applying logic and reason to questions of value or philosophy. So they move this area of thought over to the realm of faith. Their very devotion to the world of fact leaves them hungry for some sort of clear guidance as to their conduct for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, philosophers spend their entire lives dealing with a world of imaginings, conjectures, and fantasies, NOT with the physical facts of reality - at least not beyond the tap in the sink and the switch on the wall. They look with disdain upon the world of the physicist and the engineer as being one of "crass materialism" - beneath the dignity of their lofty intellectual position and not worthy of any serious consideration. The result is that their ideas are usually entirely separated from reality and produce a distortion when applied to the real physical world. Consider Immanuel Kant, for example. He went to school, then he was a tutor, then he was a professor at university for the rest of his life. As far as I know he never even did so much physics as to draw a bucket of water up out of a well. Thus whereas Thales (who was a bridge-builder) gave us Aristotle, John Locke, and the United States of America - Kant (who was a pure philosopher) gave us Fichte and Nazi Germany, Karl Marx and the Soviet Union. But I cannot place all the blame on the shoulders of the philosophers. After all, the philosopher does only half the job - he just conceives the ideas. It is the scientist who creates the means of implementing those ideas. Both men are equally responsible for the effects of their joint product. Just as the philosophers are guilty of not knowing science - and thereby of failing to test their ideas against reality, so the scientists are guilty of ignoring philosophy - and thereby failing to understand the principles underlying their actions. * How Scientists Can Build Bombs Interviewer: "You must feel good, working for peace like that." [on the Manhattan Project] Richard Feynman: "No, that never enters my head, whether it is for peace or otherwise. We don't know. You see, what happened to me - what happened to the rest of us - is we STARTED for a good reason, then you're working very hard to accomplish something and it's a pleasure, it's excitement. And you stop thinking [about principles], you know; you just STOP." Years ago in Los Alamos I had a hero, Enrico Fermi. He designed and supervised the first nuclear reaction in the history of the world - in that squash court at the University of Chicago. Then he built the first nuclear bomb that was used - the Hiroshima bomb. I worshiped that man. He was dapper. Jaunty. My God, he even had a sense of humor! And he started this whole nuclear misery. You expect him to look and act like Mephistopheles, but here was a marvelous little guy making jokes, while doing everything better than everyone else. I loved that guy back then. I wanted to be like him. But I couldn't. Because I didn't have whatever it takes for a man to enjoy himself while perfecting these weapons. When I first interviewed the scientists and first heard them tell of their work on weapons, I wondered if it were possible to be so divorced from the consequences of one's work. It seemed to me that no matter how subtle the problem a given weapon presented or how challenging its contemplation might be, the ashes and the bones in the end would be the same. Most scientists will, quite unthinkingly, sell their souls in exchange for a laboratory supplied by loot. The primary obstacle in developing any ethical philosophy is the lack of a starting point. The analyst sees a set of "ought" terms: good, well, right, proper, virtue, should, bad, wrong, etc. - each of which can evidently be defined in terms of the others, but none of which has an independent, non- relative existence. Rand's genius was to identify the connection between the "ought" of volitional judgement and the "is" of reality. It is no accident that many of the early Greek philosophers were practicing engineers, architects, bridge-builders, harbor designers. They were men whose minds were intimately tied directly to the facts of reality, and that's why so many of their philosophical notions are so profound. In an attempt to link science and philosophy, a reasonable question to ask is "Where can we find a starting point - a foundation stone of certitude as the ultimate basis of human knowledge? A place where we can stand in unquestionable certainty and from whence we can build a structure of sure knowledge?" For a mathematician this is no problem - he starts by looking at his fingers and counting them, each symbol in his mathematical system representing an identifiable quantity that is directly observed by his senses of sight and touch. For the physicist also this is no problem - he merely refers to the broadest and most universal concept known to science: the First Law of Thermodynamics (the notion that the sum total of mass/energy in the universe is constant; that you can't create the stuff and you can't destroy the stuff). You can see that the physicist's notion is fundamental to that of the mathematician: the mathematician quantifies the entities that are composed of mass/energy, but the physicist deals with the mass/energy directly. Is there something that is fundamental to the notion of the physicist? Yes, there is, and we can approach it through such questions as "What is the essential nature of the mass/energy?" "What is the fundamental nature of the Universe?" "What laws or principles underly all things - and all the behavior of all the things?" There is an answer to these questions. An answer which subsumes both the mathematician's notion and the physicist's notion. We might well call it the Philosopher's Notion. It was given to us by Aristotle, and it is the Law of Identity. The Law of Identity is one of the fundamental, axiomatic concepts identified by Aristotle. In his Metaphysics, Book 4, Part 3, he observes: "...for these truths hold good for everything that is.... And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being.... For a principle which everyone must have who understands anything that is, is not a hypothesis.... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect." Stated as a tautology: A is A. A thing (ANY thing and EVERY thing) is what it is. This idea is the foundation stone of all human knowledge. It serves to tie human consciousness to the facts of reality. That it is indeed fundamental can be seen when you observe that it cannot be escaped, that it is implicit in all knowledge, that it has to be accepted and used even in any attempt to deny it. For example, suppose you say "The Law of Identity is invalid." Observe that you have made a specific statement and that it has a specific meaning. (Even within your own mind, you do NOT intend it to have the opposite meaning!) Therefore your statement is what it is - it complies with the Law of Identity - in spite of its own contention to the contrary. This is a situation which you cannot escape, no matter how cleverly you might attempt to rephrase your contention. The Law of Identity always prevails, in everything that you think, that you say, and that you do. It is truly fundamental. It is, as Aristotle said, "the most certain of all" - it is the foundation of certainty. The Law of Identity is a foundation of objectivity. Any scientist who probes beneath the First Law of Thermodynamics will soon encounter the Law of Identity, and there he will find the doorway into the philosophy of Objectivism. That doorway is the link between science and philosophy. When you find, in the Objectivist Ethics, the TANSTAAFL principle (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch): the idea that "You can't get something for nothing, unless someone, somewhere, sometime, is getting nothing for something", you see the direct link between Ethics and the First Law of Thermodynamics. Objectivism is the only philosophy that is completely consistent with Physics. Indeed, Physics is a subset of Objectivism, for the fundamental principles of Physics (the Laws of Thermodynamics) are themselves founded upon the Axiomatic Concepts identified by the Objectivist Epistemology. Objectivism starts with fundamentals and builds knowledge on a solid foundation, from the ground up. Adherents of many modern philosophical perspectives hate this very approach, and eschew the need for "foundations" of knowledge altogether. They point out that thinkers have been trying to do this for centuries and cannot agree on anything. Therefore, they argue, what's the use? And so THEY start in midair, with some supposedly common point of reference allegedly agreed upon, but which is in fact controversial, derivative, and even arbitrary. The result is usually a ramshackle mess which presupposes an enormous amount that is never discussed, leads nowhere, and solves nothing. What Objectivism has is a consistent, comprehensive philosophical framework from which to ask questions about reality, and a consistent, comprehensive scientific framework in which to seek answers to those questions. Only this scenario can lead to a full understanding of reality. * The Scientific Attitude of Mind Science is not a body of knowledge but a way of thinking - a process - a method. The body of knowledge is what results from that process. And a Scientist is not necessarily someone who has a PhD in physics, but is anyone who practices that way of thinking. It is characterized primarily by being reality-oriented and flexible. A scientist assumes, as Einstein put it, that "Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking." This is the fundamental premise of science. The other element of scientific thought - flexibility - is the ability and willingness to alter one's ideas so as to bring them into correspondence with that "independently existing world." Nature does not necessarily comply with the arbitrary boundaries established by human conjectures, and when she does not, we must accept the necessity of modifying the conjectures. * Some History of Science In the seventeenth century, there arose a mode of scientific procedure usually associated with the names of Galileo and Francis Bacon. It was based upon observation, reason, and experiment. Galileo's work established the priority of experiment over the Greek deductive science (which was itself a great advance over the use of myth and religion to explain natural phenomena). Galileo's conclusions could not be ignored as a mere intellectual oddity, for they had to be used in the practical business of pointing cannons at the correct angle to compensate for the fall of cannonballs in flight. By insisting on the experimental verification of scientific conjectures, Galileo and his successors established a general test of scientific truth which enabled scientists specializing in widely different disciplines to accept and use each other's results. The shared method created an organized scientific community, with a division of labor among scientists in numerous specialized fields, all contributing to the accumulation of a valid body of knowledge. By the close of the seventeenth century, the scale of Europe's scientific effort was already overwhelmingly greater than that of any contemporary or earlier culture, and so too was the European civilization's progress in understanding natural phenomena. It has sometimes been maintained that Galileo's greatest contribution was his way of thinking about the physical universe. Unfortunately the great majority of philosophers were (and remain) unable to understand his methods. They still possess the Greek habit of reasoning from what seem to be valid basic assumptions and rarely believe it necessary to check their conclusions against the real universe. We are so far accustomed to think of organizations solely in terms of hierarchical bureaucracies like armies, governments, or corporations that it is difficult to realize that an enterprise so individualistic and nonhierarchical as modern science can properly be said to be highly organized. But such a narrow impression of organization would have to be dismissed as misleading on the basis of the history of science. Without a hierarchy, Western scientists formed a scientific community within which they pursued shared goals of understanding natural phenomena with dedication, cooperation, competition, collective conflict resolution, division of labor, specialization, and information generation and exchange at a level of organizational efficiency rarely matched among large groups, hierarchical or nonhierarchical. Western science had another advantage over contemporary and antecedent sciences: it arose at a time when political and religious authorities lacked the power to suppress new ideas incompatible with conventional explanations of natural phenomena, though they often tried to. * Miscellaneous Comments on the Nature of Science Goethe: "Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets." T.H. Huxley: "Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of evey one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game at chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overlflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated - without haste, but without remorse." If you learn what this world is, how it works, you automatically start getting miracles - what will be called miracles. But of course nothing is miraculous. Learn what the magician knows and it's not magic anymore. But it does no good to try to explain something as being a product of science, rather than magic, in speaking to people who have no idea what is meant by "science." This is not necessarily the fault of the ignorant person. Although there is a vast untapped popular interest in the deepest scientific questions, for many people the shoddily thought out doctrines of borderline science are the closest approximation to comprehensible science readily available. The popularity of junk science should be a rebuke to the schools, the press and commercial television for their sparse, unimaginative and ineffective efforts at science education. This unfortunate situation is compounded by the popular media's obsession with controversy and sensationalism. In their rush to expose "dangers" to the public health, the distortions and outright falsehoods they present as "science" serve only to corrupt what little factual knowledge the public does possess. To top it off, we are beset by the quantum mystics, whose dim comprehension of physics, and abysmal ignorance of philosophy, do not in any way inhibit their subjectivist metaphysical pronouncements. In fact however, the ideas of quantum mechanics do not contain any reasons whatsoever for giving up the concept of a reality that is independent of the mind. * Examples of the Scientific Attitude applied Nearly four centuries of experience since Galileo's time has shown that it is frequently useful to depart from the real and to construct a model of the system being studied. Some of the complications are stripped away, so a simple and generalized mathematical structure can be built up out of what is left. Once that is done, the complicating factors can be restored one by one, and the model suitably modified. To try to achieve the comlexities of reality at one bound, without working through a simplified model first, is so difficult that it is rarely attempted, and usually does not succeed when it is. Newton started with a mathematical construct that represents nature simplified: a point mass moving around a center of force. Because he did not assume that the construct was an exact reperesentation of the physical universe he was free to explore the properties and effects of a mathematical attractive force even though he found the concept of a grasping force "acting at a distance" to be abhorrent and not admissable in the realm of good physics. Next he compared the consequences of his mathematical construct with the observed principles and laws of the external world, such as Kepler's law of areas and law of elliptical orbits. Where the mathematical construct fell short Newton modified it. He made the center of force not a mathematical entity but a point mass. From the modified mathematical construct Newton concluded that a set of point masses circling the central point mass attract one another and perturb one another's orbits. Again he compared the construct with the physical world. Of all the planets, Jupiter and Saturn are the most massive, and so he sought orbital perturbations in their motions. With the help of John Flamsteed, Newton found that the orbital motion of Saturn is perturbed when the two planets are closest together. The process of repeatedly comparing the mathematical construct with reality and then suitably modifying it led eventually to the treatment of the planets as physical bodies with definite shapes and sizes. After Newton had modified the construct many times he applied it to the entirety of nature. He asserted that the force of attraction, which he had derived mathematically, is universal gravity. Since the mathematical force of attraction works well in explaining and predicting the observed phenomena of the world, Newton decided that the force must "truly exist" even though the philosophy to which he adhered did not and could not allow such a force to be part of a system of nature. And so he called for an inquiry into how the effects of universal gravity might arise. In 1830, the Swedish chemist Jakob Berzelius, who didn't believe that molecules with equal structures but different properties were possible, examined both tartaric acid and racemic acid in detail. With considerable chagrin, he decided that even though he didn't believe it, it was nevertheless so. Charles Darwin: "In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry (into the mutability of species), I happened to read 'Malthus on Population,' and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work." * Some Critiques of Science "There is no poetry in science." "Not all the soaring genius of Shakespeare sufficed to lift him to such empyrean heights as to reveal to him the vision of the universe that bursts in upon the dullest scientist who now lives. In every branch of science fascinations lurk, ready to burst out upon even the most plodding soul. Peeping from behind the symbols of the mathematician are formulas, such as the Mandelbrot Set, so beautiful in their subtle symmetry that no artist could improve on them. Where can one come across forms of things not only so thoroughly unknown but so majestically unknowable as in the quantum world within the atom? All the dictates of "common sense" - based upon the ordinary world about us - break down in the face of the ultimately tiny. Imagine the poetry of a science that calmly abandons common sense in order to preserve sense; a science that admits into its fold an ineluctable uncertainty in order to be more nearly certain. What mysteries, what clanking chains, what dim ghosts of Gothic romance can compare with the mysterious muon-neutrino? There is poetry everywhere and in everything, and it is most clearly present in the world that scientists dwell in." .... Isaac Asimov "I question the accuracy and validity of the Scientific Method - Science is young and clumsy - still too gross to truly measure some things." Let us examine the accuracy, validity, and gross clumsiness of science by taking a look at just a few of its actual accomplishments. To begin with, here is a measure of the accuracy between a theoretical prediction and its corresponding experimental measurements: Experiments measure the electron's magnetic moment at 1.00115965221. The theory of Quantum Electrodynamics puts it at 1.00115965246. To give you a feeling for the accuracy of these numbers, look at them this way: If you were to measure the distance from Los Angeles to New York to this accuracy, it would be exact to the thickness of a human hair. I believe we can conclude that the theory is reasonably close to reality. As for the validity of scientific hypotheses - surely the most outrageously unbelievable hypothesis of modern physics is the Quantum Mechanics, and yet a clever application of the uncertainty principle (which places a limit on the precision with which position can be known) yields very fine-tuned control over a type of electron flow known as quantum tunneling. The resulting device (the Scanning Tunneling Microscope, manufactured by Digital Instruments, Inc.) uses the quantum tunneling effect both to view, and to perform mechanical operations on, very tiny objects. Right down to the level of individual atoms. In its practical application (where the validity of the Quantum Mechanics can be measured by its commercial utility), an STM is used to monitor the production quality of an optical-disk stamping machine. And as for gross clumsiness, these three examples should suffice to dispel that erroneous view: The optical telescope on Palomar Mountain can detect a 10-watt light bulb on the moon. This telescope could also measure the width of a needle - at a distance of 5 miles. The best infrared telescopes could record the heat from a rabbit on the moon - were it alive and hopping. At the IBM Zurich lab, researchers used a Scanning Tunneling Microscope to cleave a single benzene ring off of a dimethyl phthalate molecule. Workers at the National Bureau of Standards used a Paul electromagnetic trap to detect a single quantum jump of the outermost electron on a mercury ion from its ground state to an intermediate state. That's one single quantum jump of one single electron! Not quite the sort of thing you could reach in and fondle with your finger. Look again at the criticism - and consider the principle underlying it: She really should not "question the accuracy and validity of the Scientific Method" while she is writing with a ball-point pen on a sheet of paper, probably supported by the plastic surface of a desktop, and illuminated by an electric light bulb. You see what's happening - the author is using the very thing she denies, in the act of denying it. This is an excellent example of the Stolen Concept Fallacy: she is using the thing while she is rejecting the thing. If you have difficulty grasping the Uncertainty Principle, consider this: It is easily possible to construct a square, having specified exactly the length of a side. When you have done so, you will find that you cannot measure the diagonal with exactness (because it is a function of the square root of 2). It is equally easy to construct a square having specified exactly the length of the diagonal. But in this case you will be just as unable to measure the exact length of the side. Thus we are in the position of being able to specify one or the other of two quantities - but not both simultaneously. This exercise in simple geometry is a good example of the Uncertainty Principle in action: the universe is built in such a fashion that we humans are not omniscient - we can't know everything. If you have difficulty with the notion of "mere chance being the instrument of creation" try this experiment: Take about a dozen teaspoons and drop them (randomly but with handles up) into a soda glass. Tilt the glass to about a 45 degree angle and shake it. You will see the spoons begin to nest together. This nesting is the inevitable consequence of energy dissipation - of the interplay of the laws of physics - as the spoons settle into a "least energy content" configuration. When you consider that the fundamental morsels of matter (atoms and molecules) are sets of identical objects (every water molecule, for example, is exactly identical to every other) just like the spoons - then it is not too hard to realize that they would fit together in certain ways. Just like the spoons. This fitting together - on a larger and larger scale - can account for many aspects of the world of living things we see around us. Always remember this: the words "chance" and "random" do not really describe the world of Reality. What they DO describe is the state of human knowledge. To be precise, they are terms that describe a state of human ignorance. When I say that an event happens by "mere chance" all I am really saying is that I do not precisely know what are the causal factors of that event. Personally, I would much rather admit to my own ignorance of the world than to invent, as an absolution for that ignorance, a Divinity to account for things I cannot yet explain. A commonly encountered criticism is "How can you believe in something - like an electron - which you can't possibly see?" No one has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you see only the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple assumption which helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous. The ultimate justification is that logical conclusions drawn from some assumptions have led to useful and effective solutions to real-life problems. >From science have flowed all those great inventions by means of which mankind in general is able to subsist with more ease and in greater numbers upon the face of the earth. Hence arise the great advantages of men above brutes, and of civilization above barbarity. The acre of ripe wheat that once took 12 men with a dozen horses, mules or oxen all day to cut and thresh, is now gathered up in six minutes as the combine rolls, one person at the controls. How can we achieve fantastic things in regard to the material world and yet suppose for one minute that what we are doing is arbitrary and has no absolute, unquestionable relationship to the facts of reality? If what we do works, how is that possible if it doesn't correspond to reality? __ Chapter 2 THINKING * Tools of Thought * Language * Strength And Leverage * IQ As A Potential * The Major High-IQ Societies * Useful Thinking Techniques * Procedures for Carrying on a Discussion * Criticism * The Scientific Method * The Military Staff Study * Notes on the Significance of Intellectual Context * Faulty Thought Processes * Piagetian Operational Stages * The Use Of Emotions As Tools Of Cognition * Orwell - Newspeak - Brainwashing - Prolefeed * Tools of Thought Most people believe that consciousness is some sort of indeterminate faculty which has no nature, no specific identity and, therefore, no requirements, no needs, no rules for being properly or improperly used. The simplest example of this belief is people's willingness to lie or cheat, to fake reality without any concern for what this does to their own minds. The man who lies, especially chronically, makes himself vulnerable to being deceived because he diminishes his capacity to discriminate truth from falsehood. And he may even reach the point where he CANNOT believe in truthfulness in others. Such people abuse, subvert and starve their consciousness in a manner they would not dream of applying to their hair, stomachs, or toenails. Even among those who realize that the mind has requirements, there are few who realize also that thinking is not an instinct. One of the most widespread myths is the belief that everyone "just knows" how to think and that no learning process is required. Assuming that the knowledge of how to think is self-evident, people take their own mental processes as necessarily valid; as not to be questioned or examined. People do not improve their thinking because it has not even occurred to them to consider the possibility of doing so. Thus the most important of human functions is left to blind chance - or worse, to subversive influences maliciously imposed upon them with the intent of subverting their thinking. Nothing can be more infamous than intellectual tyranny. To put chains upon the body is nothing compared with putting shackles on the brain. * Language "Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea with a symbol, be it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely reaction to symbols. When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions - rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic- mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we think not- sanely." ......Robert Heinlein. The "logic-mathematics" that Heinlein speaks of is NOT an instinctive bundle of knowledge! It is something that each individual must recognize and learn, lest he be left floundering in a mire of intellectual chaos. "The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." ...... George Orwell. There is perhaps no better analysis and critique of the corruption of language than that given by Orwell in his book, "1984." The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though rarely said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying intellect. Just as a currency, through the process of becoming more and more inflated, has less and less purchasing power, so words, through an analogous process of inflation, through being used less and less discriminately, are progressively emptied of meaning. For example: developers that used to sell houses now sell homes. Even the word "townhouse", a relatively common term a few years ago, is falling aside, being replaced by the supposedly more sumptuous sounding "townhome." There used to be a good, clear, cognitive distinction between a house and a home. Now, that difference has been altered past the point of meaning. With thousands of "homes" springing up all over the country, how can we possibly still attach sentimental meaning to places that we can REALLY call home? This phenomenon severely restricts attempts to deal with derivative concepts also. Consider "homelessness." Attempts to combat homelessness are almost exclusively directed toward putting the homeless people back into dwellings. But this is a superficial approach to the real problem, for houselessness is only one aspect of homelessness. "Home" implies basic shelter, but it also entails connection to a community of supports, including friends, family, businesses, organizations that share common values and beliefs, such as clubs and churches, as well as caretaking institutions. Homelessness marks not merely a loss of residence - but a rupture in community and family ties in addition, and the mere fact that you live in a house does not entail that you are in a home. Orwell contends that political language has been corrupted by insincerity and that the debasement is aided by honest writers who adopt corrupted language by default. Many words have become almost meaningless, and to use them without defining in what sense they are being used is, at best, to foist that corruption upon the reader; at worst it is to commit outright fraud. Corruption of language blunts the edge of critical thought in favor of timid orthodoxy, a process necessary to both totalitarian ideology and religious dogma. To control language is to control people's thoughts - and ultimately to control people themselves. Without semantic competence, you have no means of identifying the essence of either your own ideas or opposing ideas. Integrity becomes dubious at best, self-contradiction becomes easily possible, and rational persuasion becomes meaningless. Besides engendering intellectual chaos, incompetence in language creates a social caste system. Those who can construct well-formed sentences can think and therefore be independent; those who cannot are more ignorant, less productive and more easily intimidated and manipulated. Those who don't (or can't) think for themselves become the slaves of those who do. The greatest weapon of exploitation, manipulation, and oppression is language. It is only by being aware of the function of language as a tool of social, economic, and political control that we can begin to fight those who use language against us. Part of the fundamental nature of oppression is that by means of this semantic corruption it causes its victims to turn against each other instead of against their oppressors. Thus, in their rage against the beating of Rodney King, the citizens of LA beat up their neighbors and burned their own neighborhoods. They did not rise up against the police, for they do not know who their enemies are. Grammar is the science of formulating and applying the proper methods of verbal expression, i.e., the methods of organizing words (concepts) into coherent groups. We are able to recognize, remember and manipulate concepts only if their arrangements are coherent - only if the sentences we use to symbolize them are grammatical. We are able to follow a symbolic presentation - although the entire content cannot be presented simultaneously - because we have words first, then words organized into clauses, then sentences, and then paragraphs. We have to focus gradually and in installments, especially when a very complex issue is being presented. There may be a dozen concepts in a sentence, but if several of them are integrated into each clause, and the various clauses are integrated into one proposition, then, and only then, can we hold all dozen in our minds. If you just strung out a dozen words at random from the dictionary, you couldn't hold them all. This process of integration is made possible by automatization. If a concept automatically represents in your mind a certain kind of concrete, (if you don't have to take the time to remind yourself of all that you mean by the word "furniture," for example) then that instant integration of the referents of your concepts with your words permits you to understand language. Whenever you learn something sufficiently well, you cease to be aware of it. Only when ideas are automatized are you freed to use them without conscious thought and so to focus beyond them onto new goals. * Strength And Leverage I see two major aspects to intellectual competence: one is intelligence (that which supposedly is measured by an IQ test) and the other is the tools and procedures by which that intelligence is applied. I call these aspects Strength and Leverage. Strength pertains to the innate competence that is genetically built-in to the nervous system. Is this alterable? Is it enhanceable? Is it even measureable? I doubt it, but I do not know for sure. My only real knowledge of this attribute is a relative one - I can see that I possess a greater ability to perceive, identify and integrate the facts of reality than other people do (and, of course, that some other people possess a greater such ability than I do). When I make comparisons between myself and others I observe introspectively that there is a difference in fundamental understanding - a difference which, as far as I can tell, does not depend on the use of any acquired intellectual tools. I can identify that "fundamental understanding" only in a very subjective sense. I can not make a specific statement explicitly defining it or describing how it works. Leverage is quite a different thing. It consists of the intellectual methods by which Strength is applied to achieve an understanding of the world. Language is by far the first and most fundamental element of Leverage, followed closely by Mathematics. Some of the other elements are the Laws of Logic given us by Aristotle, the Scientific Method, the procedures of the Military Staff Study, and the principles of the philosophy of Objectivism. The first and foremost benefit of the application of these tools to one's life is that it puts you into close cognitive contact with reality. If the primary function of intelligence is to understand reality, then an intellectual tool which puts you in contact with reality enhances your life, and thus is a major benefit to you. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out. Most of the elements of Leverage constitute a particular subset of acquired knowledge: knowledge of an epistemological nature. Knowledge of "how to think." It is clear that in regard to Leverage there is a great potential for enhancement of one's intellectual functioning, and, to the contrary, lack of Leverage or use of mistaken Leverage can seriously inhibit or even destructively interfere with this functioning. I believe strongly that the level of one's manifested intellectual competence can indeed be raised. It is clear to me that the best way, (and, perhaps, the only way?) to go about this is to improve one's Leverage. * IQ As A Potential As you know, there are aptitude tests for many fields of endeavor. They are tests designed to determine whether or not (or to what extent) you have a potential ability for a given activity. They can tell you if you have an aptitude for Mechanics, Mathematics, Gymnastics, Music, Chemistry, Cooking, or just about any other occupation you might care to consider. I submit that an IQ test is nothing more or less than an aptitude test for "Thinking." I would like to draw an analogy between Intellectuality and Music, in order to shed some light on just what the significance of a high IQ is. Consider that in the realm of music there are two things necessary to the formation of a musician. The first is, of course, an aptitude for this field of endeavor - what we might call an "M.Q." or musicality quotient, representing your potential ability to engage successfully in this activity. And the second is the means by which this potential is actualized. Having the highest MQ in the world will not automatically result in your being a good musician. To become one, you must undertake a lengthy period of study and diligent practice in order to master the procedures involved in transforming this potential into an actuality. No one will dispute this in regard to music, but how many realize that the same principle applies to intellectuality? You have to LEARN how to think, in just the same way that you have to learn how to make music. And when I say "learn how to think" I don't mean just "get educated." I don't mean just go to school and acquire a multitude of facts in a large number of fields of study. One would not become a musician merely by acquiring wide erudition in the fields of, say, Geology, Anthropology, Economics or Political Science. No, one must study a particular set of principles - those pertaining to the field of music. Just so, to transform a high IQ into a practicing intellectual proficiency you have to study a particular set of principles - epistemological principles. A person is no more born with an automatic knowledge of how to think than he is born with an automatic knowledge of how to make music. I'm sure that each of you is aware that there was a time (maybe, if you are younger than I am, you can even remember that time) when you first learned the proper formulation of a syllogism, the nature of an ad hominem argument, or the pitfalls of the post hoc fallacy. Just as there are proper ways and improper ways to address your hands to a musical instrument, so there are proper and improper ways to address your mind to the task of identifying reality. If a musically untrained person puts his hand to the keyboard of an accordion the result will be a discordant raucous racket, simply because he is ignorant of the proper procedures. Likewise, if an epistemologically untrained person puts his mind to a philosophical problem the result is likely to be a hideous hodge-podge of insane idiocy - for the same reason. You may have a very high potential - either MQ or IQ - but before you can actualize that potential you've got to learn how. * The Major High-IQ Societies IQ Annual %ile required Membership Dues ------ -------- ---------- ------ Triple Nine Society 99.9 150 500 $12 456 Coolidge Ave. Pittsburgh, Pa. 15228 Intertel 99 136 2000 $20 Box 15580 Lakewood, Colo. 80215 Mensa 98 132 60000 $45 2626 East 14 Street Brooklyn, N.Y. 11235 I have been rather disappointed with these people. In examining them I found that the possession of a high IQ is no guarantee at all of intellectual efficiency. Having a high intelligence does not remove a person's weaknesses, ignorances, prejudices, blind spots, or ambitions; it just gives him more power and energy to indulge them. An untrained mind cannot control its own power. On the other hand, I have known people whose IQs are not very high but who are much more worthwhile and competent intellectually because they have well- trained minds and are possessed of cognitive techniques enabling them to manipulate abstract ideas. The principles of Objectivism provide an enormously powerful intellectual tool. The incalculable value of these ideas makes their desirability seem blatantly obvious - to me. But I was very sad to discover that other high-IQ people are quite indifferent - or even hostile - to them. I found only about two dozen Mensans, half-dozen members of Intertel, and NO ONE above this level (except for myself) who was interested in applying these principles. * Useful Thinking Techniques When trying to define a concept, you may find it useful to consider its opposite and see if it would be appropriate to define the concept in terms of the negative (or absence) of its opposite. For example: Freedom as the absence of Slavery - Innocence as the absence of Guilt. Implicit knowledge is that which is available to your consciousness but which you have not conceptualized. Implicit knowledge is not a substitute for explicit knowledge. Values which you cannot identify, but merely sense implicitly, are not in your control. You cannot tell what they depend on or require, what course of action is needed to gain and/or keep them. And you cannot teach them to your children! Implicit knowledge, since it has not been identified, cannot be challenged. For successful goal-achievement, you should have a clear and explicit statement of your goals and the rationale for them. This provides you with a firm and constant awareness of the principles that guide and shape the actions you will take to achieve those goals. It will enable you to live according to your philosophy by taking the appropriate actions to implement its principles. I find that there are three levels of clarity to which I can hold an idea: The first, and lowest, is just having the thought inside my head, probably in a rather vague form. I can force myself to the second level of clarity by making a verbal statement of the idea. When I have to translate vague, unspecific mental images into spoken words, the idea becomes more precise and unambiguous. For this reason I deliberately talk to myself quite frequently - or talk to my cat (but he rarely finds any of my ideas worth commenting on!) The third, and highest, level of clarity is reached when I sit down and put the words into written form. This way they get saved as perceptual concretes and I can review them and rework them and rearrange them until I get a really accurate presentation of the idea. * Procedures for Carrying on a Discussion "Discussion among rational people is best conducted as a partnership in discovering the truth, not as combat or indoctrination. Discussion and debate are values only if they are means to the discovery of the truth." ... David Kelley If a sensible discussion is to occur, the participants must do several things: Agree on the subject to be discussed. Define the terms encompassing this subject. Identify the principles underlying the various approaches to dealing with this subject. Decide, by examining the consequences which ensue from the principles, which of these approaches is the proper one to use. Determine the best way to implement this approach. Each participant must make a reply appropriate to the presentation the others have made. Each must try to further the investigation. Discussion is futile when directed not toward general principles but merely toward the specific phenomena which are consequences of those principles. Perhaps the best examples of this are debates about legalizing drugs. They usually devolve quickly from a merely superficial consideration of the principles underlying the anti-drug laws into a dispute over the specific means for distributing the drugs if they were to be legalized. Thus the principles themselves are never fully examined. If you want to make a presentation to a hostile audience, here are some recommendations: Your purpose should be merely to make your position known, clearly and briefly, so that your audience can see what your ideas are. If anyone wants to learn more about them, the burden of intellectual responsibility lies upon them to solicit - not upon you to impose. You owe a rational statement only to those whom it does concern and who are making an effort to know. Those who are making an effort to fail to understand you should not be a concern of yours. Your procedure in such a presentation should be: To educate only those sincerely interested in learning. Not to refute contentious assertions nor correct dogmatic errors nor challenge erroneous assumptions. Not to attempt discussion with intellectually loose people nor those whose approach involves ridiculing or belittling rationality. If you want to communicate with dummies you will have to make allowances for the dummies. * Criticism The experience of having my essays published, and dealing with the resulting feedback, has led me to identify several types of criticism: Irrelevant: Remarks that have no rational justification, do not in any way apply to the idea being criticized, and contribute nothing to the subject under discussion. But can this really be called criticism? Combative: Remarks intended mainly to provoke dispute. What I get from the kind of person who listens only for the purpose of contradicting me. Corrective: An analysis that exposes an important flaw in the presentation, thus clarifying the subject. Contributive: Commentary that expands upon the idea presented, furthering it and widening its applicability. The First Law of Debate: Anything is possible, if you don't know what you are talking about!! * The Scientific Method An epistemological technique used to form scientific concepts. 1) Recognition of facts that appear to be related, but whose relationship is unknown. 2) Observation and experimentation to collect data. 3) Analysis of the data. 4) Formulation of an hypothesis that attempts to explain the relationship. 5) Testing of the hypothesis against all known evidence. 6) Continual testing as new evidence is obtained. Fundamental precepts of Scientific Method: New and speculative hypotheses do not warrant consideration as long as the facts that are observed are adequately accounted for by the theories that already exist. A proposal should not be considered if no credible evidence has been adduced that it has any value. Those explanations should be accepted which involve the fewest assumptions. Virtually any scientifically conducted experiment can, at least ideally, be reduced to two broad steps: first, determining the variables that affect the outcome of the experiment; second, setting up conditions such that one of the variables can be altered while the rest are kept constant. From the data obtained in this way the experimenter can modify his hypothesis as to which variables matter, in what way they matter, to what degree they matter, and which don't. Thus his mental image grows closer and closer to an accurate representation of reality. Scientific knowledge (to be precise, the progress of scientific knowledge) is cumulative in nature. You start with a foundation and then you build upon that foundation. That's why science has progressed to such a tremendous extent during the past 300 years. If physicists spent all their time arguing about the validity of the First Law of Thermodynamics, they would never make any progress at all. And if mathematicians spent all their time arguing about whether or not 2+2=4 there would never be any progress in mathematics. But you must always remember that one of the really important skills of a scientist is in knowing what things to argue about. The doubt involved must be VERY carefully selective!! Its improper application has sometimes been disastrous for the progress of science. On the one hand there is the impulse to regard almost NOTHING as being open to question. On the other hand is the impulse to regard EVERYTHING as being open to question. On the one hand are the "know it alls" and on the other hand are the "know nothings." Obviously neither position is true. Humans are neither omniscient nor totally ignorant. Doubting is at least as important to the advance of science as believing is and, moreover, doubting is a serious business that requires extensive training to be handled properly. People without training in a particular field do not know what to doubt and what not to doubt; or, to put it conversely, what to believe and what not to believe. I am sorry to be undemocratic, but one man's opinion is not necessarily as good as the next man's. A scientist MUST doubt. It would take longer for valid theories to become established if overcredulity on the part of scientists led them into all the blind alleys indicated by newly-presented theories. Scientific manpower is too limited to investigate everything that occurs to everybody. The advance of science depends on scientists in general being kept firmly oriented to the direction of maximum possible return. * The Military Staff Study 1) Statement of the problem: One problem only, isolated and stated; not merely a description of a "bad" situation. 2) Assumptions: Make no assumptions unless absolutely necessary. One assumption must not conflict with another; if so, prepare a different study for each. 3) Facts bearing on the problem: A fact is a statement of conditions or affairs held to be true. Don't mix fact and opinion. 4) Discussion: Produce a logical and orderly critical analysis of the problem through the integration of the facts and the assumptions. 5) Conclusions: Not a continuation of the discussion. They must point directly to the need for certain actions. 6) Recommendations: The actions which, if taken, will solve the problem. They must not pose alternative courses of action, and must be susceptible to simple approval or disapproval. A reasoned solution might be overruled by other considerations; some of the noblest of human acts have been carried out in defiance of reason. It is also quite true that spectacular blunders occasionally follow in the wake of the keenest reasoning. But, by and large, clean and orderly thinking justifiably enjoys a most favorable reputation. * Notes on the Significance of Intellectual Context Why is it that so frequently when you are speaking to a person who believes in authoritarian, statist ideas, the person apears to listen but does not really hear what you are saying? Governmental Authority is, for him, an axiomatic concept. He literally cannot see any other starting point - cannot conceive of a society which is not founded on coercion - and if you try to go beyond his frame of thinking, he merely accuses you of expressing vague generalities. It is as Orwell said it would be: "You will lose the ability to think certain ideas, and then you will be totally incapable of ever trying to act on those ideas." In such a discussion, most people quickly reach a point where they are not able to respond even when they have the discussion in front of them in writing. This is because they have reached the boundary of their intellectual frame of reference and they cannot cope with the questions without the mental flexibility to expand that frame of reference so as to encompass an area which contains the answers. They are prisoners of an inadequate reality assessment, and it is usually a waste of your time to engage them in discussion, simply because they will find your presentation to be quite literally incomprehensible. This helps explain why the average journalist cannot get a sentence straight if it is phrased more subtly than his own mind can make phrases. It explains also much of the unresolvable controversy in the field of social science. The technique used by most contemporary social scientists restricts their analysis to relatively minor consequential details. Questions dealing with fundamental principles are outside their pale. Their analysis takes place within an institutional context that is itself taken for granted: the framework of government control. This profoundly affects how the questions are framed, and thus studied and answered. This thinking method renders social scientists incapable of questioning much that is fundamental to their fields, and creates an intellectual barrier which is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the furtherance of libertarianism. This phenomenon has an obverse side also: I have sometimes been so befuddled by a question or proposition that I had to stop for a while and figure out why it seemed so "out of whack." The answer lies in the fact that its underlying premises are so disparate from mine that it is not at all amenable to a direct response. I can't answer the question, because it is overflowing with assumptions that I reject. * Faulty Thought Processes In any argument between two people who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins. The inconsistent person will present his ideas in a weak, conflicting, and diluted form - and thus will create in the minds of the audience an impression of evasion and cowardice, while his adversary will appear to possess greater honesty and courage. (See "Anatomy of Compromise" in CAPITALISM THE UNKNOWN IDEAL.) A disagreement that does not challenge fundamentals serves only to reinforce them. If, for the question: "Do you want slavery?" your opponents manage to substitute the question: "What kind of slavery do you want?" then they can afford to let you argue indefinitely; they have already won their point. Consider a Determinist vs an advocate of Free Will. The Determinist, to the extent that he adheres to the principle, will be disinclined to engage in any great mental activity. His motivation to do so is undermined by his belief that the result of such activity is not subject to his volition. The free will advocate, however, suffers under no such handicap and will not thereby be deterred from making the fullest application of his intellectual faculties of which he is capable. People who believe that definitions are arbitrary, or are to be accepted or rejected according to their authoritarian backing, are people for whom there is no hope of meaningful intellectual interaction. They are in the same category as the Determinists - but whereas the Determinists believe that cognition is absolutely fixed and unalterable, these dummies believe the obverse: that cognition cannot be firmly tied to an objective reality. Reason is not automatic. If men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called "behaviorist psychology." So they are wrong from scratch. To argue against such persons is to apply to them a premise they spend all of their effort disproving: that reason is involved in their theories. You should consider those people only long enough to expose the specific nature of their irrationality. Those who deny reason cannot be conquered by it. Leave them alone, for they are in a mysterious mental state which is too lunatic for serious consideration. They have made a conscious choice to remain ignorant. You should make a conscious choice not to waste your time on them. Thus do the philosophical principles you choose have a considerable influence on the efficiency of your thought processes. * Piagetian Operational Stages Piagetians contend that children have their views of the world bound up in concretes. This they call the "concrete operational stage," when children are generally incapable of imagining a situation with any of its variables somehow different. Kids at this stage have a lot of difficulty with "what if" questions. Only sometime during adolescence do children become able to deal adequately with conceptual abstractions. This is called the "formal operational stage." It is during this stage that young adults become able to deal with propositions that are contrary to fact (What if there were no Federal Reserve Bank?) - to imagine several alternative explanations for the same phenomenon (What really caused the Great Depression?) - to deal with metaphor (What is meant by the market's "invisible hand"?) - to understand that classes are not only groups of concrete objects but may also be conceived as abstract entites (What are those elements that make up justice? How does justice become an element that makes up something called freedom?). Piagetians contend that nearly 50% of the adult population never adequately learns how to use the capacity for formal operational thought. Half the population is often bound to the reality of the moment, impotent to imagine how things might be under different circumstances. Just imagine yourself at a cocktail party and ask the person you've been randomly thrown up against, "What if there were no local zoning laws?" and you'll likely get a blank stare. Press him with, "What if there were no minimum-wage laws?" and you'll be getting rather close to his threshold of irritability. The ways of the economic world are pretty uncomplicated for this guy. When he thinks gasoline prices are too high, he wants someone to MAKE them lower. When he thinks his salary is too low, he wants someone to MAKE it higher. He has no notion of conceptual analysis, and is a walking example of what survives when a mind becomes a victim of infant mortality. Someone who does not think in principles tends to rely by default on social customs, and thus does not function independently in practice. The collectivist ideologies have a concrete model they can use to convey their view of society: the model of the family. Liberals stress the nurturing role of the family - its unconditional support for every member. Conservatives stress the authority of the parents in teaching virtue and enforcing standards of behavior. These aspects of the family are understood by preconceptual children, and can be grasped in a primitive form by non-conceptual adults. But there is no comparable form in which it is possible to grasp the concept of individualism, or any other of the principles of a free society, because they are based on the need of adults to function independently. To those who do not think conceptually, only what is immediately seen is real. At the level of principles, no ideology can be understood, much less consistently practiced or advocated, by those who function non-conceptually. This is why anti- ideological pragmatism is so popular. * The Use Of Emotions As Tools Of Cognition (This material is extracted from Lecture #6 of Barbara Branden's PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENT THINKING.) This is a process used by people whose intellectual focus is on feelings rather than on truth and knowledge. Their fundamental technique of thinking is to refer to their emotions rather than their rational faculty. They use reason only as a tool of rationalization - to justify ideas which have already been accepted on the basis of their feelings. Instead of storing conceptual integrations and evaluations in their subconscious, these people store specific memories of concrete events along with the emotional responses associated with those events. Then any new phenomenon which is perceived to be similar to (i.e., has an accidental resemblance to) the aggregate of stored memories will evoke the associated emotional response, and thus will be formed a judgement of the new phenomenon on the basis of associational connections rather than conceptual integrations. Notice that this process is based on irreducible concretes, and that no classification according to fundamental distinguishing characteristics is involved. That aspect of any phenomenon having the most striking emotional impact is considered to be its defining characteristic. Ideas are also stored as concretes: as memories of something heard, read, or thought. These concretes are not integrated with other concretes, but are stored as slogans. Conclusions about any subject consist of the memories of events, plus the corresponding emotions, plus the remembered slogans. People who function this way are typically unable to define their terms; for them, the meaning of a word is a jumble of memorized examples, emotional associations and floating images. Their primary focus is on the emotional connotations of phenomena. If a presentation does not arouse strong emotional response in them, it will have very little effect on them at all. Ideas themselves will have no motivating influence on them. They will respond not to the cognitive content of an idea but to the emotional content of its presentation (it is this response that gives demagogues so much of their following). They do not judge the truth by its correspondence to reality - they judge reality by its correspondence to their feelings. They are psychologically set to grant primacy to their emotions, which set and direct their perceptions. When necessary, their perceptions are distorted to fit the emotion, or simply ignored. Only what fits the emotions is permitted entry into consciousness. Thus they become intellectually self- blinded. They make no distinction between emotions and thoughts - they "feel" their thoughts simply because the thoughts are non-conceptualized. What they do not do is INITIATE a process of conceptualization. Theirs is a passive, not an active, consciousness. The end result is the explicit, open reliance on emotions and the rejection of conceptualization, which, in their minds, has become a meaningless process. This is the reason why some men jump to conclusions irrationally. They do not identify principles, but just act on an emotional response. This also explains much context-dropping. Without a principled basis of firmly-held concepts, it is impossible for them to hold an ideational context and relate specific concretes to that context. * Orwell - Newspeak - Brainwashing - Prolefeed 1984 by George Orwell - New American Library (Signet) #451 CY688 This is the most prophetic book of the 20th century. Orwell's concepts of Newspeak and Prolefeed are indispensable to an understanding of the development of American culture during the latter half of this century. A thorough knowledge of Newspeak, as it has been implemented in America, is the best means by which one can avoid an immense quagmire of faulty thinking. * Newspeak The effect of Newspeak is not to extend but to diminish the range of thought and to make all other modes of thought impossible, so that an idea divergent from the prevalent philosophy will be literally unthinkable. This is done partly by stripping undesirable words of unorthodox meanings. For example: The word "anarchy" still exists but it can only be understood as meaning a completely lawless and chaotic state of nihilistic destruction. It cannot be used in its old sense of "a social condition from which the institutionalized use of coercive aggression is absent" since politically such a condition no longer exists even as a concept, and is therefore nameless. Another example is "inflation." What people today call inflation is not an increase in the quantity of money substitutes, but the general rise in prices and wages which is the inevitable CONSEQUENCE of inflation. This semantic innovation is by no means harmless. First of all there is no longer any term available to signify what "inflation" used to signify. It is impossible to fight an evil which you cannot name. You no longer have the opportunity to resort to a terminology accepted and understood by the public when you want to describe the financial policy you are opposed to. You must enter into a detailed analysis and description of this policy with full particulars and minute accounts whenever you want to refer to it, and you must repeat this bothersome procedure in every sentence in which you deal with this subject. Second, those who wish to fight inflation are diverted in their struggle away from the fundamental nature of inflation and are forced to direct their attentions to the consequences. They end up snipping at the leaves of the weed rather than hacking at the root. An especially corrupting abuse of language can be seen in the ambiguous use of the words "think" and "feel." This equivocates cognitive assessment with emotional response, and leaves the victim unable to discriminate between his thoughts and his emotions. The special function of other Newspeak words is to destroy meaning. In Newspeak it is seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it IS heretical; beyond that point the required words are nonexistent. It would be possible to say, "government is unnecessary," but this statment could not be sustained by a comprehensible argument, because the requisite words (such as "anarchy") are not meaningfully available. An example of a phrase designed to destroy meaning is in this suggestion, made by a proponent of international trade barriers: "A more accurate name than the persuasive label 'free trade' - because who can be opposed to freedom? - is 'deregulated international commerce.'" If accepted, his proposal, that his adversaries use this mouthful of multi-syllabic obfuscation as the name of their political goal, would be the first step toward destruction of the concept "free" in the minds of his opponents. And in the minds of their audience. Nowhere is this semantic deception more blatant than in the government's dishonest descriptions of its own activities, in which words are used merely as tools to manipulate the social environment. In 1993, Congress required the Dept. of Health and Human Services to examine the feasibility of shifting some biological weapons research from the army to the National Institutes of Health. Thus, under the direction of the Dept. of Health, the National Institutes of Health will now be engaged in germ warfare. Orwell was right - "War is Peace" or, more appropriately, "Health is Death." Perhaps the most long-lasting and widespread manifestation of the government's use of another of Big Brother's slogans ("Freedom is Slavery") is the "selective service." In Newspeak, certain words are deliberately constructed for political purposes - words which are intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them and to make it impossible for him to hold any contrary attitude. This is the explicit goal of the "Politically Correct" movement. What a Newspeak user acquires is an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshipped "false gods." He did not need to know what these gods were, and probably the less he knew about them the better for his own orthodoxy. This sort of orthodoxy was explicitly fostered during the McCarthy era of the early 1950's, when accusations of "communist!" were thrown around indiscriminately while no one, neither the accusers nor the accused, had any idea of what a communist is. Nor did they dare ask publicly, for fear of being labeled a communist merely for making the inquiry. Thomas Szasz coined the very useful word "semanticide" to mean the murder of language. Semanticide is the ultimate goal of Newspeak. Many words, such as "freedom," "patriotism," "liberty," etc. have been appropriated by wanna-be tyrants (especially by Right-wing political Conservatives) who use those words to designate the opposite of their historical (and cognitively correct) meanings, thus leaving the majority of people with no way to distinguish libertarians from our totalitarian enemies. The only way I can see to combat this dismal situation is to attack it not on its surface - by making futile attempts to persuade people of the correct definitions of those critical words - but at its roots, by presenting the idea that Definitions Are Not Arbitrary. Unless your audience realizes this, any argument you engage in will be merely a verbal battle of wits with your adversary - the outcome dependent on who can make the most clever use of phrases that are meaningless in the minds of the audience. * Brainwashing These are the elements of brainwashing. At least some of them are used, in greater or lesser intensity, by all authoritarian organizations, and by anyone attempting to assert psychological dominance. Get your victim at your mercy. Take away his ordinary inputs - his accustomed environment. Isolate him and deprive him of social support, to develop an intense concern for himself. Deprive him of all opportunities for self-expression. Control his perceptions, with darkness or bright light, or by creating a barren environment and restricting movement, to fix the victim's attention on his predicament and to eliminate distractions. Inundate him with strong and novel sensory experiences. Subject him to physical degradation, by prevention of personal hygiene and imposing various other humiliations, so as to reduce the victim to concern with "animal values." Induce debilitation and exhaustion, by semi-starvation, exposure, sleep deprivation and induced illness, so as to weaken the victim's physical and mental ability to resist. Demonstrate omnipotence, to suggest the futility of resistance. This is carried out by such techniques as pretending to take cooperation for granted or demonstrating complete control over the victim's fate. Issue threats, to cultivate anxiety, dread and despair. Enforce trivial demands, to develop a habit of compliance. Perform occasional indulgences, such as unpredictable favors and unexpected kindness, to provide motivation for compliance. * Prolefeed The last-named element of brainwashing, "control of perceptions," gives rise to the phenomenon of "Prolefeed." Prolefeed augments Newspeak, in that its effect is to render people less able to make rationally-based value judgments. In doing so, it leaves them more receptive to judgments imposed on them by authority figures. Responsibility for the implementation of Newspeak must rest mainly with the government, but Prolefeed is the product of the advertising industry of America. There is nothing unethical in attempting to induce people to purchase your products, but the means the advertising industry has used to achieve this end have had unforeseen psychologically and intellectually devastating results. Prolefeed is a format of radio and TV programming whose result is intellectually debilitating. It is a format of information presentation which, by inducing psycho-epistemological programming and deprogramming, results in severe inhibition of cognitive efficiency. The cognitive debilitation results, in part, from continuous exposure to unceasing repetition of phrases or melodies which contain just enough cognitive content to possess a minimum of intelligible meaning, thereby distracting the mind from self-generated activity, without giving the mind sufficient content for significant externally-induced activity. Observe, please, that it is not the CONTENT of the input that induces the debility, but the FORMAT of its presentation. Consider a common phenomenon: there is a radio playing in the background at the place you are working. In order to concentrate on your work you "tune out" the radio - you make an alteration in your mental functioning which renders you unaware of the sounds of the radio. Since your ears (unlike your eyes which can be physically closed to sensory input) are continually feeding signals to sensory receptors in the brain, all the sound that enters the ears is transmitted into the brain. Thus there is a part of your mind that is always aware of this sound. The only way you can "tune out" the background noise is to erect a barrier between your conscious mind and that area of the subconscious mind that receives input from your ears, a barrier that prevents the awareness from getting through. The programming that erects these psycho- epistemological barriers is one of the most pernicious aspects of Prolefeed. Not just because it produces the psychological self-alienation of a divided mind, but because it goes further by inflicting a profound impairment of judgment, an impairment resulting from the conflict of the subconsciously acquired prolefeed information with consciously derived value-decisions. We're bombarded with advertising, so we learn to tune it out. All that advertising is like a steady chattering noise in our eyes and ears. In order to function, we have to make ourselves deliberately blind and deaf to that part of our environment. The advertisers know that we do this, so they increase the size, color, intensity, volume, and the repetitions of their ads. They give us more, better, and different ads. And we try even harder to tune them out. Commercials are designed to catch your attention and instill remembrance, an increasingly difficult process because its effects dampen its effectiveness. Eventually we are so tuned out that we can no longer see the sky, the stars, the souls of our lovers, and the reality of the world we live in. Such programming causes severe value heirarchy distortions. It does this by presenting mundane things as having supreme importance. Consider the advertisement showing a man about to bite into a hamburger. His facial expression clearly and blatantly portrays the idea that this hamburger is the greatest thing ever to enter his life. One wonders how he contemplates his wife when he goes home from work at night. After he has displayed such an attitude toward a hamburger, what could he have left to display toward her? Being continually bombarded with the notion that each product - whether it be a hamburger, chewing gum, the latest model chevy, or a political candidate - is a sine qua non of the utmost value and importance, is a process that severely distorts, or even destroys, any rational value heirarchy and leaves the victim in a judgmental vacuum, lacking a sensible means to evaluate the phenomena which are IN FACT crucial to his life. Frequent instantaneous shifts of subject matter - e.g., breaking up programs with commercials - inhibit the mental function of integration and diminish the attention span of the victim, thus promoting schizophrenia. Such an interruption immediately following an information presentation can inhibit the victim from consciously evaluating the information. Thus he will be more likely to subconsciously accept it as truth, and will be left in a condition wherein the ideas in his mind have not been critically examined. Without firm awareness of their truth value, he will experience a nebulous state of uncertainty regarding his knowledge. It is no mere coincidence that the rise of popular radio and TV programming in the 1950's and its widespread availability (the transistor was invented in 1948) immediately preceeded the plunge of the SAT scores reported by American high-school students from 1963 onward. (See Chapter 12) Prolefeed has had a devastating effect on American society. But while you are contemplating lugubriously the weltanschauung of Orwell's book, keep this in mind: the world Orwell depicts can have only a limited actualization. For this reason: the men in the white coats KNOW what is real. They HAVE to know. Without those men, there could be no technological civilization - there would be only barbarism. NO society rises above barbarism except by recognition of the Facts of Reality by someone who is instrumental in the conduct of society. This is why no matter what the State decrees, someone HAS to know reality: the scientists who conceive material wealth; the engineers who translate those conceptions into existing mechanisms; the mechanics who maintain this technology. These people have to be in cognitive contact with objective reality. That cognitive contact is an unconditional prerequisite to the existence of a technological civilization, and it is a continual barrier to government omnipotence. And here you can see one of the major contributions of Objectivism: Rand has made philosophically EXPLICIT the function of the men in the white coats (who are only briefly and tangentially referred to by Orwell). This explicit depiction carries within it the seed of destruction for Statism. Emmanuel Goldstein must live! __ Chapter 3 THE IMPORTANCE OF CORRECT DEFINITIONS * On the Importance of Correct Definitions * How to Make a Definition Some approaches to defining a few interesting concepts * Certainty * Probability * Expense * To Be * References * Envy * Instinct * Luck * Standard vs Purpose * Anarchy * Nonsense * On the Importance of Correct Definitions "Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea with a symbol, be it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely reaction to symbols. When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions - rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic- mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we think not- sanely." ......Robert Heinlein. A definition is a statement designed to "identify the specific meaning of a concept, isolate the facts of reality to which the concept refers and of which the concept is a mental integration." (Jan63 - 3) It serves "to keep a concept distinct from all others, to keep it connected to a specific group of existents" (Jul67 - 9), or, as Harry Browne so aptly put it: "to draw a sharp line between what IS a certain thing and what isnt." "The purpose of defining one's terms is to afford oneself the inestimable benefit of knowing what one is talking about." (Jan63 - 3) (References are to various issues of THE OBJECTIVIST NEWSLETTER.) If one does not scrupulously afford oneself this benefit, the facts of reality will, sooner or later, correct one's error. Obviously, there are some mistaken definitions that will be corrected immediately as they are acted upon. If, for example, you define a hot stove as a chair, your mistake will be immediately and warmly chastised. There are other mistakes, however, that will not be so quickly righted. If you improperly identify an onion seed as a carrot seed, your mistake will not be corrected for weeks or even months. In the meantime you will have dug your garden, planted your seed, fertilized it, watered it, and carefully cultivated it until harvest time. Only then will you uncover your error, but by then you will have wasted a great deal of time and energy in the pursuit of an improper course of action, and you will then also be stuck with the consequences of your mistake: eating onions instead of carrots until next spring. Some mistakes will take even longer to be rectified. The more abstract the concept, the less immediately will reality show you your error. If you incorrectly define marriage, the tragic result may be a divorce court - but this "setting right" of the situation may not come about until after years of domestic suffering. If you mistakenly define the principles of business management, you will eventually find yourself in a bankruptcy court; but again, it may take decades of toil and effort before the facts of reality catch up with you. And finally, if a group of men establishing a new country mistakenly define the practice of freedom, two centuries later their grandchildren may wake up one morning to find themselves in a concentration camp. * How to Make a Definition The basic structure of a definition was first identified by Aristotle, and it was he who gave us the proper procedure for making a definition: Place the class of entity you wish to define in a wider class called a genus, all members of which share common characteristics. (e.g., Man is a living being.) Then add a qualification to the statement of inclusion which differentiates the class to be defined from all the other members of the wider class. (Man is a rational living being.) For a precise and detailed account of the cognitive process involved, see Ayn Rand's INTRODUCTION TO OBJECTIVIST EPISTEMOLOGY. There are several corollary rules for carrying out this procedure: Rule of Equivalence: A definition must be true of every member of the class being defined and only of members of that class. Rule of Fundamentality: A definition must refer to the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of the thing being defined. The definitive characteristic must be that which is a cause, not an effect: that which makes a thing what it is and differentiates it from all other things - that without which it would not be the kind of thing which it is. A definition must distinguish between names and entities. The essences of entities are not arbitrary, as are the verbal labels by which we symbolize the entities. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet - because giving the rose another name would not make it another entity. Rule of Non-Circularity: A definition must not contain any concept which, to be understood, presupposes the definition. An example of circularity is: "Democracy is a system of government which uses democratic procedures." Rule of Non-Negativity: A definition must tell what the thing IS rather than what it is NOT. Exceptions are those concepts which are inherently negative in meaning, such as orphan or bachelor. But note that a positive concept is always presupposed by such negative terms. Rule of Context: All known distinguishing aspects must be considered. The definition must include all presently held knowledge. Rule of Clarity: A definition must not be obscure, metaphorical or poetic but must clearly state a literal and exact meaning. For example: "Truth is beauty" is a nice poetic statement, but it is NOT a definition. Many words are vague insofar as they apply to characteristics which may be possessed in varying degrees. It is impossible to draw a sharp line between those who are bald and those who are not. It is impossible to define precisely the concept of baldness. But the characteristic according to which people distinguish between those who are bald and those who are not IS open to a precise definition: it is the presence or the absence of hair on the head of a person. This is a clear and unambiguous characteristic of which the presence or absence is to be established by observation and to be expressed by propositions about existence. What is vague is merely the determination of the point at which non-baldness turns into baldness. People may disagree with regard to the determination of this point, but their disagreement refers merely to the interpretation of the convention that attaches a certain meaning to the word baldness. A false definition of Rational Selfishness is that everything everyone does every moment throughout life is selfish. All this does is define "selfishness" in a way that is not helpful at all, because it makes "selfishness" all- inclusive. A word is a tool for delimiting one area of thought from others. The word becomes useless if it is defined to include everything. The word "everything" already serves that purpose quite well; we don't need a synonym. Ostensive definitions are those which establish directly, by an appeal to experience, the relationship between a word and that to which it refers. Ostensive definitions define primaries which cannot be placed into a genus and differentiated, such as sensory primaries like color, roughness, bitterness, and warmth; or metaphysical primaries such as Existence. One cannot place Existence into a wider class of entities. One of the worst consequences of faulty definitions is that you will be confused every time you have to compare concepts. If you haven't conceptualized according to fundamentals, but instead by some accidental characteristic, then when you need to compare them, for the purpose of making moral or ethical judgements, you'll be in real trouble. A definition is not an arbitrary construct, but the identification of a natural phenomenon. We cannot arbitrarily define "gravity". It is a phenomenon we discover. Once we understand it we can then define the WORD "gravity" based on the discovery. Defining a term is not a matter of defining it for MYself or for YOURself, but of making an identification that leads to UNDERSTANDING the phenomenon that has been defined. * Certainty Certainty is a state of mind in which a person perceives a correlation between his mental images and Reality. It is a judgement made within the context of a state of knowledge. The knowledge need not be total - but must be sufficient to ensure that the judgement is valid. Observe that this is a philosophically neutral definition: An objectivist achieves a state of certainty when he has modified his mental images to bring them into accord with reality. A subjectivist achieves certainty when he has modified his perceived reality to bring it into accord with his mental images. Observe also that this definition allows for degrees of certainty - certainty need not be absolute: the closer the degree of correlation between the mental image and reality, the higher the degree of certainty experienced. Absolute certainty would correspond to a complete congruency between the image and reality. And the complete absence of certainty would correspond to a state wherein there was no mental image at all of the aspect of reality under consideration - a state of complete ignorance. Certainty is not an absolute prerequisite to life's activities. One can go through life without being certain of many things: You are uncertain every time you go hunting or fishing. You are uncertain when you plant a garden, when you look for a word in the dictionary (one of my grumbles is in not finding the word at all - or finding it accompanied by a grossly inadequate definition, such as the word "certainty"), when you go to town - with or without your umbrella (although in this last example, I am tempted to say that there is a kind of "negative certainty" involved!) A "reasonable expectation" is sufficient to cope with a vast number of situations. Are there things about which we MUST be certain? Yes, I believe there are two such things: 1. The Axiomatic Concepts. These are the foundation of human knowledge, and thus are the foundation of all subsets of human knowledge, including certainty. As Aristotle remarked, in considering Axiomatic Concepts: "For a principle which everyone must have who understands anything that is, is not a hypothesis.... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all." 2. Rationality - the ability of the human mind to perceive and understand Reality. One of the facts of reality relevant to this context is the fact that human beings are neither omniscient nor infallible, and thus to ground the concept of certainty on either or both of these notions is to demand something that does not exist in reality. In the real world, certainty is rarely a Boolean phenomenon; it is seldom the case that you have either absolute certainty or total doubt about something. Those who attempt to impose such an alternative on the idea of certainty are implicitly assuming that a human being must be both omniscient and infallible: to have ABSOLUTE certainty about something, one must have TOTAL knowledge of that thing. And to have absolute CERTAINTY, there must be no room for the slightest error in one's judgement. Neither omniscience nor infallibility are attributes possessed by human beings. The statement "There is no such thing as absolute certainty" - or any variation of this statement - manifests the fallacy of self-exclusion: The statement itself is intended to be absolutely certain. Kant divided the world into two domains: the domain of phenomena and the domain of noumena. Phenomena, he claimed, are events as perceived by the human mind - they are sensations. Noumena are the causes of phenomena - they are the so-called things-in-themselves, the objects that really exist. Kant concluded that human beings can never know the noumena directly: noumena are the sources of the signals that act on our senses, and we can perceive only the signals, not the sources. According to Kant, then, we cannot ever really know anything definite about the noumena. But when he says "We cannot know anything definite about them" he is saying something definite about them: that their essential nature is such as to preclude our having definite knowledge of that nature. But Kant's statement itself explicitly asserts such definite knowledge, and is thus another example of the fallacy of self-exclusion. The notion of certainty has its roots in the process of concept formation. As Rand has observed "A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted." To form a concept, a man does not have to make the particular measurements - nor even know how to make the measurements - "he merely has to observe the element of similarity," and recognize that "the relevant measurements must exist in SOME quantity, but may exist in ANY quantity." "Similarity is grasped perceptually; in observing it, man is not and does not have to be aware of the fact that it involves a matter of measurement. It is the task of science to identify that fact." (Quotes are from INTRODUCTION TO OBJECTIVIST EPISTEMOLOGY, Chapter 2, which contains an extended account of the nature of the measurement process.) Note that "similarity is grasped perceptually" and that the integration is of percepts. As David Kelley has pointed out, the percepts are DIRECT links between Existence and Consciousness. There can be no doubt about the reality of the percepts: they are indeed certain. And here, in the percepts, is the foundation of certainty. The integration of the percepts is the first active behavior that a consciousness performs (the receipt of sensations and their integration into percepts are essentially passive processes). So, when I integrate the percepts, my certainty lies in the knowledge that the percepts do indeed possess the distinguishing characteristic (this knowledge is given to me perceptually). But I do not need, and sometimes cannot ever achieve, the certainty of knowing EXACTLY what the particular measurements are. Here are some examples: When I go hunting - my certainty lies in the knowledge that food animals do exist and can be obtained through my efforts. My uncertainty lies in not knowing the precise location of the animals and not knowing the exact actions needed to obtain them. When I plant a garden - my certainty lies in the knowledge that food plants can be grown. My uncertainty lies in not knowing exactly what conditions are required to grow a particular plant in a particular place. When I look for a word in the dictionary - my certainty lies in the knowledge that words exist and that they can be defined. My uncertainty lies in not knowing if the particular word I want is in a particular place and has been given a suitable definition. When I go to town - I am certain that it does rain. But I am uncertain as to whether it will rain at a particular location at a particular time. This notion applies even in the realm of Quantum Physics: I am certain that electrons emit photons, but I am uncertain about the emission of a photon by a particular electron at a particular time. (It is the Probability Amplitude that describes this emission.) With regard to Rationality - my certainty lies in the knowledge that my mind can function as an accurate identifier of reality. I may be uncertain about the accuracy of a particular application of my mind to a specific identification. My safety lies in carefully reducing the specific identification to the precise perceptual concretes upon which it is founded. The percepts are certain, and if I have correctly built my identification upon them then it too will be certain. "Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty - some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none ABSOLUTELY certain." Now we can see the flaw in this contention: the word "statements" implicitly subsumes both aspects of concept-formation. When the "statements" are about the particular measureable characteristics of phenomena, then they are open to uncertainty. But when the "statements" are integrated percepts of the phenomena, then they are certain. "If certainty is unattainable, how can we decide how close we are to it, which is what a probability estimate is?" In this question the word "certainty" means "infallably exact precision in measurement." There is no such thing - the world just isn't built this way. This is an improper definition of "certainty." A probability estimate is fundamentally not a statement about reality but a statement about my knowledge of reality. reality is not probable - it is fact. "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." When Bertrand Russell said this, he should have put "I think" at the end of it. The flaw in Russell's remark lies in the implicit meaning of "certain of themselves." The fools and fanatics cause trouble not because of their certainty, but because of their social behavior. It is wrong to blame certainty per se for the choices and actions of people who assert certainty. That's rather like blaming guns for murder. Guns don't kill people - people kill people. Certainty "creates confidence in one's course of action as an already established fact. It provides the basis for progress into new areas unencountered previously." This notion is critically important to the development of man's cognitive behavior; the basic certainty of the elemental act of conceptualizing lies at the root of all his subsequent conscious behavior. A great number of man's concepts are derived not directly from perceptual concretes, but from the integration of previously created concepts (the process Rand calls "abstraction from abstractions). If the previously created concepts were not "already established facts" there would be no way to build reliably upon them, and man would be restricted to living a cognitive life not much higher than that of the lesser animals: restricted to a merely perceptual awareness of the world. I believe it is possible for a person to live without certainty - but only without his own inner certainty. Doing so, he goes through life as an intellectual, moral and spiritual parasite: a parasite on other people who DO possess certainty. As Branden has observed, the fundamental act of a human being is the choice "to think - or not to think." The act of concept-formation lies at the base of all other human behavior. The conviction of certainty regarding this act is a prerequisite to all thought. If you don't think, you can stay alive only by being a parasite on the thinking of others. * Probability There is a critical distinction to be made between two uses of the idea "Probable." 1. It is used to express a judgement about the occurrence of a phenomenon: "I'll probably go to town this afternoon." "The ice-cream parlor will quite likely be out of strawberry again." "The next president will surely be a varmint criminal." "It is more probable that the next president will be a varmint criminal than that the ice-cream parlor will be out of strawberry." In each case what is expressed is a surmise or conjecture - a statement of my judgement about a situation. Such judgements are not precisely quantifiable, but are combinations of my ignorance, my partial knowledge, and my extrapolations from previous experience. 2. It is used to express knowledge about the frequency of occurrence of a phenomenon: "The probability of a coin falling heads-up is 1/2" "The probability of dice showing 12 is 1/36" "It is more probable that a coin will fall heads-up than that the dice will show 12." These cases are not statements of uncertainty. They are statements expressing exact and certain knowledge - certain because the statements are based directly on perceptual observations of the facts of Reality. They are descriptions of reality with as much underlying certainty as the statement "2 plus 2 make 4." No probability can be attached to a unique event; that is, an event that belongs to a class where there is only one member and no prior ones. * Expense "At taxpayers' expense" That is a frequently-heard term nowadays, and whether the word used is "expense" or "cost" the same meaning is intended. I believe it is a wrong meaning, and that the term is a cruel misrepresentation of the facts. The statement has two implications: That a transfer of wealth has occurred from person A to person B in the form of a payment for phenomenon C. That if C had not occurred, the payment would have remained in the possession of A. Neither of these implications is factual. Consider a specific example: The government contracts with Daddy Warbucks Corp. to provide the army with a new gun. The gun turns out to be poorly designed and will not work. During a congressional hearing to investigate the multi-million dollar boondoggle, congressman Flatula is heard to declare "This whole mess was done at taxpayers' expense!" The implication is that the Taxpayer paid Daddy Warbucks for the New Gun. But this is not the case. Daddy Warbucks received payment from the accounting office of the Department of Defense - he got a cheque from the government for $Mega. And too, if this particular contract had never been issued (and the New Gun had never been manufactured) the $Mega would have stayed, not in the pocket of the Taxpayer but in the coffers of the government. The whole scheme was done at government expense. The fact that the government got its money by robbing a selected group of people does not in ANY way implicate those people in the actions of the government. Consider a personal example: If you are robbed of $100 by a hoodlum, and the hoodlum subsequently uses part of that money to finance an abortion for his girlfriend, can it be said that this abortion occurred at your expense? Did you participate in the abortion? No, you did not. It was performed by a quack doctor of whose very existence you were completely unaware. Did you finance the abortion? No, you did not. The doctor received his payment from the hoodlum. The doctor didn't know where the hoodlum got the money, or even that you exist. Did you condone the abortion? No, you did not. You didn't even KNOW about the abortion! There is absolutely no reasonable way, in either of these examples, that the third party (the taxpayer in the first case, and you personally in the second case) can be construed as a participant, unless he knows about and sanctions the behavior of the other two parties. And here we see the underlying motivation of those who use this phrase "at taxpayers' expense": the desire to impose upon YOU personally the moral culpability of sanctioning the behavior of the government and the people who deal with it. What they say, in effect, is that because you are the victim of an act of robbery (taxation) you are therefore responsible morally for the manner in which the robber uses the money he has stolen from you. This same viciousness can be observed in another assertion I encounter frequently when I chide people for using the word "we" when referring to the actions of the government. They reply with "Well, you're a taxpayer too!" The fact that I am a victim is being used as justification for assigning to me moral culpability for the behavior of the thief. I call this the GRATUITOUS INCULPATION fallacy. You might chastise me for attributing to the people who use these arguments a motivation they do not intend. And by and large you are right: they do not intend to perpetrate an evil, but that IN FACT is what they are doing. I call this the "Road to Hell" syndrome. In fact, their intentions do not matter; it is only the consequences of their behavior that matter - the consequences that actually have an effect in the world. The most wicked people are those who sincerely believe that what they are doing is good. If you wish to know the true nature of someone who uses the statements and arguments I presented above, merely describe to him why those statements and arguments are in fact evil. And then see if he relinquishes them. * To Be Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary: "to have an objective existence: have reality or actuality." Here, "to be" is defined by referring to the concept of existence. This is a more-or-less adequate definition of the term, but it does not convey the genuine fundamentality of the idea of existence. Consider what the function of a definition is. A proper definition will describe the fundamental nature of a term - in the process using other terms which are fundamental to the first term. For example: "orphan" would be defined by using the term "parent". But "parent" could easily be defined without reference to the term "orphan" at all, because the idea of "parent" is fundamental to the idea of "orphan" - not the other way around. To define "parent" we must refer to terms that are fundamental to it, such as "sexually mature lifeform" - and so on, down the ladder of fundamentality. Thus we define Z in terms of Y. Y in terms of X. X in terms of W... D in terms of C. C in terms of B. B in terms of A. But do we then define A in terms of Z? No. The attic rests on the main floor. The main floor rests on the basement. The basement rests on the foundation. And the foundation rests on bedrock. But the bedrock does not rest on the attic. Sooner or later, an ultimate fundamentality is reached. In building a house, that ultimate fundamentality is the bedrock. In physics, that ultimate fundamentality is the First Law of Thermodynamics. In epistemology that ultimate fundamentality is known as an Axiomatic Concept. An axiomatic concept can be described, it can be explained, but it cannot be "defined" simply because there are no terms which are fundamental to it. An axiomatic concept is a term which MUST (by virtue of its very nature) be accepted and used in the act of defining any and all other terms. Indeed, one of the primary distinguishing characteristics of an axiomatic concept is the fact that it must be accepted and used even in any attempt to deny it! It is inescapable. The three axiomatic concepts are Existence, Identity, and Consciousness. That the world exists is an idea which is inherent, implicitly or explicitly, in ALL other ideas. That things which exist are what they are (have an identity) is also such an idea. And that YOU have a consciousness, which recognizes (or, if you wish, denies) this existence and identity, is another fundamental - which you accept and use in the process of any cognitive endeavor. Which is to say that you accept and use your consciousness in any act of consciousness. "To be" is a verbal expression which asserts the fact of existence. * References Diogenes: That you are a man, he will know when he sees you; whether a good or bad one, he will know if he has any skill in discerning the good and the bad. But if he has none, he will never know, though I write to him a thousand times. A reference is a method of obtaining information about another person. A, being unacquainted with C, and wishing to make a judgement about him, has two means of doing so: by direct observation and consultation or by referring to another person's observations, in the form of a reference provided by B, an acquaintance of C. B, however, may or may not have a previous acquaintance with A. If A knows B then there is some justification in his asking B for information about C, because A will have made an estimate of the validity of B's powers of observation and judgement, and will therefore be able to make some valuation of the reference. If A does not know B then it is certainly not advisable for him to place much, if any, weight on the information provided by B. After all, C is certainly not going to select a reference source who would say bad things about him. If A accepts a reference from a person with whom he is not acquainted then he has gained no useful information about C, because the most undesirable people can usually provide the most impeccable references. To ask for a reference is, at best, of very limited usefulness; at worst it is an intellectual cop-out. If I want to know what kind of person you are I will make my own observations and base upon them my own judgement, I won't pass the buck to someone else. * Envy The motive of a man who is willing to make himself worse off in order to bring another down to his level. Do not fool yourself by thinking that altruists are motivated by compassion for the suffering: they are motivated by hatred for the successful. To be rational is to be successful in dealing with reality. Thus is explained much of the existing hatred for rationality. But altruism has no power over its victims except by their own consent, which means: by their acceptance of guilt for the crime of living and of producing values - of being successful. The envy today's intellectuals feel is not the relatively healthy desire to have what others have, but an ugly pleasure in seeing their betters brought down. Envy is not the desire to emulate the achievements of others, nor is it primarily the desire to steal other people's values; it is, rather, the desire to wipe out these values. The envier has little interest in the transfer of anything of value from the other person's possession to his own. He would like to see the other person robbed, dispossessed, stripped, humiliated or hurt. In a free market, where men earn their wealth and distinction by trading their skills and achievements, a man's long-range failure, like his long-range success, is an objective reflection of his ability. It is precisely this inexorable rule of capitalism - "to each according to his ability" - that wounds the self-esteem of the envious mediocrity and engenders the widespread hatred for capitalism. Their ideas are not ideas in favor of anything, but are a means of expressing their hatred of knowldge, of achievement, of happiness, of man - their political views are an expression of their more fundamental spiritual nihilism. * Instinct 70/Aug/10 The unnamed but automatized connections in the mind. AS-1013 62/Oct/43 An unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without the involvment of reason. Scientists who use the term "instinct" never define it, and rarely even attempt to do so. The impression I get from all their usages is that instinct means "behavior for which I am not able to attribute any other cause." Nathaniel Branden (PSE-23): There is no such thing. There are 3 categories in terms of which animal behavior can be explained: 1. Actions which are reflexes. 2. Actions which are guided directly by an animal's pleasure-pain sensory apparatus and which involve the faculty of consciousness but not a process of learning - such as moving toward warmth. 3. Actions which are the result of learning. Behavior that has not been traced to one of these categories or to some combination of them has not been explained. Hormones, while not exercising absolute control over behavior, can assert a substantial influence over behavior. If the creature's volitional consciousness then cooperates with this influence, the result could be the manifestation of complex behavior. Another thing to consider is the propensity for self-assertion: a baby grasps because that is the natural function- potential of its hand, just as eyes see, legs walk, and a mind thinks. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, April 1992, contains a fascinating essay by Ronald Melzack entitled PHANTOM LIMBS. This essay presents the best case I have ever seen for a phenomenon that might be called "instinct" although surprisingly, the word "instinct" does not appear in the essay. ************* from Melzack ******** People who have lost an arm or a leg often perceive the limb as though it is still there. Such a a phantom can feel wet, or it can itch, which can be extremely distressing, although scratching the apparent site of discomfort can actually relieve the annoyance sometimes. Some paraplegics complain that their legs make continuous cycling movements, producing painful fatigue, even though the patient's actual legs are lying immobile on the bed. The brain contains a network of neurons, that, in addition to responding to sensory stimulation, continuously generates a characteristic pattern of impulses indicating that the body is intact and unequivocally one's own. If such a matrix operated in the absence of sensory inputs from the periphery of the body, it would create the impression of having a limb even when that limb has been removed. Phantom seeing and hearing, like phantom limbs, are also generated by the brain in the absence of sensory input. People whose vision has been impaired by cataracts or by the loss of a portion of the visual processing system in the brain sometimes report highly detailed visual experiences. Phantom sights and sounds occur when the brain loses its normal input from a sensory system. In the absence of input, cells in the central nervous system become more active. The brain's intrinsic mechanisms transform that neuronal activity into meaningful experiences. The parietal lobe has been shown to be essential to the sense of self - to the recognition of the self and to the evaluation of sensory signals. Patients who have suffered a lesion of the parietal lobe in one hemisphere have been known to push one of their own legs out of a hospital bed because they were convinced it belonged to a stranger. When sensory signals from the periphery reach the brain, they pass through several systems in parallel. As the signals are analyzed, information about them is shared among the various systems and converted into an integrated output, which is sent to other parts of the brain. Somewhere in the brain the output is transformed into a conscious perception. As a system analyzes sensory information, it imprints its characteristic neurosignature on the output. The specific neurosignature of an individual would be determined by the pattern of connectivity among neurons in the system - that is, by such factors as which neurons are connected to one another and by the number, types and strengths of the synapses. When sensory input activates two brain cells simultaneously, synapses between the cells form stronger connections. Eventually the process gives rise to whole assemblies of linked neurons, so that a signal going into one part of an assembly spreads through the rest, even if the assembly extends across broad areas of the brain. The connections of this neuromatrix are primarily determined not by experience but by the genes. The matrix, though, could later be sculpted by experience, which would add or delete, strengthen or weaken, existing synapses. I think the matrix is largely prewired because many people who were born without an arm or a leg do nonetheless experience a vivid phantom. Under normal circumstances, then, the myriad qualities of sensation people experience emerge from variations in sensory input. This input is both analyzed and shaped into complex experiences of sensation and self by the larely prewired neuromatrix. Yet even in the absence of external stimuli, much the same range of experiences can be generated by other signals passing through the neuromatrix - such as those produced by the spontaneous firing of neurons in the matrix itself or the spinal cord or the periphery. Regardless of the source of the input to the matrix, the result would be the same: rapid spread of the signals throughout the matrix and perception of a limb located within a unitary self, even when the actual limb is gone. ******** end of Melzak ******* It seems my Tabula is not entirely Rasa. * Luck Luck means to prosper or succeed through chance or good fortune. Lucky, fortunate, happy, providential, mean meeting with unforseen success. Lucky stresses the agency of chance in bringing about a favorable result; fortunate suggests being rewarded beyond one's deserts; happy combines the implications of lucky and fortunate with stress on being blessed; providential more definitely implies the help or intervention of a higher power. "Every scientist hopes for the good fortune to recognize one of nature's suprises and the good sense to make the most out of it." ... Robert Hazen "There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe. 'Good luck' follows careful preparation; 'bad luck' comes from sloppiness." ... Heinlein "Luck favors the prepared mind." ... Pasteur When Napoleon's eagle eye flashed down the list of officers proposed for promotion to generals, he used to scribble in the margin of a name: "Is he lucky?" * Standard vs Purpose I observe some confusion in the minds of many Objectivists regarding the proper applicaton of these two concepts. I will see if I can throw some light on the situation. A standard is the basis upon which rests or which makes possible the existence of a purpose. The two things, while related, are not identical and should not be confused with one another. Consider a house. Its standard is the foundation which it is built upon. Its purpose is the function of providing shelter for people. You can see that it could not fulfill its purpose without having its standard; but observe also that its standard is not the reason for its existence. Now consider a man. His standard is his life - the life which is manifested in his biological mechanism. (To be specific, it is the ability to effect a temporary and local decrease in entropy through the use of chemical reactions catalyzed by nucleic acid molecules.) His purpose is also his life - but here "life" is used in a different sense, meaning the process of achieving values. I will refer to these two different aspects of life by the terms B-life and V- life. In the Objectivist writings there is considerable emphaisis on the idea that "man's life is the standard of values." (Here is meant B-life.) There is also much emphasis placed on the idea that "man's life qua man" (V-life) is the purpose of man's existence. Unfortunately, there is too little attention paid to differentiating between the two quite different aspects of the term "life" which are being considered. The result is that many people think in terms of B-lfe when they should be using the term V-life. An example is the man who claims that, if faced with a terrible situation in which he had to choose between saving his own life or saving his wife's (or child's) life, he would, according to the principles of Objectivism, have to save his own life. Because, after all, Obectivism tells him that his own biological existence is the most important value he can hold, doesn't it? This is surely not what Objectivism implies, nor is it what Rand means to say. You will recall Galt's words to Dagny at the time when he is about to be captured: "But if they get the slightest suspicion of what we are to each other, they will have you on a torture rack.... At the first mention of a threat to you, I will kill myself.... I do not care to see you enduring a drawn-out murder. There will be no values for me to seek after that - and I do not care to exist without values." This same motivation can be observed in the final scenes of Hugo's TOILERS OF THE SEA. Both Galt and Gilliatt realized quite well that his purpose in living is the achievement of values, not merely the continuance of his physical biological processes. * Anarchy An anarchic society is not a Utopia in which the inititation of violence is impossible. Rather, it is a society which does not institutionalize the initiation of force and in which there are means for dealing with aggression justly when it does occur. The absence of government does not mean the absence of violence. It simply means the absence of an official, legal, institutionalized tool for its imposition. It is not a form of statism. Anarchists don't want to impose their value system on anyone else. It's not terrorism. The agent of the government - the cop who wears a gun to scare you into obeying him - is the terrorist. Governments threaten to punish anyone who defies State power, and therefore the State really amounts to an institution of terror. Here is what anarchists believe: Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, almost always cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness. No true reform is possible that leaves government intact. Appeals to a government for a redress of grievances, even when acted upon, only increase the supposed legitimacy of the government's acts, and add therefore to its amassed power. Government will be abolished when its subjects cease to grant it legitimacy. Voting is not an expression of power, but an admission of powerlessness, since it cannot do otherwise than reaffirm the government's supposed legitimacy. Every person must have the right to make all decisions about his or her own life. All moralistic meddling in the private affairs of freely-acting persons is unjustified. Behavior which does not affect uninvolved persons is nobody's business but the participants'. We are not bound by constitutions or agreements made by our ancestors. Any constitution, contract, or agreement that purports to bind unborn generations - or in fact anyone other than the actual parties to it - is a despicable falsehood and a presumptuous fraud. We are free agents liable only for such as we ourselves undertake. All governments survive on theft and extortion, called taxation. All governments force their decrees on the people, and command obedience under theat of punishment. The principal outrages of history have been committed by governments, while every advancement of thought, every betterment in the human condition, has come about through the pratices of voluntary cooperation and individual initiative. The principle of government, which is force, is opposed to the free exercise of our ability to think, act and cooperate. Whenever government is established, it causes more harm than it forestalls. Under the guise of protecting people from crime and violence, governments not only do not eradicate random, individual crime, but they institutionalize such varieties as censorship, taxation-theft and war. All governments continually enlarge upon and extend their powers; under government, the rights of individuals continually diminish. Anarchism is the philosophy that favors a free society organized along lines of voluntary cooperation, individual liberty, and mutual aid. * Nonsense That which is expressed in a way that I find incomprehensible. In considering what is nonsense I began with the notion that nonsense is a statement that rests upon or manifests a denial of the Law of Identity. This defines it as a Metaphysical concept. But then, how can I identify nonsense? Oh sure, some things I can see immediately as nonsense. They are a subset of the things that I can understand. But what of other things which I cannot understand? Like the Tensor Calculus - might that be nonsense? I have no way of determining. And the proposition cannot be resolved by reference to higher level intellects either. For example: The IDEA of my little computer would have been nonsense to Archimedes (I suppose the computer itself would have been magic to him), thus it is clear that a perfectly sensible idea can be regarded as nonsense - even to someone endowed with the highest degree of intellectual ability. Therefore, if it is considered as a metaphysical concept, there is no way that nonsense can be precisely identified. This leads me to believe that it can only be accurately considered as an epistemological concept. It then becomes relative to the person who is making the identification. Thus, just as one man's meat is another man's poison, one man's sense can be another man's nonsense. As the Red Queen said: "You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!" __ Chapter 4 ECONOMICS FROM AN OBJECTIVIST VIEWPOINT Part One: History - Property - Capitalism - Money * Objective vs Subjective Economic Value * History * The Corporate Enterprise * Political Power vs Economic Power * John Locke on Property * Some Questions about Property * Information as Property * Capitalism * Wealth * The Need For Money * The Evolution of Money and the Nature of inflation * The Effects of Inflation * Objective vs Subjective Economic Value The economic ideology of the feudal system was contained in the phrases "just price" and "just wage." Prices and wages were seen as an ethical judgment of worth while supply and demand were viewed as economically irrelevant. The modern idea of prices and wages as pragmatic devices for allocating resources, implying no ethical judgment, came into existence only centuries later. Under the feudal system the economic influence of supply and demand on prices arose only in the worst possible times: during famine or war. And the steep rises in prices during those times were considered an outrage perpetrated by the sellers who set them. People had not yet learned that you can't get something for nothing. Most still have not learned this today. For hundreds of years men sought in vain for some objective standard of value, a "fair" price, a "just" wage, an unvarying measure of the intrinsic worth of an object. But no such measure exists, simply because "value" has no meaning other than in relation to living beings; the value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, not to any characteristic of an inanimate object. The most commonly proposed answer to their quest was that the exchange value of a product is the amount of time put into the making of it. For instance, if a baker worked an hour to bake a loaf of bread, anyone else should be willing to give up an hour's work for that bread. But this scheme leaves the baker with no way to decide how much of his time to devote to baking bread rather than cakes or tarts. Thus this "objective value" idea always led to economic nonsense - and it continues to do so today. The Marxian definition of value is absurd: all the work you care to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, with zero value. Likewise, unskillful work can easily subtract value: an incompetent cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess with a value of zero. Eventually it was deduced (by Carl Menger) that the exchange value of a product is simply whatever anyone else will give for it in a voluntary trade. In a voluntary trade, each participant evaluates, in terms of his own personal scale of values, what he gives up and compares this with what he receives. The ratio at which these items compare can then become the basis for a price - the only possible realistic price. In this way the personal choices of each individual participant, all balancing against each other, comprise the dynamic flow of commerce which we know as the free market. Menger showed that the free market is just free people making free choices about their own values. From this was derived the concept of the market as an information system, and the realization that the evaluations underlying economic choices are of a subjective nature which makes impossible any objective measurement of their motivations. The related phenomenon of "cost" is also inherently linked to choice. It is that which the choice-maker gives up when he selects one alternative rather than another. Cost consists of his own evaluation of the enjoyment or use that he anticipates having to forego as a result of his choice. * History The failure of Charlemagne's successors to establish a consolidated regime in Western Europe and the eventual disintegration of real political power into the hands of a multitude of local barons resulted in a vacuum of centralized authority. With the decline of the feudal system at the end of the Middle Ages, the absence of centralized political power left a nascent merchant class with the opportunity to establish the commercial institutions which were the foundation of the industrial world we live in today. The prerequisite for the birth of these economic endeavors was the existence of a wide realm within which trade could be conducted with freedom from coercion by political authorities. This freedom also opened the door to the extensive development of towns and cities, some of which were virtually independent political entities outside the feudal system. During the 16th through the 18th centuries, maritime trade with overseas markets was at once a major field of economic growth and an area intractably resistant to medieval principles of political control. The efforts of the emerging nation-states to control maritime commerce lacked the universal recognition necessary to confer legitimacy and were, on the contrary, competing, contradictory, and mutually self-defeating. The political/economic situation in China was quite a bit different. The imperial examination determined entry into the bureaucracy and thus assured the continuation of a centralized elite, drawing into itself the best brains of each generation. The basic ideology of the mandarinate was opposed to the value-systems of the merchants. Capital accumulation in Chinese society could indeed occur, but the application of it to permanently productive industrial enterprises was strongly inhibited by the scholar-bureaucrats, as indeed was any other social action which might threaten their supremacy. It may not be a coincidence that modern Japan, which led in adapting Western institutions to its own economy, grew out of a politically decentralized feudal society. For the European governments, the timing was wrong; they came to power too late to prevent the rise of capitalism, and their only recourse for expressing statist values was a gradual, Fabian assertion of authority over the aspects of capitalism not too mercurial to elude their grasp. * The Corporate Enterprise The conduct of economic affairs over time periods of substantial length required the emergence of an independent economic organism, above and beyond the individuals engaged in economic activity. The huge enterprises (railroads, steel mills, factories) that evolved during the Industrial Revolution required the tying up of capital in amounts, and over periods of time, unprecedented in medieval commerce. The life of the assets and the time needed to recover the investment often exceeded the life expectancy of the mortal charged with their management. The two great authorities of the Middle Ages were the feudal aristocracy and the Church. Neither produced the relationships of trust and confidence needed for long-term economic association. To the medieval merchant, accustomed to keeping his wealth protected against the hazards of political extortion or war, a tie-up of capital for a period far beyond the range of foresight would have seemed insane. But gradually, appreciable numbers of these merchants (those who invested in corporations) came to believe that other businessmen (those who managed the corporations) were honest, diligent, and could be trusted. As this trust developed, many business transactions that had formerly occurred in separate ways in various distinct ventures came to be included in one conceptual unit, the corporate enterprise: the publicly-held corporation with marketable stock. Such trust presupposes a widely shared sense of business ethics, and that sense of business ethics could hardly have been inherited from the teachings of the Catholic Church or from the feudal aristocracy. The contempt which the clergy and the aristocracy felt for the merchant class could only have encouraged the merchants to develop a code of honor based on punctilious business relationships - a behavior strikingly absent from the aristocratic code and emphasizing the profound difference between the two. * Political Power vs Economic Power All political systems rest upon the foundation of theft. The ultimate source of political power is the weapon which is used to commit the act of theft (called taxation) that provides the wealth of the state. The distinction between politics and economics is the distinction between the power to coerce and the power to produce. Politics is also characterized by other types of coercion than the theft of wealth, but it is this act of theft that constitutes the economic foundation of political systems, whereas other forms of economic activity (excluding non-institutionalized theft) rest on the production of wealth rather than its expropriation. On the one hand lies economic power, exercised by means of a positive: by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value. On the other hand is political power, exercised by means of a negative: by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the government's tool is fear. The power of a politician is the power to impose punishment on people who fail to obey his commands. To the extent that he can grant rewards, those rewards consist of expropriated wealth. The power of a businessman is the power to grant rewards (in the form of produced wealth) to people who agree with him. His only power to punish is the power to withhold the reward. The businessman must produce something consumers are willing to buy at a price that consumers are willing to pay, and he must compete for the favor of the consumers in a market with other businessmen offering similar goods or services. He must persuade consumers to buy his product, while the politician can coerce them into buying something whether they want it or not. There is so little clarity in either economic or political analysis because in the minds of most people the two are all muddled up together and when people speak of "power" they make no distinction between the power to coerce and the power to produce. For man to achieve a human state of life and civilization, three conditions are necessary: freedom, capitalism, and a rational code of ethical principles to guide his social behavior. To men who use reason and are free to interact cooperatively, nature gives more and more. To those who turn away from reason, are not free, or who interact destructively, it gives less and less. With the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, the first two of these conditions were achieved, to a considerable extent. The result was the transformation of the world. It was the people of the USA, with a government too small and weak to significantly inhibit economic activity, who implemented the principle of laissez-faire capitalism - of free trade in a free market - to the greatest extent. In America, prior to the 20th century, men's productive activities were predominantly left free of governmental restrictions. The result was the creation, in the brief period of a century and a half, of a standard of living unequaled by the sum total of mankind's development up to that time. Capitalism - and civilization - are declining because men failed to achieve the third condition necessary for a human state of existence: a rational code of ethics appropriate to man's nature. It is a principled foundation for such a code that Ayn Rand has provided. Most people today have not learned to distinguish between government wealth transfers and wealth earned in a free market. This ignorance, coupled with Christianity's inherent aversion to business, induces people to feel envy when others become rich through market activity. The consequence of this envy is a clamor for increasing government intervention in the marketplace. But that intervention is always counterproductive, causing more problems than it was intended to solve. The line which divides our area of wealth from our area of poverty is roughly that which divides freely produced and marketed goods and services from government controlled activities. The solution to economic problems caused by government does not lie in devoting still more wealth to an institution inherently unfit to be a producer. The bottom line is that, just as people can use a TV without understanding anything about how it works, America has become rich but Americans don't know why. And in their ignorance they are destroying the economic foundations that made their wealth possible. Much of the rest of the world suffers from a related form of shortsightedness. The belief that the wealth of the West springs from its factory system gives rise to an impulse in the countries of the Third World to equip themselves with the trappings of modern technology - an impulse exemplified by the Soviet Union's five-year plans a half-century ago. The severely limited success of these ventures results from their lack of appropriate economic foundations. In the West, the development of commercial relationships preceded the rise of modern industrial institutions by many years. Western economies had been growing with striking success for more than a century before the large industrial corporations emerged. This growth, and its concomitant capital accumulation, were the foundation for the subsequent immense corporate enterprises. * John Locke on Property "Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something of his own, and thereby makes it his property. He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask, then, when did they begin to be his? When he digested? or when he ate? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? And 'tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could.... And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him....'tis the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state nature leaves it in, which begins the property, without which the common is of no use." * Some Questions about Property "Locke argues that mixing labor with the unowned will convert it to the owned - without defining what kind or quality of labor per material is necessary." What is necessary is to mix in enough labor to "remove it out of the state nature leaves it in." When I have done this, I will have made my property observably distinct from the unowned. The act of asserting ownership is a contextual process, depending on the nature of the society in which ownership is asserted. For example - if I put a fence around something, and put labels on the fence, then I will have noticeably separated out my part from the unowned. But such an action would be meaningless in a society of barbarians who did not recognize the significance of a fence or who did not possess the tool of literacy. The property right of a landowner is contingent on the general agreement of his community that he is the rightful owner, an agreement based on whatever are that society's institutionalized principles for establishing ownership. If he held the land by force only, that would be mere possesson, not property. It's property when he is able to remain in peaceful possession. Thus ownership is more than mere possession. It's possession which is protected by the existing social institutions. "If you take a boat out to sea and catch fish, the fish are properly yours, since you used your labor to get them, but mixing your labor with that part of the ocean does not make the ocean itself yours." But it is not the ocean I have mixed my labor with - it is the fish. If I were to gather in some of the ocean water and run it thru a desalinizer (or in any other manner to distinctly separate it from the unowned), then it would indeed be mine. "The land under a building is not properly yours even though the building is." If the land under my house is not mine, then whose is it? And by what right can he claim ownership if I cannot? "What claim do you have to water that flows across your land? Or to the wind which blows over it?" This is a question to which I must admit I do not have an answer. * Information as Property Jerry Pournelle: "We're all agreed that information piracy is a growing problem, and there appears to be no ready solution for it. I admit to being a bit scared, since I make my living from intellectual property, and that's becoming hard to impossible to protect. In a very real sense, we're all going to have to depend on ethics - and the last I heard, that isn't even being taught in the schools any longer." Pournelle identifies a critically important fact: the problem of information as property cannot be solved "out of context," that is, outside the general context of the social institutions that shape our culture. Before such problems can be fully solved, society must be restructured away from institutions of government and toward ethically rational social institutions. Property has traditionally been something that can be transferred from place to place or person to person. Theft can be defined as depriving the owner of the use thereof. But in an electronic environment, although a piece of software or a component of a data base may be valuable, the intruder who accesses it without authorization is not depriving the owner of its use, although he may well be making the product less valuable to its owner. Knowledge is the only product that is not subject to diminishing returns. You can give software away over and over again, and you still have it. This loaves-and-fishes quality of information has no place among the parables of capitalism. Our culture's economic system gets its axioms from the idea of property. Whereas property is by nature scarce, information has no inherent scarcity, consequently traditional economic ideas do not adequately encompass the phenomenon of "information as property." Publishers, film companies and broadcasters will have to find new ways to cope with a distinctly different environment from the one that existed in the past. How are those publishers who recognize that their commodity is information, not paper, to make money? Traditional publishers have been involved in printing for so long that they have forgotten that they are a branch of the information and entertainment industries, and not the wood pulp and paper industry. One suggested alternative: The seller puts her titles on a disk in encrypted form, locking each title with a separate RSA key. She presses these disks in small batches, changing the keys after each batch, then sells the disks at retail. The customer then decides, from the promos on each disk, which titles he wants. Over the phone, the customer can provide the job lot number, the titles desired, and his credit card number. The seller then gives him the decryption keys. In considering such schemes, keep in mind that most people pirate for one of two reasons: a large cost difference or a large convenience difference. Therefore it's not enough for the legal copy to be cheap, it must also be convenient. * Capitalism In thinking about capitalism I started by considering all the definitions I could find. None of them, not even the one derived by the Randites, seemed fundamentally valid. They all try to distinguish among supposedly different forms of economic behavior, but actually just make spurious distinctions based on the type of social organization in which economic behavior occurs. I had also been thinking about the fundamental nature of rationality, and I observed that there is a connection between wealth-creation and rationality: before you can create material wealth you must know and understand at least something about reality. I realized that rationality and wealth-creation are two correlative aspects of human behavior. Rationality is the means by which man uses his mind to know and understand reality. Wealth-creation is the means by which man manipulates reality to fulfill the physical requirements of his existence. Rationality and wealth-creation go hand-in-hand and both are fundamental requirements of man's life. One of the distinctive differences between man and the other animals is his much greater ability to conduct his behavior with reference to time periods of substantial length. From this observation there arises a useful, if not precisely specifiable, distinction to be made between two general categories of wealth-creation - a distinction which ensues from man's ability to act through time: is the wealth to be consumed immediately, or is it to be used later on to produce more wealth? If it is to be used later on, as a tool for the creation of more wealth, then it can be called "capital" and the process can be called "capitalism." Thus I will use the term to mean: "The process of using wealth not for immediate consumption but for the creation of more wealth." Conducting wealth-producing activities deliberately through time is the essence of capitalism. If you save your wealth and use it to create more wealth, you are doing capitalism. If you merely consume the wealth you are not doing capitalism. Observe that capitalism is not a Boolean phenomenon. All human cultures practice at least a tiny bit of capitalism - even if it's only the manufacture of stone knives and arrowheads. The economic development of a culture depends on the extent to which this practice is implemented. A society can have more or less of it. The more it has (i.e., the more that wealth is accumulated through time) the more the society will prosper. Capitalism can be as small as flaking one flint knifeblade. Or it can be as huge as General Motors and IBM. Observe also that this definition is politically neutral. It doesn't matter WHO does capitalism - nor WHY they do it. It only matters that the act is performed. Capitalism is an economic tool, like a hammer. Anyone can use a hammer: a Libertarian, a Fascist, a Communist. From a strictly economic point of view, in considering only the production of wealth, the political philosophy of the person who uses the hammer doesn't matter. All that matters economically is how efficiently he uses the hammer. If he uses it well, wealth will be created; if he uses it inefficiently, less (or no) wealth will be produced. Thus the term "State Capitalism" actually makes sense: a government CAN implement the procedures of capitalism. This will help explain why such dismal systems as the Soviet Union do not collapse outright, and why a mixed economy like the USA can muddle along for quite a while. You can see now why I must disagree with Rand. She always equated capitalism with a political system of her preference, but to do so deprives us of a valuable concept that can be applied to economic behavior regardless of the political context in which that behavior occurs. It also deprives us of a valuable cognitive distinction: that between economics and politics. The phenomenon Rand spoke of should properly be called "laissez-faire capitalism." That is, capitalism practiced in the context of a more-or-less free market. Although this is certainly the most efficient social context for the practice of capitalism, it is not the only political context in which capitalism can be implemented. Many environmentalists assert a significant distinction between consuming or conserving one's capital, but the important distinction to make is between two forms of capital consumption: dissipation or production. Mere conservation is economically irrelevant - to conserve something rather than to use it makes no contribution to prosperity. A sensible approach to the subject of human well-being is to USE capital, but in such a way that it is augmented or regenerated as much as possible (and thus, in a manner of speaking, "conserved" for future use) and in such a way that its present use PRODUCES future well-being. The real crime in this context is to destructively dissipate capital in order to achieve only a transient benefit. Perhaps the best example of this process is the gluttonous dissipation of the world's supply of fossil fuels, much of which is consumed for no other purpose than to transport imbecilic adolescents back and forth from one end of Main Street to the other. A sane practice would be to use the fossil fuels, to as great an extent as necessary, for the purpose of establishing a nuclear fusion or solar power technology. * Wealth Wealth is the result of transforming naturally existing entities into material that enables the achievement of human values. That wealth consists of money is a popular misconception which arises from two functions of money: as the instrument of commerce, and as the measure of value. But real wealth consists in what is produced and consumed: the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in. Yet so powerful is the verbal ambiguity that confuses money with wealth, that even those who at times recognize the confusion will slide back into it in the course of their reasoning. Each man sees that if he personally had more money he could buy more things, and thus if he had twice as much money he could buy twice as many things; he would be "worth" twice as much. And to many the conclusion seems obvious that if the government merely issued more money and distributed it to everybody, we should all be that much more wealthy. What they do not see is that such a course of action would merely destroy commerce. * The Need For Money A stable currency that has real immediate and long-term value is an absolute prerequisite to the establishment and maintenance of an economically successful society. This is especially true with regard to a technologically sophisticated society. Whereas it is possible to maintain a simple agrarian society on a barter basis, barter will NOT suffice in an economy that produces king-size beds or is comprised of large industrial institutions. One of the most significant factors in the failure of a national economy to develop, and also a major contributor to the decline of an economy, is the lack of a medium for the measured exchange of wealth. Even if people are permitted to freely produce wealth, there can be very little rise in the general standard of living if they cannot exchange that wealth in any transactions more sophisticated than simple barter. To do so, they must have available a secure means of measuring the relative value (relative to each other individual's personal goals) of their products. This is the function of money. There are fundamental reasons why gold and silver were the first money media. Nevertheless, every time a government seizes control of money, the media are changed and eventually the money's value is destroyed. In almost all nations today, money is based on the empty promise of a government rather than on the firm foundation of a known and durable commodity (such as gold or silver). And throughout the world today, inflation is everywhere destroying the possibility of long-term investments in wealth-generating commerce. For a magnificent description of the function of money, see "The Root Of All Evil" speech in ATLAS SHRUGGED, Part 2, Chapter 2. * The Evolution of Money and the Nature of Inflation Excerpted from the book HOW YOU CAN PROFIT FROM THE COMING DEVALUATION by Harry Browne: If you were to find yourself alone on an isolated island, you would have no need for a medium of exchange. There would be no one with whom to exchange. You would go to work, as necessary, to produce the things you needed for your survival. You would produce some things that you would want to consume immediately, and you would probably produce other things to be stored for later consumption. You might also produce some other things that would be called "capital goods" - things that make further production easier. But you would only produce when you believed it would lead ultimately to something you wanted. Let's suppose now that there was one other person on the island with you. Each of you has his own area of the island and each of you is producing for himself. Sooner or later, you would probably begin exchanging things with each other. Perhaps you have produced more than you need of something he hasn't produced, and vice versa. You exchange your surplus with each other - and both of you profit thereby. Obviously, you won't trade your production for something you have no use for. Why bother working if your efforts don't eventually bring you something you can use? You'll trade only for those things you want to use now or can store for use at a later date. And here we have a very important rule at work: You only produce and exchange when you believe it will lead ultimately to something you want. But now let's suppose there are 100 people on the island - each with his own area. You will still have to produce to survive; there's no way to avoid that. But exchanges will probably take place on a much wider basis. In fact, it will be only a matter of time until a "specialization of labor" develops. That's where an individual no longer produces everything for himself. Instead, he concentrates on the production of only one or two items - and then trades his production with others for the products and services he wants. These trades with others are called direct exchange - the trading of some of your property for another commodity you intend to use yourself. This is also called barter - trading without money. But, eventually, you find yourself in a position where you're willing to accept in exchange an item you don't intend to use. Suppose you have butter and you're looking for wheat. I have wheat, but I'm not looking for butter. Instead, I need corn. So you go find a third person who has corn and is looking for butter. You trade your butter for his corn. Then you come back to me and trade the corn for my wheat. You have what you want; but it took two exchanges to get it. This is the beginning of indirect exchange - the trading of one thing for something you don't intend to use yourself. For example, one day Jones the nail-maker walks into the store of Smith the furniture-maker. Jones opens the conversation with, "Smith, I need a new workbench. I'll give you 2000 nails to make one for me." "Sorry," says Smith, "I have all the nails I'll need for a while. Come back in about six months." Jones goes on, "But I need the workbench now! Look, you're bound to use those nails eventually. But, even in the meantime, you can probably trade them to someone else for something you need. I'm always getting offers of trades from people wanting nails. They're a lot easier to exchange than furniture." "You have a point there, I do seem to have a lot of trouble exchanging kingsize beds for clothes. This way, I'd use only as many nails as I need for each purchase... well, okay - I'll try anything once." So he accepts the nails and makes the workbench for Jones. And then he goes out to find products for which he can exchange the nails. And, lo and behold, it works! He finds that trades are much easier to make. As a result, he enjoys life a lot more with a few nails in his pocket. He can stop at a store and trade for anything he wants to - without having to arrange an elaborate, long-term furniture purchase with the storekeeper. In fact, he merely points out to the merchant the advantages of nails as a trading medium in the same way that Jones pointed them out to him. And the final argument is that you can always use the nails sometime in the future; they won't lose their value. And if you don't use them, someone will. The merchant realizes this; and so he accepts the nails, confident that he can use them or trade them for what he wants. So nails have become money. And what is money? Money is a commodity that is accepted in exchange by an individual who intends to trade it for something else. Money is a commodity, just like anything else that's traded in the marketplace. What distinguishes a money commodity from other commodities is the intention of the person to keep it only until he trades it to someone else. It's only a means to a further exchange for that person. Not everyone intends to trade it, however. Some people receive the money commodity, intending to use it for its own natural purpose (in this case, nails for construction purposes). And this brings us to the key word in the definition of money: accepted. The commodity can become money only when an individual accepts it - when someone's willing to take it, confident that he can trade it ultimately for what he wants. But why gold and silver? There are five main attributes of gold and silver that give individuals good reason to accept these commodities confidently: 1. They are durable. They can be stored for long periods of time, if necessary, without perishing. 2. They are easily divisible. As we saw, it was easier to exchange nails than furniture because you could divide a supply of nails into small purchases. And gold and silver can be broken into smaller pieces or used as dust - without harming their inherent value in any way. 3. They are convenient to handle. Their naturally high market values make it possible to work with small quantities. Wood wouldn't do - because you would need so much of it to be worth a desired item that it would be inconvenient to carry and exchange. 4. They are consistent in quality. One ounce of gold is as good as any other ounce of the same fineness. 5. They have accepted value. They are used for such things as jewelry, dental work, electronics, art objects, ornamentation. soldering, photography, and other purposes. That previously determined value also tells you how much gold and silver are worth in relationship to other commodities. If the money commodity didn't have that separate value, you couldn't confidently accept it in trade for what you have produced, for you wouldn't know the worth of what you received. One enterprising fellow notices that individuals waste a lot of time measuring gold dust in exchange for their drinks at the bar. So he opens a mint. He buys raw gold or silver and converts the metal into coins. He stamps the coins with his name and the amount of gold in the coin. If an individual trusts the coin-maker, he will probably prefer to use the coin. Its recognizable weight makes it easier than measuring gold dust. Another ambitious chap opens a warehouse. "Bring your gold to me," he says. "I'll store it for you in my theft-proof vault. I'll give you a receipt for it, so you can claim it any time you want it. I only charge a small fee for the service of storing it for you." This means you can now keep your gold in a safe warehouse - rather than carrying it around or leaving it at home where it could be stolen. And as the use of the warehouse beomes more widespread, and the integrity of the warehouseman becomes known, the receipts can serve an additional purpose. You can exchange the receipts themselves. Why bother going to the warehouse to get your gold, only to trade it to someone who will probably take it back to the same warehouse for safekeeping? Instead, you simply hand over the receipt to him. At this important stage in the evolution of the money system, we must remind ourselves of an important point: It is the gold that is the money; the paper receipts are not money! Gold is money because it's a commodity with accepted value and is convenient to use in exchange. Paper could NOT be useful as money because the relative ease with which it is produced makes it inexpensive by nature; you'd have to use tons of it to obtain the same result served by a few ounces of gold. The paper takes on value only as it can be exchanged for gold. If the warehouse were to refuse to make the gold available, the receipt would eventually be worthless. It's similar to storing furniture. You can't sit on a furniture receipt; you can only exchange it for something to sit on. The paper receipts are not money; they are money substitutes. Along with the normal paper receipts, it is possible to have tokens. A token is a money substitute in metallic form, rather than in paper. The present U.S. copper-nickel tokens are a good example. These are not coins, since there is no significant inherent value in them (perhaps two cents worth of metal in a quarter). Like paper receipts, they can only have lasting, constant value if they can be readily exhanged for something of real value. Suppose you left your gold on deposit at the bank (warehouse) and received a receipt that you intended to spend in the marketplace. And suppose the dishonest banker issued a second receipt for the same gold to someone else. Two people are now trying to spend the same gold at the same time. You now have inflation - two receipts for the same supply of gold. One consequence of this would be the well-known "run on the bank." As soon as anyone became suspicious that the banker was doing this, he'd get jittery about his own money. If very many people became suspicious, you'd have a run on the bank. And those who arrived there last would be out of luck - if the bank really were cheating on the receipts. If it weren't, everyone would get his gold and the bank's honesty would be proven. This would probably result in increased business for the bank. An honest bank would not have to fear a run. So let's coin another definition of inflation, one more to the point: Inflation is the counterfeiting of money substitutes. Suppose you and I form a partnership, a company that prints paper receipts. We print 1000 new $20 bills. Then we go to Seattle where we are not known to anyone. We start spending the bills and are immediately praised by the local merchants and the newspapers. They proclaim that it is a great thing for Seattle that we have come to town, for we're bringing prosperity to a city that was in a recession. Two weeks later, we leave town with $20000 worth of goods. The townspeople bid us a grateful farewell for all the business we have brought to them, It's obvious the WE have benefited from the situation. We traded paper dollars with NO real value for products that HAVE real value. Assuming that no one ever learns our little secret, has our gain actually hurt anyone else? In other words, does anyone ever pay for our benefits? The merchants who received the counterfeit bills did not lose. They could pass the bills on to others for things they wanted. We gained; the merchants didn't lose. Apparently no one lost. But we've overlooked a few people. Not just a few, in fact. We've overlooked everyone else in Seattle. For everyone else will lose in order to make this gain possible. We can see this easily as we imagine our car leaving Seattle - loaded with goods removed from Seattle's marketplace. We leave Seattle's residents with less property than they had before we came. There will be fewer goods available to divide up among the people there. In exchange, they received additional money substitutes that will circulate in the community. But money substitutes are not wealth. This simply means there are now MORE money substitutes to pay for FEWER goods and services. Since the money supply has gone up and the goods and services have decreased, the result can only be higher prices in Seattle. The price increase will be irregular. Those who get their hands on the counterfeit money first will gain from it; for they'll have extra spending money, and prices will not have gone up yet. But as those extra money substitutes pass through the community, they will bid prices upward. The other people in the marketplace will be paying for our gain - and they will do that through the higher prices they pay for each product. Suppose our arrival and departure were not noticed. In other words, no one was aware that an extra $20000 was suddenly coming into circulation. The individual merchants who received our $20 bills would have no reason to suppose that there was anything unusual or temporary about the increase in business. They would simply suppose that their long-standing promotional efforts were finally paying off - that success was on its way at last. They would most likely hire extra clerks to handle the increased business, maybe order a new sign and a better paint job for the store. And they would enlarge their inventories to meet the increased demand, of which we appeared to be an example. But as soon as it became evident that the sudden dose of new business was purely temporary, they would have to retract their expansion plans. They would lay off the extra clerks and cancel the orders for remodeling. The painter who was to have done the remodeling would, in turn, have to fire his new helpers. And what would he do with all the extra paint he had ordered? The net result throughout the area would be a state of gloom. Everyone would have extra commitments to pay off and shelves full of undesired stock - all because an illusory boom caused businessmen to gear up to a demand that never really existed. Would you call that a recession? Yes, indeed. Inflation is an increase in money substitutes above the stock of real money in storage; the counterfeiting of paper money. Inflation simply means there are more paper money receipts in circulation than there is real money with which to back them up. As we've seen, this will cause prices to go up. But rising prices are not inflation; they are an effect of inflation. * End of excerpts from Browne. What people today call inflation is not inflation, i.e., the increase in the quantity of money substitutes, but is instead the general rise in prices and wages which is the inevitable consequence of inflation. This semantic error is by no means harmless. First of all there is no longer any term available to signify what inflation used to signify. It is impossible to fight an idea which you cannot name - especially when you no longer have available a term accepted and understood by your audience as a descriptor of that idea. Second, those who wish to fight the cause of inflation are diverted in their struggle away from the fundamental nature of inflation and are forced to direct their attention to its secondary consequences. They end up snipping at the leaves of the weed rather than hacking at the root. * The Effects of Inflation A hard-money standard is an integral part of a system of free enterprise, of good faith and law, of promise-keeping and the sanctity of contract. It is this system - and the confidence to which it gave rise - that is being destroyed by inflation. Like every other tax, inflation acts to strongly influence the business policies we all must follow. But unlike specific and knowable taxes, inflation cannot be compensated for because it cannot be quantitatively specified in advance. It discourages prudence and thrift. It encourages squandering, gambling, and reckless waste of all kinds. It often makes it more profitable to speculate than to produce. It tears apart the whole fabric of stable economic relationships. Its inexcusable injustices drive men toward desperate remedies, leading them to demand totalitarian controls, thus planting the seeds of fascism and communism. It ends invariably in bitter disillusion and collapse. Between 1963 and 1973, in 40 countries whose inflation rate reached 15%, 38 abolished their democratic institutions in one way or another. At first glance, you might think that inflation affects only the money supply, but the more you look at it the more convinced you will become that it is all-pervasive in its pernicious effects. In 1985, parents spent 40% less time with their children than they had spent in 1965. This is an excellent example of the insidious side-effects of inflation. Government inflates the money supply in order to appropriate the nation's wealth; thus working people are forced to spend more time earning money in order to maintain their standard of living. This of course leaves them with less time to spend with their children. I become more and more sympathetic with that majority of Germans who, when surveyed as to which was worse - WorldWar1 or the subsequent runaway inflation - replied "the inflation was much worse than the war!" Money substitutes are certificates of debt against the true wealth of an economy. As those substitutes decline in value, foreign holders of the paper may begin to unload it in exchange for other kinds of paper, thus starting an avalanche of similar domestic unloading in which a national debt (intended to be a legacy bequeathed to your children and grandchildren) would have to be paid NOW - or repudiated. In either case, the dollar would become worthless. The politicians have seized the wealth of the nation, and given the nation back a mortgage on itself. This seizure is not merely the theft of wealth, it is the theft of your children's opportunity, of their future, of hope. As Mises observed, the transition from Money to Wallpaper has five steps: 1. The bill is exchangeable for a specified amount of Au or Ag 2. The bill is exchangeable for N dollars in Au or Ag 3. The bill is N dollars - exchangeable for a specified number of another nation's bills. 4. The bill is N dollars - exchangeable at the open market rate (whatever you can sucker some poor fool into trading for it). 5. Katastrophenbausse. __ Chapter 5 ECONOMICS FROM AN OBJECTIVIST VIEWPOINT Part Two: Several miscellaneous issues * Foundations * Bootstrap Economics * Economic Calculations * The Tragedy of the Commons * The Public Goods Problem * Fascism-Communism * Marx * The Luddite Phenomenon * Liability * Productivity * Trade vs Theft * Foundations Believe it or not, economists do not know what they know. That is, with regard to various aspects of their field, economists cannot say "these aspects are what we know to be true, and those aspects we know little or nothing about." If a discipline after centuries of intellectual activity still does not know what it knows, it cannot be said to be in good condition, or based on a solid foundation. In spite of this admitted ignorance, economists have for at least two centuries debated the merits of specific manifestations of government interference in the market, frequently using abstract mathematical models whose essential flaw is that they have little relevance to actual human behavior. In line with this, the strength with which each different model is advocated by the economists is frequently inversely proportional to the amount of empirical evidence that it is correct. Such a situation would be laughably ridiculous except for the harrowing fact that politicians distill their policies from the proposals of these economists, whilst the economists are distilling their proposals from fantasy. As Herman Daly, a senior economist with the World Bank, eloquently observed: "My major concern about my profession today is that our disciplinary preference for logically beautiful results over factually grounded policies has reached such fanatical proportions that we economists have become dangerous to the earth and its inhabitants." If one insists on analyzing an imaginary problem which has no real-world equivalent, it may be appropriate to use an analytical model which has no real-world application. By the same token, if a model is designed to deal with real-world situations, it may not be able to handle purely imaginary problems. In either case, a solution is meaningless. But these "meaningless" solutions do indeed have real-world consequences when they are implemented through political coercion. A thief who presumed to justify his theft by saying that he was really helping his victims by his spending, thus giving retail trade a needed boost, would be slapped down without delay. But when this same idiocy is clothed in Keynesian mathematical equations and impressive references to the "multiplier effect," it carries far more conviction with a public that has been bamboozled into accepting the "mystique" that conventional economics is a valid tool of analysis. In the 1989 edition of his famous textbook, ECONOMICS, Samuelson described the Soviet Union as being proof that, contrary to what many skeptics believe, a socialist economy can function and even thrive. Statements such as this show a contempt for truth that would turn Paul Goebbels green with envy. The fact that they are not considered an embarrassment by the economics profession speaks of the fatuity of that profession. But such statements, which tell us nothing about the real economic world, may tell us something about the minds of the people who make them. Many of the most dogmatic and fanatical socialists are not interested in personal wealth and live in self-imposed poverty. They think that asceticism is noble and virtuous (otherwise they wouldn't practice it themselves), and believing that it is virtuous, they want everyone else to live the same way. This is one reason why socialists never get discouraged if their ideology doesn't work (that is, doesn't produce prosperity). They never really wanted it to. As long as socialism mandates self-sacrifice and forestalls prosperity, its most zealous advocates will keep proclaiming it a success. Commenting on economic "bubbles," Samuelson admits that "in all the arsenal of economic theory we have absolutely no way of predicting how long such a bubble will last." Well, anyone who takes a close look at "the arsenal of economic theory" will readily observe it to be so filled with fallacy that the world envisioned by Samuelson and his colleagues bears little correspondence to the world of reality. No wonder it has so little predictive power. Keynesian economics is unable to provide a theory that can even describe, let alone explain, observed economic reality and experience. If economists really knew what they are talking about, the Soviet Union never would have collapsed. Another manifestation of unreal economic analysis can be seen in Ayn Rand's quasi-deification of industrialists as being men of punctilious ethical scruple and rigorous logical acumen. In fact, businessmen are just like many other people: stupid, shortsighted, and as quick to make use of coercion if they think it will serve their purpose. In a free marketplace they would have an ethically useful function, but the trouble is, and always has been, that there is no FREE marketplace. Societies have always been based on institutionalized coercion, and the people (including businessmen) accept this as natural social behavior. This acceptance is ingrained on many mental levels and during the entire life of the citizen, so it should be no surprise to see it exhibited by businessmen. In spite of these gross flaws, economic theory lives on, surviving largely because there are some fundamental truths about the human condition that call for principled explanation. First enunciated in THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, these truths are: 1) The overwhelming majority of people are naturally and unswervingly interested in improving their material condition. 2) Repression of this natural desire leads only to impoverished societies. 3) When this natural desire is allowed sufficient expression so that commercial transactions are widespread, everyone does eventually indeed improve his condition, however unequally in extent or time. This is not all we need to know, but it is what we do know, and it is surely not asking too much of economic theory that in its passion for sophisticated methodology it not ignore this knowlege. But yet it does. * Bootstrap Economics The Bootstrap Effect An economy will rise to the highest level of wealth creation that is possible to it, subject to three restraints: 1. Limitation of natural resources. 2. Paucity of knowledge. 3. politically-imposed restrictions. The solar system, considered in its entirety, contains a sufficiency of natural resources to provide the human race with an unlimited supply of wealth. During the past 300 years Man has acquired enough knowledge of technological processes and economic institutions to convert those natural resources into that unlimited supply of wealth. Thus mankind is now in a position to raise its standard of living to an unlimited height, and would indeed do so if not for the third restraint. It is politically-imposed restrictions alone that prevent this. The overwhelming number of human beings are concerned each to increase his own standard of living, and to the extent that it is possible each will act to do so. In fact, to the extent that it is possible each DOES act to do so, unless he is inhibited by law from doing so. Each individual person is continually looking for a way to improve his personal standard of living - continually looking for a way to circumvent ANY obstacles that are placed in his path. The aggregate expression of all of these individual concerns results in what I call the Bootstrap Effect. Everywhere within an economic system the people who perform economic actions will raise the level of wealth creation of that system. And they will continue to raise it until they can find no way of raising it any further. Until they are balked by some restriction. If that restriction is removed, the individual people to whom it had been a barrier will now perceive a possibility to further raise their own personal standard of living - and will commence to do so. Increasing the general level of wealth creation until they encounter another obstacle. And if there are no obstacles, there is no limit to the height to which people will push their standard of living. * Economic Calculations A grave deficiency in any centralized economic system results from inadequacy of information. The controlling authorities in a centralized system are never able to obtain a comprehensive and accurate depiction of the society under their command. Government data is often meaningless on its own terms and almost always misrepresents the nature of an economy. For example: one man spends to build a bridge, another to destroy it. Does it make sense to sum these two expenditures together into a "GNP"? Incompatible plans do not add up to some kind of "super-plan" nor does spending on them add up to an aggregate reflecting total productivity of any kind whatever. Also, government expenditures are always considered to be a productive contribution to the economy. But in fact government is a drain, and hence its expenditures should be subtracted from any aggregate of productivity. All figures on economic performance are false in one way or another, each compounding itself on the others until the economic forecasts generated by the state are as fictitious as a list of Nixon's virtues. About the only thing the government's economic indicators truthfully indicate is that the market has ceased to function properly. It has ceased to function properly because the natural regulating mechanisms have been severely crippled by government interference. One function of prices is to guide the factors of production so as to apportion the relative output of thousands of different commodities in accordance with demand. No bureaucrat, no matter how brilliant, can solve this problem arbitrarily. An example of the problem can be seen in The Guffey Act of 1937, which forbade the sale of coal at less than certain minimum prices fixed by government. Though Congress had started out to fix "the" price of coal, the government soon found itself (because of different sizes, thousands of mines, and shipments to thousands of different destinations by rail, truck, ship and barge) fixing 350,000 separate prices for coal. Prices provide suppliers with signals of what consumers want, and relative prices are an important source of information - they represent the relative value of alternative uses of resources. Willingness to pay a high price typically means that the producer is doing a good job of providing for consumers. If that high price generates high profits, then the producer is able to obtain more of the resources and produce more of the desired commodity. By allocating resources on the basis of willingness to pay, the market results in resources being allocated to the highest valued uses, because those who are willing to pay the price clearly value the use of the product more than those who are unwilling to pay. As a result, resources are guided toward their most desired uses. But a government-controlled economy does not use this source of information when determining how to allocate its resources, and thus the flow of profit does not act as a channel directing resources toward the most desirable uses. When a bureaucrat makes a mistake in regulating your affairs, he does not receive any feedback, in the form of personal economic loss, to alert him to his error. You receive all the feedback, but you are not in a position of control, so you cannot correct the error. Hayek calls the implicit decision structure underlying the market the Extended Order. Nobody designed it, nobody fully understands it, and no one knows a fracton of what it "knows." As Leonard Read points out, there is not a person living who has the complete knowledge required to manufacture so much as a pencil. Yet the extended order knows how to make pencils, laptop computers, nuclear-magnetic-resonance body scanners, and hundreds of thousands of other products. It also knows where and when they are required and in what quantity. It was the failure to comprehend this phenomenon, more than anything else, that was the chief intellectal flaw in Marxism and all its intellectual progeny. The point is that the thousands of people whose unwitting cooperation has made our options viable, have put forward their respective contributions voluntarily. Admittedly, they have agreed only to the terms of their individual transactions, but since that is their only point of contact with the rest of the extended order, their involvement has been a genuine case of unanimous consent. "Regulating the market" is actually regulating people - preventing them from making trades which they otherwise would have made, or forcing them to make trades they would not have made. The market is a network of trade relationships, and a relationship can only be regulated by regulating the persons involved in it. Thus price control is people control. Being imperfect, man does indeed need a regulating mechanism, but free enterprise does this admirably. Competition enables the businessman to continually check his ideas against his competition to see whether what he believes (and does) really works. If it doesn't, then either he goes under or, if he is clever, he will change his ways and go on to meet the competition's challenge. Unfortunately, government is not regulated by competition. Hence, no plan that government puts into operation can be tested by a competitor. Thus an error in government policy is almost never eradicated, except by revolution, war, or depression. Market competition is far less painful. * The Tragedy of the Commons If 100 or less sheep graze a certain pasture, the grass will continue to replenish itself, but if more than 100 sheep graze the land, the grass will diminish and ultimately vanish. Suppose the land is owned in common by ten shepherds each of whom has ten sheep. If one shepherd acquires an additional sheep he will see himself as 10% better off, and will see the pasture as being only 1% worse off. Naturally, each shepherd will consider it to be in his self-interest to increase his flock, but in the long run this is to the detriment of all. The sensible solution to this problem lies in private ownership: each of the shepherds should own a tenth of the land. Then if he acquires one more sheep, he will immediately see that his pasture will be 10% worse off. Murray Rothbard, in FOR A NEW LIBERTY: "In the East, the 160 acres granted free to homesteading farmers on government land constituted a viable technological unit for farming in a wetter climate. But in the dry climate of the West, no successful cattle or sheep ranch could be organized on a mere 160 acres. But the federal government refused to expand the 160-acre unit to allow the homesteading of larger cattle ranches. Hence the open range, on which private cattle and sheep owners were able to roam unchecked on government-owned pasture land. But this meant that no one owned the pasture, the land itself; it was therefore to the economic advantage of every cattle or sheep owner to graze the land and use up the grass as quickly as possible, otherwise the grass would be grazed by some other sheep or cattle owner. The result of this tragically shortsighted refusal to allow private property in grazing land itself was an overgrazing of the land ... and the failure of anyone to restore or replant the grass.... Hence the overgrazing of the West, and the onset of the dust bowl. Hence also the illegal attempts by numerous cattlemen, farmers, and sheepmen... to fence off the land into private property - and the range wars that often followed." Again we can see that the establishment of private property rather than government-owned "commons" could have avoided these difficulties. The fact that government asserts domain over the air is what makes air pollution a "tragedy of the commons" problem. In this case, the problem is exacerbated by attempts on the part of the government to dictate specific solutions to the problem, rather than solving it by means of some market- oriented method of pollution control such as: Measure the amount of pollution being emitted and assess a quantity fine (e.g., $2/Kg/day). Gradually raise the amount of this fine, and continue to do so until the pollution falls to an acceptable level. Thus all the choices regarding production, handling and disposal of the pollutant would remain inside the ambit of voluntary behavior rather than being expressed through fascism. Another place in which the tragedy of the commons rears its ugly head is in the American judicial system. Its staggering backload of cases, resulting in years of delay in the clearing of trials, results in great part from its being a government-owned "commons" phenomenon. * The Public Goods Problem Remember the lighthouse, that legendary "public good" which your professor discussed in Economics 101? Though socially valuable, the lighthouse supposedly cannot be provided by the free market because it contains costs that cannot be reflected in the market price. It is claimed that ships will benefit from the light without paying for the service. Therefore, since the lighthouse owner can't exclude free riders, it will be unprofitable to provide the lighhouse at all. Your professor no doubt did not tell you that long before economists developed the theory of public goods and market failure, private entrepreneurs were building and operating profitable lighthouses throughout England. Another example, which you have all experienced: As I was chewing on my sandwich, a couple of girls came over and plugged the jukebox. When the music started, the boys began bouncing a little, obviously enjoying the rhythm, and the girls chatted away as they had been doing before. I realized that I had just witnessed a mirocosm of the "public goods" situation. Everybody was enjoying the music but only two had paid. They hadn't gone around shaking people down for their "fair share"; they hadn't insisted that the music be supplied for nothing; they hadn't even asked for contributions. The girls supplied everyone with a valuable good because they wanted it themselves. * Fascism-Communism There is no fundamental distinction between these two forms of society. They are merely two variants of Socialism - the means by which government asserts control over the economic affairs of individuals. The fundamental distinguishing characteristic of markets is whether your behavior is controlled by your own choices or by someone else's choices. Under both fascism and communism - or, for that matter, ANY form of government - you are not free to guide your behavior according to your own choices. The only questions which differentiate forms of government are to what degree you are enslaved, and in what manner the enslavement is imposed. Fascism: Under this system, many major choices regarding the operation of businesses are made by government, but the individual who operates each enterprise receives his income from the profits of the business. In America, these are usually fascist operations: Bus companies, Airlines, Truck lines, Radio and TV stations, Banks, Private elementary and secondary schools. Communism: Under this system, all the business decisions are made by government, and the people operating the enterprise are government employees who receive their income from the government. A communist government expropriates all businesses and operates them as departments of the government. In America, these are communist operations: Highway maintenance, Public Schools, Utility companies such as most water systems, and sometimes electric systems, Police (except private police companies, which are fascist). Under fascism, the people are led to believe that they are working for themselves, even though in fact they are not. Under communism, they know they are not working for themselves. That is why fascism is less incompetent than communism. In fact, the level of efficiency of an economic system is a direct consequence of the degree to which the individuals who control specific aspects of that system are free to implement their own choices, and are acting in a context in which their own personal income is dependent on their own personal choices. This explains why communism is the least efficient of these systems, fascism is somewhat more efficient, and a free market is the most efficient of all. Only a free market demands competence. Authoritarian regimes place obedience above all other considerations. I distinguish some other controls from the above categories of fascism and communism since these controls are not primarily oriented toward governing business operations but are intended as general restrictions on individual personal behavior. These are such things as driver's licenses, marriage and divorce, customs and immigration. Registration of vehicles, business licenses, building permits, land titles (deeds) and land tax are in yet another category - they are the government's assertion of eminent domain - the assertion that government is the ultimate owner of all property, and that the individual can make use of that property only with permission from the government. Of course all these are also means by which government obtains some of its revenue. * Marx According to Marx, no clear line can be drawn between economic and political processes. In his scheme, the forces of material production are a superhuman entity independent of the will and actions of individual men. Industrial production and wealth, he asserts, are not to be attributed to any individual's creative thought or action, but are a free gift of nature. Such gifts multiply automatically across time through the intervention of impersonal agencies called Science, Technology and Progress, and each man is morally entitled to his fair share of these gifts. Only the State can achieve social justice by wresting wealth from the hands of the vile, greedy rich, who have appropriated more than their fair share, and by redistributing it fairly among the virtuous, non-greedy poor. This is the underlying rationale of the Welfare State. Because the use of coercion to confiscate wealth has benefit for one group ONLY at the expense of another, Marxists are led to the belief that life must be viewed as a zero-sum process in which original wealth-creation is ignored or even denied. Inherent in this ideology is the view that economic power is the ability to prevent other people from satisfying their own economic wants by preempting or monopolizing the economic resources of the society. This reflects the "zero-sum" assumption that economic resources and economic output are fixed - a national pie to be distributed by the state. But this coercive redistribution of wealth undercuts the very process that produced the wealth in the first place, thus Marxist societies inevitably end up impoverished. When a theory invariably achieves only the opposite of its alleged goals, yet its advocates remain undeterred, you may be certain that the theory is not a conviction or an ideal, but a spurious rationalization. In a free market, a man's long-range failure, like his long-range success, is an objective reflection of his ability and his usefulness. It is precisely this inexorable rule of capitalism - "to each according to his ability" - that threatens the self-esteem of the Marxist, engendering his intense hatred for the free market. Ironically, the most passionately voiced charge against laissez-faire is that it is an unjust system. The man who hates and fears a free market does not confess that what he really resents is precisely the implacable justice of this market. The driving motive of the irrational policies of Marxism is the desire to destroy the hated system which rewards men according to their abilities, and to substitute one which will give to the frustrated mediocrity according to his needs. Their Marxism is a wonderful tool that gives them an answer for everything - even an answer for the failures of Marxism. A Marxist writes: "The method of analysis Marx used to understand social domination and conflict is the most powerful way of understanding the very failures of his theory." But how can a theory that has failed be used to understand itself? Thus there is no possibility of controverting the committed Marxist. His Marxism makes him invulnerable to argument. * The Luddite Phenomenon It is often not the widely diffused gain resulting from the new technology that most forcibly strikes even the disinterested observer, but the immediately obvious concentrated loss. The new machines' increased output of shoes, at lower cost to everyone, is ignored; what is seen is a group of cobblers thrown out of work. * Liability There is a current trend toward legislation, and court precedent, that virtually insures that every real or imagined social ill shall find its way into the courtroom for resolution. In his book LIABILITY, Peter Huber looks at the origin and consequences of this kind of litigation. He observes that because of "a wholesale shift from consent to coercion in the law of accidents (and) a shift from individual to group responsibility ....the number of tort suits filed has increased steadily for over two decades. So has the probability that any given suit will conclude in an award. And the average size of awards has grown more rapidly still." This cancer on capitalism results in a severe threat to fundamental features of our economic system, such as technological innovation and the sanctity of contracts. As examples, he observes that liability accounts for 30% of the price of a stepladder, 95% of the price of vaccines, and 1/3rd the cost of a small airplane. The threat of liability suits or cost of insurance has orphaned more than 500 drugs that are invaluable for treating rare but serious diseases. Fifty years ago, such liability litigation would not have been conceived. Twentyfive years ago, it would have been laughed out of court. Today it is seriously considered, and the really scary aspect is this: there is NO WAY to tell in advance what the ruling of the court will be. The courts are not bound by any semblance of rationality or any adherence to the principle of Justice, and yet they exercise total dominion over the economic life of the country. * Productivity The productivity potential of the American people was enormously enhanced by the practice of capitalism during its first hundred years, when government was too small to seriously hinder personal freedom. But as government grows larger and consumes more and more resources, a continually growing share of the productivity potential of the American people must be devoted to the maintenance of government. Computers have enabled a tremendous productivity boost since the 1970's, but no matter how much more wealth per capita improved technology makes possible, always there is something to soak up the surplus and condemn ordinary people to a lifetime of labor. No matter how much productivity increases, people never seem to work less, only differently. The government is consuming, at an accelerated pace, the productivity potential of the country. Jerry Pournelle: "It looks to me as if our choices are very limited: increase productivity, or have a declining standard of living. Or both. Unfortunately, most increases in productivity are eaten by new measures, such as the Clean Air Act. It's my opinion that most of the productivity increases made possible by small computers have disappeared into increased regulations." Another thing that has kept the government alive while the federal debt curve goes up is that it is confiscating much of the wealth produced by the women who have liberated themselves since the 1960's. * Trade vs Theft Interactions which involve the transfer of wealth can be generally divided into two categories: Trade and Theft. The fundamental distinguishing characteristic which separates these categories is the relevance of choice to the preservation of values. For example: If I put a gun to your head and demand your money, the situation is such that your choice has no relevance: you lose a value no matter how you choose. Either your money or your life. If your choice is to give me the money, then you lose the money. On the other hand, if your choice is NOT to give me the money, then you still lose the money - and your life, too. No matter how you choose, you lose. That's what makes the transfer a theft. If a person's choice is NOT relevant to the loss or non-loss of a value then the transfer is a theft. If the person's choice IS relevant, then the transfer is a trade. There is a situation in which choice seems to be relevant, but nonetheless the transfer cannot be termed a trade: when the transfer occurs within a context of deception. This is fraud. In considering the nature of deception, we must keep in mind that rights impose no obligations on other men except of a prohibitive nature. Rights are not a claim to affirmative action. Each man is obliged only to AVOID the violation of the rights of other men. Therefore, in my dealings with others: I have no obligation to convince them of anything. I have no obligation to educate them about anything. My only obligation is to refrain from telling them anything I know to be untrue. Nozick proposes three conditions for a just transaction: 1. It must be freely entered into by both parties. 2. There must be no deception on either side. 3. The goods traded must have been justly acquired - that is, acquired in circumstances that accord with the first two conditions. His third condition raises a critically important idea: the problem of trade cannot be solved "out of context," that is, outside the general context of the social institutions that shape our culture. Before such problems can be fully solved, society must be restructured away from institutions of government and toward ethically rational social institutions. Gulliver's Travels: "They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defense against superior cunning; and since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or hath not law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage." __ Chapter 6 RIGHTS AND FREEDOM * Natural Rights * There is no such Thing as Freedom * Natural Rights Consider the conditions which are required by man's nature for his proper survival. (By "proper survival" I mean a state of existence which maximizes the opportunity of each person to manifest his values in the external world. See the May, 1994, issue of FULL CONTEXT for a further development of this idea.) There are several categories of them - Physical, Chemical and Social, to name some. In the physical realm we can easily observe that there are several conditions which must prevail if a man is to remain alive. An example is the fact that he must maintain a certain environmental temperature range, outside of which he would either freeze or roast. If for any reason this environmental condition ceases to prevail, man's proper survival comes to a quick and drastic end. We can see other physical conditions necessary as well, such as a continual accomodation to the force of gravity. In the chemical realm also we observe necessary conditions: the existence of an oxygen gas environment, the avoidance from diet of certain chemicals (cyanide, arsenic, strychnine) and the inclusion of certain other chemicals (ascorbic acid). This last case is a good example of the fact that these conditions are necessary for man's PROPER survival, for without the inclusion of an adequate amount of vitamin C, life will not come to the same sort of immediate and drastic end as it would from the elimination of the oxygen gas environment. Nonetheless without the vitamin C man is not in a state of PROPER survival, even though his life does continue on a limited and retarded level. (He merely subsists, he does not flourish.) The point I am trying to make is that there are certain conditions arising from man's nature - unavoidable, uncompromising and absolutely necessary conditions - which must be accomodated in order for him to continue in a proper state of existence. Although this assertion is easily seen to be indisputable in man's physical and chemical life, I contend that it is equally, though perhaps not so obviously, indisputable in man's social life. There are certain conditions of SOCIAL existence which are necessary for man's proper survival. Conditions which, unlike the physical and chemical conditions, prevail only when man lives in a social environment. Obviously, when a man lives alone in the wilderness, or on a desert island, the physical and chemical conditions prevail just as much as they do when he lives in New York City or Tokyo. However, when he lives in society there are other conditions which prevail as well, conditions resulting from his interaction with other men. Just as he must accomodate interaction with a physical universe and with a chemical universe, so when he lives in a society he must accomodate the conditions of a social universe - a universe consisting of the relationships with other men in his environment. There is a name for this set of conditions. It is RIGHTS. Rights are the conditions of social existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. Man is a being of a specific nature; his life is contingent on specific courses of behavior. To live, man must choose to engage in rational and productive action. But he is also a social being, and since some men unfortunately choose to interfere violently with rational and productive action, it is therefore necessary for peaceful men to derive precepts for social behavior which allow each individual to maintain his own life free from force and fraud. These social precepts are identifications of human rights. Consider the most obvious example: the right to life. If the society were composed exclusively of murderers, the "proper survival" of each individual man, and therefore of the society, would come to an immediate and drastic end. It is clear that "life" is an unavoidable precondition of social interaction. If you kill everyone you meet, presently there will be no one left for you to meet anymore. There would no longer be a social existence at all, for the simple reason that one of the conditions prerequisite to that existence had been violated. That condition is the right to life. Another example: the right to property. One of the major reasons for social cooperation among men is the material benefit to be gained by each man from trade with other men. Both trade and the division of labor are devices for the production and exchange of property, and as you can observe from your own experience there is much less incentive to produce or exchange if you do not have the assurance of being secure in your ownership of the property involved. This security in ownership is the right to property. To the extent that this right is violated, by that much will be diminished the incentive of each man to maintain the economic basis of society. To recognize and enforce the rights of individuals is to recognize and enforce the conditions of proper social survival: the conditions that permit human energy to work effectively to satisfy human needs. We can see now that rights are not something that an individual "possesses" and that can be granted to him or taken away from him. They are conditions of existence which can be accomodated, ignored, or violated - with accompanying beneficial or detrimental results to men living in a social context. A right must be something embedded in the nature of man and reality, something that is applicable to his situation at any time and in any age. The right of self ownership, of defending one's life and property, is clearly that sort of right: it can apply to Neanderthal cavemen, in modern Calcutta, or in the contemporary USA. Such a right is independent of time or place. But a "right" to a job or to three meals a day or to twelve years of schooling is not the same phenomenon. Suppose that such things CANNOT exist, as was true in Neanderthal days or in modern Calcutta? To speak of rights as something which can only be accomodated in modern industrial conditions is not to speak of natural rights at all, but of figments of the imagination. Such "rights" are not embodied in the nature of man, but require for their fulfillment the existence of a group of exploited people who are coerced into providing them. "I have a right to speak freely" can hold true no matter how many people there are, but "I have a right to a comfortable income" can be asserted only when there are enough other people in society to provide it. If there are not enough givers and too many takers, the principle becomes impossible to apply. One way to consider these issues is through the realization that rights impose no obligations on other men except of a prohibitive nature. Each man is obliged only to AVOID the violation of the rights of other men. He has no obligation to provide other men with the means of accomodating rights. Thus there is no such thing as the "right" to an education (self-education is a moral imperative but it imposes no ethical obligations) or the "right" to a job (every man must be free to engage in productive activity according to his own choices, but this does not give him a claim to the use of another's property). Rights are not a claim to affirmative action imposed by some men on others, therefore any condition which contains such a claim cannot be a right. The right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self- generated action. A man has the right to support his life by his own work but this does not mean that others must provide him with food, clothing, shelter or any other necessity of life. The right to property means the right to take the economic actions necessary to earn property and to use it and to dispose of it; it does not mean that others must provide the property. The right to free speech means the right to express ideas without danger of suppression, interference or punitive action by government. It does not mean that others must provide the means through which to express one's ideas. Thus, for any man to claim the "right" to violate the rights of another man is a contradiction in terms (a denial of the Law of Identity). One cannot claim that a condition of proper human survival necessitates the negation of a condition of proper human survival. Therefore there can be no rights to rob, enslave, or murder. Such "rights" are merely stolen concepts. Your recognition of an inalienable right of another man is not a compromise between two rights, his and yours, but a line of division that preserves both rights intact. A difficult question is that of the ethical status of retaliation and self- defense. If one person violates rights, is the situation rectified by another doing likewise? Do two wrongs make a right? The foundation of all human behavior - both moral and ethical - lies in the Law of Identity. Proper behavior is that which is consistent with this Law; improper behavior is that which attempts to contradict this Law. I asserted above that the violation of rights involves a contradiction of the Law of Identity. It is consistent, however, to take an action which eliminates such a contradiction, even if that action, when considered out of context, could itself be a negation of the Law of Identity. In ethics, as in the propositional calculus, one negative cancels out another. (I find it personally distasteful, but I can see no way to avoid the conclusion that two wrongs do indeed make a right.) Thus to lie to a man who is trying to rob you, or to kill a man, when defending your own life against his aggression, are ethically legitimate (i.e., logically consistent) actions. Even if this argument is accepted, there still remains the question of degree. Would it be proper to kill a man who has merely stolen an apple? The principle I have described above would make it seem so, but surely such a degree of retaliation would be repugnant to a civilized person. The issue of degree must be dealt with in the context of value-balancing. As Rand has shown, there are rational means of establishing value hierarchies, and it is with reference to such hierarchies that the proper degree of retaliation for particular aggressive actions should be determined. This determination is one of the proper functions of a legal code, and here you can see the major reason why an explicitly formulated framework of justice must lie at the foundation of any social organization. If the determination of "degree of retaliation" is left to the personal judgment of the individuals involved, or to the multitude of their hired (or elected) agencies, then it is very unlikely that widespread adherence to rationally-derived principles of justice would exist in society. This would hardly be a suitable context for the ensurance of rights. A closely related problem is the punishment of criminals. If criminals have intrinsic rights to life, liberty and property, then are not capital punishment, incarceration, and fines violations of the criminals' rights? If this is the case, then the implication is that there is no ethical difference between committing a crime and punishing a criminal. This seems to be a plausible argument, but observe that it is based on the assumption that a criminal must be "punished" for his crime. Restitution (instead of punishment) for much criminal behavior has two important beneficial consequences for social order: 1) it ameliorates the condition of the victim and tends to reduce his desire for violent revenge, and 2) it benefits the offender by enabling him to restore his place in society. Indeed, the creation of punishment law appears to have increased social disorder precisely because punishment law precludes both of these alternatives. * There is no such Thing as Freedom There are three aspects to the idea of freedom: Physical, Psychological and Social. In physical terms, freedom - or the lack of it - refers to the constraints imposed by the laws of nature. For example: you are not free to flap your arms and fly through the sky. You are not free to breathe water, like a fish. This is not the sort of freedom I am going to talk about. In psychological terms freedom refers to the constraints you may impose upon yourself because of your state of mind. For example: you may not be free to get a broken tooth fixed, simply because you dread going to a dentist. You may not be free to learn how to ski, simply because of your lack of self- confidence. This too, is not the sort of freedom I will deal with in this essay. It is freedom in the context of interacting with other people that is my concern. I will try to make a precise statement of just what that kind of freedom is. Consider these pairs of terms: Light - Darkness Sound - Silence Heat - Cold Slavery - Freedom Let us examine the first of these pairs, light - darkness. Light is defined as electromagnetic radiation in a certain range of wavelengths. As such, we can easily understand and deal with the characteristics of light. We can measure stronger or weaker lights in terms of candlepower or lumens. We can identify different wavelengths of light and call them colors. We can produce light by means of light bulbs and torches. Light is a real existing thing. What then is darkness? Darkness is not a real existing thing. It is merely a term of convenience which we apply to a situation from which light is absent. You will observe that there are no units of measurement for darkness. There are not greater or lesser darknesses (what is greater or lesser in this context is the amount of light present) nor are there different characteristics of darkness - there is only one kind of darkness and that is the complete absence of light. So long as there is any light at all present we cannot truthfully say that we have darkness but rather that we have a greater or lesser degree of illumination. Now consider the second pair, sound - silence. Sound is defined as a certain sort of motion of the air. Sound comes in various degrees, namely louder and softer. It comes also in various types, namely of a higher or lower pitch. As with light, you can see (or rather, hear) that sound is a real existing thing. Silence, however, is not. It is merely a term of convenience which we apply to a situation from which sound is absent. And as with darkness, there is only one degree of silence, the complete absence of sound. So long as there is any sound present at all we cannot speak of silence but rather of more or less noise. Now on to the third pair, heat - cold. Heat is a manifestation of the molecular energy in an object. We can make a measurement of heat by means of a thermometer and we can see (or feel) that heat comes in various degrees of temperature, and thereby we know that this energy content is a real existing thing. So what is cold? Cold is the absence of heat. Cold is not a real thing. You might now be tempted to say: "Humbug! I know cold is real. My refrigerator makes my milk cold. I know this because I drink the cold milk." Well, your refrigerator does not put cold into the milk. What it does is to take heat out of the milk. The refrigerator is a "heat pump" which pumps the heat from the inside of the box to the outside. (You can feel the heat coming off of the radiator on the back of the refrigerator.) You will note that we have thermometers for measuring heat, but there is no device for measuring cold. You will note that heat is measured in degrees (fahrenheit or centigrade), but there is no unit of measurement which indicates coldness. Strictly speaking, there is only one degree of cold, and that is absolute zero, the point at which all the heat has been removed from an object. So you can see that it is not cold that is a real existing thing, but rather heat. Now consider the fourth pair of terms, slavery - freedom. Keeping in mind the previous three distinctions I made, let us see what, in this context, is the real existing thing and what is merely a term used to indicate an absence. Consider that we can take a man and by the application of physical force we can compel him to submit to our will. We can also compel him to submit by threatening him with force. We can bind a man in chains; we can lock him in a cage. Or we can threaten to deprive him of his property, his liberty, or even his life. And thus we can force him to submit to our will. Surely you recognize this as the imposition of slavery. And you can see that slavery is a real existing state of affairs. There are degrees of slavery: some men are completely enslaved, such as negroes in the pre-civil-war South. Other men are more or less enslaved according to the amount of force or threat of force to which they are subjected. So, if slavery is a real existing thing, what then is freedom? Is it not a real thing? After all, men have been willing to fight for it and to die for it all through history. Do they fight and even die for a nothing? For a notion that does not exist in reality? Is it not true that a man will go out and fight against tyranny, and when he has destroyed the tyrant does he not smile and say, "Now I have freedom!"? Doesn't he have something that he did not have before? Namely freedom? Well, let us see what he does have and what he does not have. Before, when he was living under the tyranny, there was imposed upon him a force or a threat of force, to which he was compelled to submit. Then, when he fought, his objectivie was to destroy the tyrant. When he fought he did not take some thing away from the tyrant; rather, he destroyed the thing that the tyrant had used against him. The thing destroyed was the tyrant's ability to compel. And then, after his success, when he said, "Now I have freedom!" did he possess any real thing as a result of his fight? Obviously not. No real existing thing has come into his possession which he did not previously possess. What has changed is that he is now living in a different situation. Whereas before there was force now there is not. And this situation is what he calls freedom. Freedom is the absence of slavery. Freedom is not a real existing thing, it is rather the term we apply to a situation from which compulsion is absent. I want now to make the most critically important point of my essay. I have maintained that darkness, silence, cold and freedom are not real existing things. What I have said is true. But what I have said, if not properly understood, can be fatally misleading. Consider one more example of the same nature as those I have illustrated: You can pluck a rock out of the ground, leaving a hole, and you can say that it is the rock that is the real thing and that the hole is merely the absence of the rock and therefore not real. That is the frame of reference I have used throughout this essay, and it is correct, as far as it goes. But it is certainly not complete. Just as you might stumble over the rock and break your leg, so you might fall into the hole and break your leg. Your relationship to the hole, you see, is a rather important situation. Even though we may consider the hole as being merely the absence of the rock, it certainly does have relevance to your life. And although I have said that darkness, silence, cold and freedom are merely absences, I do not mean to deny their relevance to life. The absence of light which is a blind man's darkness is crucially important. The absence of sound which is a deaf man's silence is very relevant. The absence of heat which is a dead man's cold is undeniably significant. And the absence of slavery which means the freedom of Man is the basis of all human progress. __ Chapter 7 THE ETHICS UNDERLYING SOCIAL STRUCTURE * Some Ethical Concepts Defined * Philosophy Underlies Society * Foundation of Law * Voting * Majority Rule * Stateolatry * Miscellaneous Ethical Topics * Abortion * Honesty vs Dishonesty * Link Between the Individual and the Group * What is a slave? * Profound Ethical Concerns * Coerced Compassion * Effect of Social Complexity on Statism * Dual Ideologies * Hallmark of a Conservative * Compromise * Libertarian Foreign Policy Thoreau might have written only yesterday about our government today. What makes his commentary so timeless in its application is that he saw beneath the superficial manifestations of government to its underlying principles of operation. What is important is to define the state toward which the human community should be advancing. To set the parameters and the goals toward which the men and women of good will should strive; the general relationships that should exist betwen human beings. To produce a schematic for civilized life, a set of instructions. This is the intent of my writings on Ethics. * Some Ethical Concepts Defined term: genus: differentia: ethics human behavior interpersonal libertarianism political principle voluntary statism political principle coercive anarchy political structure voluntary government political structure coercive Ethics is the study of interpersonal human behavior. There are several such forms of behavior: sexual, economic, and political, to name a few. In each of these behaviors an interaction occurs between two or more people. In sexual behavior, for example, the interaction involves erotic stimulation. In economic behavior the interaction involves material wealth. And in political behavior the interaction involves human liberty. In each case there are two fundamental manners in which the interaction can transpire: coercively or voluntarily. In sex I would define these as rape vs consensual sex. In economics I would define them as theft vs trade. And in politics I would define them as statism vs libertarianism. Libertarianism is the statement of a political principle. As John Hospers described it: "a philosophy of personal liberty - the liberty of each person to live according to his own choices, provided that he does not attempt to coerce others and thus prevent them from living according to their choices. Libertarians hold this to be an inalienable right of man; thus, libertarianism represents a total commitment to the concept of individual rights." Libertarianism is a political philosophy, concerned with the appropriate use of force. It asks one question: Under what conditions is the use of force justified? And it gives one answer: only in response to the prior use of force. The opposite of libertarianism is statism, the principle that it is proper for the community (or a selected subgroup thereof) to compel the behavior of its individual members. Anarchy is a narrower term, contained within the context of libertarianism, and referring to the social institution by means of which the principle of libertarianism shall be implemented. Government is the social institution by means of which the principle of statism is implemented. In practice throughout history, the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of government has been that it is an institution comprised of the strongest gang of aggressors in a particular area at a particular time. Consider that when people live together in a society, that is, a group in which interactions can take place among all the members, there must be institutionalized a set of ethical standards of behavior designed to inhibit actions which would result in the violation of freedom. This is the ostensible (but NOT actual) purpose of a legal system. A society can have either libertarianism or statism as its standard of behavior. In accordance with the first alternative, the social institution (legal system) for implementing that standard of behavior will be an anarchy. On the other hand, if statism is the standard of behavior then a government will be the implementing institution. An anarchic society is not a Utopia in which the inititation of violence is impossible. Rather, it is a society which does not institutionalize the initiation of force and in which there are means for dealing with aggression justly when it does occur. The absence of government does not mean the absence of violence. It simply means the absence of an official, legal, institutionalized tool for its imposition. A statist society is one in which aggression is institutionalized. * Philosophy Underlies Society Philosophical principles are food for the mind in just the same sense as there is food for the body. It is not necessary that you eat poison to be sick - is suffices merely that you fail to eat the proper food. For example, you will suffer if you fail to eat vitamin C. In just the same way, an individual person - or a social organization - will suffer not only if it implements wicked philosophical principles, but also if it simply fails to implement proper philosophical principles. In the case of an individual, that failure can occur when a person takes actions based on his principles. To the extent that the principles do not correspond to reality, the actions he takes will fail to achieve beneficial values. Thus it is that a philosophical failure will have destructive consequences in reality. In the case of a society, the danger arises from the fact that there will always be individuals whose personal beliefs lead them to perform actions which violate rights. Many individuals would use their positions wickedly if they could. However, the institutional arrangments within which people perform their tasks determine whether or not such abuses can be carried out. If social institutions fail to accomodate this fact, the actions of those individuals will be detrimental to the society. Further, the deliberate institutionalization of rights-violating behavior (e.g., government) is akin to the dietary failure of actually eating poison. Thus it is that a philosophical failure will have destructive consequences in social reality. Society doesn't function because government intervenes occasionally to resolve disputes. Rather, the vast majority of people depend on continuing relationships wherein it's customary to keep your word, treat others with respect, and comply with mutually beneficial norms. These privately-developed norms are the glue which holds society together, by and large in spite of the interference of government. Here are examples of two different norms, each of which produces a completely different type of ethical behavior, depending on the acceptance or rejection of government interference in an interpersonal relationship: Consider a man and a woman who have lived together in a state of intimacy for 20 years. At the end of that time, they decide that the best thing for them to do would be to go their separate ways and each live independently of the other. So what happens? Each hires a lawyer, goes to court, and attempts to induce the government to use its coercive power against the other. This sort of divorce occurs so frequently that it is considered a natural process, always to be expected, even inevitable. But in fact there is nothing natural, expectable, or inevitable about this arrangement. It is simply the result of a mistaken cultural norm which is easily corrected by a fundamental alteration in the individuals' perspective on government. Consider a man and a woman who have lived together in a state of intimacy for 20 years. At the end of that time, they decide that the best thing for them to do would be to go their separate ways and each live independently of the other. In this case, it would be unthinkable for them to go through the above described legal process. Why unthinkable? Well, don't you see, they are not husband and wife, but father and daughter (or mother and son). You see, people CAN live peaceful, productive, and cooperative lives - once they cease to regard government as an acceptable arbiter of their interpersonal relationships. The Hutterite sect of Christianity, which has existed for over 400 years, has never experienced an act of murder by one of its members. Many people consider philosophy to be very largely an affair of acquiring and then displaying certain clever techniques of logico-linguistic proficiency. Or they seem to want a philosophy resembling the multiplication table or the periodic table of the elements. They want it to be such that all philosophy is mechanistically determinate. So that whenever faced with an alternative they can simply consult this "look-up" table and thereby be relieved of the necessity of intellectual effort. They want an answer to every question - even before it has been asked. Maybe what they really don't want is the recognition of personal responsibility. They want a philosophy that takes this burden off their shoulders. The perspective of personal moral responsibility for one's actions is being abandoned - it has nearly been culturally lost - and the result is what you see in everyday's newspaper headlines: mayhem and brutality. * Foundation of Law A natural law is a necessity imposed on an entity by the entity's nature. It is a cause which mandates an effect: appropriate behavior. This cause is inherent in the entity's specific nature. The law arises from the interaction of the facts of the entity's nature with the other facts of reality. A natural law is practical - it must always "work" - because it relates to things as they really are. While it is generally recognized that man's physical and even his mental nature are subject to the rule of natural law, it is just as generally assumed that the area of ethics is completely outside the scope of natural law. This assumption is held tacitly, rather than being identifed and defended, simply because it CAN'T be rationally defended. It is quite foolish to assert that man is a being with a specific nature and therefore subject to the rule of principles derived from that nature in all areas except his dealings with other men. Do men cease to have a specific nature when they come into relationship with other men? Of course not! Natural law does indeed apply to human relationships, and it is just as objective, universal, and inescapable in this area as in any other. The proof of this is that actions have consequences - in the area of human relations as surely as in the area of human medicine. No matter how cleverly a man schemes, he will suffer if he insists on acting in a manner which contradicts the nature of human existence. The consequences may not be immediate, and they may not be readily apparent, but they are inescapable. The law of supply and demand, and all other market laws, are really natural laws, derived from the nature and needs of man. The fact that market laws are natural laws explains why a free market works and a controlled-market doesn't: natural law is always practical - it always "works." Thus man-made law should be identified rather than invented or decreed, as is the case with government legislation. Law is necessary for the survival and development of individual liberty, but decreed legislation is its nemesis. Arbitrary legislation destroys the very certainty that we seek from natural law: People can never be certain that the legislation in force today will be in force tomorrow. As a result, they are prevented not only from freely deciding how to behave but from foreseeing the legal effects of their daily behavior. Legislation also disrupts established conventions that have hitherto been voluntarily accepted and kept. Even the possibility of nullifying these conventions tends to induce people to fail to rely on any existing conventions or to keep any accepted agreements, no matter how they may have come into existence. Man's only duty is to respect others' rights and man's only right over others is to enforce that duty. A free society exists when people recognize, as a social, collective rule, that individuals have the right to own property and to use their bodies and minds as each sees fit. Their recognition of this right consists in their accepting a duty not to interfere with these free actions of individuals. This social rule has the enormous advantage of being the only collective rule compatible with individual freedom and autonomy. This is the only rational way in which society can cope with the problem posed by nonagreement about "The Good." Every bit of human progress has happened for a single, simple reason: the elevation of the status of the individual. Each time civilization has stumbled into another age that is a little better, a bit more enlightened, than the ones before it, it's because people respected other people as individuals. When they haven't, those have been the times of slipping backward. One of America's greatest shortcomings is that almost everything nowadays is geared against the individual and in favor of the big institutions - big corporations, big unions, big banking, big government. So not only does an individual have trouble getting ahead and staying there, he often has difficulty merely in surviving. And whenever bad things happen - inflation, devaluation, depression, shortages, higher taxes, even wars - it isn't so much the big institutions which get hurt, it's the individual, all the time. More and more, individuals are being deprived of the power of decision, and being allowed only the power of choice among the things government permits. The more you depend on government, the more limited those choices become. What must be reinstated is the opportunity for the individual to make decisions that count. Small wonder that many people in big cities seem so despairing: nothing in view indicates any care for what the individual thinks or desires. Hitler: "The individual must finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual." * Voting Here are the best arguments I could find - both for and against voting: Thoreau (Civil Disobedience): "All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked, I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting FOR THE RIGHT is DOING nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but litttle virtue in the actions of masses of men." "It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.... Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence." Voting: You advocated an undertaking you didn't fully understand. You were a participant in an activity you failed to supervise. You did not check the activities of a man whom you knew from experience to be a liar, and you permitted that man to screw around with the most dangerous technology in human history. I'd say you shirked your responsibility. In America, voting is an all-or-nothing proposition: you either win or you lose. If you can get 51% of the vote, you get 100% of the power. No matter whether an office is filled by an 80% voter turnout or by a 15% voter turnout, the new office holder has the full power of his office. If you are on the losing side - the minority - you get nothing. The alternative presented to the voter is absolutely exclusive: the selection of one TOTALLY precludes the other. There is a conflict in voting which is not found in the market. Market choices conflict only in the sense that buying a given good leaves you LESS money (not NO money) to purchase other goods. While you can buy some pretzels and some pizza, you can't vote for some Bush and some Clinton. In a market, the individual is never placed in the position of being a dissenting (and powerless) minority. Voting is just a method of choosing oppressors. Every time you step into a voting booth you license a potential killer or thief. From the perspective of either political party, there is no area of human activity that is outside the sphere of government encroachment. Some advocates of voting, when faced with the accusation that they are perpetrating this evil, will counter with the assertion that your means of control over the situation is to exercise your right to vote, and that if you don't do so, you have no right to complain about the situation ("If you don't vote, don't complain!" is what they say). Consider the nature of the demand they are laying on you: your alternative is either to participate in the wickedness (by voting) or refuse to participate and thus be condemned to submit in silent acquiescence to being victimized by the wickedness. In fact, only those who do NOT vote have a legitimate moral right to complain! They are the only ones who give no sanction or support to their persecutors. Imagine a neighborhood in which two bullies dominate and intimidate everyone. But they're democratic-minded bullies: they allow all (well, almost all) the neighbors to vote every four years in an election to determine which of the bullies will be empowered to possess a big stick and for the next four years to rule the neighborhood, beating and robbing all the residents. Now imagine that one poor persecuted resident complains about being beaten and robbed, and in response is told: "Well, if you don't like bully D then next time express your preference for bully R - but unless you choose one of these bullies, you have no right to complain about being beaten and robbed." Such a demand for willing self-immolation is an act of inexcuseable viciousness - worse even than the beating and robbing! The very act of voting is an attempt on the part of voters to delegate to another person a power that they could not justly possess themselves. Your participation is your concession that there should indeed BE elected officials with the power of government coercion. Government is based on coercion, but individuals should not have the authority to coerce others, and therefore they should not put themselves in a position to delegate such authority to third parties, which is the essence of voting. There is plenty of mass-media crowing about the "high voter turnout" (about 55% - that's high?), as an "affirmation of the system," and a "strong endorsement of democracy." Nobody mentions the message of the 45% abstention. It is often said that refusal to vote means that one is left with no voice at all, but that implies that having a voice in the proceedings is proper and desirable. Authoritarian activity is one which forces, directly or indirectly, someone else to do something. But voting in itself does not do this. Only voting for authoritarian candidates (including the lesser of evils, which is still an evil) or for authoritarian policies is authoritarianism. Voting AGAINST tax increases, measures to increase government controls, and voting FOR libertarians truly committed to total liberty cannot be authoritarian. Voting for freedom or against coercion does not delegate power to another; just the opposite. Participation in electoral politics serves to legitimize the whole political process and the existence of government. If people did not vote, the democratic theory of government would lose its legitimacy and politicians would have to justify their rule on the basis of something other than the alleged consent of the governed. This, hopefully, would make the true nature of the State more obvious to the governed. And such a revelation might have the potential to motivate people to challenge, evade, or ignore government interference and coercion. If you consider voting to be acceptable, then you must consider it to be acceptable for the winning candidates to hold power in a coercive government. The ultimate political issue is that of the Individual vs. the State. But the voter, by virtue of his behavior, has already cast his lot with the state. Each candidate would use the State in a different way - but each would use the State. Obviously, this is a game which only the State can win. By playing the game, you demonstrate your conviction that the game is playable. Suppose you are in airplane which gets hijacked and the hijacker says, "I will kill you all unless you vote that you want to be set free." Unfortunately, over 50% of the passengers are anarchists who are opposed to voting, so they refuse to vote, and all the passengers are killed. In this case, by refusing to vote, they indirectly contribute to the death of the minority that would have survived if they had been the majority. Not voting in this case is authoritarian. Not voting constitutes an implicit declaration to the winner that "I don't care what the outcome is." We are all living in a society hijacked by the rulers. If we can vote for less coercion but refuse, we implicitly endorse coercion. The fact is, when we are hijacked, as we are, or under terrorist rule or subject to any authoritarians, we are involved, and a refusal to voice a yea or nay can itself further authoritarian rule. [This is a fundamentally collectivist argument - it assumes that the victim is in some way responsible for the behavior of the criminal.] John Galt (Part3, Chapter8): "It's the attempt of your betters to beat you on YOUR terms that has allowed your kind to get away with it for centuries. Which one of us would succeed, if I were to compete with you for control over your musclemen? .... I'd perish and what you'd win would be what you've always won in the past: a postponement, one more stay of execution, for another year - or month - bought at the price of whatever hope and effort might still be squeezed out of the best of the human remnants left around you, including me." From Ayn Rand's notes for ATLAS SHRUGGED: By accepting his decisions, which she knows to be wrong, then by helping him to carry out bad ideas well, she only helps him to run the railroad badly and thus contradicts and defeats her own purpose, which was to run it well. She postpones the natural consequences of his bad decisions and thus leaves him free and gives him the means to do more damage to the railroad by more bad decisions, and worse ones. A bad thing well done is more dangerous and disastrous than a bad thing badly done. For example: an efficient robbery is worse for the victim than an inefficient one. "Silence implies consent." Consent to what? Just what is it I consent to when I do not vote? To the policies of Bush? To the policies of Clinton? To the policies of Marrou? To the policies of all those whose principled disagreement with the electoral system precludes their participation in it? The process of implication contains a consequential relationship. For one thing to imply another thing, there must be a causal sequence between the two things. People who make the assertion "silence implies consent" never propose any chain of logical connection between the silence and the consent. Precisely how does consent arise from silence? How can dead men be said to consent to anything? If my silence does imply consent, then how far does that implication reach? If I am silent about one side of an argument, and also silent about the other and contradictory side of the argument, then what implication can be drawn concerning my consent to either side? Am I considered to consent to all things about which I am silent? Even those about which I am completely ignorant? To the fact that someone in Calcutta beats his wife? If I must express disapproval of all things to which I do not consent, for fear of reproach resulting from my silence about any of them, there would not be sufficient hours in the day for such a plethora of expressions as would be required to preserve my moral purity. Voting would make ME feel like a swim in the sewer. * Majority Rule In America, it is claimed, we have "majority rule." Just what do we have in fact? To find out, let us analyze a recent presidential election. I chose the Johnson-Goldwater election of 1964 because the winner of that election received the greatest plurality of votes of any recent (during the past half- century) election: Johnson received 61% of the votes cast. But was this landslide victory an expression of "majority rule"? I think not. Certainly Johnson can be said to represent a majority of the voters - 61% is, after all, almost two-thirds. But when you consider the total number of eligible voters you discover that Johnson represents only 37% of them (they didn't all choose to vote, you see). So Johnson represents only a bit over one-third of the voting-age population of the country. That can hardly be said to be a majority! But even this is not a fair assessment of the situation. Johnson was, after all, not merely president over those who chose to vote for him. And he was not merely president over those who were qualified to vote. He was president over EVERYBODY! And out of that "everybody" how many actually expressed a choice to have Johnson as their president? 22%. Yeah, only about one person in five chose Johnson. As I said, I deliberately picked this election as an example. Any other recent election shows even more strikingly that this so-called "majority" is a quite small fraction of the population. The notion of "majority rule" is hogwash! Shortly after the 1964 election I realized that the American electoral process contains a fundamental flaw. When you vote, the only choice you have is to vote FOR one candidate or FOR another candidate. There is no way you can vote AGAINST any candidate. There is no "NO" choice on the ballot, only "YES" choices. This realization was one of the things that turned me off to the idea of politics. You have no doubt heard (many times) of a disgruntled voter going to the polls to choose "the lesser of two evils." I realized that the lesser of two evils is still an evil, and to express a preference for that evil is to don the cloak of moral culpability for his subsequent behavior. I observed with interest a peculiar electoral quirk during the 1976 elections. The LP, after the expenditure of an enormous amount of time, energy and money, was able to get "None of the above" placed on the ballot in Nevada. Thus there were three options available to the Nevada electorate when they went into the polling booth to elect their congressman: the Democrat, the Republican, and None of the Above. The outcome of this election was very interesting: the Democrat received 23% of the votes, the Republican received 29%, and NOTA received a whopping 47%. Can you guess what happened? Very simple: the Republican went to Washington as the congressman from Nevada. As of 1990, NOTA is still on the ballot in Nevada, and the winner of every election is that PERSON who gains the greatest number of votes. Votes cast for NOTA are simply wasted. It is intrinsic to the American Constitution that there MUST be a government. The people CANNOT choose "No Government" - that is not provided for in the Constitution. Sure, the Declaration of Independence observes the right of the people to "alter or abolish" their government, but the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document. I found it fascinating to watch the first post-Soviet general elections in Russia. They had an explicit choice on their ballots: Yes or No for any (and all) particular candidates. Such a large number of the Communist candidates (who ran unopposed) received a preponderance of "No" votes that run-off elections were held a couple weeks later. Those "NO" votes were indeed counted - unlike the NOTA votes in Nevada. I found it fascinating also to watch the subsequent Hungarian elections, which were held with the stipulation that unless at least 51% of the voting population did participate, the elections would be invalid. The Hungarian government has at least a more acute sense of "majority" than does the American government. In a recent election for the Fremont County, Wyoming government, only 13% of the population voted, and yet the government selected by that tiny fraction does indeed rule Fremont County. Some "majority rule" that is!! American voter turnout as percent of voting age population, during national off-year elections: 1966 47.9 1970 47.9 1974 38.9 1978 45.9 1982 48.5 1986 46.0 1990 45.0 Since 1972, when 18-year-olds first went to the polls, their election participation has steadily declined. In 1990 less than 19% of the 18 to 20 age group voted. The majority is invariably wrong. Consider the fact that every major breakthrough in man's understanding of the world has always been greeted with indifference or opposition by the majority. When private individuals in 18th century England introduced the "barbaric" practice of innoculating against smallpox, the majority, including virtually the entire medical profession, was appalled. Advances are made by individuals or by small groups of cooperating people who OVERCOME majority opinion or indifference. The fact that the majority is invariably wrong has interesting implications for the concept of democracy - a system which means, in fact, State control of the individual and his property in accordance with the supposed wishes of the majority. In a word, where majority rules, progress stops. The goal of free men should not be majority rule at all but self-rule, a society in which not political action but individual action prevails. Political freedom for the individual has become a charming legend from the early years of the Republic when individual liberty - rather than the will of the majority - was actually considered the core of democracy. Nowadays, acceptance of the legitimacy of individual autonomy is a contradiction wholly intolerable to the democratic ideology. Under a democracy, when a man looks into a mirror he sees one ten-millionth of a tyrant, and one whole slave. Some of the devastating consequences of the Ambiguous Collective fallacy can be observed in the phrase "we are the government," where the useful collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the naked exploitative reality of political life. For if WE truly ARE the government, then ANYTHING a government does to an individual is not only just and not tyrannical; it is also voluntary on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge debt which must be paid by taxing one group on behalf of another, this reality of burden is conveniently obscured by blithely saying that "we owe it to ourselves." But WHO are the "we" and WHO the "ourselves"? These are two distinctly different groups of people. If the government throws a man into jail for dissident opinions, then he is only "doing it to himself" and therefore nothing improper has occurred. And so we must conclude that "we" are NOT the government; the government is NOT "us." The government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people. But even if it did, crime is still crime, no matter how many citizens agree to the oppression. There is nothing sacrosanct about the majority; the lynch mob, too, is the majority in its own domain. A black African guerilla, commenting on democracy: "Vote, what is a vote? I don't have a vote in Mozambique. They don't have the vote in Zambia or Zimbabwe or Angola or Tanzania. Nobody has the vote in Africa, except perhaps once in a man's life to elect a president-for-life and a one-party government. Vote? You can't eat a vote. You can't dress in a vote, or ride to work on it. For two thousand rand a month and a full belly you can have my vote." * Stateolatry The most firmly held myth is the one that no society can exist without government - and its corollary that every society must have a ruler. The myth of the necessity of the State is as decisive as belief in God was for the people of Medieval Society. This myth is held so firmly and fundamentally by many people that they are entirely unaware even that they hold it. For a good illustration of this syndrome see Heinlein's CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY, pg 180. Here you can see someone to whom government is so invisible that he describes human culture without reference to it. Everyone is so immersed in the context of statism that no one really knows the other alternative. Even though the Polish (or Hungarian, or Romanian... etc., etc.) governments might WANT to establish a free market, they simply do not know what it is. Most people do not realize they could even HAVE any control over their own economic situation. Because everything is so wrapped up in bureaucracy and law no one has any idea that government could be circumvented. So long as people cannot perceive alternatives for comparison they will never even become aware that they are oppressed. They will not only lack any impulse to rebel, they will lack even the power of grasping that the world could be other than what it is. It is as Orwell said it would be: "You will lose the ability to think certain ideas, and then you will be totally incapable of ever trying to act on those ideas." The only way out of this statist situation is for people someday to realize that governments are NOT necessary for civilization - that in fact governments are an impediment to civilization. When the day comes that enough people are disillusioned with government, government will simply cease to exist. It will go the way of Alchemy, Phrenology, the Flat Earth, and other similar errors that were eventually discarded as being useless. This is why I do not think anarchism to be utopian. Today it is only a dream, a dream that will not soon come true, but if the idea is preserved it will be used in the future. Consider this: all government is founded upon Lies. But a lie will not fit a fact. It will only fit another lie made for the purpose. Therefore the life of a lie, and of government, is simply a question of time. Nothing but truth is immortal. * Miscellaneous Ethical Topics * Abortion One of the major issues of the day is the argument about Abortion. By and large, this is merely a diatribe of emotional invective, containing very little in the way of factual analysis (see the remarks below, by George Bush). I want to engage not in a moral or ethical evaluation but merely in a factual presentation upon which can be based whatever evaluation you choose to draw from your own set of moral principles. Many arguments are based on the contention that a fetus is a human being, and is therefore possessed of the right to life. This is the "Human Rights" argument. There are six points of development at which a fetus can be claimed to acquire the status of "human being." Any argument from this premise must choose and justify one of these points: 1. Fertilization 2. Implantation in the uterine wall 3. Brain-wave activity 4. Quickening (when the woman becomes aware of the fetus' movement) 5. Viability (when the fetus can be withdrawn and survive) 6. Birth Some argue that whether or not the fetus is a human being, it is not a "person" i.e., is not possessed of the complex of psychological characteristics that distinguishes any one human being from all others - in short, that the fetus, although a human being, does not have a soul. Aquinas, rejecting the notion of a fertilized-egg = person equivalence observed that "the body alone is begotten by sexual procreation, and that after the formation of the body the soul is created and infused." Others argue that even if the fetus is a human being, it is a parasite and therefore does not possess human rights. This is the "Parasite" argument: What human has the right to remain, unbidden, as an unwanted parasite within some other human being's body? The fetus does not have any right to be fed and nourished, because such a right would make the woman its slave. The only means of refusing is to expel the fetus. What the woman is doing in an abortion is causing an unwanted parasite within her body to be ejected from it. This argument is countered with the assertion that parasitism is a perfectly natural phenomenon (Mankind is itself a parasite upon the earth) and therefore parasites do indeed have rights - the fetus has as much right inside its mother as does man on mother earth. Both are in their natural habitat. There is also the "Supersession" argument - that the rights of the woman supersede any rights possessed by the fetus: Does not a woman have a primary right to her own life? The right to determine the circumstances of her own body? The "Contractual Obligation" argument: Conception and pregnancy are foreseeable consequences of even careful sex. By willfully causing a fetus to exist, parents implicitly recognize its need for support; it's a package deal. When parents mutually enable their sperm and ova to join, the parents are not enslaved - they have volunteered. And its rebuff, the "Choiceless" argument: If the woman is claimed to have volunteered for a contractual obligation, how is it that the fetus, which is an entity incapable of making choices, can be said to be a participant in that - or any - contract? And there is the "Infanticide" argument - the contention that a live, born child cannot in principle be distinguished from a viable late-term fetus: they both have an unconditional need for material support. Therefore, if abortion is acceptable, so also must be infanticide. (This can be extended to include euthanasia for seriously ill adults and dependent elderly people, as well as all those whose continued existence requires material support provided by other people.) When couples who both carry the mutation for Tay-Sachs disease decide to have children, they typically elect to have prenatal testing. If a fetus has the disease, they usually abort it rather than give birth to a child who would succumb within five years to a horribly slow, painful death. Because it is always so uniformly hideous in its progression, extremely few people believe a child afflicted with Tay-Sachs should be brought into the world. The view of the Religious Right, as expressed by George Bush (LA TIMES, 12/12/88): "Well, it (may) appear to be a double standard to some, but I, that's my position, and it's, we don't have the time to philosophically discuss it here, but... we're going to opt on the side of life, and that is, that is the, that really is the underlying part of this for me. You know, I mentioned, and with, really from the heart, this concept of going across the river to this little church and watching one of our children, adopted kid, be baptized. And that made for me, and it was very emotional for me. It helped me in reaching a very personal view of this question. And I don't know." Also to be considered are the inevitable practical results of anti-abortion laws as under such laws many abortionists become dangerous and disreputable practitioners resorted to by desperate people. As many as 60 million abortions are performed annually, at least 50% of them clandestinely in the 100 or so countries where the procedure is illegal. Unsafe abortions account for between 105 and 168 maternal deaths for every 100K births in the Thirld World countries. This constitutes between 25% and 40% of all maternal mortality. Every year, in six of the Latin American countries where the practice is illegal, about 2.8 million women have abortions and half a million are hospitalized for related complications. A study in Boston and Long Island showed that 66% of women having their first abortions are young, single Catholics opting for abortions rather than sinning repeatedly by using birth control. 70% of those who had a second abortion were Catholic. * Honesty vs Dishonesty There are times when a lie is not only ethically justifiable but is actually morally obligatory. "What?! What?!" I hear you croak. "Is this guy out of his mind?" Well, let me explain. Imagine that you set out to go downtown having in your left pocket $10 and in your right pocket $100. As you are trudging along the street a hoodlum snatches you into an alley, claps his revolver (a Quickfire Arms Corp. Saturday Night Special) up gainst the side of your pretty little head and wheezes softly into your ear: "Allright, Cutie, your money or your life!" So you, trembling in fear and terror, reach into the left pocket and produce the ten-spot. "Arrgh!! He gasps, wafting into your nostril the stench of cheap Sicilian wine, "Izzis alla dough ya got, kid?" I maintain that at this point your answer not only COULD morally be "yes," but that it actually SHOULD be "yes" and that if you answer "no" you are behaving in an immoral, self-destructive fashion. Under ordinary circumstances a lie is an attempt to initiate force against someone - that is, an attempt to separate him (without his consent) from some rightfully achieved value. In the context of my little story, the lie is not an initiation of force. Your money is not the hoodlum's rightfully achieved value, and you have NO ethical obligation toward him. Your only moral obligation is to extricate yourself from the situation in the least self- destructive manner possible. Thus we see that a lie can be a perfectly proper act to protect a value against an injustice; not a desire to gain a value by faking reality, but a fully contextual recognition of the relevant facts of reality. * Link Between the Individual and the Group Richard Adams, in his book WATERSHIP DOWN, made a profoundly important identification of a connection between the individual and the group - the connection that explains why people will do things in a group context that they would never do when acting as individuals: "The current that flows (among creatures who think of themselves primarily as part of a group and only secondarily, if at all, as individuals) to fuse them together and impel them into action without conscious thought or will." This is the psychological phenomenon that accounts for the clearly distinct difference between the behavior of "individual man" and that of "group man." Branden maintains that the fundamental moral "sin" is the failure to choose to think (see THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-ESTEEM, chapter 4). I would draw a parallel to this contention in the field of ethics and maintain that the fundamental ethical "sin" is the failure to choose to judge. I mean specifically failing to make judgments about the ethical propriety of your own behavior, and instead allowing yourself to become merely an instrument of someone else's will. Rand observed that the most contemptible man is the man without a purpose. But the most evil man is the man who allows his purpose to be determined by others. The most widespread (and most devastating in its effects) manifestation of this failure is the claim that "I was only doing my job." This I call the "Nuremberg Defense" as it was the most common defense offered by the Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg trials. Whenever you hear this claim what you are hearing is an attempt to justify ethical viciousness on the grounds that the perpetrator has abandoned his own judgment and accepted the propriety of acting according to the judgment of someone else. The Nuremberg Defense tries to divorce choice from action and thus avoid the assignment of guilt. The man who makes the choice tries to absolve himself from guilt by claiming "but I didn't DO anything," and the man who performs the action tries to absolve himself from guilt by claiming "but I didn't make any choice." When each has thus eliminated guilt from his considerations, both together are capable of a completely unlimited scope of wicked behavior. This "default of judgment" phenomenon lies at the base of all government police agencies and all military organizations. This phenomenon made possible the Holocaust, and without it the Holocaust would not have been possible. Without it, the Hitlers of the world would each have to do his own murders personally, and would not be able to act through a social institution comprised of people trained to accept any judgment - any choice - governing their behavior. Any judgment, that is, except their own. The vast majority of the human race are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from infliciting pain, but in a society where viciousness is institutionalized they don't dare to assert themselves. One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally participates in iniquities which revolt both of them. "In fear of what others might report about you, you stoned the woman although your heart revolted at the act." Hitler: "I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down. This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty." But this process works only with "group man." It does not work at all with the individualist. The individualist is the person who has a higher allegiance to his own conscience than to the rules others set down for him. The individualist thinks and judges independently, valuing nothing higher than the sovereignty of his own intellect. He is not the sort of chaff that makes good fodder for the state. * What is a slave? I can see two fundamental distinguishing characteristics of a slave: 1. He must do whatever his master commands him to do. 2. He cannot do anything without having permission from his master. Keynes described aggregate demand management as "the one kind of compulsion of which the effect is to enlarge liberty." Edmund Burke wrote, "Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed." Rousseau, in The Social Contract: "Men must be forced to be free." If libertarianism were politically possible, there would be no need for the LP. The fact that society is constructed in such a manner that an ethics can be implemented through governmental coercion, precludes the implementation of a rational ethics. Contrary to the "gentlemen" quoted above, you cannot coerce people into freedom. Freedom is the absence of coercion. * Profound Ethical Concerns I have frequently heard people claim that certain issues are fraught with "profound ethical concerns." Issues such as research using fetal tissue, DNA manipulation, organ transplants, etc. Here is one of the rare instances wherein a proponent of such "profound ethical concerns" actually makes a sensible statement of the concerns he imagines: Gene therapy raises profound ethical concerns. For instance: 1. Should therapy be applied simply to improve one's offspring, not only to prevent an inherited disease? [He implies that the elimination of an evil, "an inherited disease," is perhaps acceptable, but the implementation of a positive good, "to improve one's offspring," is of questionable propriety. Why does he object to a good?] 2. Who would be empowered to decide? [Here he clearly implies that someone is to have the authority of "empowerment." Why must such an authority exist? Who, after all, is "empowered" to decide which people shall be permitted to wear shoes?] 3. Is society willing to risk introducing changes into the gene pool that may ultimately prove detrimental to the species? [In fact, Yes. Not only does the willingness exist, but the perpetuation of such detrimental genes is actually legally compelled by implementation of medical techniques that preserve the existence of severely retarded people.] 4. Do we have the right to tamper with human evolution? [Everyone who ever selects his/her spouse on the basis of "He would make a good father" or "She would make a good mother" is "tampering" with human evolution. Why does he object to this selectivity?] Veterinarians are particularly sensitive to the ethical problems of dealing with animals - love of animals, after all, was what brought most of them into the field. Vets point out that their job is not to prolong life but to reduce the suffering of as many animals as possible. Human medicine, they aver, is in many ways more heartless: "We're allowed to give suffering animals euthanasia, but physicians are required by law to keep their patients alive no matter what the cost." Sooner or later man will be going outside the solar system. Sooner or later we will meet types of intelligent life much higher than our own, yet in forms completely alien. And when that time comes, the treatment man receives from his superiors may well depend upon the way he has behaved toward the other creatures of his own world - including himself! * Coerced Compassion Reflect on the vast majority of those who turn to police power to remedy distress. Every one of them will say they act purely because of their concern, their compassion, for those on the lower rung of life's ladder. Can they not trust their own compassion to express itself? Apparently not, for it seems, when they turn to government, they are insisting that they must be forced to do that which they claim they already want to do. An absurdity! People who want to control other people's lives never want to pay for the privilege. What they usually expect is to be paid for the "service" they impose upon their victims. What they never recognize is that the individuals who are forced by government regulation to act against their own interests are the very "public" which is supposed to benefit from the government controls. In any case, if you are going to do good for someone, it really should be THEIR idea of good, not yours. In all cases, it should be the other person who initiates the interaction - by asserting THEIR perception of their own good. Why was it necessary to have laws to FORCE racists to practice racism? After all, the employers, landowners, businessmen, etc., were overwhelmingly from the dominant group and were free to segregate and discriminate on their own. The answer is that the voluntary structure of economic incentives works against this behavior. As long as producers and consumers are free to act spontaneously in the context of a free market, there are economic costs for discriminating against minorities. There are likewise economic incentives to avoid discriminatory practices. * Effect of Social Complexity on Statism Socialism must always fail because any society large enough to be economically and technologically civilized is too large and complex to be contained within the minds of any subgroup. The competence of government began to decline precipitously after the First World War as society's technological complexity began to increase exponentially. It will be the final irony of the statist system that, once headless after a catastrophic collapse, it will be unable to save itself. The centralized control of all aspects of the country will prevent people from asking the questions that must be answered before any organized recovery can begin. * Dual Ideologies The claim that countries that call themselves capitalist are guilty of misdescription reflects the fact that both those in and out of power use dual ideologies - those that actually guide their actions and those that are used as instruments of deception in waging social conflict. The theory of a political system is almost always its surface ideology, and it may be a deeply, if not necessarily intentionally, deceptive facade. People almost automatically assume that the goal of a political system is to advance the welfare of at least a majority of the population. But this is because some such goal is almost universally propounded in surface ideologies, and, being credulous, they allow themselves to be taken in by the surface ideology and never perceive the real motives that actually guide the behavior of the state. Much of the government's "crime-prevention" behavior can be explained by the idea that the State has forbidden to the individual the practice of wrong doing, not because it desires to abolish wrongdoing, but because the State desires to monopolize it. * Hallmark of a Conservative The hallmark of a conservative is the phrase "too much." If you press him until you can get him to identify the core of his social philosophy, you will find that it is founded on a statement containing some variation of the phrase "too much." He is not fundamentally opposed to slavery, just "too much" slavery. He is not fundamentally opposed to government interference in private lives, just "an excessive amount" of interference. He is not fundamentally opposed to tyranny, just a level of tyranny that is "far beyond" what he judges acceptable. An excellent example of this is the following quote from FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton and Rose Friedman (page 61): "Some restrictions on our freedom are necessary to avoid other, still worse, restrictions. However, we have gone far beyond that point." But the distinction between an acceptable level of restriction and an unacceptable level is an arbitrary one, because such a distinction is based on a similarity in quantity rather than a difference in quality. The "point" the Friedmans refer to is an undefinable position. A second characteristic by which a conservative can be recognized is his reliance on religion. Almost all conservatives have religious belief as a major foundation stone of all aspects of their philosophy. A third characteristic by which a conservative can be recognized is that politically, he is an "anti-". If you ask him what his political philosophy is based on, he will usually reply that he is an anti-communist. This is what makes conservatives attractive to philosophically superficial capitalists. Such capitalists (who are themselves opposed to communism) see no deeper than the "anti-communist" label presented by the conservative and conclude that the conservative is their philosophical ally. To be allies, it is not necessary to have a noble aim in commmon. It is necessary only to have a common enemy. If your ally defines himself only as an "anti-" you can use him without fear that he will corrupt your purpose. You have a big advantage: he knows only what he DOESN'T want. You know what you DO want. But the flaw in applying this idea lies in the philosophical superficiality of the capitalists. They do not probe beneath the surface label of the conservative and observe that fundamentally what he is FOR is the imposition of some form of coercive social institution. The conservative thinks he can make some compromise between freedom and slavery, but his belief that there is a happy middle somewhere in between is wrong. That is not how compromise works. * Compromise A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. But this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a basis for the adjustment. It is only in regard to concretes or particulars implementing a mutually accepted basic principle that compromise can occur. A compromise is a negotiated adjustment of the quantity of some phenomenon, thus the process cannot be applied between two disparate phenomena. There cannot be a compromise between a phenomenon and its negation. For example, between theft and non-theft. If I want to steal $10 from you and I respond to your protest by suggesting that we "compromise" and I will steal only $5 - this is no compromise! It is relinquishment, by you, of your principle of non-theft - and acceptance, again by you, of my principle of theft. Once you have accepted the principle of theft, then we can indeed compromise - on how much theft you will be subjected to. Ben Franklin wrote in 1766 that "if Parliament has the right to take from us one penny in the pound, where is the line drawn that bounds that right, and what shall hinder their calling whenever they please for the other 19 shillings and eleven pence?" * Libertarian Foreign Policy Robert Ringer: "I am in favor of complete freedom of trade between companies and people throughout the world, but not under the umbrella of political partnerships between governments." Thus a proper libertarian policy toward trade relations (a foreign policy, as expressed by a free society) should be: We will trade with individual people or with private companies, but we will not engage in any exchange which is subject to the control of a government. __ Chapter 8 GOVERNMENT * Government defined * Descriptions of Government * Corruption in Government * The Real Function of Government * What Government Responds to * Political Intentions are Irrelevant * Failures and Contradictions of Government * Government Murders During the 20th Century * The War On Drugs * Self-Defense * Government defined A critique of the Randian view: Rand defined government as "an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area. A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control." Peikoff tries to justify this definition by claiming that in a free society the government is prohibited by a Constitution from initiating force. Barbara Branden makes perhaps the best presentation of the Randite view of government. She claims that government is "a social agency that performs the task of formulating and enforcing the laws of a country. The concept does not entail that a function of that political body will be the initiation of force. But because it is true that a factual function of government IS the initiation of some extent of force, people fail to grasp the possibility of an alternative to that factual function. They fail to separate the concrete from the abstraction. They have failed to differentiate some particular instances of government from the abstraction as such." I have several objections to these notions: If, as Rand claims, the institution has exclusive power, how can it be prevented from aggressing (since there could be no restraining power to stand against it)? The initiation of force cannot at all be prevented except by bringing to bear against it a greater force. But if government holds exclusive power, then there cannot exist any greater force, and thus government cannot be kept from using its force coercively. What does "objective control" mean in fact? As used by Rand, the concepts of "exclusive" and "objective control" preclude one another. Peikoff's commentary is merely the elementary mistake of confounding the notion of "prohibit" with the notion of "prevent." It is quite obvious that to forbid something is by no means to prevent that thing, and the idea that a document can, in itself, pose a restraint on the behavior of an organization of men possessed with weapons of destruction, is simply absurd. The only thing that can counter the power of a gun is another gun. A written constitution won't stop a policeman's bullet, no matter how vigorously you wave it, nor how vociferously you assert its provisions. As Mao Tse Tung taught, "All government power grows out of the barrel of a gun." The abstraction that Barbara Branden comments on is not an abstraction from perceivable concretes - there is not now and never has been a government that did not aggress against its subjects. It is not "some particular instances of government" that manifest this attribute, it is ALL instances of government that do so. The aggression is a universal and FUNDAMENTAL characteristic of ALL governments. It is universal both by historical observation and because every government, to be territorially exclusive, must compel every person within its domain to acquiesce in its sovereignty. It is fundamental because that acquiescence underlies all the other functions of government. Aggression must therefore be a definitive characteristic in forming the abstraction "government." It is not epistemologically proper to hypothesize a non-existent concrete (a government without aggression) and subsume it within an abstraction. To do so is not to create a valid concept but a fiction, and this is what the Randites have done with their concept of government. The word "government" has an easily discernable meaning which can be seen by anyone who looks deeply enough into the factual nature of its fundamental distinguishing characteristics. To think about, and talk sensibly about, a phenomenon which does NOT share those fundamental distinguishing characteristics, we should select a verbal label different from the one that is already applied to the phenomenon which DOES possess them. Thus it is improper to use the word "government" in the way the Randites use it. Nock made a distinction between the State and Government: "Government is an agency with strictly limited powers, devoted to protecting individual rights to life, liberty and property. The State, on the other hand, is an offshoot of government that develops when some people capture the machinery of government and pervert it, using its powers not to protect rights, but to violate them, to exploit people by confiscating their wealth, regulating their activities, and subjugating them whenever necessary to enhance its own illicit power." This distinction is spurious. "Government," as Nock describes it, is something that has never existed. The State is not an offshoot of government - something that develops from the corruption of government - the State is in fact the only one of the two institutions that has existed in history. Except for some private agencies, limited in scope and subsumed by the State, there has in fact never been what Nock calls a Government. A conceptual distinction can be made between the coercive institution I have described above as "government" and the more general notion of "the means by which order is maintained in a society" (the means may not necessarily be a government). Some people would use "state" to denote the first and "government" to denote the second, but this would be ambiguous in view of the widespread equivalence between the words "state" and "government," so I will use "state" and "government" synonymously, and use "governance" to denote the idea of a means by which order is maintained in a society. Coercive power is that which defines government and makes government different from any other social institution. All other differences between states and other institutions flow from this fundamental characteristic. Thus the proper definition of government is "the strongest gang of aggressors in a particular area at a particular time." * Descriptions of Government Gandhi: "The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence, to which it owes its very existence." Mencken: "The typical lawmaker of today is a man devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology, or cannibalism." Lane: "The nation is nothing at all but simple force. Not in a single nation are the people of one race, one history, one culture, nor the same political opinion or religious faith. They are simply human beings of all kinds, penned inside frontiers which mean nothing whatever but military force." The essential characteristic of States, quasi-States (e.g., the PLO) and proto-States (e.g., the IRA) is that they initiate force to implement their policies. Viewing the State all through history, we can see no way to differentiate the activities of its administrators from those of a professional criminal class. Thus there are no ethical differences between a hoodlum protection racket and a State, save scale, sophistication, and success in conning the victims into acceptance. * Corruption in Government When I attribute some purpose to government, I do not mean to imply that individual people who are members of government explicitly hold that purpose as their personal objective. This is quite frequently NOT the case at all! What I am attempting to do is explain the consequences of government in terms of institutionalized behavior whose implementation results in those consequences. Just as no one really INTENDS to kill himself when he begins to be an alcoholic, nevertheless his behavior has that as its consequence. The only choice a man has is what actions he will take. He has no choice about the consequences. They are rigidly determined by the law of cause-and-effect. By the Law of Identity. Being merely human, a percentage of bureaucrats can be expected to be corrupt, thus as the number of bureaucrats increases there will be more corruption. By the same token, increased legislated criminalization means that more property rights are controlled by government, thus there is greater scope for corruption. The more severe are the legal constraints on private markets, the more valuable become the rights controlled by government, thus the reward for corruption increases. Police corruption occurs in those areas where entrepreneurs would supply voluntary services to consumers, but where the government has decreed that these services are illegal: narcotics, prostitution, gambling, etc. Where gambling, for example, is outlawed, the law places into the hands of the police the power to sell the privilege of engaging in the gambling business. In short, it is as if the police were empowered to issue special licenses for these activities, and then proceeded to sell these unofficial licenses at whatever price the traffic will bear. Whether consciously or not, the government proceeds as follows: first it outlaws certain businesses, then the police sell to would-be entrepreneurs the privilege of engaging in those businesses. Given the unfortunate and unjust laws, corruption may be highly beneficial to society. Society may be better off if corruption induces police to ignore many of the victimless crimes, thus leaving police resources available to prevent violent crimes. Ignoring many laws, such as housing codes and oil import restrictions, would improve social welfare. In a number of countries, there would be virtually no trade or industry at all in the absence of the corruption that nullifies government prohibitions. How sane is the moral foundation of an institution that requires the corruption of its members to achieve desirable ends? * The Real Function of Government Have you ever wondered just what the government is REALLY doing while it is claiming to "serve and protect"? In 1971, the FBI office in Media, Pa. (a suburb of Philadelphia) was raided and a large quantity of documents seized. This raid was considered so important by the FBI that it closed about half its offices throughout the country, concentrating its resources in the remainder so as to provide for greater secrecy in its operations. An analysis of the seized documents was subsequently published in the Los Angeles Free Press, 24Dec71: 40% surveillance of political groups 30% internal procedural matters 15% "ordinary" crime 7% military AWOLs and deserters 7% draft resistors 1% organized crime Governments all behave in fundamentally the same manner, regardless of what they say their politics are. Perhaps they might be more accurately perceived as big machines that do what they are programmed to do rather than as bunches of people. A culture develops within government that is completely dominated by the advocates of government action. From constituents to lobbyists to journalists, the congressman very rarely, or never, comes in contact with anyone who advocates government inaction. Every employee at every level of every government department is affected and all those expensive people think they have to DO SOMETHING to justify their salaries, and every action is another interference with freedom, keeping people from doing what they want to do or making them do things they don't want to do. A bureaucrat dreads being accused of doing nothing, so he will continually proliferate rules. One result is that the American court system is drowning in the avalanche of legal pollution that could appropriately be called hyperleges. If we view crimes as being behaviors that conflict with the interests of the segments of society that have the power to shape government law, then we realize that the government merely tries to balance the demands of conflicting interest groups, and to discriminate among them on the basis of their relative political power in order to determine who gains and who loses. Another primary function of government is to act as a mechanism to take wealth from some and transfer it to others. Governments protect individuals' property against the depredations of others as a shepherd protects his sheep from shearing by others. But against their own government, individuals have to protect their accumulated wealth as best they can themselves. Those who claim that government, bad though it may be, is an absolute necessity for protecting people against crime, must explain the fact that for every 1000 crimes the American police are aware of, only one criminal is ever sentenced to prison. Nor does government protect people against foreign aggression - on the contrary, it coerces the people (by means of what is euphemistically called "selective service") into protecting and preserving the government's own existence. * What Government Responds to For many years I had a vague, non-specific realization that government in America is somehow fundamentally different from most all other governments. But I could not specify precisely what that difference is founded on. I believed there to be a much stronger connection between government and the public here in America than in other countries, but I could not identify the nature of that connection. Then, when the passage of Proposition 13 in California in 1978 (by a margin of 2 to 1 at the polls) touched off a nationwide run of similar legislation in other states, I saw just how it is that the government is responsive to "the people." I now believe that elected officials base (sometimes, but not always, explicitly) their behavior on WHAT THEY PERCEIVE TO BE THE WILL OF THE MAJORITY OF THE VOTERS. In this statement I use three terms very carefully and deliberately: perception, will, and majority (not the majority of the whole population, but the majority of the voters). Most political behavior is not based on the will of the majority, but is based on what the politician PERCEIVES as being the will of the majority. (This explains the influence of lobbyists and other pressure groups.) Of course, this does not account for ALL political behavior - a lot of it is straightforwardly venal, and much is intended simply to increase the power of government. But in almost all situations where the issue under consideration is the subject of considerable publicity, the politician will do what he THINKS the MAJORITY of the voters WANT him to do. I believe there are no limits to this. None whatsoever. As Mencken observed, they would, if they thought it politically expedient, legislate infanticide just as readily as they voted in Prohibition and the War on Drugs. This thesis leads to an answer to the question: "Why don't politicians understand principles?" If my argument is correct, then it is an immediate conclusion that politicians CANNOT have principles (except the one that I have attributed to them). Any man who insists on shaping his behavior by reference to ethical or moral principles, rather than electoral pragmatism, would probably not get elected. If his insistence on principle were to be adamant while he was in office, he would surely not get re-elected. Thus I see a selection process in action - a process which ensures that politicians will not be the sort of people who understand and act on principles. The notion that politicians refer to "accepted religious principles" has considerable merit too. If the politician cannot see, clearly and explicitly, the will of the majority, he will act by default, as it were. He will consult whatever set of "principles" he holds implicitly, usually some set of religious ethics or, lacking that, a collection of cliches and platitudes. * Political Intentions are Irrelevant The State makes promises to its citizens that it cannot even try to fulfill without employing means that frustrate their own ends. As the gap widens between promise and fulfillment, perceptively honest people in the political system tend to dissociate themselves from the process, leaving it to those who are unscrupulous enough to accept and practice fraud. As the State extends its power, increasingly callous practices are required of increasingly callous people. The worst get on top, and try to stay there. Politicians have to be wicked: the requirements of office are such that no benevolent mind could meet them. Once a man has chosen to become part of the state, it is the nature of the institution that controls the ways in which he will function, regardless of his intentions. A pernicious system is not made less so by its adherents intending that it do good. For example, police training systematically presents the idea that it is right to force others to obey orders. Thus individuals who become police are subjected to changes in themselves which, like the movement of the hands on a clock, may be difficult to see at any particular moment, but which are nonetheless inexorable. A man or woman of only moderately authoritarian tendencies at the time of first entering the police force soon begins to accelerate down the path to savagery. Perhaps the first time he witnesses fellow officers beating up a suspect, the new recruit is astonished and horrified. But he says nothing because so many officers with greater experience and authority accept the violence. The next time, the new recruit looks the other way and feels terribly upset. By the third time, he merely thinks: "Oh no, not this cruelty again." By the twentieth or the thirtieth time, the no-longer-rookie cop is accustomed to seeing such injustice, and after many years on the force, such a man or woman thinks nothing of performing such acts. But nowhere along the line could the cop see himself turning into a bully. No matter how well-meaning the individual policeman may be, the parameters of the institution in which he functions compel upon him this alternative: to accept the conditions of the institution or to withdraw from participation. Part of "accept the conditions of the institution," whether it is a police institution or a military institution, is the requirement that the participant renounce his own moral autonomy, abandon his own sense of ethical judgment and allow himself to become merely the instrument of the judgments of his superiors. Once he has done this there are no limits to the wickedness he is capable of. "When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of public duties they lead their country by a short route to chaos."... Sir Thomas More. And after he has done it for a sufficient length of time, he will become so immersed in the life that no other alternative will be conceiveable to him. "When National Socialism has ruled long enough, it will no longer be possible to conceive of a form of life different from ours."... Adolph Hitler Many men have no honor, but at least it is possible for a man to have honor. It is not possible for a government to have honor, simply because no one within it can keep his honor while continuing to condone and participate in the dishonorable behavior that is an inevitable concomitant of government. Government consists of two types of workers: those who are paid for what they do, and those who provide their participation free of charge. Both groups work for the state. Every individual who begins working within the political system in an effort to accomplish anything enlarges the system by his own presence, whether or not he is a salaried employee. This is always true even when the intent of the activist is the reduction of government. Success in the free market rewards the virtues of thrift, hard work, and far-sighted entrepreneurship. Success in politics, on the other hand, rewards the ethical vices of demagogy, mendacity, and expertise in the wielding of terror and coercion. Hence, the good people - from any rational point of view - will tend to rise to the top in the free society, while ethical scum will tend to rise to the top of a statist system. The politician's job consists in sacrificing some men to others. Thus, no matter what choice he makes, it cannot be just. Proceeding from an unjust basis, he can have no rational standards by which to judge. The idea that the Libertarian Party can effect any changes in the performance of government is based on an incorrect assumption: the assumption that there can be honest, sane and benevolent people among members of the government. Even if a man desires very strongly to accomplish some good and beneficial end, he cannot do it through means which are fundamentally evil and, by acting via these evil means, he makes himself immoral REGARDLESS OF HIS INTENTIONS. It is as impossible for an honest and just man to participate in government as for an athiest to become an archbishop. Or a priest to become an abortionist. In each case, the alternatives differ in terms of fundamental principles so opposed that there is no possibility of overlap. Throughout the history of government, there has been one thing only that has tied government behavior to the facts of reality: the necessities of military action. When you are making guns and bombs, you HAVE to know what reality is. Without this compelling link to reality, all government behavior would be totally insane. Even with it, most government behavior is irrational at best - madness otherwise. * Failures and Contradictions of Government There are many who claim that without government there would exist much more suffering and distress. In response to this manifestation of the "WouldChuck" fallacy I can only say that I am honest enough to admit that I do not know how much suffering and distress there would be without government. All I can do is point out some of the more blatant examples of how much suffering and distress there are WITH government, and observe that under the plausible pretext of protecting person and property, governments have spread wholesale misery, destruction, and death all over the earth where peace and security might otherwise have prevailed. They have shed more blood, committed more crimes, tortures, and murders in struggles with each other and with their subjects than society would or could have suffered in the absence of all governments whatever. Here I want to present just a few examples of how government fails in practice. If you read the newspapers and newsmagazines regularly, you will quickly see that these examples are merely tiny drops in the huge bucket of government's incompetence and viciousness. In every session of all the legislatures of America, programs to solve the nation's debt, create jobs, and remedy social problems are launched with great fanfare and wonderful speeches. But then, when no one is looking, the politicians go back to their offices and the promises are forgotten. Although the scenarios that triggered the programs are frequently discredited, the bureaucracy permanently retains all the power it accumulated through the legislation that created the programs. With such great fanfare and wonderful speeches, the Humphrey-Hawkins "full employment" bill was enacted in 1978 (when the unemployment rate was 6.1%). It set a national goal of reducing unemployment to 4% by 1983. In 1983 the unemployment rate was 9.6%. Because those in favor of a government subsidy have much at stake, their lobbying efforts will be intensive and well financed. To the individual taxpayer, however, the impact will be at most a few dollars a year. Accordingly, opposition is usually muted and dispersed. In concert with the lobbyist is the politician. Being human, he seeks a measure of personal importance, prestige and influence. Thus his interests are not served by minimizing the role of the state, but by maximizing the role of the institution of which he is a part. He will have a natural inclination to insist that increased regulation is the appropriate remedy for any social problem. And so, year by year and decade by decade, the bureaucracy grows larger and larger, welfare handouts multiply in number and the tax burden builds higher and higher. Totalitarians eventually gain the advantage, and it is merely a matter of time before freedom is extinguished. Even when the people become aware that the government is hideously bloated, they have little incentive to curtail it. On the one hand, people don't have the foggiest understanding of "spontaneous order," i.e., that problems can be solved by unplanned processes that are not the result of any controlling authority's specific intentions or conscious designs. (The economic process by means of which everyone is provided with shoes is an example of such a "spontaneous order" phenomenon.) On the other hand, people don't understand that many of the social problems they face are the result of past government actions, and that the only real solution for them is an indirect one, to wit: to repeal earlier programs and let individuals take care of things themselves. The imposition of restraints on Japanese automobile exports to the USA during the 1980s shifted the composition of those exports away from small cars and towards large cars, as the Japanese attempted to increase their revenues without increasing the number of units they sold. Yet large cars are relatively fuel inefficient. Thus the protective efforts of the US government had the unforeseen consequences of increasing the average amount fuel used and pollution produced by imported cars. The Savings and Loan industry is going down the tubes, US Banks are failing in record numbers, the FDIC is running out of money, loans are hard to come by even for the most creditworthy borrowers, and the economy merely creeps along despite remarkably low interest rates. Welcome to the latest banking crisis - in this era of central banking which was supposed to prevent such things. During more naive days, nearly everyone imagined that private banks were inherently unstable and that financial crises could be averted only through the good graces of wise regulators. Recent events make it quite clear that government intervention itself is a key source of instability. The Federal Reserve governors base their hunches about inflationary pressures - and the actions required to stifle them - on selected economic indicators, but the indicators they monitor reflect the fact that inflation is a sequential process: it shows up first in wholesale prices, then in retail prices, then in wages. So by the time wages begin rising, it is too late for the Fed's actions to affect the primary cause of the phenomenon they are trying to deal with. The Minimum Wage: The first thing that happens when a law is passed that no one shall be paid less than $3 for an hour's work is that no one who cannot produce the equivalent of $3 an hour for his employer can be employed at all. You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive the employee of the right to earn the amount that his abilities would permit him to earn, while the employer is deprived even of the moderate services that the employee is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage the government substitutes unemployment. The December, 1991, issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN contains an excellent example of the precept that government is grossly inefficient at best, and counterproductive at worst. An essay on "Homelessness in America" touts government as the only effective means of coping with the problem, and presents as an ideal remedy "a joint effort started in 1989 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and HUD. Under the Homeless Families Program, nine cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore and Denver, will receive a projected $600,000 grant each over five years to implement services for homeless families. The program also makes available 1,200 Section 8 certificates, public housing assistance funds, worth about $35 million over five years.... To date, the initiative has helped more than 100 homeless families move from emergency shelters to permanent housing." What you see here is the government providing 100 dwellings, but when you look slightly deeper you observe that in so doing, the government expropriated enough wealth to have provided 160 houses. How so? Well, consider that during the two-year period "to date," this project spent over 16 megabucks to provide those 100 homes. (That comes to $160K per dwelling.) But this occurred at a time during which the average cost of a new house in America was less than $100K. The 16 Megabucks, if spent by private builders, would have provided 160 dwellings. The more the government spends on housing, the fewer houses there will be in relation to the number that could have existed without government intervention. Robert Heinlein once remarked: "Ten-dollar hamburgers? Brother, we are headed for the hundred-dollar hamburger; for the barter-only hamburger. But this is only an inconvenience rather than a disaster as long as there is plenty of hamburger." So far there is still plenty of housing and hamburger in America (at least in comparison with countries where housing and food production are strictly socialized and completely controlled by government). But as government intervention in the economy becomes more and more pervasive, the economy will become less and less able to provide these (and other) necessities of life. And the fewer houses produced, the more people will clamor for the government to "do something about the problem of homelessness!" And every time it does something, there will be still fewer houses produced, simply because government is not the solution - government is the problem. (For a more thorough account of the effects of government on the housing market read THE FEDERAL BULLDOZER by Martin Anderson.) As the problems created by partial controls multiply, there is a logical extension of partial controls to universal controls and it is here that the full and horrible price of abandoning free market principles is made explicit. Productive capacity and the incentive to work decline continually; and therefore the government is eventually led to seize control over all production and distribution. That same issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN contains an article on America's Wetlands. In its attempt to preserve these ecological areas, the federal government has implemented several programs, including the 1972 Clean Water Act and the 1985 Swampbuster program. In spite of these schemes, some 300K acres of wetlands are lost every year, and the Department of the Interior estimates that less than half of America's original wetlands still exist. The government's latest effort, the l991 Wetlands Guidelines, was used to evaluate 22 of Washington State's recognized wetlands. To the surprise of the scientists, only four of the 22 wetlands would still be so classified under the new rules. Many experts say the document is filled with inconsistencies and loopholes that could lead to the loss of designation for half of the nation's remaining wetlands. There are also several other bills pending in Congress that would alter the definition and relative value of wetlands. Each agency involved in wetlands management - the Army Corps of Engineers, the Fish and Wildlife Sevice, the Soil Conservation Service and the Environmental Protection Agency - use different guidelines to define a wetland. Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan, when asked to define 'wetlands' responded: "I take the position that there are certain kinds of vegetation that are common in wetlands, pussy willows or whatever the name is. That's one way you can tell, and then if it's wet." Here we see a situation worse even than the housing debacle described above. At least in the area of houses, there are SOME dwellings constructed as a result of the government's policies, even though the government's behavior in this area is grossly inefficient. But in its dealing with wetlands, the government is actually counterproductive. The more it passes laws and creates agencies, the more the wetlands vanish. The argument that the functions of government law are the assignment of property rights and the protection of those rights is spurious. Government governs by means of mediating wealth transfers, imposing behavior controls, and protecting (and expanding) its institutions. The police cannot prevent crimes, rarely solve crimes - or even find out about them - and certainly do very little to rehabilitate criminals. The only thing they are good for is to go up against armed lunatics, so other folks might not have to; and they won't always do that. Worse yet, once they have the training they naturally want to use it, and they see one of the safest ways of doing so in the enforcement of victimless crime laws. As of 1990, the San Francisco police will no longer investigate burglaries where the value of goods stolen is under $10K. Nor will they investigate bad- check cases if the amount is under $2K. In 1988 they investigated only 26% of all violent crimes reported - but they spent 73 million dollars waging the drug war. According to the Statistical Abstract of the USA, the per capita loss to crime each year is $5760. But this pales in comparison to the $20470 that you could put into your pocket each year if government were abolished. You can calculate this amount by summing up the total revenues of all federal, state, and local governments, then dividing that sum by the number of non-government working people. The figures above are for the year 1990. * GOVERNMENT MURDERS DURING THE 20th CENTURY: In Millions (thru 1985) War 35.7 (battle deaths: WW1 9 WW2 15) Non-war 150.5 Total 186.2 = 5% of earth's population during that period. This averages out to be one murder every 15 seconds. Communist governments: 126.2 Fascist governments: 23.4 Democratic governments: .9 This distinction among government types, although certainly useful for deciding where you should choose to live, is seen to be somewhat spurious when you consider that the Italian massacre of the Libyans must be attributed to Fascism - but the French massacre of the Algerians must be attributed to Democracy. I really doubt that it made any difference to the dead Arabs who considered themselves neither Libyan nor Algerian, fascist nor democratic. Communists don't scare me; communist governments scare me, but the frightful thing is the government, not the communist. The Hutterite sect of Christianity, whose beliefs consist of pure and absolute communism, has existed for over 400 years, and during that time there has never been a murder by one of its members. Keep in mind that this little expose' of government murders includes only those people who were directly murdered by governments. It does not take into account the tens of millions who died in the deliberately-caused famines in the Soviet Union (8 million during the 1920's) and China (30 million during the 1950's). Nor does it count those poor unfortunates repatriated by the Allied nations in Operation Keelhaul. Nor does it encompass all the damage and suffering caused by enslavement, property seizure and income theft that are perpetrated on a regular basis by ALL governments. As Ayn Rand was fond of saying: the enormous population growth of the capitalist societies during the 19th century should of itself induce any life- loving person to embrace capitalism. Well, the perpetration of 186 million murders should of itself induce any life-loving person to reject government. During a recent one-year period (1986), these were the murder rates for police in various American cities: (the government does not call these "murders," but they are killings by the police, in the line of duty, of innocent civilians who are not suspected of any crime. No prosecutions ensue from these incidents.) Dallas .924 per 100K of the population (9) Los Angeles .743 (22) Denver .700 (4) Houston .462 (8) NYC .185 (14) The numbers in () are the actual number of people murdered that year. Dallas and LA have the two highest rates of all cities in the country. I do not know how the other listed cities rank, and these are the only data I have. The census bureau classifies the USA urban population as being 167M, or 74% of the total. Urban is considered to be communities of 50K or more. I assume that most of the murders occur in urban areas and so I use the 167M as a population base for these two extrapolations: 1. Using the lowest murder rate available (.185) there would be just over 300 murders per year nationwide. 2. Using the average of all the murder rates (.603) there would be just over 1000 murders per year nationwide. It is probably safe to assume that at least one poor citizen is being murdered by the police every day somewhere in the country. Contrast this with the rate at which police are being murdered: just over 100 per year. These statistics ARE kept by the FBI - and widely publicized. In fact there is a national day of mourning observed for murdered police - it is in May each year. You might ask "Who are these poor people?" (Keep in mind that police do not accidently kill people; when a policeman takes out his gun and shoots it, he is TRYING to kill somebody. When a civilian performs the same action, it IS considered by the government to be an act of murder.) They range from a 5- year-old boy in Stanton CA to a 70-year-old woman in Dallas. They include an entire family of 11 people (including 5 children) who were DELIBERATELY burned to death in Philadelphia by the city police department, who held off the fire department until the fire had done its grisly work. This happened in May of 1985. After a two-year investigation, the city government announced that "no laws had been broken" by anyone involved. And mayor Goode boasted (yes, it was actually a boast!) that "the city government is more powerful now than it was then." During the decade of the 60s the Philadelphia city police murdered its citizens at the average rate of one per week (2.5 per 100K on an annual basis). This caused such a scandal that it provoked an investigation by the Federal Justice Department and the city cleaned up its act a little bit even though there were no indictments. And if deliberately (and legally) burning children to death does not convince you of the viciousness of government, what would? If you are a decent and benevolent person, you ought to believe in something different from what has killed so many people, and espouse an ethics that human beings could actually live by, and work for it to become real. In June of 1984, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that prosecutors need not honor plea-bargain agreements. The court maintained that as long as a plea-bargain agreement is "voluntarily accepted by a suspect with full awareness of the consequences," prosecutors are not bound to abide by it. It seems that the more open and forthright the government is, the less obliged it is to be honest! Ask yourself what products and services are currently least satisfactory and have shown the least improvement over time. Postal service, elementary and secondary schooling (one of the government's greatest failures is the public school system), police protection, sewage disposal, and railroad passenger transport would surely be high on the list. Ask yourself which products are most satisfactory and have improved the most. Household appliances, TV and radio sets, computers, supermarkets and shopping centers would surely come high on that list. The shoddy products are all produced by government or government-regulated industries. The outstanding products are all produced by private enterprise with little or no government involvement. Yet the public has been persuaded that private enterprise produces shoddy products, that we need ever more government employees to keep business from foisting off unsafe products at outrageous prices on us poor ignorant and vulnerable customers. What the government refers to as "Fair Trade" consists largely of the government devising new ways to protect consumers against the scourge of low prices and high quality. The rise of statism has seen a general economic thrust away from far- sightedness and the building of capital and toward destructive looting of the stock of capital for short-term profit. The increasing scope of law-making, and its associated transfers of property rights from private individuals to government, undermines the private property arrangements that support a free market system. This process creates considerable uncertainty about the future value of those private rights that have not yet been seized by government. When resource owners are relatively uncertain about their continued ownership of those resources, they tend to use them up relatively rapidly and have less incentive to enhance future production capabilities. Thus resources will be overused and underproduced. Even for statist-minded businessmen, the inevitable erosion of confidence in the future that results from the government's continual policy reversals, irresolution in the face of electoral whims, and stifling bureaucracy, makes long-term business planning impossible. Regulation of economic activity is often justified and upheld by the courts on the fictitious grounds that a laissez-faire economy inevitably leads to "excesses" and "abuses," necessitating regulation which amounts to prior restraint upon private freedom of action; yet similar attempts at prior restraint of government action is routinely struck down, even as judges cite the resulting excesses and abuses as a small price to pay for freedom. * The War On Drugs In view of the furor over "crime" in America, it is rather enlightening to peruse some of the actual measurements of this "crime." These data come from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1992 edition, pages 180 thru 195. They clearly show the results of the Republican (Reagan/Bush) regime's emphasis on fighting drug use. Total number of criminal offenses known to the police: 1980 13.4million 1990 14.4million a rise of 7% Drug arrest rates (per 100K population) 1980 256 1985 346 1989 527 a rise of 106% Tried in U.S. District Courts: Marijuana 1980 2thousand 1990 5thousand a rise of 150% Other drugs 1980 3thousand 1990 13thousand a rise of 333% Sentenced to prison in U.S. District Courts: 1980 Total 14thousand Drugs 4thousand 1990 Total 28thousand Drugs 14thousand a rise of 100% a rise of 250% Observe that half the sentences nowadays are for drug crimes and that the number of drug sentences today equals the total number of sentences for ALL crimes in 1980. For every 1000 non-drug arrests made by the police, three criminals get sentenced to prison. For every 1000 drug arrests, 16 are sent to prison. An examination of the breakdown of the "Total number of criminal offenses" reveals that many categories of violent crime changed little during the 1980s. In fact, the increase in the total population of America has resulted in a per capita DECLINE in several of these rates: Total of offenses known: -2.2% Murder: -7.8% Total property crime: -4.9% Burglary: -26.6% An analysis of these numbers reveals clearly that there is indeed a "crime wave" sweeping America. But it is not murderers and burglars who are responsible - it is people puffing the wrong kind of cigarettes who are overloading the nation's prisons. The FedGov's response - putting more police onto the streets and pouring more money into the coffers of local law- enforcement agencies - is counterproductive: it can only exacerbate the situation because it will lead to a more vigorous and thorough enforcement of the Drug Laws. Some measures of the insanity of the Drug War: The morphine required for a $100 fix in a dirty alley could be purchased from the local drugstore for just $1, if not for the anti-drug laws. In 1973, John Hospers calculated that two-thirds of the violent crime in New York City would quite simply and quietly disappear overnight if all the drug laws were repealed, since that is the proportion of the crime that is caused by addicts who need the money for a fix. Half the prisoners in the Texas state prison system are there for violation of drug laws, NOT for violent crimes! How peculiar that the government does not blame the obesity of fat persons on the people who sell them food, but it does blame the drug habits of addicts on the people who sell them drugs. If two men had walked down Fifth Avenue in March 1933, and one of them had a pint of whiskey in his pocket and the other had a hundred dollars in gold coins, the one with the whiskey would have been considered a criminal and the one with the gold an honest citizen. If these two men, like Rip Van Winkle, slept for a year and then walked back up Fifth Avenue, the man with the whiskey would have been considered an honest citizen and the one with the gold coins a criminal. On the positive side, it is clear that government itself would benefit from a change in policy: reclassifying marijuana possession from a felony to a misdemeanor reduced the felony caseload of the Los Angeles police by 25%. You might think that sooner or later the government would realize the insane idiocy of its policy on drugs. But keep this in mind: although Prohibition lasted only 12 years, the Drug War has continued for over two generations with no sign of abating. Remember also that the Nazis did not abandon their persecution of the Jews, even when the manpower involved was critically needed to defend the gates of Berlin itself. Thus there is no reason to surmise the government will cease its insanity short of out-and-out social collapse. Nor do I see hope in attempts to elicit public discussion of the issue. Discussion is futile when directed not toward general principles but merely toward the specific phenomena which are consequences of those principles. This precept becomes eminently clear during debates about legalizing drugs. They invariably degenerate from very brief and superficial mention of the underlying principles into lengthy disputes over the specific means that would be used for distributing the drugs if they were to be legalized. There are other, less widely-known, aspects of the government's drug policy that have severely detrimental effects on American society: The FDA doesn't want anybody to be killed by medicines (that would look bad for the FDA's record) but they don't care how many people die of diseases resulting from the government's prevention of the development and sale of medicines. Put yourself in the position of an FDA official charged with approving or disapproving a new drug. You can make two very different mistakes: 1. Approve a drug that turns out to be dangerous. 2. Refuse approval of a drug that would have been beneficial. If you make the first mistake you will become infamous. If you make the second mistake, nobody will ever know it. Thus, with the best will in the world, you will inevitably delay or reject any and every new drug. You will compel the drug companies to Shrug. An examination of the therapeutic significance of drugs that are forbidden in the US but are available elsewhere in the world, such as in France, reveals this in action. The psychiatric profession is also deeply affected: To therapists, the addict needs help to solve a problem, the problem being that he uses a drug of which they disapprove. But to the addicts, the only problem is how to get the drugs they want. They don't see themselves as "sick," and they don't want "treatment." Authorities who are intervening to control their behavior react as tyrants always do - whether they be central planners trying to make their citizens conform to some national plan, or foreign policy planners trying to control people in other countries - by getting angry with the people who don't appreciate the intervention of "experts" into their lives. The victimizers, in short, blame the victims. And this IS a problem. The principle role of medical, and especially psychiatric, professionals in the administration and enforcment of chemical statism is to act as double agents - helping politicians to impose their will on the people by defining self-medication as a disease, and helping the people to bear their privations by supplying them with drugs. This is a major national tragedy whose very existence has so far remained unrecognized, and whose consequences may be devastating. Consider that the tranquilizer Valium is the most widely-prescribed drug in the USA. Its sale is a multi-billion dollar business. Suppose something happened that resulted in the cessation of its distribution (and also that of other similar drugs). What would be the effect on all those stressed people whose mental stability depends on such drugs? Kurt Saxon maintains that this might well be the most devastating result of a collapse of our economy. All those neurotics might go crazy and destroy everything in their environment. It is laws which create much of social context - the Prohibition laws created the "Alcohol War" context. Today's Drug laws create today's "Heroin War" context. Unjust laws are creating a deeply divided and corrupt society, where the appearance of orthodoxy is everything, and intelligence, humanity and common sense count for almost nothing. If a man long afficted by a toxic chemical suffers sudden convulsions and then dies from them, one might validly say that the convulsions were the immediate cause of the death, so long as one remembers the ultimate cause. The same is true of a country addicted to a toxic ideology. Throughout history, rulers have picked on various scapegoats to divert attention from the results of their policies, including Jews, Christians, eccentrics and now drug users. If drugs were really so terrible why were they completely legal between 1776 and 1914 - without serious social problems? It is not the drug that is the problem, but the ideology of government. Edmund Burke observed that "it is ordered in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." Nor can men of infantile minds and childish habits be free. Their state-induced passions forge their fetters. * Self-Defense Compare the appalling behavior of government with the plausible alternative of self-defense: The number of times private handguns are successfully used for self-defense each year: 645K. Women use guns about 416 times per day to defend themselves against rapists. 99% of the times when a private citizen uses a gun to prevent a rape, robbery or burglary, no one is shot. The percentage of people, shot by police, who are innocent of a crime: 11%. The percentage of people, shot by private citizens, who are innocent of a crime: 2%. In Florida, an increasing number of people are carrying handguns - and the homicide rate is falling. A gun kept at home is 216 times more likely to be used for defense against a criminal than to cause the death of an innocent member of the household. Each year, more criminals are lawfully shot by private citizens than are shot by police. Fewer than 2% of gun owners ever kill someone unlawfully. A society where peaceful citizens are armed is far more likely to be one where Good Samaritans will flourish. But take away people's guns, and the public - disastrously for the victims - will tend to leave the matter to the police. In a recent survey, no less that 81% of the Samaritans polled were owners of guns. If we wish to encourage a society where citizens come to the aid of neighbors in distress, we must not strip them of the actual power to do something about crime. Surely it is the height of absurdity to disarm the peaceful public and then, as is quite common, to denounce them for apathy. Even worse are the insidious consequences of the denial, by law, of individual self-responsibility and self-authority. In a society where the individual is forbidden to act freely on his own authority within his own personal sphere of influence, a sense of apathy is the inevitable result. Both a local apathy, regarding his interpersonal relationships, and a more generalized apathy, regarding his community. People who are prevented from solving their own problems will not solve the problems of their cities, either. There are always the types who insist on running the show but who wouldn't lift a finger to carry the garbage. Freedom means, in part, that we'll all have to learn to take out our own garbage, since in a free society no one will have the means to compel others to do it for him. Freedom makes demands on people. That's why government is so highly considered - it makes "the other fellow" do the work. One reason government in America is being pressured to create a socialized medical system is that such a system lets the government take care of another worry. An anarchist looks after him or herself. Too many people in this world can't and won't. They will look for a savior, a dictator or a committee to do the work, and will cheerfully make any sacrifice in order to be saved and cared for. But the government answer has not worked; it will not work; it can not work. Unfortunately, the workable solutions are not permitted by government. Under government there are winners and there are losers. Unlike the free market, for every beneficiary of government action there is a victim. The values of the winners are imposed upon the losers, and the losers are powerless to reject them. But in a free market, majorities and minorities can both win, because a free market is not a zero-sum institution. In a market it is possible for numerous large and powerful economic interests to coexist and prosper in the same economic territory. If you believe that government should do this or that, enacting laws against drugs, pornography, homosexuality, etc., keep in mind that government acts through coercion or threat of coercion. If you want the government to tax other people for your pet project, you are in effect holding a sword over those people and forcing them to pay for the imposition of your ideas. You don't wield the sword, but the government agent wields it on your behalf. Remember too, that it is a double-edged sword: if the government can initiate aggression against others in order to achieve your goals, it can also initiate aggression against you to promote someone else's goals. Any scheme to loot "the other fellow" can work only if there are enough productive people around for each to be somebody else's "other fellow." Governments cause pain, misery and suffering by passing laws, and then point to that same pain, misery and suffering (which were caused by the laws) as the reason the laws are necessary - and even why the laws should be more strongly enforced! Nowhere is this spurious chain of "cause and effect" more devastatingly manifest than in the War on Drugs. The real cause of immigration and drug-war horror stories is the enforcement of anti-immigration and anti- drug laws, not the people forced into dangerous and degrading circumstances by those laws. (When was the last time you read about armed thugs doing battle over the distribution of Aspirin or Valium?) Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure. You can see the disastrous symptoms of this disease in the faces of the people. In their eyes you can see the flame of hope slowly dying, drowned by the harsh reality of survival in modern America as the nation sinks into the swamp of fascist tyranny. __ Chapter 9 BEYOND GOVERNMENT * Limited Government * Jury * Government is a Mistake * Arguments Against Anarchism * A Covenant for a Union of Sovereign Americans * Limited Government Everyone wants less government. But in most cases, all they want is to get rid of the part that they don't like. Would it be possible to place universal restrictions on a government so as to make it a truly limited government? In view of the fundamental characteristics of the institution, such restrictions are clearly impossible. A "limited government" would not, in fact, BE a government, but would instead be the equivalent of a private police force. Regardless of what it is called, any organization with the potential of implementing force MUST be structured in a way that provides protection for those who are subject to its power. Unfortunately, the Founding Fathers did not include in the Constitution a provision that would have made it a criminal offense for the government to interfere with the lawful behavior of a free citizen. That would have made a tremendous difference in the structure of our society. The revolt against England should not have gone so far as to reject many eminently sensible provisions of the British scheme of government. Such as the Coroner's Jury, by which police behavior is subject to citizens' evaluation. In the final scene of ATLAS SHRUGGED, Rand makes this proposal for an amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade." An extension of this might provide a more sweeping limitation: "Government shall have no authority whatsoever over the freedom of production, transportation, communication, and trade." Another broad restriction could be patterned on the Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain activities which are forbidden to government, shall not be construed to permit the government any activity not specifically designated by the Constitution. Government shall have ONLY the authority which this Constitution specifically grants to it. Any attempt to exceed this specified authority shall be construed as criminal behavior." Here are two other suggestions that might have good effect: Government shall pass no law that has not arisen directly from the populace via a ballot-initiative process. It is forbidden for government to possess information about any specifiable individual person who is not a convicted criminal or a government employee. In an attempt to protect people against criminals, it is necessary to enact laws which specify a punishment for criminal behavior. If a constitution is to provide for genuine protection of the people against government oppression, then surely that constitution should contain penalties for its own violation. Thus there should be a provision that would make it a criminal offense for anyone in government to violate the constitution. And, corresponding to this, a provision that would penalize the government for making any laws that violate the rights of the citizens, e.g., victimless-crime laws, or for in any way exceeding the authority granted to it by the constitution. Immediately the question arises: How could such violations be judged? * Jury Libertarians argue that the only proper functions of government are to provide Police, Courts and Military. Admittedly, these are indeed necessary social functions, but there is another function equally, if not more, important to a civilized society. This function is the protection of individual citizens against government oppression. This is a function that CANNOT be performed by government! There must be an independent procedure for judging government behavior and for adjudicating disputes between citizens and government - something other than the presently-existing court procedures. After all, the courts are themselves a part of the government, and when a citizen is mistreated by the government he has no redress except to take his case to the government itself. But as John Locke observed, "Any man so unjust as to do his neighbor an injury will scarce be so just as to condemn himself for it." The "balance of power" in our Constitution sets each branch of government to be a counterforce against each of the other branches of government. What this "balance of power" does NOT do is provide a check on the power the government has over the freedom of the individual citizens. I suggest that there should be an institution to provide such a check, and I see the jury as a likely basis for such an institution. I would set the jury up as an entity as separate from government as possible, and designed to act as an independent judge of government. The principle of Jury Nullification should be incorporated into the structure of the jury, and that principle should be extended to include these attributes: Any conflict between an individual and the government, or any charge of misconduct against the government, shall be resolved by jury. Juries shall be selected by lot (and ONLY by lot) from a panel of volunteers, none of whom shall be a member of government, a registered voter, or a lawyer. All jury members shall receive a copy of the constitution (which shall itself contain a detailed description of the function of a jury) and a copy of the law which authorized the government's behavior in the conflict under consideration. Although the government (in the person of the Judge or the Prosecutor) shall be permitted to advise the jury, the jury shall in no way be obliged to follow that advice. (It might be a good idea also to abolish most of the functions of a judge, a position which has grown to be more that of a dictator than a mediator. Perhaps the function of Jury Foreman should be extended to encompass any necessary judgeship functions. Such an arrangement appears to work quite well in the operation of the Supreme Court, which might itself be considered as a 9-member jury.) Nullification of a law shall repeal the law - permanently. Nullification shall also immediately and permanently remove from office all those legislators who sponsored the law, render ineligible for re-election all those legislators who voted for the law, and subject to criminal prosecution all armed members of government who implemented the law. To enforce these provisions, there shall be established a force of Jury Marshals (financed by some means completely independent of government control - perhaps by fines imposed by juries on government agencies) whose jurisdiction shall extend only to members of government. Control over the Jury Marshals shall be exercised only by a jury. In a more anarchist arrangement, the jury shall appoint a Marshall and he shall select a posse from a panel of armed volunteers. This group shall carry out the verdict of the jury, and the posse shall be dissolved immediately afterwards. America is drowning in an avalanche of legal pollution that could appropriately be called hyperleges. But hyperleges is inevitable under the present legal system: it is the natural function of a congress to pass laws, just as it is the natural function of a mosquito to suck blood. We have legislatures at the federal, state and local levels whose only function is to pass laws, thus the inevitable result of 200 years of legislative function MUST be a plethora of laws. After two centuries, what could you expect but that the American court system would be drowning in laws? This is a situation that can only get worse as time passes and congresses keep performing their natural function. These laws are the structure of the culture of our society. It is universally observed that this culture is deteriorating - that there is more crime and less personal safety than there used to be in this country. But have the people themselves changed all that much? Are you yourself any less civilized than your grandparents were? I really don't think individual people have changed; what HAS changed is the social context in which we live. We have thousands, if not millions, more laws than our grandparents had. But we are people, just as our grandparents were. The difference is not in the people, but in the rules which limit our individual choices and govern our social interactions. What does this mean in reference to my proposed Covenant? Shall we have an institution to create, amend and interpret the Articles of Implementation that I suggest? And thus open the door to eventual hyperleges? To ask a more general question - Why do we need all these laws that the congresses have laid upon us during the past 200 years? Why, exactly, do we need an institution that continually creates laws? Why should we need Articles of Implementation at all? What I see a need for are guidelines for applying the principles contained in the Covenant. I don't see a need for anything other than this. Suppose we had no legislatures, no congresses, no senates, no councils - in short, no gangs of goons continually passing laws supposedly "for the good of the people." Suppose the implementation of the Covenant were to arise spontaneously from the people themselves. Thus: The verdict of the jury shall be delivered in writing, and shall include the principled rationale for that verdict. The collected verdicts of all the juries will constitute the "body of law" of the community and selected verdicts will provide guidelines for applying the principles of the Covenant, just as today we consult selected Supreme Court cases for legal guidance. But notice that there is nothing binding in this corpus. Each individual jury can decide each individual case solely according to its interpretation of the Covenant. Through such an extention of the function of the Jury, we would truly have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." * Government is a Mistake Clearly, the suggestions I offer are not a comprehensive formula for the establishment of a limited government, but I do think they contain the major elements that any such formula must incorporate. But should limited government be the libertarian goal? I think not! ANY government, no matter how it is constructed, is by its fundamental nature an evil institution - because the essence of the concept "government" is coercion. I believe the very idea "government" is a mistake. In the same category (but with much more devastating consequences) as "flat earth" and the "geocentric cosmology." There was once a time when men believed the earth to be flat. As long as they held to this belief, they could not successfully navigate over long distances. Only when they had abandoned this belief could they advance and extend civilization over all the planet. There was once a time when men believed the earth to be the center of the universe. As long as they held to this belief, they were restricted to a very limited and inaccurate view of reality. Only when they had abandoned this belief could they acquire a comprehensive knowledge of the cosmos. Today, men believe that civilization is impossible without government, and they give their highest loyalty to their nation. This mistaken belief has spread misery, famine, and the wholesale destruction of war all over the earth. Someday in the future, when people stop lying to themselves about the nature of government, they will achieve the greatness of soul to see a higher loyalty: reality. They will then recognize the mistake and government will be abandoned, just as other mistakes have been abandoned. The scourge of nationalism will recede into history, like other diseases that have been conquered by advancing knowledge. Only then will it be possible for men to live together in peace and security. But the mere removal of government, although a necessary prerequisite for the existence of social sanity, will not suffice to bring it about. A positive is not merely the absence of a negative. We can see evidence of this in Yugoslavia and the regions of ethnic strife in the former Soviet Union. Just as in the application of any other moral or ethical principle, it is necessary to LEARN how to implement social health. I hope to make a small step toward preparing for that future by suggesting an alternative to government, an alternative which would in fact perform the valuable social function that government merely claims to perform. I will present the fundamental principle which is accepted by all libertarians, show that even in a purely anarchic society there would be a need for an explicitly stated code of behavior, and present an approach to the problems of formulating such a code. * Arguments Against Anarchism James A. Kuffel: Jurisprudence is difficult and complex, and it is farfetched to assume "competing governments" would deduce exactly the same "laws" in all areas, not to say in one. Imagine the consequences of various "governments" attempting to apply different "laws" within the same territory....Equality before THE law would be impossible, that is, justice would be impossible. Government may function improperly, taking invasive action on a large scale. But, as a corollary, it is the only form of organized force which can ensure the protection of rights on a large scale. [Kuffel is attacking a straw man. It is not only "farfetched" to assume different governments would promulgate the same laws, it is obviously false - as you can easily see by observing the governments throughout the world today. One need not "imagine" the consequences of various governments' attempts to apply different laws - one need only observe the plethora of civil wars continually being waged. To equate Justice with "equality before the law" is absurd. Justice and Law are only accidentally (and rarely) related. Government not only "may" function improperly - it always does! And in fact it has NEVER ensured the protection of rights on a large scale. But in any case, the argument Kuffel attributes to anarchists is NOT what anarchists propose! We conceive proper laws as being enunciations of principles of justice, not as being - as Kuffel implies - the arbitrary pronouncements of a government.] Don Ernsberger: While driving home from work one day, my wife was sideswiped by a motorist who was in a hurry to return home. After taking her car to the garage for an estimate, she notified the insurance company (Nationwide) that it would cost some $112 to repair the minor damages. It was then that we realized to our horror that the other driver was insured by Allstate insurance - a rival firm. Demanding that our rights be protected, we pleaded for action. Nationwide dispatched a squadron of crack troops to the home of the guilty driver. He, true to form, certainly did not permit rival agents to enter his home as he distrusted Nationwide. He was able to hold the Nationwide units at bay for the several hours that it took for Allstate troops to arrive. Now the two rival firms faced each other across a battleline. In the conflict which followed, seven were killed and twelve wounded - but Nationwide carried the day. Out of the charred ruins of his home the $112 was recovered and we were repayed. [When did you ever hear of Pinkerton facing off in a gun-battle with Wackenhut? But in 1861 two rival GOVERNMENTS faced each other across a battleline, and the result was 680 thousand deaths.] Ron Heiner: Each party may attempt to secure the services of whatever court would favor his point of view and, consequently, there would be the emergence of courts seeking clients some of whom hold different, antagonistic beliefs and viewpoints (there might even emerge courts soliciting individuals with certain religious, political, and moral views along with courts emphasizing different principles in tort, liability, and contract disputes). The conflicting parties could also look for protection agencies which would enforce their views and opinions. Now if one argues that the protection agencies would force the disputants to abide by the agreements with and the decisions of the private courts, then one is no longer describing a system of voluntary interaction but rather a system of coercive interaction comprised of agencies with the power to defy the wishes of their clients (or coerce individuals who are not clients who have for some reason antagonized other individuals who hired these agencies). [This is an excellent description of the inter-relationships of federal, state and local courts, each with its own sheriffs and marshals.] John Hospers: As for the courts, it seems to me that they would be inclined to render the most popular verdicts - that is, those that would gain the arbitration agency the most paid members - and the most popular decisions aren't necessarily the most just ones. [As for the elected judges, it seems to me that they would be inclined to render the most popular verdicts - that is, those that would gain the judge the most votes - and the most popular decisions aren't necessarily the most just ones. (See the movie "Miracle on 34th Street" for an excellent fictional portrayal of this phenomenon )] Arguments against competing defense agencies overlook the fact that there is a de facto state of competing governments presently existing in the USA. Every area of the country suffers under the burden of at least three governments, and in some places four: Federal, State, County, and City. It was the competition between the state and federal governments that resulted in the Civil War. Has there ever been an instance of Pinkerton, Wells Fargo, and Wackenhut engaging in armed conflict? Such arguments manifest the fallacy of Reification of the Existent. * A Covenant for a Union of Sovereign Americans From CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE by H. D. Thoreau: I heartily accept the motto, - "That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, - "That government is best which governs not at all;" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. All libertarians, whether they are of the Anarchist persuasion or of the Minarchist view of social organization, hold to the same basic ethical principle - the libertarian ethic of non-aggression: John Hospers: "Libertarianism...is a philosophy of personal liberty - the liberty of each person to live according to his own choices, provided that he does not attempt to coerce others and thus prevent them from living according to their choices." Ayn Rand: "Both parties hold as their moral absolute that neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason is their only means of trade." Robert LeFevre: "I will contend that each individual may rightfully do as he pleases with his own person and his own property without asking permission from anyone, and so long as he confines his actions to his own person or property he cannot be morally challenged. What may he do morally with the person or property belonging to another? Absolutely nothing." Karl Hess: "Libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit; that all man's social actions should be voluntary; and that respect for every other man's similar and equal ownership of life, and by extension, the property and fruits of that life, is the ethical basis of a humane and open society." Many Anarchists believe that no explicitly codified statement of the libertarian principle is necessary, and that no formal system of social organization is desirable to ensure its implementation. The Minarchists believe that an explicit statement is very much necessary (in the form of a constitution) and that society would be impossible without the existence of a formally-structured social organization possessed of the monopolistic power and authority to enforce the basic ethical principle. I disagree somewhat with both positions. I do believe that an explicit and formally accepted statement of the basic ethical principle is very much necessary. Anarchists err in considering Rights, Justice, and other ethical concepts to be market phenomena. They are NOT market phenomena, they are facts of reality, and as such their correct identification is NOT arbitrary. Robert Bidinotto pointed out precisely the mistake underlying the anarchist position: "anarchists sincerely believe that they are merely advocating 'COMPETITION' IN THE PROTECTION OF RIGHTS. In fact, what their position would necessitate is 'COMPETITION' IN DEFINING WHAT 'RIGHTS' ARE." I am swayed also by Rand's contention that an explicitly held conceptualization is infinitely more reliable, useful, and enduring than one that is held in a merely implicit manner. Implicit knowledge is not a substitute for explicit knowledge. Values which you cannot identify, but merely sense implicitly, are not in your control. You cannot tell what they depend on or require, what course of action is needed to gain and/or keep them. And by the arguments of many other libertarian scholars as well: Rose Wilder Lane: "I think there is a natural necessity for a civil law, a code, explicitly stated, written and known; an impersonal thing, existing outside all men, as a point of reference to which any man can refer and appeal. Not any form of control, for each individual controls himself; but a law, acting as a nonhuman third party in relationships between living persons; an impersonal witness to contracts, a registrar of promises and deeds of ownership and transfers of ownership of property; a not-living standard existing in visible form, by which man's acts can be judged and to which men's minds can cling." Ayn Rand: "Even a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government." Robert James Bidinotto: "In any society, human life and well-being mandate that there be a set of objective procedures to distinguish aggression from self-defense, and some way of imposing the final verdicts upon the victimizers on behalf of the victims." Joel Myklebust: "'The market will handle it' amounts to little more than a disguised form of majority rule. That the identification of justice is not a market function seems clear from the fact that, given a demand, the market will supply murder, theft, and arson, in addition to protection. It will not determine right and wrong, it only reacts to supply and demand. Any attempt to deal with complex problems of right without recourse to basic ethical principles is hopeless." Murray Rothbard: "In my view, the entire libertarian system includes: not only the abolition of the State, BUT ALSO the general adoption of a libertarian law code." John Hospers: "They (private protection agencies) should be able to enforce only THE LAW OF THE LAND... - a body of law already enacted, and known in advance, so that one would forsee the consequences of any violation. In other words, laws should...be ENACTED by the state, even though the ENFORCEMENT of them might be left to private agencies." Brick Pillow: "I agree with you that people should solve their own problems....But at some point, if there isn't a peaceful procedure to settle the dispute, it will be settled without being peaceful, and quite possibly the violent solution will not be a just solution. What I envision is that...when the antagonist refuses to yield, decent folks will need an authority that they can turn to....Of course, this presents the next level of perplexing problem: What prevents our pristine Justice League of America from exceeding its mandate, from becoming as evil as the government it replaces?" Nicholas Raeder: "It makes no difference whether the consumers desire automobiles, frozen foods, heroin, murder or censorship; if allowed to do so, the market will provide them. The market is not a slave to the good of the individual, and it does not dispense justice. The market follows desire. It will act rationally in fulfilling desires, but it is the desires of the consumers that it follows.... Neither human nature, rights, justice nor rationality are market phenomena. The actions of the market, as well as the actions of every individual within the association, must be in adherence to a certain standard of conduct in order to make justice and the exercise and protection of human rights possible." These are indeed powerful arguments for the establishment of some code of basic principles, existing in visible form, codified and publicly known. But how can such a code be made acceptable to a conscientious individualist? A man who finds repugnant ANY externally-imposed social organization? Surely a reasonable man would consent to an individually-chosen contractual arrangement of such a nature that a libertarian anarchist would have the OPTION of ignoring it completely, whilst de facto still living within its jurisdiction. It would have to assert no influence over, nor contact with, his life at all - so long as his behavior was non-aggressive. The problem is one of providing a social organization that can effectively combat aggression and ensure the rights of the people, but that will not itself be able to encroach upon non-aggressive citizens. What we must strive for is an arrangement wherein the necessary power (to combat aggression) is so balanced against other, independently existing, power (to prevent encroachment) that the probability of its misuse becomes as small as it can be got. Can this be done by means of a government? Either a constitutionally "limited" government, or several government-like, competing defense agencies? I think not. When I examine the idea of government and contemplate the nature of governments as they have existed and do exist in the world, I see their fundamental distinguishing characteristic to be "the strongest group of aggressors in a given area at a given time." Herein lie my objections to both the Minarchist proposal for a government limited by a constitution, and the Anarchist proposal for competing defense agencies. In fact, there is no limit to the power of a gun except another gun. A constitution cannot limit the power of an armed group that chooses to ignore it. A "limited" government would in fact be limited only if its members chose to adhere to the constitution - and as we Americans have seen very well, this is no real limit at all. LeFevre observed that "experience over the past ten thousand years reveals clearly that governments are never limited." I think it inevitable that any "limited" government would eventually become a tyranny. I am strongly opposed to any social organization that has a monopolistic power to compel - no matter what formal documentary restraints may be placed on such an organization. There is a good deal more promise in the Anarchist scheme, but it too is open to such a degeneration if one (or a consortium) of the defense agencies should become "the strongest group." There is a fundamental structural flaw in the American Constitution: the principles upon which the government of the United States was based, as well as the plan for the construction and operation of the government were contained in the same document. To allow for the possibility of future improvements there was a provision placed in the document allowing it to be amended. This provision left the basic principles upon which the government was founded also open to alteration. Obviously the PURPOSE of governance should not be changeable, but on the other hand, the MEANS used to fulfil this purpose must be changeable so as to take advantage of new, more efficient technology and to correct errors. To permanently fix the purpose of governance, it is necessary to state the purpose in a binding form that cannot be altered or eliminated short of revolution. Once this binding form is enacted, and the purpose of governance thereby fixed, one can turn to constructing an agency to carry out this purpose. But these two things, Purpose and Agency, should be explicitly recognized as two separate phenomena. Thus governance should have two foundation stones, rather than one: a fixed and immutable statement of purpose - and an amendable implementation of that purpose. I believe the best, and safest, arrangement would be a modification and linking of BOTH the Anarchist and Minarchist ideas into a scheme that would place that ultimate power DIRECTLY into the hands of the individual members of society. I believe, with Jefferson, that there is "no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves." I am NOT, however, an advocate of majority rule. I do not mean "a majority of voters," I mean each and every citizen. It is claimed that a constitution limits a government. What is it that gives a constitution its power? Nothing but the behavior of the people who have chosen to abide by its specifications. A statement of authority, according to which a country is governed (such as our Constitution), is only as valid - as faithfully enforced - as the fidelity of those individuals who implement it. Thus the Constitution of the USA is implemented only to the extent of the honesty, competence and reliability of those who have taken the oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." The foundation of our government, in its actual implementation, lies in the behavior of those individuals who have taken this oath. They possess the power (the guns) to assert governmental control, and they (should) refer to the Constitution as a guide in the exercise of that power. The ultimate democracy would be one in which all adult citizens have taken such an oath, in just the same way in which physicians take the Hippocratic Oath. I envision a confirmation ceremony such as the Bar Mitzvah, passed through by each person as he (or she) becomes a fully-adult participating citizen of the society. A ceremony in which an oath of fidelity would be taken, NOT to an institution or to a document, but to a set of clear and explicitly stated ethical principles. An oath expressed in the form of a contract between the individual and the community in which he lives; a formal social statement that would specify a libertarian restraint on individual behavior; a statement making explicit the principle of non-aggression as the foundation of social organization and interconnecting the individual to the organizational structure of society in such a manner as to commit him to support, uphold and manifest this ethical principle in his social relationships. An oath that would make the individual consciously aware of his responsibility to ensure the perpetuation of a free society. This oath would be a Covenant formally establishing the principled basis of relationships among individuals, rather than a Constitution setting up a potentially dangerous coercive institution. It would establish a society based, not on command and coercion, but on consent and contract. I envision the Covenant as the "statement of purpose." It would state ethical principles, but not deal with the specific implementation of those principles. The Covenant would be an absolute, not open to amendment, but the accompanying Articles of Implementation would be amendable so as to accomodate technological and social changes in the culture. Thus there might be several institutions (defense agencies among them) established for the implementation of the principles, but each agency, as an organized institution, would be bound by the Articles of Implementation. And each agent, as an individual citizen, would be bound by the principles of the Covenant. The next step in this line of endeavor is, of course, to formulate such a covenant. Here there are two basic problems. One is to conceive the structure of a libertarian society and embody its principles in a specific statement - the other is to establish a transition procedure that would carry us from the presently existing state of affairs into that libertarian society. A procedure should be established whereby the new society can grow from a small kernel. My suggestion is to establish an association similar to something like the Black Muslims or the Quakers. This would be an inward- directed society that withdraws as much as possible from participation in the coercive world and in which each member lives as much as possible in accordance with the ethical principles of the Covenant. I propose the name "Union of Sovereign Americans" as a label for this association. I envision the long-term goals of The Union of Sovereign Americans as being the perpetuation of the libertarian ethic, being the seed of a new society, (either to replace the present one if it should collapse, or perhaps growing through time to the extent that it would extinct the present one) and being a social group in which people of good will could find companionship. To begin the Union of Sovereign Americans there must exist a Covenant and some guidelines (Articles of Implementation) on how to live one's personal life in accord with the principles of the Covenant. "THE GALLATIN DIVERGENCE" by L. Neil Smith (Ballantine book #30383) contains a covenant, (fictionally proposed by Albert Gallatin at the time of the Whiskey Rebellion and resulting in a complete alteration of the course of history). This covenant has been extracted from the book and widely circulated with a provision for registry of all signatories. It has been signed by dozens, if not hundreds, of people. But I observe something of critical importance regarding this covenant: in Smith's fictional account, the signing of the covenant always resulted in a profound change in the life of the signatory, because the people in Smith's story actually lived their lives according to their professed principles. However, in the real world of the present time, I am not aware that the behavior of any person has been changed in any way as a result of having signed this covenant. The signatories simply continue their previous lives - working to support government (and in some cases working FOR government) - with no causal connection between their stated principles and their daily behavior. This is not the fault of Smith's covenant, and I am not criticizing that covenant. I criticize the lack of integrity in the lives of modern-day people. This same lack of integrity is seen in Randites (who explicitly disapprove of Shrugging), and in many of those who take the non-aggression oath of the Libertarian Party: "I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals." These people grumble about the condition of the society they live in, but few of them choose to take the only effective path open to them for societal change: the transformation of their own lives. So what can be said of any kind of covenant or oath that requires no more of a signatory than a mere verbal assertion? The world is filled with hypocrites! Is a man who works as a drug law enforcer really an advocate IN PRACTICE of personal freedom and moral self-responsibility? (Could a priest be a practicing abortionist?) Not hardly. Such a one would not be a suitable member of The Union of Sovereign Americans. One must not only assert fidelity, but also practice fidelity. One must establish a lifestyle suitable to the set of ideas he professes. My point is that no oath of allegience to any principle or vow of adherence to any set of ideas would preclude people for whom there is no connection between principle and practice (This is why the American Constitution has been betrayed over the course of two centuries). I believe that to be successful the Union of Sovereign Americans must involve a whole way of life - not just an oath. It must involve the learning of a set of ideas and the practiced application of those ideas in one's life. It must include not just an embracing of the libertarian ethic, but a resolve to combat - or at least withdraw support from - the coercive aspects of the society we live in. My own belief is that a good place to begin would be with the act of Shrugging that Rand proposed. This would be a way to separate those who merely pay lip service to freedom while continuing to support the status quo, from those who are really serious in their intention to devote their lives to the practice of freedom. This statement of principles might be a good starting place for the formulation of the Covenant: Each individual is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others. Each has the right to use and dispose of his own life and his own property as he sees fit. The only real crimes are those activities which violate men's rights: activities which initiate the use of force against other people. The only proper use of force is in response to the prior use of force. I will never initiate the use of force or fraudulent dishonesty. I will never tolerate the initiation of force by other people. I will in every way possible to me assist other people to prevent the initiation of force and to defend the inalienable right of each individual to resist coercion. I will recognize no obligation to be binding among individuals except those to which each participant has voluntarily and explicitly consented. I will recognize no group which claims to possesses rights in excess of those belonging to its individual members. Any association acting to contravene these principles shall have forfeited its right to exist. I will consider such persons and associations as unworthy of my friendship. I will have no dealings with them, and upon all occasions treat them with the contempt they deserve. I request that my fellow citizens join me in ostracizing those who participate in or otherwise support coercive associations. It has been almost 30 years since I shrugged in 1965, and after all those years of watching the Libertarian Party and the various new country/enclave projects, I am convinced that there is no seed population within the present culture of America that can give rise to the scheme I envision. The process of cultural value-deprivation has gone on too far for there to be any significant number of people willing to drastically alter their lifestyles to accomodate "mere philosophical principle." Thus, I do not know what to propose as a practical implementation of the ideas I have presented. I don't see any real use for them, but have written them up and will circulate them in the hope that they will be preserved for some future generation wherein they might have some functional significance. Allen Thornton: "Libertarians have one thing going for them that others lack: they are in tune with reality. Human beings are all that really count and libertarians know that. A man and his wife drinking coffee at the kitchen table, an old woman warming herself by the fire, a child playing in the mud: these are the only reasons governments should exist. All the giant industries and superhighways, all the wonderful technology and fabulous medical knowledge, everything that seems to stand so loftily above us is only there to serve these people and their desires. One of these days, people are going to understand what is real and what is illusion and that is the day when anarchy will triumph." Men, women, of every nation, every race and condition: how much longer are you going to let yourselves be used? When are you going to tell your rulers, "Enough!" and claim the right to live your own lives? __ Chapter 10 RELIGION * Christianity vs Objectivism * Christianity vs the Lightning Rod * Christianity vs Women and Sex * Interview with God * Robert Ingersoll on Religion * Religious Roots of Evil * Attila and the Witch Doctor * Basic Principles of Objectivism - Nathaniel Branden - from Lecture #4 * The Case of God vs the Case of Reality * God as Big Daddy * Religion and Insanity * Christianity vs Objectivism I wonder if you realize just how profoundly antagonistic are Christianity and Objectivism. I will make a brief comparison to exemplify this. In morality, Christianity holds that one of the major sins is Pride (remember that that was a main cause of the expulsion of Lucifer). On the contrary, Objectivism holds Pride as one of its cardinal virtues (PSE, chapter 12). In ethics, Christianity regards self-sacrifice as a primary virtue. Objectivism holds self-sacrifice to be an abomination and self-interest to be a primary virtue (VOS, chapter 1). From Augustine's "Confessions": After denouncing all the pleasures of the body, he continues with a comment on the mind: "To this is added another form of temptation, more manifoldly dangerous. For besides the concupiscience of the flesh which consists in the delight of all senses and pleasures, the soul has, through the same senses of the body, a certain vain and curious desire, veiled under the title of knowledge and learning, the seat whereof being in the appetite of knowledge, and sight being the sense chiefly used for attaining knowledge, it is in divine language called 'The lust of the eyes.'" Contrast this with part of the description of John Galt: "The first thing she grasped about him was the intense perceptiveness of his eyes - he looked as if his faculty of sight were his best-loved tool and its exercise were a limitless, joyous adventure, as if his eyes imparted a superlative value to himself and to the world - to himself for his ability to see, to the world for being a place so eagerly worth seeing. It seemed to her for a moment that she was in the presence of a being who was pure consciousness." (AS Part 3, chapter 1) Faith is the acceptance of an idea as true in the absence of reason or in defiance of objective reason to the contrary. It is not the acceptance of an idea on the basis of incorrect reasons, it is the belief that reasons are unnecessary. In defense of assertions not defensible in reason, Tertullian writes: "It is believable because it is absurd. It is certain because it is impossible." He is joined by Augustine who writes: "One must first BELIEVE, that one may then know." Faith is the willful abdication of one's consciousness, and it is THIS act that Objectivism holds to be the most fundamental sin that a man can commit.(PSE chapter 12) There is no common ground between Christianity and Objectivism. They are diametrically opposed to one another. * Christianity vs the Lightning Rod Of all the fatal manifestations of nature, the one which is most clearly an overwhelming attack of a divine being against man is the lightning bolt. And yet, if the lightning stroke were obviously the wrathful weapon of a supernatural being, there are some difficult-to-explain consequences. As it happens, high objects are more frequently struck by lightning than are low objects. As it also happens, the highest man-made object in the small European town of early modern times was the steeple of the village church. It followed, embarrassingly enough, that the most frequent target of the lightning bolt, then, was the church itself. Over a 33-year period in 18th-century Germany, no less than 400 church towers were damaged by lightning. What's more, since church bells were often rung during thunderstorms in an attempt to avert the wrath of the Lord, the bell ringers were in unusual danger and in that same period, 120 of them were killed. You will recall, in this context, the famous kite-flying experiment in which Ben Franklin demonstrated that lightning is nothing more than a big dose of electricity. Franklin had noted that an electrical discharge takes place more readily and quietly through a fine point than through a blunt projection. If a needle were attached to a Leyden jar, the charge leaked quietly through the needle point so readily that the jar could never be charged. Well, then - If a sharp metal rod were placed at the top of a structure and if it were properly grounded, any electric charge accumulating on the structure during a thunderstorm would be quietly discharged and the chances of its building up to the catastrophic loosing of a lightning bolt would be greatly diminished. Franklin advanced the notion of this "lightning rod" in the 1753 edition of POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC. The notion was so simple, the principle so clear, the investment in time and material so small, the nature of the possible relief so great, that lightning rods began to rise immediately over buildings throughout the world. And it worked! Where the lightning rods rose, the lightning stroke ceased. For the first time in the history of mankind, one of the scourges of the Universe had been beaten, not by magic and spells and prayer, but by science, by an understanding of the laws of nature and by intelligent cooperation with them. There was an embarrassed reluctance about putting up lightning rods on churches. It seemed to betray a lack of confidence in God. But it soon became all too noticeable to all men that the town church, unprotected by lightning rods, was hit, while the town brothel, if protected by lightning rods, was not. Every lightning rod on a church is evidence of the victory of science and of the surrender of religion - and no one can be so blind as not to see that evidence. Even though they may choose to be so blind as to deny it. * Christianity vs Women and Sex Under Christianity, women lost all legal status and all right to property (rights they had firmly held in the preceeding Roman society). All this was justified by the Christians on the grounds that Eve had been the cause of Adam's downfall. Some attitudes toward sex, as expressed by several of the founders of institutionalized Christianity: Saint Paul: "It is good for man not to touch a woman. But if they do not have self-control let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn." Saint John: "Among all savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman." Tertullian describes woman as "a temple built over a sewer." Clement of Alexandria: "It is disgraceful to love another man's wife at all - or one's own too much. He who too ardently loves his own wife is an adulterer." The Compendia of Catholic Moral Theology devotes 44 pages to a description of all possible forms of sin. 32 of these pages are devoted specifically to sexual sin. Of all the ways you can sin, 73 percent of them are sexual. Make no mistake about it, the Christian religion has a profound and passionate hatred of sex. * Interview with God When I found God, He was sitting in a remote corner of another universe, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the Grand Design. "I am moving to another universe," He said, "because too many Christians have moved into this neighborhood." Asked about his actions, God said: "Return good for good. Return evil with justice." Asked if he was angry, God said: "Wouldn't you be if something you made didn't work? I made man to think, to use his reason, his thought, his logic, to be free, to be just, to create beauty, to love truth, to achieve, to be joyous." "My eagles soar, don't they? My fish swim don't they? I made man to walk in joy and triumph. My greatest achievement. My masterpiece. And what does man do? He fears. He crawls. He has faith. He ignores reality. He evades action." "I gave him vision. I gave him principled imagination. I gave him courage. I gave him Mind. I gave him Life. I gave him my love of Truth. What does he do? He seeks masters and saviors." "This is not what I wanted at all. I am going to try it again in the next universe. Maybe there things will work out better." Are you planning any changes in the next universe, God? "Yes, I am. No religion. No government. No Church nor State to oppress and intimidate my creation." One last question God, if you will? "Yes?" Do you feel bad about leaving anything behind? "Yes, I do...." (A tear came to God's eye. The first tear in a billion years. His sorrow made me tremble in fear. I waited for Him to speak.) "I will miss two things most dear to me.... Conscience in the service of Justice, and Genius in the service of Truth." "I will miss the admiration and pride I felt when my creation perceived Justice and asserted his knowledge of it." "I will miss that immortal light of Genius, the power and glory of Man, whose radiant glow gave me warmth and comfort on cold nights." "I am just too damn disappointed to listen to any more foolish prayers." * Robert Ingersoll on Religion There may be a God who will make us happy in another world. If he does, it will be more than he has accomplished in this. I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders. I had rather think of those I have loved and lost, as having returned to earth, as having become a part of the elemental wealth of the world, I would rather think of them as unconscious dust, I would rather dream of them as gurgling in the streams, floating in the clouds, bursting in the foam of light upon the shores of worlds. I would rather think of them as lost visions of a forgotten night, than to have the faintest fear that their naked souls have been clutched by a Christian god. For thousands of years men have been writing the real Bible, and it is being written from day to day, and it will never be finished while man has life. All the facts that we know, all the truly recorded events, all the discoveries and inventions, all the wonderful machines whose wheels and levers seem to think, all the poems, crystals from the brain, flowers from the heart, all the songs of love and joy, of smiles and tears, the great dramas in Imagination's world, the wondrous paintings, miracles of form and color, of light and shade, the marvelous marbles that seem to live and breathe, the secrets told by rock and star, by dust and flower, by rain and snow, by frost and flame, by winding stream and desert sand, by mountain range and billowed seas. All the wisdom that lengthens and enobles life - all that avoids or cures disease, or conquers pain - all just and perfect laws and rules that guide and shape our lives, all thoughts that feed the flames of love, the music that transfigures, enraptures and enthralls, the victories of heart and brain, the miracles that hands have wrought, the deft and cunning hands of those who worked for wife and child, the histories of noble deeds, of brave and useful men, of faithful loving wives, of quenchless mother love, of conflicts for the right, of sufferings for the truth, of all the best that all the men and women of the world have said, and thought and done through all the years. These treasures of the heart and brain - these are the Sacred Scriptures of the human race. It is to him who masters our minds by the force of truth, not to those who enslave men by violence, it is to him who understands the world, not to those who disfigure it, that we owe our reverence. Wherever these human beings may be who have shared our love, whatever landscape soothes their soul, whatever breeze cools their brow, their country is our country too. Each square foot of land occupied by a man of good will is part of our country. Christ never wrote a solitary word. It has always seemed to me that a being coming from another world, with a message of infinite importance to mankind.... If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament he would be a criminal. If he would strictly follow the teachings of the New, he would be insane. (When religion makes you act like a fool, it is a wrong religion... Heinlein) Pious ignorance always regards intelligence as a kind of blasphemy. If we are ever judged at all it will be by our actions, and not by our beliefs. If Christ was good enough to die for me, he certainly will not be bad enough to damn me for honestly failing to believe in his divinity. Think of the egotism of a man who believes that an infinite being wants his praise! (I will live by what I see and reason, not for a pie-in-the-sky possibility of a god's existence and His liking me enough to confer immortality on me for kissing His ass... Brick Pillow) [During the Dark Ages] Faith reigned with scarcely a rebellious subject... She built cathedrals for God and dungeons for men. She peopled the clouds with angels and the earth with slaves. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of today. The building in which they were assembled took fire and many of these men and women perished in the flames. A French priest called this horror an act of God. Is it not strange that Christians speak of their God as an assassin? This Deity says, "pray for those that despitefully use you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine." It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach. They are taught as a part of their creed to despise the descendants of the only people with whom God is ever said to have had any conversation whatever. Thomas Jefferson referred to the clergy as "mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus," and making it their business in life to confuse mankind with their abracadabra. He compared them to cuttlefish, having the "faculty of shedding darkness... thro' the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will skulk." Thomas Paine: "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, not by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church." * Religious Roots of Evil Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian doctrine, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the non-ideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificied for men who are vicious. Here is the essense of the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the non-ideal, or virtue to vice. Christians do not know how to love their god except by crucifying man. Jesus joined humanity in order to redeem it, and for this redemption to take place, he HAD to be crucified, thus taking the sins of humanity onto his own shoulders and expiating them. If that is so, then Judas, Pontius Pilate and other villains had essential parts to play in this redemption, and had they refused those parts, all of humanity would still be laboring under original sin. That should make those men heroes, shouldn't it? Saint Basil (AD 360): "The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is that of one who is naked; the shoes you do not wear are those of one who is barefoot; the acts of charity you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit." Saint Ambrose (AD 360): "You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his." Thus we see that in the Christian belief, anyone who possesses property needed by another must surrender it or be guilty of theft. Pope Paul VI (1973): "True justice recognizes that all men are in substance equal. The littler, the poorer, the more suffering, the more defenseless, even the lower a man has fallen, the more he deserves to be assisted, raised up, cared for, and honored." Marshall Cohen, Professor of Philosophy CUNY: "Once an adequate social minimum has been reached, justice requires the elimination of many economic and social inequalities, even if their elimination inhibits a further raising of the minimum." Jan Tinbergen, first Nobel laureate in Economics: "A modest first step might be a special tax on persons with high academic scores." An Ayn Rand villain: "The men of ability? I do not care what or if they are made to suffer. They must be penalized in order to support the incompetent. Frankly, I do not care whether this is just or not. I take pride in not caring to grant any justice to the able, where mercy to the needy is concerned." Ayn Rand: "What passkey admits you to the religiously moral elite? The passkey is lack of value. Whatever the value involved, it is your lack of it that gives you a claim upon those who don't lack it. To demand rewards for your virtue is selfish and immoral they claim; it is your lack of virtue that transforms your demand into a moral right." * Attila and the Witch Doctor The consequence of the epistemology of religion is the politics of tyranny. If you cannot reach the truth by your own mental powers, but must maintain obedient faith in a cognitive authority, then you are not your own intellectual master; in such a case you cannot guide your behavior by your own judgment either but must be submissive in action as well. This is the reason why, historically, faith and force are always corollaries; each requires the other. To say that any man or human phenomenon can be perfect is to blaspheme God, for to allow any value or significance to humanity is to derogate by just that amount from the majesty, perfection, and supreme value of God. Thus, no matter how good a man is, in the eyes of a Christian he is not as good as he ought to be. If a man is sinful, the fault is his - but if he is virtuous, the credit belongs to God. Similarly, if an investor loses his money on dry holes, the loss is his - but if he hits a gusher, his profits should rightfully be taken by taxes. Nietzsche is correct in stating that Christianity fears, resents, and attacks strength. But it is not Nietzsche's notion of strength - brute strength, unleashed passion - that Christianity opposes. It is intellectual strength, the strength of the sovereign, independent, rational mind that all mystics oppose. It is no accident that in this opposition to reason, Christianity and Nietzsche are allies. The Witch-Doctors and the Attilas both hate the mind that yields to neither faith nor force. * Basic Principles of Objectivism - Nathaniel Branden - from Lecture #4 Let us examine the concept of god and observe some of its striking implications for man's consciousness. To begin with, those who profess to believe in god are unable to identify or communicate intelligibly what it is that they believe in. What is the nature, the identity of god? What is the meaning of the concept? "God is 'something'" they say, "only I don't know what it is." They claim to believe in it nevertheless. No philosophy, theology or religion has ever given a rationally intelligible definition or even description of the nature of god, or any intelligible content to the concept god. Observe that I said "intelligible." A great many descriptions have been offered and a great many attributes have been ascribed to god but they are of a kind that represent a negation and a mockery of man's consciousness as well as of everything known to him in reason about the nature of reality. For instance: "God" claim the mystics, "is infinite." What does it mean to be infinite? It means to possess no limits. To possess no specific determinite finite number of attributes - no specific particular identifiable qualities. It means to be nothing in particular. But to be nothing in particular is not to be. To assert that an infinite being exists is to assert that something can exist that possesses no identity - that is nothing in particular. To accept the existence of a being who possesses no identity one has to reject the Law of Identity. But to reject the Law of Identity is to reject the total of one's grasp of reality. Thus the concept of an infinite god is the destruction of man's concept of existence, of being. "God" claim the mystics, "is pure spirit" or "pure consciousness." What do they mean by spirit? Well, in rational terms the concept spirit is intelligible and simply means man's consciousness. Consciousness, in rational terms, means the faculty of awareness possessed by a specific material living entity. But this is not what the mystics mean. By "pure spirit" they mean a non-material entity. And by "pure consciousness" they mean a faculty without any entity to which it belongs. What is a non-material entity? The mystics have no identification for it and no definition. No concept except the negation of man's concepts. Non-material means simply "non-anything you know." Spirit, in the mystics' terms, is not something specific or identifiable. Its nature is precisely that it cannot be identified. It is not to be grasped by man. It is not merely different from matter, it is the metaphysical opposite of matter. It is that which matter is not. To grasp it you must reject everything which you do grasp and replace it with the concept of "that which is not what I grasp." In terms of man's consciousness, to grasp means to understand, to identify. The definition of spirit offered by the mystics is in effect "that which is not to be identified by man." The same epistemological devastation is performed by the mystics' concept of pure consciousness. Man's concept of consciousness is a faculty belonging to a specific being who possesses specific means of awareness such as sense organs, nerves, a brain - which make it possible for him to be aware of reality in the form of sensations, perceptions, conceptions. But the mystics' concept of pure consciousness is a faculty without an entity. A faculty that exists by itself and is conscious without any specific means of awareness. An action without an entity that acts. The action of an unlimited entity - unlimited by any specific means. This is not only the destruction of the Law of Identity but also the acceptance of the one epistemological method that destroys a rational consciousness: the dropping of context. Logic, man's means of cognition, requires the preservation of the full context of every concept man forms. To accept the idea of a pure consciousness, man must drop the context, the meaning, the root of consciousness as he knows it and replace it with the idea of a consciousness which is "not what I know or mean or grasp." Thus the doctrine of "god is pure consciousness" is the destruction of the concept of consciousness. "God" claim the mystics, "is omnipotent." What does omnipotent mean? It means that god can do anything. Since the actions possible to an entity are determined by the nature of the entity that acts, for god to be unrestricted in action, he would have to be unrestricted in identity. And this would mean that he possesses no identity. If god is omnipotent, not only does he possess no identity but neither does anything else possess identity. Think about that. God can do anything to any entity and he can make any entity do anything, regardless of the entity's nature. Which is tantamount to saying that the entity has no nature. Anything goes. Anything is possible. If miracles can happen, reality is fluid, arbitrary, unpredictable, unknowable. A miracle is the rationally impossible. If god is omnipotent, contradictions have to be possible. This raises a number of questions the sole meaning of which is a mockery of man's reason. For example: it has been asked "Can god tie a knot that he cannot untie?" or "Can god create a mountain that he cannot climb over?" The answer given by the mystics is "You must not try to understand, you must believe." You must believe that that which is inconceivable to you is possible. And that that which you do conceive of, such as specific identifiable entities, can be negated and dissolved by miracle at any moment. Thus the concept that god is omnipotent destroys the Law of Identity and the Law of Causality. "God" claim the mystics, "is omniscient." To be omniscient means to know everything: past, present and future. Observe that the attribute of omniscience is necessitated by the attribute of omnipotence. In order for god to be able to do anything, he would have to know everything. But observe also that the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience contradict each other. In order for god to know everything, everything would have to be fated and predetermined. But if everything were fated and predetermined, it could not be changed. And if it could not be changed, this is a limitation on god's potency and he is not omnipotent. Here again the mystic will tell you "Don't think, don't examine, don't wonder, don't question - believe." The concept of omniscience is the secret wish-fullfillment of every mystic. To acquire one's knowledge, by a process of struggle and effort, is abhorrent to the mystic. But to know everything, to know it instantaneously and without effort, to know it causelessly without any specific means of knowing it, or acquiring one's knowledge, or holding one's knowledge, this is the mystics' passionate dream. The concept of omniscience is a psychological monument to the mystics' hatred of effort. Finally, the mystics claim that "god is all-good." This means that he is incapable of evil. This poses a number of problems. The first is, if he is incapable of evil, how can he be omnipotent? Or consider another problem: consider what is meant by the concept "Good." The concept of good or evil can pertain only to a being who has the power of choice. Morality applies only to entities who have a choice of action. If a robot were constructed for a certain job which it would execute flawlessly because it was so designed by a scientist, you would not call it a virtuous robot. You would know that the robot has no power of choice and that it does only what it HAS to do. But if god is incapable of choosing evil, then he is as amoral as that robot. If god has no power to choose evil, if by nature he must always and automatically choose the good, then he is outside the concept of morality and his actions cannot be described as either good or evil. The doctrine of "god is all good" creates an enormous problem which the mystics have never been able to solve. It is known as the Problem of Evil, and it consists of the question "If god is omnipotent and all-good, why does he allow evil to exist in the world?" The philosopher Epicurus expressed this problem thus: "Either god would remove evil out of this world and cannot, or he can and will not, or he has not the power nor will, or lastly he has both the power and will. If he has the will and not the power, this shows weakness, which is contrary to the nature of god. If he has the power and not the will, it is malignity, and this is no less contrary to his nature. And if he is neither able nor willing he is both impotent and malignant and consequently cannot be god. And if he is both willing and able, which alone is consonant with the nature of god, whence comes evil? Or why does he not prevent it?" Theologians have been painfully aware of this problem and they have offered a number of answers. The most common answer is that man's limited intellect cannot grasp the mystery. That god in fact works for good purposes, but the purposes are of a kind which man's reason cannot grasp. So, if we see innocents slaughtered by the millions, and the seemingly evil prosper, and if it seems to us that we are witnessing something evil, why it is only an illusion - it is not evil. By god's standards, it is good. If you see your loved ones being tortured and murdered, do not dare consider it evil, do not dare pass any moral judgement; it merely seems evil from your limited viewpoint. It serves a good end from god's viewpoint, which you cannot grasp and must not question. If god wills it to be so, who are you to call it evil or to protest? Thus the doctrine of "god is all good" is the destruction of morality. Observe that the mystics' answer to all the problems and contradictions in the concept of god is "Your mind cannot conceive of it. If your mind cannot conceive of the irrational, the contradictory, the senseless, the impossible, it is your mind that must take the blame." The ultimate brain-killer is the mystics' claim that god is unknowable. Do not confuse the concept of unknowable with the concept of unknown. Unknown merely means something not known at present or not known to you. But unknowable means that which can never be known. That which by its nature cannot be known. The most consistent theory of the mystics, pertaining to god as the unknowable, is that of a theological school known as negative theology. The negative theologians insist that one cannot possibly say what god is because to ascribe any attributes to him is to limit him, and this amounts to an impertinence. One must not say that god is finite - that would limit him. One must not say that god is infinite - that would limit him also, since it forbids him to be finite. One must not say that he is all-good because that implies that he cannot be bad. One must not say that he is good AND bad, because that forbids the possibility of his being exclusively one. One must not say that he is omniscient, because that forbids the possiblilty of his being fallible. One must not say that he is fallible because that forbids the possiblilty of his being omniscient. Well, here in this theory you can observe the full, open and explicit meaning and purpose of the mystics' advocacy of faith in god: the hatred of man's mind and the desire to destroy it. To destroy all the cardinal concepts of man's reason. To destroy the base of man's consciousness, the Law of Identity. And to leave man groveling on his belly, as an abject idiot, cringing in terror at a nightmare apparition which he dares not identify as either real or unreal, knowable or unknowable. * The Case of God vs the Case of Reality To a rational person, there are many more reasons for not believing in God than for believing. However, there are times when even a rational person must ask himself if there might not be some basis for such a belief. Probably this query most often occurs when no evident explanation can be seen for some phenomenon. Given this situation, religion might be viewed as an error concerning causality and the proper means of establishing causal connections in reality. Perhaps early man did not develop a science since he may not have believed that cause and effect could possibly be linked together inexorably. Instead he tried to forsee the acts of an inconstant reality (gods) by augury and astrology. Much of human energy has gone into the working out of the proper ritual for control of such a mystical Universe and into the effort of establishing rigid adherence to that ritual. Verbal formulas, uttered by specialists, are relied on to bring good luck to a fishing fleet, members of which would be uneasy about leaving port without it. If we think this is but a vagary of uneducated fishermen, I might point out that the Congress of the United States would feel most uneasy about beginning its deliberations without a chaplain mimicking biblical English in an attempt to call down good judgment upon them from on high - a device that seems very rarely to have done the Congress much good. What is a religion? A religion is a system of beliefs and practices resting on the assumption that events within the world are subject to some supernatural power or powers, such that human needs, either physical or psychological, can be satisfied by man's entering into relations with such powers; the supernatural powers in question are called supernatural in virtue of the fact that they can be known, related to, or influenced primarily by means other than those of reason or sense experience. The fundamental characteristic of all religions is this belief in a supernatural power which can control everyday events. And a fundamental practice characteristic of all religions is the attempt to influence this power. But the psychological consequences of this belief are all-pervasive and devastating: Christianity, and most other religions, teach that God, by whatever name He is called, is the father of us all. This places man in the role of a child who is at the mercy of another's command and in whose will lies the final verdict upon which all of man's actions must be based. This will covers a multitude of irresponsible actions on the part of man. Man is assigned no responsibility except to believe and obey. If he does not succeed in life, it was not his fault; it was God's will that he should not. God has a purpose for everything and everyone, and if we cannot see what that purpose is, it does not matter because God knows. The Bible teaches "all things work together for the good of those who love God." We are told "take no thought for tomorrow, for sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." This pearl of wisdom was given in the famous Sermon on The Mount by Jesus to his followers. In this same sermon they were told that God would provide whatever they needed in the way of food and clothing just as he fed and clothed the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. Religion today teaches the same thing: God will provide, just as long as one serves Him. So what if you do not get to make the decisions, you will be taken care of. Thus religion replaces critical thinking with fantasy and wish fulfillment. To a religious person, the concept of God explains everything. Man has no need to ask why. His mind is not needed, only his faith. His faith gives him the security of the firm conviction that SOMEONE knows what is going on, even if he does not. It gives him the hope that SOMEHOW all will turn out well. And if he is mugged every time he steps out of his door he has the assurance that God will destroy the evil-doers and reward him for his endurance. This sort of faith in an all-knowing God and in a righteous judgment is a great comfort to the believer. It relieves him of responsibility for just about everything. It gives him a sense of worth as being part of "God's Great Plan". AND, it promises him immortality!! Now that is a pretty good argument for investing in something that really does not cost very much. A little faith, professed now and then, and one can go on his merry way without a worry in the world. But what does it REALLY cost? This is where the rational, reality-oriented man finds his reasons for NOT believing in God. An adult person is one who has reached the point of maturity in his life where he is able to care for himself. He has no need, nor wish, for anyone else to take care of him. For this person, the religious obligation to defer to a will outside himself would preclude belief in God. This type of person is one who uses his mind to reason and find out the facts in reality that account for phenomena. The exercise of his reason teaches him that blind faith will never net him a thing except the frustration of his hopes (just ask any man who has ever attempted to adjust a carburetor), and that learning to deal correctly with reality will help him realize his aspirations. He says with Robert Ingersoll, "We need the religion of the real, the faith that rests on fact." The cost of faith in God's omniscience is the abdication of one's own ability to reason and to know. The believer has no real control over his life, since everything he does is governed by what he is taught is "God's will." He has no answer for what happens to him except that "it must be part of the Divine Plan." The only goal of his life is to reach the end of it as well as he can and hope for his reward in heaven. He has no real knowledge that this reward exists, only his blind faith in religion's promise. He drags through existence with the hope that someone else has the ability to know, and the fear that they may NOT know or that he may not measure up in the end. The automonous individual, on the other hand, knows that he himself has control over his own life. He has ascertained the facts of reality by the use of his ability to reason and arranged his life to be in accord with them. He seeks the explanations for everything that happens to him in the knowledge of cause and effect. The goal of his life is his own happiness here on earth, and he does not look for or expect unearned rewards. This individual has the self- taught knowledge that rewards do indeed exist and that they are obtained by his own efforts. His life is LIVED in the knowledge of his mortality, without fear, and with the confidence that he has the ability to be happy while he lives. It is of no importance to him whether God exists or not, HE exists, and it is important to him to be happy while he exists. The cost of hoping in the promise of heaven's rewards is the sacrifice of confidence in one's own ability to live a happy life on earth. What about the explanations for those things we can't explain? The believer has no quandary in this regard, to him, the mystery of God explains everything. He has no need to ask why, he only needs to accept what he does not understand as part of the mystery. He is told that there are some things he is not supposed to understand. A rational man knows that there are some things he does not yet have an answer for, but he also knows that he is capable of seeking an answer. His mind is the tool he finds joy in using to solve the mysteries of the universe he lives in. He is not willing to accept a lack of understanding as a final judgment on his ability to understand. His own worth as a human being is the biggest reason a rational man finds for NOT believing in God. A being who has discovered the glory of his own nature cannot regard himself as a chunk of depravity whose duty is self- abasing obedience to supernatural commandments. Once more, Robert Ingersoll expressed the attitude of the man of reason very well: "Astrology was displaced by astromony. Alchemy and black art gave way to chemistry. Science is destined to take the place of religion. In my judgement, the religion of the future will be reason." * God as Big Daddy "God" is not a concept. At best, one could say it is a concept in the sense in which a dramatist uses concepts to create a character. It is an abstract of actual characteristics of man combined with the projection of impossible, irrational characteristics which do not arise from reality - such as omnipotence and omniscience. God: Somewhere, in an inaccessible place, there is an old man in a nightshirt who knows everything and is all powerful and created everything and rewards and punishes... and can be bribed. This is only a malignant practical joker with the morals of a terrorist. Aren't malaria, cholera, syphilis, yellow fever, and bubonic plague merely the punishments that this infinitely wise, compassionate, and forgiving Father created to inflict upon His children? The victims that He hounds the most gleefully are always the poor, the hungry, the defenseless. What kind of a fiend would we brand any human father who treated his children like that? The Sun is in a backwater arm of an absolutely humdrum galaxy. Why should I- Am-That-I-Am hang out around here? There must be more pressing things for him to do. All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God was clever enough to create the Universe, why wasn't He clever enough to create it in such a way that life could evolve naturally without miraculously improbable events? Those who claim that the evolution of life is prohibitively improbable without Divine intervention are saying in effect that God was a bungler who couldn't get it right the first time (and who, after ten billion years of tinkering, STILL hasn't got it right!). If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly tinkering, repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: God is a sloppy mentufacturer. He's not good at design and he's not good at implementation. He'd be out of business, if there were any competition. * Religion and Insanity Apparently many schizophrenics are drawn to charismatic/fundamentalist Christian sects wherein "hearing voices" is normal and accepted. People with mental illness are often treated with generosity and kindness in Fundamentalist churches. This is worth remembering when news articles appear, as they frequently do, describing how some religious fanatic just committed a social atrocity on the advice of "God" or "Jesus," because usually the mental illness preceded the religion. Of course the influence of exploitative preachers and/or fasting and many of the other trappings of fundamentalist Christianity, would aggravate pre-existing illness. The great trouble with religion - ANY religion - is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge the consequences of those propositions by evidence. Thus he can easily come to commit the most heinous atrocities in good conscience. THE WAR-PRAYER by Mark Twain: O Lord, our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;... help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; ... help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst; ... We ask it, in the spirit of love. Beyond the region of the Probable is the Possible, and beyond the Possible is the Impossible and beyond the Impossible are the religions of this world. The mystical ideas in which they trust are fictions, barren in their yield of results, powerless in prediction, and devoid of useful application. In a word, they are worthless. Maybe I cannot see the naked Face of God - but my eyesight is good enough to detect fradulent baloney. In conclusion I can only say this: I hope, for His sake, that God does not exist. Because if He does, He has one hell of a lot to answer for! __ Chapter 11 SPIRITUALITY, ART, AND BEAUTY * The Spirituality of a Scientist * The Credo of a Rational Man * Oath * Love * Marriage * Table Blessing * Art * Beauty * The Need for and Function of Art * The Nature of Fiction * Music * Dancing * Some Writing Techniques * The Destruction of Art under Statism * Miscellaneous Comments on Art * The Spirituality of a Scientist I have come into a peculiar sort of spiritual awareness during the course of my studies of Objectivism. I have found that this philosophy, which is very strongly oriented toward rationality - toward a Galilean rather than Tertullian epistemology - leads, when it is fully developed and manifested within oneself, to a kind of spiritual awakening - a blossoming of the soul - that has its own unique nature. I experience this in part as an inward- directed focus - a growing recognition of (as Nathaniel Branden put it) "the biological forces deep within our organism that speak to us in a wordless language we have barely begun to decipher." I experience it also as a growing sense of the wonderful capability of human intelligence and its place and function in the universe. "It is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for something as a condition of the course of events. Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths." ... Albert Einstein The idea of a "scientific religion" may seem a contradiction in terms, but I have for some time been intrigued with the introspective observation of a deep sense of wonder, awe and spirituality that has arisen within me during the time that I have been studying and applying Objectivism, growing in scientific knowledge, and developing the functional competence of my intelligence. This has nothing to do with any mystical, faith-oriented notions, but is a sense of becoming more and more united with the totality of the Universe as I adjust the epistemological methodology of my mind to bring it more and more into accord with Reality. To give a mundane example: a rainbow is no less beautiful, but actually grows in beauty and wonder, with a deeper knowledge of the postulates of physics and epistemology that describe and explain it. Although religious people deny it, I find no difficulty in accepting a non- mystical explanation of the foundation of my beliefs: "Existence is the first cause. The universe is the total of that which exists. Within the universe, the emergence of new entities can be explained in terms of the actions of entities that already exist. All actions presuppose the existence of entities. All causality presupposes the existence of something that acts as a cause. To demand a cause for all of existence is to demand a contradiction: if the cause exists, it is part of existence: if it does not exist, it cannot be a cause. Nothing cannot be the cause of something. Nothing does not exist. Nothing is not just another kind of something - it is nothing. Existence exists; you cannot go outside it, you cannot get under it, on top of it or behind it. Existence exists - and only existence exists; there is nowhere else to go. The universe did not begin - it did not, at some point in time, spring into being. Time is a measurement of motion. Motion presupposes entities that move. If nothing existed, there could be no time. Time is 'in' the universe; the universe is not 'in' time." ... Nathaniel Branden Holiness is a measure of the reverence and awe which men hold for certain symbols and the power those symbols give us over the world of nature. It is Language which grants godhood to man by enabling him, through symbolic conceptualization, to encompass the world within the scope of his thoughts. Thus, sense, reason, and intellect - all of which are functions of "the Word" - are what make me a Man. And give me the power to be a God. Surprisingly, some of the best expressions of this function of language can be found in the Bible: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Here are examples of how some other scientists and scholars have expressed this feeling: Ayn Rand, in her introduction to THE FOUNTAINHEAD: What I was referring to was not religion as such, but a special category of abstractions which, for centuries, has been the near-monopoly of religion ... the realm of values, man's code of good and evil, with the emotional connotations of height, uplift, nobility, reverence, grandeur, which pertain to the realm of man's values, but which religion has arrogated to itself. Religion's monopoly in this field has made it extremely difficult to communicate the emotional meaning and connotations of a rational view of life. Religion has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man's reach. Exaltation, Worship, and Reverence do name actual emotions. What, then, is their source or referent in reality? It is the entire emotional realm of man's dedication to a moral ideal. It is with this meaning that I would identify the sense of life dramatized in THE FOUNTAINHEAD as man worship. The man-worshipers are those who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it. They are those dedicated to the exaltation of man's self-esteem and the sacredness of his happiness on earth. Galileo: "I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them." Albert Einstein: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.... To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men." Isidor Isaac Rabi: "Not religion in a secular way, but religion as inspirer of a way of looking at things. Choosing physics means, in some way, you're not going to choose trivialities. When you're doing good physics, you're wrestling with the Champ." Robert Ingersoll: "The real miracles are the facts in nature." James Hogan: "If one wants to feel more than inarticulate wonder before mountains or buildings, it helps to understand the invisible mechanisms that support the visible beauty." Richard Feynman: "I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It's analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there's a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run 'behind the scenes' by the same organization, the same physical laws. It's an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It's a feeling of awe - of scientific awe - this feeling about the glories of the universe." Henri Poincare: "The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so, he studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful." Carl Sagan: "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy." A student of Arthur Eddington: "The Great Hall was crowded. The speaker was a slender, dark young man with a trick of looking away from his audience and a manner of complete detachment. He gave an outline of the Theory of Relativity, as none could do better than he. He led up to the shift of the stellar images near the Sun as predicted by Einstein and described his verification of the prediction. When I returned to my room I found that I could write down the lecture word for word. For three nights, I think, I did not sleep." Victor Weisskopf: "The Joy of Insight" Ayn Rand: "I will ask you to project the look on a child's face when he grasps the answer to some problem he has been striving to understand. It is a radiant look of joy, of liberation, almost of triumph, which is unself- conscious, yet self-assertive, and its radiance seems to spread in two directions: outward, as an illumination of the world - inward, as the first spark of what is to become the fire of an earned pride. If you have seen this look, or experienced it, you know that if there is such a concept as 'sacred' - meaning: the best, the highest possible to man - this look is the sacred, the not-to-be-betrayed, the not-to-be-sacrificed for anything or anyone. This look is not confined to children. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol: an idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. It is the steady confident reflection of that light that you look for in the faces of adults - particularly of those to whom you entrust your most precious values. That light-bulb look is the flash of a human intelligence in action; it is the outward manifestation of man's rational faculty; it is the signal and symbol of man's mind. And, to the extent of your humanity, it is involved in everything you seek, enjoy, value or love." Peter Zarlenga: I am thought. I can see what the eyes cannot see. I can hear what the ears cannot hear. I can feel what the heart cannot feel. Yet I create Beauty for the eyes, Music for the ears, Love for the heart. They, ignorant of their ignorance, call me cold. Barren of Sight. Barren of Sound. Barren of Feeling. But it is I who am from which all comes. Given to the ungrateful. Unseen. Unheard. Unfelt. Ayn Rand: "I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgement of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect. Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: 'I will it!' This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before. And now I see the face of god." From A Jewish Prayer Book: God, where shall I find Thee, Whose glory fills the universe? Behold I find Thee, Wherever the mind is free to follow its own bent, Wherever words come out from the depth of truth, Wherever tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection, Wherever men struggle for freedom and right, Wherever the scientist toils to unbare the secrets of nature, Wherever the poet strings pearls of beauty in lyric lines, Wherever glorious deeds are done. * The Credo of a Rational Man As a rationalist, I am often chastised by faith-oriented people for not having anything to "believe" in. Although I have always dismissed as nonsense the notion that Belief must inevitably be grounded in Faith, it required many years of philosophical study for me to be able to make a specific statement of just what it is that I do Believe in. I believe that somewhere, just out of sight, the Unicorns are gathering: on the other side of the hill, where the rainbow comes down onto a grassy field. I believe, with Niels Bohr, that the laws of physics work - whether I believe in them or not. I believe in the Law of Identity. I believe in the primacy of Existence over Consciousness (and I see this manifest in the Quantum Physics). The greatest source of wonder and amazement I know is the interactive relationship between the Primary and Tertiary structures of nucleic acid molecules. I believe, with Einstein, that "Out yonder there is this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking." I believe, with Thoreau, that "Man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried." I believe, with Ayn Rand, that "Man is a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." I believe that reality is an objective absolute, existing independently of my consciousness. I believe that my mind is competent to achieve valid knowledge of reality, and that the values proper to me are objectively demonstrable. I believe that the basic function - the purpose - of consciousness is to perceive and understand the world: my mind must first perceive the independently existing world - then it must understand its perceptions - then I must use this understanding to govern my behavior so as to interact successfully with reality and thereby achieve my values. Job 40:7,10,14 * Oath The function of an oath is to help, not to threaten. It is something to remind you of how important words are. Ideas are important. Principles are important. The words that embody ideas and principles are important. Your word is the most important of all. Your word is who you are. An oath can concretize Purpose within your mind and give you an explicit, objective guideline for your actions. It can serve to focus your mind directly onto your goals. A few examples: "I now, in the presence of death, affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said against the superstitions of the world." "I have seen my daughter, I have lain with my wife; now I will kill my enemies, and then I can die." "We are gathered to call desolation over evildoers. May the sorrow they have wrought and the wrath they have raised turn upon them. May our enemies suffer as we have suffered! May they feel our fire and steel as we have felt theirs! May their hearts beat fearfully for what they have done to us!" * Marriage Marriage is a form of oath-taking that states the purpose of a relationship: "I, Colin, take thee, Gwen, to be my wife, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, as long as you will have me." "I, Gwen, take thee, Colin, to be my husband, to care for and love and cherish for the rest of my life." "I will demand much of thee, All that thou art and all that thou canst be, And I will give unto thee, All that I am and all that I can be, In the name of the best within me, I pledge unto thee my troth, I will strive to make that best ever better and better, Thou art the purpose of my existence, All that I have made of myself is what I give to you in trade for that which you have made of yourself." "By oak and ash and springtime-whitened thorn, through ages gone and ages to be born, by earth below, by air arising higher, by ringing waters, and by living fire, by life and death, I charge that ye say true if ye do now give faith for faith. We do. Place each a ring upon the other's hand, and may the sign of binding prove a band that joins the youth to maiden, man to wife, and lights the way upon your search through life. Farewell! And if the roads ye find be rough, keep love alive, and so have luck enough." "Do you each individually swear that you will be true and loyal, each helping his chosen one in all things, great and small; that never, throughout eternity, in thought or in action, will your mind or your body or your spirit stray from the path of truth and honor?" * Love Expressions of love can take on the character of an oath, stating the deepest meaning of one person's emotional response to another: "If you can show me beauty that I haven't found, And teach me secrets that I never knew, Lead me to vistas that I haven't seen, And fill each day with more of you, If you can share a soul that makes my soul grow greater, If you can teach my glance to see the sky, If you can make each year grow only shorter, Then so will I." "Yes, I have made many mistakes in life. But you are not one of them." "Maybe one day one of us will cause the other a tear or a curse. Maybe one day we will play the foolish game of 'What if.' But somehow I doubt it. I have seen rainbows and I did not curse the sky when they were gone. I have heard nightingales sing and I did not curse the forest when it was silent. I was grateful that I had seen and heard. And their memory is a thing that is beautiful to me yet. So it will be with you. If I turn and one day find you are gone, the memory and the beauty of it will make all my tomorrows a little warmer." "I have never had so much as now. All my life I've been alone. I would look into the huts and the tents of others in the coldest dark and I would see figures holding each other in the night. But I always passed by. You and I - we have warmth. That's so hard to find in this world. Let someone else pass by in the night. Let us take the world by the throat and make it give us what we desire." "I have nothing to offer you but my strength for your defense, my honesty for your surety, my ability and industry for your livelihood, and my authority and position for your dignity. That is all it becomes a man to offer to a woman - the devotion of a man's heart and the strength of a man's arm." "She kissed me. Me. She did. She does. She will. It cannot die until I do. What need I more than this? How wonderful the world is." "We shall light up for one-another a lamp in the temple of life. Aimless lumps of stone blundering through space will become stars singing in their spheres. An extraordinary delight and an intense love will seize us. It will last hardly longer than the lightning flash which turns the black night into infinite radiance. It will be dark again before you can clear the light out of your eyes: but you will have seen: and forever after you will think about what you have seen and not gabble catchwords invented by the wasted virgins that walk in darkness." "Our love is not over. This is the first, the most important, thing for you to know. We have said good-bye. That was at breakfast this morning. You kissed me. You smiled. It was perfect. We have said good-bye. And our love is not over. Our good-bye was perfect, as our love will always be. Forgive me for wanting that. Forgive me for fearing the other good-bye. My pain bringing you pain, your sadness bringing mine. Leaving you with the lie that there could be sadness between us. Have we lived our love so that wicked little cells, growing in darkness, could cheat us at the end? No. We cheat them. We say good-bye with a kiss and a smile. And our love goes on forever. What you must know is that in my last hours I have lived our life again, in tears of joy that so exquisite a life could have been mine. Now you must do something for me. You must live long and well. You must live as though you are saving each moment to share with me, in my arms, when we are together again. And if you find another love before your life is over, treasure those moments most of all, and know that nothing could make me happier." Some statements of profound emotion can surpass oaths and become songs of prayer: May the Lord protect and defend you May He always shield you from shame May you come to be in Israel a shining name May you be like Ruth and like Esther May you be deserving of praise Strengthen them Oh Lord, and keep them from the stranger's ways May God bless you and grant you long lives May the Lord fulfill our sabbath prayer for you May God make you good mothers and wives May He send you husbands who will care for you May the Lord protect and defend you May the Lord preserve you from pain Favor them oh Lord with happiness and peace Oh hear our sabbath prayer Amen * Table Blessing The sharing of a table is an act symbolic of good will. So simple a thing, a lighted fire, yet it is a symbol of man's first great step toward civilization. How many times has it seemed as if a man, in offering fire and warm food, was saying, "See, I am a man, by these signs you shall know me, that I can make a fire, that I can cook my food." Another example of the symbolic phenomena I am trying to portray is the almost universal practice of expressing gratitude at the supper table (I refer to this practice as "Table Blessing"). I believe this expression, although misguided in its religious aspect, has a profoundly important function in human life as a symbolic recognition of the importance of productive achievement. I have endeavored to contrive statements by which this phenomenon could be suitably expressed in an Objectivist household: "My dear friends, let us pause in our proceedings for a moment and contemplate the nature and the source of the providence which we see before us on our table and around us in our lives. Let us look within ourselves and ask if we be worthy to partake of this bounty. Let us resolve to act so that the scales of Nature shall balance - so that all that we must take from the world for our sustenance we shall return to the world in like measure, giving thankful recognition to those who, in doing likewise, bring into being the civilization in which we live. Thank you." "We should be thankful to our natures that we can earn our food and be thankful to ourselves that we have done so. As we have earned this food, so must we earn all that is valuable in our lives." "The sun never sets on Ford tractors. Somewhere, right now, there is a Ford tractor working the land. Remember this when you break bread." * Art The essay "Art and Cognition" by Ayn Rand, which appeared in the April, May, and June 1971 issues of THE OBJECTIVIST, is an in-depth analysis of all forms of art. Art is the selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgements. Metaphysical values are those which reflect an artist's fundamental view of the nature of man and the nature of the universe in which he lives. Cognitive abstractions identify the facts of reality. Normative abstractions evaluate the facts, thus prescribing a choice of values and a course of action. Cognitive abstractions deal with that which IS; normative abstractions deal with that which OUGHT TO BE (in the realms open to man's choice). Cognitive abstractions form the epistemological foundation of science; normative abstractions form the epistemological foundation of morality and of art. Romanticism is a category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition. * Beauty Beauty is a concept of consciousness. It is the integration of one or more experiences of pleasure along with one or more observations of a manifestation of one's values. Here are a few examples of this: Jean Auel: "In Ranec's eye the finest and most perfect example of anything was beautiful, and anything beautiful was the finest and most perfect example of spirit; it was the essence of it. That was his religion. Beyond that, at the core of his aesthetic soul, he felt that beauty had an intrinsic value of its own, and he believed there was a potential for beauty in everything. While some activities or objects could be simply functional, he felt that anyone who came close to achieving perfection in any activity was an artist, and the results contained the essence of beauty. But the art was as much in the activity as in the results. Works of art were not just the finished product, but the thought, the action, the process that created them." [Ranec was an artist, thus his supreme value was the process by which art is created.] The artist said, "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." Richard Feynman replied, "First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people - and to me, too, I believe. Although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. But at the same time, I see much more in the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells inside, which also have a beauty. There's beauty not just at the dimension of one centimeter; there's also beauty at a smaller dimension. There are the complicated actions of the cells, and other processes. The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insects can see the colors. That adds a question: does this aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life? There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowldege of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds." [Feynman was a scientist, thus his supreme value was the process of gaining knowledge of the world of nature.] Every child in the world looks upon his mother and sees the most beautiful woman in the world, even though many mothers are not beautiful. Do you know why this is so? The child looks with love, and sees love returned. Love is what makes beauty. [The child is a child, and his supreme value is to be loved. Have you forgotten that?] * The Need for and Function of Art and Beauty Man's need for art springs from the fact that he needs the ability to bring his widest abstractions into his immediate perceptual awareness. Every man seeks a confirmation of his own view of existence, and by concretizing this view into something that a man can grasp directly, art is performing this function. Art can give both to the artist and the spectator the experience of seeing the full, immediate, concrete reality of his distant goals. Thus works of art are valuable to us if they reinforce our view of existence in any of its many aspects. The brief respite that is obtained from a flight of fancy into an imaginary world, or the feeling of beautiful rightness when music takes hold of the senses and your body moves in perfect accord with the rhythm it feels, are food for the soul. The world of nature is not a kind place towards living things. It is harshly indifferent to our well-being, and we must continually strive to maintain our existence - our very lives - in the face of inimical conditions. As the human brain evolved, and volitional behavior increased in significance, it became possible for man to explicitly recognize the harshness of nature - to lament: How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Oh, to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. Man became the only creature capable of deliberate suicide - the only creature requiring an intellectually deliberated motive for continuing his existence. To perceive beauty in a sunset, wonder in a rainbow, glory in a thundering waterfall, delicate charm in a hummingbird's iridescence, could only have infused early man's soul with a cause for continuing in the face of adversity. Thus could Beauty have come to have an evolutionary function in human development: those who found beauty to be a pleasure and a value would have more incentive to continue with the struggle of life. * The Nature of Fiction Tolkien spoke of good fiction thusly: "...literary belief, the state of mind that has been called willing suspension of disbelief. But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful subcreator. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is true: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed." A basic tenet of Objectivism is that truth is the recognition of reality. The principle of Objectivist Epistemology which assumes prior certainty of existence indicates that we cannot invent physical things or concepts without referents in reality, and then declare them to be real. However, thoughts are real, and it is an observation of objective reality that man's thoughts include the creation and manipulation of abstract concepts and symbols. It is also observable that many of these creations have no physical identity of their own - such as Pegasus. But although they lack physical identity, these creations/concepts/symbols are real and are existents. We must just be careful not to confuse a concept created without a referent in reality with a physical being. Identity without physical existence is what fictions have. But we must recognize that it is not the sort of incontrovertible, indestructible, absolute identity that existents have; it is the identity ascribed to them, defined for them by their author and shared by the readers. None of us doubt that John Galt and Dagny Taggart have identity. John Galt is not to be confused with Wesley Mouch. Yet none of these people ever existed and none ever will. Non-existence is a derivative concept which can be formed or grasped only in relation to some existent that has ceased to exist. This is the way in which the concept is formed intitially. But once it is formed and grasped it can be applied to that which has never existed or even that which cannot exist. This is a perfectly valid use of the concept non-existence. One can hypothesize a non-existent concrete and then subsume it within an abstraction. To do so is to create a fiction. I see two broad categories into which my thoughts can be divided: those which correspond to the real world (the reality domain) and those which do not (the imaginary domain). The Objectivist Epistemology is a splendid tool which enables me to make proper identifications in the former category and also to make a firm distinction between the two categories. The Objectivist Epistemology does not apply to the second category - and I do not think it needs to. The reality domain is a limited, circumscribed context. This domain is limited by the facts of reality and it is circumscribed by the principles of the Objectivist Epistemology, which serve to keep me very firmly in cognitive contact with the real world. The imaginary domain, on the contrary, has no limits. Imagination is the same sort of concept as freedom - they are both defined in a "negative" manner, as absences. Freedom is the absence of social constraint. Imagination is the absence of reality constraint. I must confess I am not entirely comfortable with the notion that there can be any entity in the universe that is not constrained by reality, but it seems quite obvious to me that the human imagination is just such a thing. But then, if the universe itself can be infinite (i.e., unbounded) there could be within it an entity which is also unbounded. In spite of my misgivings, all my thoughts on this matter compel me to swallow the hard fact that there are no bounds on human imagination, and that it is not subsumed by the Objectivist Epistemology. I approached this by introspection of two of my thought processes: the act of creation and the enjoyment of works of fiction. When I invent some mechanical contraption I begin by making a picture inside my mind of the device I want. I imagine all its parts and how they fit together and interact with one another. If something does not seem right I modify my mental picture of it, and eventually I come up with a picture of a device that I think will do the job. This picture is of a device that I have never seen before, and as far as I know has never even existed. Therefore it is a fiction. But now comes the important part: sometimes this picture can be easily and straightforwardly transformed into fact, i.e., it corresponds precisely with the potentiality of the real world. On other occasions the picture must be modified considerably before such a transformation can occur. And I must confess there have been some pictures I have had to scrap entirely - the facts of reality simply do not allow them to be existentialized. I can see in this process that my mind is free to conceive ANY picture whatsoever. The only point at which I am constrained is when I try to make real my mental pictures. Only if my mind has been in close cognitive contact with reality can I do this. If I were to be constrained in my imaging to a factual corresponence with reality then I could never create (except perhaps by accident) something which had not previously existed. (I have for many years believed that all philosophers should be required to spend some time as practicing engineers - there would be a whole lot less nonsense in the field of philosophy if this were done.) I see the same process occur in the creation of intellectual entities. A lifetime of Science Fiction addiction has shown me that there are no bounds to the fictional worlds the human mind can imagine. Unfortunately, the attempted existentializaion of some of these worlds is not quite the simplistic scenario as my attempts to make real the sometimes clumsily-conceived physical devices that I imagine. Karl Marx believed he had conceived an excellent "social" device, but you all know very well what disastrous consequences have ensued from the attempt to make real that miserable scheme. This distinction between these two basic categories of human thought shows the value of the Objectivist Epistemology in keeping a firm grasp on reality, and also shows the basis of mental health: the ability to distinguish between fact and fantasy. These observations lead to an important link between science and fiction: without fantasy, science would have nothing to test. * Music Extracted from the essay "Art and Cognition" by Ayn Rand, which appeared in the April, May, and June 1971 issues of THE OBJECTIVIST. "Music is a certain succession of sounds produced by periodic vibrations. Musical tones heard in a certain kind of succession are integrated by the human ear and brain into a new cognitive experience, into an auditory entity: a melody. The essence of musical perception is mathematical: the consonance or dissonance of harmonies depends on the ratios of the frequencies of their tones. The brain can integrate a ratio of one to two, for instance, but not of eight to nine. Music offers man the singular opportunity to reenact, on the adult level, the primary process of his method of cognition: the automatic integration of sense data into an intelligible, meaningful entity. To a conceptual consciousness, it is a unique form of rest and reward. A composition may demand the active alertness needed to resolve complex mathematical relationships - or it may deaden the brain by means of monotonous simplicity - or it may obliterate the process by a jumble of sounds mathematically-physiologically impossible to integrate, and thus turn into noise. The other arts create a physical object and the psycho-epistemological process goes from the perception to conceptual understanding to appraisal to emotion. The pattern of the process involved in music is: perception - emotion - appraisal - conceptual understanding. Music is experienced as if it had the power to reach man's emotions directly. It is possible to observe introspectively what one's mind does while listening to music: it evokes subconscious material that seems to flow haphazardly, in brief, random snatches, like the progression of a dream. But, in fact, this flow is selective and consistent: the emotional meaning of the subconscious material coresponds to the emotions projected by the music. The subconscious material has to flow because no single image can capture the meaning of the musical experience, the mind needs a succession of images, it is groping for that which they have in common, for an emotional abstraction. Man cannot experience an actually causeless and objectless emotion. When music induces an emotional state without external object, its only other possible object is the state of actions of his own consciousness. If a given process of musical integration taking place in a man's brain resembles the cognitive processes that procuce and/or accompany a certain emotional state, he will recognize it, in effect, physiologically, then intellectually." Douglas Hofstadter: "I feel that mathematics, more than any other discipline, studies the fundamental, pervasive patterns of the universe. However, as I have gotten older, I have come to see that there are inner mental patterns underlying our ability to conceive of mathematical ideas, universal patterns in human minds that make them receptive not only to the patterns of mathematics but also to abstract regularities of all sorts in the world. Indeed, how could anyone hope to approach the concept of beauty without deeply studying the nature of formal patterns and their organizations and relationships to Mind? How can anyone fascinated by beauty fail to be intrigued by the notion of a "magical formula" behind it all, chimerical though the idea certainly is? And in this day and age, how can anyone fascinated by creativity and beauty fail to see in computers the ultimate tool for exploring their essence?" * Dancing Rhythm is the flow or regularity of groups of recurring heavy and light accents which conform to a specific metered timing. Timing is simply the number of counts per measure of music. The tempo denotes the rate of speed these beats are metered in. Dancing is the manner in which the movements of the body are distributed and applied to beats of music, thus forming patterns. The most important point to remember is not only to find the correct beat of music to start a step, but to perform it (in its correct rhythm) while remaining on the proper beat of each measure of music, to whatever tempo played. When you are able to dance a pattern in correct rhythm while placing it to the correct beats of the measure you will then have good timing and rhythm. You will then be a good dancer. * Some Writing Techniques Here are a few elements that show what makes a story a realistic work of art - or a bomb. The Expository Lump. The creation of a story's context - its "reality" - is one of the most important jobs the writer has. All too often this job is handled in a rather clumsy manner and the reader stubs his toe, so to speak, on an Expository Lump that occurs in the story. The Expository Lump comes in two forms: the narrative lump and the dialog lump. In both forms, the story pauses while the author throws information at the reader in order to establish the "reality" of the story's situation in the reader's mind. Here is an example of the dialog lump: "Well, John, we've been stuck in this busted-down spaceship for three weeks - and it's gonna be another week before we get rescued." "Yeah, David. And on top of that we're running out of oxygen, since the storage tank sprung a leak yesterday." This isn't really two characters talking to each other, it is the author talking to the reader, presenting information that should have been skillfully interwoven into the story line. Subjunctive Tension is the ambiguity between what your words say and all the possibilities of their meaning. "He walked through the door." (teleportation, obviously - he probably walked through the doorway rather than the door itself.) "The sun came through the window." (In which case, it got rather hot in here. It was the sunlight that came in, not the sun.) The Said-ism: In an attempt to avoid repetitious use of the word "said," characters have been known to "hiss" sentences containing not a single sibilant, to "growl" lines consisting mostly of vowels, to "ejaculate," to "effuse," to "smile" entire conversations. Once you become aware of the said- ism, its use becomes hilarious. The Capitalization of Words in an attempt to make one's Inventions important by Typographical Tricks rather than by the Power of the Descriptive Words themselves is a technique you will all too often encounter in my own writings. The hierarchy of rules for the use of science in science fiction: If you can make it correct, you should. If you can't make it correct, at least make it plausible. If you can't make it correct or plausible, you had better make it fun. Characterization and story are of equal importance literarily and even metaphysically, for if you ask which comes first, action or an entity, the answer is "an entity." If man's nature must be expressed through his actions, it is equally true that action is meaningless unless it is the product of, or the expression of, someone...or something...human. * The Destruction of Art under Statism A good story is one wherein the protagonist has to apply reason to bring order out of chaos. To apply the scientific method, in short. But this requires that the author portray independent thought and judgment in action - he must portray a character who interprets reality according to his own judgment. The artist and the State are natural enemies because the state insists upon being the sole interpreter of reality, and if the artist acquiesces in this function he abrogates his own metaphysical value-judgements and is thus bereft of the fundamental requirement for creating art. The Newspeak-bred, statist mentalities of most modern "artists" render them incapable of equaling even the perceptiveness of a good forger: they do not know what they are imitating, nor why it had been successful. They do not know the difference between trash and values and therefore are rarely able to produce anything of value, either in industry or in art. Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them. * Miscellaneous Comments on Art A young would-be composer wrote to Mozart, asking advice as to how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding musical form and that it would be better to start with something simpler. The young man protested, "But Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when you were younger than I am now." And Mozart replied, "I never asked how." Sitting beside him on a pedestal he had a piece of jade, a good-size chunk, almost as big as my head. Every once in a while he would turn it so it would catch the sunlight in a different way. One day I asked him what he was doing, and he said, "I'm trying to see what it is - there's something there I haven't captured yet, and when I do, I'll start carving." In a novel of ideas, the ideas have to work. The hand that can create these images and reveal the soul in them, and is inspired to do this and nothing else even if he starves and is cast off by his community and all his family for it: is not this hand the hand used by God, who, being a spirit without body, parts or passions, has no hands? __ Chapter 12 THE DISASTROUS STATE OF AMERICAN EDUCATION SAT score decline High School dropout rate Quality of Education Quality of the Teachers Futility of Reform Principles underlying government schooling Tragic consequences For the decade ending in 1962 the mean scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test varied within about a 10 point range (from 471 to 479 on the verbal section and from 490 to 502 on the math section). In 1963 these scores commenced a decline which continued for almost 20 years: YEAR VERBAL MATH 1962: 478 502 1981: 424 466 -11% -7% From 1981 to 1991 the scores leveled off, holding within a few points of 425 Verbal and 470 Math. Some of this decline can be attributed to the fact that a wider range of students now take the test than took it in the l960s, but the Wirtz Commission concluded that about half of the decline represents an actual decline among students with qualifications similar to those taking the test earlier. However, in early 1990 a nation-wide scandal came to light: it was revealed that school administrators and teachers, in their attempts to improve their standing in the community and to earn for themselves and their schools "improved student achievement" bonuses offered by the state governments, had been cheating on the achievement tests by providing their students with the answers prior to testing. This makes highly suspect the "leveling off" of the SAT score decline that was reported in the mid-1980s. (In any case, the issue will be sidestepped in 1995, when the College Board will recalibrate the "average" combined verbal and math score (supposedly 500) to the median of the test group of that year. This will result in that year's group having a combined score 98 points above that of their predecessors.) During this two-decade period there was also a precipitous drop in the number of students scoring at the top 1% level (700 or higher) in spite of the fact that the total student pool increased by more than one-fourth: YEAR VERBAL MATH 1966: 33,200 55,500 1979: 12,300 38,900 -63% -30% To say less than words can say is to commit an intellectual crime. Today, the fruits of that crime hang shriveled on the vine of education, in the form of millions of students who have been prevented, by their years of schooling, from developing their capacity for thought. The situation is further aggravated in the field of higher education. Observe the number of new Ph.D.s in science: Physical Sciences Physics Mathematics 1971: 4500 1970: 1500 1978: 619 1984: 3400 1986: 900 1988: 341 -24% -40% -45% And this sorry situation is by no means restricted to the scientific fields. It is taking a terrible toll in the arts as well. Between 1966 and 1989 there was a reduction of 77% in the number of public school students enrolled in music courses. More than a fourth of the science Ph.D.s and 60% of the engineering Ph.D.s awarded in 1986 went to foreign students, and two-thirds of postdoctoral appointees in engineering were foreign citizens. In early 1989, only 7 in 1000 American university students were studying engineering. In Japan the ratio was 40 in 1000. The percentage of American students pursuing a degree in any science dropped from 11.5 in 1966 to 5.8 in 1988. This paucity of American science students extends down into the high schools: among the winners of the 1990 Science Talent Search, 57% were foreign students. And again, the arts are affected along with the sciences: in 1993, thirty-seven percent of the students at the Julliard School of Music were foreigners. During the 1960's, American colleges and universities expanded as if the post-War baby boom that produced the massive youth cohorts of that period would last forever. (But what else could they have done - in view of the demands placed upon them?) It did not, and institutions of higher learning are now confronted by sharply declining enrollments in a period of economic hardship and insecurity. Faced with this potentially devastating situation, most undergraduate institutions, including some of the most selective, have lowered their admissions standards and many have abandoned them altogether. A 1978-79 College Board survey of 2,600 colleges showed that only 40% required any minimum grade point average for admission and only 30% set minimum cut-off scores on the SAT. As a result, percentages of applicants accepted were very high: 91% at public two-year colleges 86% at private two-year colleges 79% at public four-year colleges 77% at private four-year colleges The inevitable overall result is that virtually all literate and numerate students and many semi-literate or even illiterate ones can find some college which will accept them, if they can somehow arrange to pay the fees. This is illustrated by University of Wyoming president Terry Roark's comment in September, 1988: "My plan to stiffen UW admissions standards will not prevent any high school graduate from entering Wyoming's only university." While the SAT scores decline, the high-school dropout rate increases: NEA data for the '85-'86 school year reveal that 30% of America's teenagers are not graduating from high school. (In 1965 the fraction was 24%) In the large cities, the dropout rate is 35-50%. Indeed, in Boston for that year more kids dropped out (52%) than graduated!! Perhaps partly through actual physical fear: many classrooms require two teachers, one to talk and keep the pupils amused while the other tries to keep them from killing each other. Teaching someone the difference between velocity and acceleration is irrelevant if that person is hungry and scared. The social cost of this phenomenon is staggering - in part because these dropouts tend not to enter the labor force. In 1987, 19% of the labor force had college degrees, up from 10% in 1963. Only 18% had less than a high school diploma, down from 45% in 1963. "So where are all the dropouts?" you may ask. More than half of the nation's prison population are dropouts. The dollar cost of confining a prisoner can be up to $25K/year - a figure higher than the cost of a year of schooling at either Harvard or Yale. And this dismal situation exists in spite of an enormous, and growing, financial investment: government spending on education consumes 7% of GNP ($240 billion in 1984). The cost per student of public elementary and secondary schooling was $2279 in 1980, $4810 during school year 1988-89, and $4929 the following year. Between 1950 and 1976, per pupil spending increased nearly 300% (inflation adjusted). In the five years from 1971 to 1976 total professional staff in US public schools went up 8%. The number of supervisors went up 44%. The cost per pupil went up 58%. While the number of students went DOWN 4%. The number of school districts went down by 17%, continuing the trend to greater centralization. These massive changes produced not a nation of scholars but the least educated generation in our history. The cost of education is more than just taxpayer and parental dollars; it is also the students' time, much of which is wasted. For example, does it really take 12 years to produce high school graduates who cannot read, who cannot find the USA on a world map and who do not know when WWII was? Couldn't the same results be achieved in a lot less time? Is it likely that better results will be achieved with longer school years and extra years in school, as many educators now advocate? For those who stay in school, the quality of education leaves much to be desired. I have seen estimates of functional illiteracy ranging from 25% to 33% of high school graduates, and up to 13% of the entire adult population. The National Commission on Excellence in Education found 23 million adult functional illiterates, and Daniel Boorstin, head of the Library of Congress, claims the number is growing at an annual rate of 2.3 million. According to the National Council for Geographic Education (corroborated by an independent study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress), one in five American students is unable to locate the USA on a world map. An NSF poll in 1988 revealed that 55% of adult Americans do not know that a year is the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. Says James Vining, executive director of the NCGE: "We have a situation where Johnny not only doesn't know how to read or add, he doesn't even know where he is." And, I would add, he can't figure out what's going on: the NCEE also found that 40% of 17-year-olds are not able to draw a simple inference from written material. And as time goes on, they have less and less access to even the simplest written material: In 1950, virtually all American households received at least one daily newspaper. In 1970, 98% did so. But by 1993, that had fallen to 63%. Only nine of the states require a geography course for graduation. Thirty percent of US high schools do not offer a physics course, twenty percent offer no chemistry, and ten percent offer no biology. Almost 75% offer no earth or space science courses. in 1990 less than 50% of the graduates had taken chemistry, and only about 20% had taken physics. In an examination of 17 countries, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement found that US 14-year-olds ranked 14th in their knowledge of basic science. (Hungary was first and Japan second.) US students were also among the worst at age 18. A 1989 international math test included the statement "I am good at mathematics." The Americans led in their agreement with this statement: 68% answered "Yes." (In another survey, 30% considered themselves to be not just good, but "among the best.") But when the test was scored, the Americans ranked LAST in their actual math performance. American students do not know their math, but they have evidently absorbed the lessons of the newly-fashionable self-esteem curriculum wherein kids are taught to feel good about themselves: American kids feel good about doing bad. The US high-school grad used to be highly educated relative to the rest of the world. This is no longer the case, and the economy is now much more globally- extensive. Thus the US grad is relatively dumber. A 1988 survey found that half of those who had never taken a course in biology did as well in tests as 40% of those who had; apparently, biology courses taught most of those taking them almost nothing. The institutionalized ignorance described here has another really tragic consequence for American teen-agers: partly as a result of grossly inadequate - or nonexistent - sex education programs, the rate of abortions rose 70% between 1973 and 1988 among American girls under the age of 20. But what can you expect from an educational process in which reading, writing, arithmetic and science are delivered to students in much the same way as tires, windows and doors are attached to the frame of an automobile on an assembly line? A student moves along this assembly line, at each stage having an additional "education module" slapped onto his mental framework. It is supposed that the end result of this agglomeration process will be a comprehensively educated person. But nowhere during the process does the student acquire the ability to integrate the modules into a coherent whole. In the public schools the students are merely memorizing facts - they are not integrating ideas. A culture is a collection of values and the behaviors required to achieve those values. Schools do not transmit the culture because they do not teach children how to set long term life goals in the context of a political and economic environment. In fact, what the schools are actually doing is culturally retrogressive, as they are instilling a philosophy of value- deprivation/depravation. Good teachers are as much victims of this situation as are the students. They are forced to comply with government and school administration "guidelines" ...instead of determining them. The result is that students are "exposed" to subject material instead of being taught it. Sooner or later America will have to face the fact that angry denunciations of public education and innumerable studies by committees with prestigious appellations have left us blue in the face but have produced not one whit of change. In no field is there more rhetoric about change, and in no field is there less actual change reflecting real improvement. Many parents turn a blind eye to these developments because they don't want to face (for example) the prospect of having minority students who should be in the seventh grade attending fifth or sixth grade classes with their children. People who support this view point to the overwhelming percentage of minorities in remedial classes as evidence that it is a genuine concern. But when the "right to an education" becomes the "right to a diploma" many students are graduated who don't receive an education. The National Committee on Excellence in Education remarked: "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." And what of the soldiers who are waging this war? Observe: The state of Texas recently heaved a sigh of relief that only 3.3% of its teachers flunked a basic "see-Spot-run" competency test. Still, that is 6579 teachers unable to read, write, or cipher, all early grade-school material, and you wonder how they managed to finish college and get hired. Medals given to the winners of a Los Angeles scholastic competition in 1992 misspelled the word "academic" (acadumbic?) Using data provided by ETS, Ron Hoeflin compiled this list of median GRE advanced achievement test scores for graduate school applicants in various fields. It shows clearly the intellectual position of teachers relative to other professional groups: Mathematics 630 Physics 628 Philosophy 627 Biology 609 Chemistry 606 Economics 590 Engineering 583 Geology 569 English Lit. 549 Spanish 549 French 544 German 535 Psychology 533 History 529 GRE (total) 509 Political Sci.498 Geography 486 Music 485 Education 464 The decline in the SAT scores of educators has been just as acute. In 1973, future education majors scored 59 points lower than the national average on the combined SAT; by 1982, they scored 82 points lower. The negative selection of those going into teaching has been aggravated by negative selection among those already in the field. The 1972 National Longitudinal Survey of high school seniors shows that the mean SAT score for those who enter the field of teaching and then leave it is 42 points higher than the score of those who enter and stay. Those who remain permanently in the profession have a combined SAT score 118 points lower than the score of those who have never taught. In the words of teachers-union president Albert Shanker, "For the most part, you are getting illiterate, incompetent people who cannot go into any other field." And if you should ask "Well, why can't they clean up their act?" - consider this: The American Association for the Advancement of Science is attempting a radical redefinition of science curricula. The first phase, intended to establish what high school graduates should know, was intended to last six months, but took five years! Many teachers who are honestly looking for ways to improve their techniques walk away without any answers. It's like asking directions to the bus stop and getting a lecture on mass transit systems. In view of the widespread concern for "classrooms without education" the simple alternative of "education without classrooms" ought to be readily apparent, but no one seems to be aware of it. The belief that classrooms are a prerequisite to education leads to the belief that education comes only from classrooms - that education is a prerogative of the schools. How many times have you heard the remark "When will you finish your education?" when what is meant is "When will you get your diploma?" It is unfortunate that many people, strutting off the stage while clutching in their hot little hands that decorative piece of wallpaper, think "at last my schooling is finished" and then commence to stagnate intellectually for the rest of their lives. Merely sitting in a school room for a period of years is not equivalent to receiving an education. And for those ambitious students who manage to cope with this state of affairs and graduate from high school, what awaits them when they do get to college? (52% of the graduates of American high schools go on to college.) Just what is the educational philosophy of the modern university? Here are some representative examples: In metaphysics, the University of Delaware (Newark) presents a course (Course #A5 267-80, Spring 1979) titled: NOTHING. "A study of Nil, Void, Vacuum, Null, Zero, and Other Kinds of Nothingness. A lecture course exploring the varieties of nothingness from the vacuum and void of physics and astronomy to political nihilism, to the emptiness of the arts and the soul." In epistemology, New York University offers: (Philosophy V83.0083, 1981-82) THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. "Various theories of knowledge are discussed, including the view that they are all inadequate and that, in fact, nobody knows anything." For ethics, we go to Indiana (Bloomington) and attend course #H200, titled SOCIAL REACTIONS TO HANDICAPS, in which the students will "explore some of the different ways in which the handicapped individual...has been regarded in Western Civilization. Figures from the past such as the fool, the madman, the blind beggar...will be discussed." There was once a time when college students studied facts, knowledge, and human greatness. Now they study nothingness, ignorance, and blind beggars. A pervasive epistemological and moral relativism is producing a generation of young people who are intellectually impoverished, lacking the knowledge, moral standards or commitment to reason necessary to sustain the cultural and economic institutions underlying America's success. Most of the colleges of this country have simply classified ignorance and are peddling it as knowledge. The NEA boasts that in 128 years their goal has never wavered: "Excellence in every classroom, for every child." The dismal picture painted here suggests a more appropriate motto: "Ignorance is our most important product." The effects of NEA policies, and of five generations of John Dewey in the public school system, show clearly that that system has failed. Public schools have failed and will continue to fail for a very simple reason: there is no impetus for success. Because children HAVE to be in school and HAVE to do what they're told, teachers almost never get any quick and reliable feedback about their teaching. By contrast, people teaching their own children, even if they make many mistakes, are soon likely to become effective teachers, because they get from their children the kind of unmistakable feedback that tells them when their teaching is helpful and when it is not. But public education is accountable to no one. Taxpayers must support it and the majority of parents must accept its product, like it or not. Much of the legislation concerning educational reform, particularly that directed toward "minority" accomodation, is no more than ideology masquerading as reform, as conflicting pressure-groups fight for control over the school system. From the eighteenth century to the present, domination of the masses through control of schooling has been a major part of the larger struggle for power in a democratic society lacking a securely established institution of individual rights. Competing educational systems would offer the consumer a wide choice in his purchase of education for himself and/or his children. This would end forever the squabbles over curriculum (more athletics? more academics? Black Studies programs?), student body (segregated or integrated? - shall we bus to integrate?), control of education (should it be in the hands of parents, teachers, voters, the school board, or the colleges?), and all the other questions which are unsolvable within the context of government's coercive control of education. If each consumer were free to choose among competing schools the type of education he valued most, all these problems would be solved automatically. But the government school system preempts the options of the citizens who are obliged to finance it, so that alternatives are dependent on the arbitrary decrees of government committees. The government has not solved the education problem because government IS the problem. As American public schools slowly sink under waves of violence, drugs, and illiteracy, supporters search frantically for salvation - but there is none. The internal chaos and increasing politicalization of public education are inherent in its government ownership wherein, without the necessity to compete for customers, and lacking the profit motive, there is no incentive for improvement. As long as local school systems can be assured of state aid and increasing federal aid without the accountability which inevitably comes with aggressive competition, it would be sentimental, wishful thinking to expect any significant increase in the efficiency of the public schools. The application of individual rights and cognitive competence to the educational system is necessary before sanity can return to the classrooms. The Japanese educational system demonstrates some interesting contrasts with that of the USA. In the mid-1960s math tests were given to 18-year-olds in 12 countries. The AVERAGE Japanese scored at the same standard as the top 1% elsewhere. A second run of these tests in the early 1980s had similar results. Another comparison (in 1981) of 17-year-olds in Japan and in Illinois showed the average Japanese scoring better than 98% of the Americans. In attempting to understand this disparity, it should be noted that the financing of state-owned senior high schools in Japan is about average for economically advanced nations. But 30% of Japanese high schools are privately owned, and although compulsory schooling extends only to age 15 in Japan, 94% of Japanese adolescents voluntarily continue their education, even though they are all required to pay fees for this continuance - whether they choose to attend a state-financed high school or a wholly private school. Thus, while the American government-controlled schools are barely able to attract half the nation's adolescents, the Japanese experience suggests strongly that schools sensitive to consumer requirements by virtue of their market organization provide a service which virtually all adolescents (and/or their parents) are not only willing to avail themselves of but even to pay for. AND which has fabulously successful educational results! We should make the public aware of how much better educated their children would be from reading things produced by private foundations rather than from studying the social sciences at a university. What happens in the American Sociological Association is trivial, but what's coming out of certain think tanks (Cato) and certain institutes (Institute for Objectivist Studies) is very exciting and much more central to the real problems of American society. The Laissez Faire Bookstore undoubtedly provides a better selection of educational material than can be found in any university's social science department. The erosion of confidence in government resulting from continual policy reversals, irresolution in the face of electoral whims, and stifling bureaucracy may eventually lead to a trend toward private funding of education. To ensure the supply of trained talent, business will have to invest in the private educational system. And to some extent, it already is doing so: the NSF estimated in 1992 that employers in the US spend in the region of $100 billion a year retraining high school graduates in basic skills. The Savannah symphony orchestra players sign two contracts, one to play in the orchestra, and the other to teach music to high school students for 20 hours per week. Some students are themselves taking note of and protesting their situation: The "Teach Or I'll Leave" (TOIL) movement is gaining momentum. The movement was inspired by David Karpook, who as a Harvard undergraduate in the 1970s walked out of his Physics class whenever the lecturer stopped making sense. In recent years the idea has spread to campuses across North America and thence to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In recent months (summer 1993), students at several Japanese technical universities have taken up the practice. American schools are failing in every subject and on a fundamental level; they are doing it methodically, as a matter of philosophical principle. Their courses are a hodge-podge of random and contradictory information that can't possibly be integrated into a consistent whole, and one of the first things they teach students is not to bother to try. The anti-conceptual epistemology that grips them comes from John Dewey, who stands on the shoulders of Immanuel Kant, the philosopher who dedicated his life and his system to the destruction of reason. About 1900, psychologist William James developed what came to be called the "pragmatic method." It maintained that the value of anything is to be found only in terms of its "usefulness" or actual consequences. It denied the existence of "absolutes" of any kind. Shortly thereafter, philosopher John Dewey seized upon this concept and developed from it the theory of Instrumentalism. It holds that thought is simply a method of meeting difficulties - that its goals are wider experiences and the solving of problems. To Dewey, knowledge equals experience. There are no self-evident truths, no universal verities of any kind. To Dewey, anything in life which satisfies a want is a "good." If one concedes that good and evil have no higher connotation than satisfying or failing to satisfy an individual want or need, then it follows that there can be no positive standards of child behavior, no moral code except a relative one. Knowledge, in this hashish doctrine, is never worth pursuing for its own sake, only for the sake of problems it might solve for the individual. Dewey's pragmatism held the main goals of education to be these: To aid the child to live the life of the peer group, and to enable him to adjust to unknown and constantly changing environmental conditions. There is nothing here, you will note, about the basic essentials of knowledge. Nothing about culture. Or teaching children to use the intellectual tools which the human race has found to be indispensable in the pursuit of truth. Or even simple literacy, for that matter. The American education establishment has embraced this turkey and over the decades continues to prop up its decaying and putrescent philosophical corpse, disguising it with verbal rouge and mascara long after its failure had become blatantly apparent to all save said establishment. It is still cherishing this zombie, no matter how many kids emerge from its clutches illiterate and ignorant. The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though rarely said, that uttering nonsense and half-truths without cease ends by destroying intellect. Incompetence in cognition creates a caste system. Those who can use language can think and therefore be independent, rational and productive; those who cannot are more ignorant, less productive and more easily manipulated, intimidated and controlled. Thus the American school system has produced generations of citizens who are intolerant of matters about which they are ignorant or have been systematically misled. If improvements are not made in the educational system, the divisions among people in this country will only become more extreme. A few horror stories: City government departments such as Fire, Police, Ambulance, Hospitals, Parks, Electricity, Water, and Streets need to employ people who are at least moderately literate, who possess sufficient education and selfconfidence to make reasonable judgments in everyday situations. NYC's system of public education has failed to produce such employees. It's disheartening to call 911 to report a crime at the playground in Riverside Park at 91st Street and then have the responding 911 employee ask plaintively: "But what is the house number? We have to have a house number..." I had managed to get a person who wasn't familiar with the geography of her own city, probably didn't know how to read a map, and didn't realize that private homes with numbers are not part of the layout of our public parks and playgrounds. This is not so unusual. Incompetent public service does not contribute to a high standard of community living. A Missouri couple took their local public school to court for failing to teach their child to read and write. The judge ruled for the school on the grounds that the law sets forth compulsory attendance in Missouri, not compulsory education. Life can be frustrating for graduates who depart college full of a social science know-how that leaves them knowing only how to teach the same stuff to others. A political science professor tried to convince me to go to graduate school and get a Ph.D. in political science. "What could I do with a political science Ph.D.?" I asked. "Well," came the answer, "you could lecture to other students getting political science degrees." "And what would they do with their political science degrees?" "Well, they could teach others..." It sounded like a giant Ponzi scheme, so I left college immediately. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, It expects what never was and never will be. .... Thomas Jefferson __ Chapter 13 Thoughts on the Future of Civilization * Alienation * Principles have Consequences * Freedom/Slavery schizophrenia * Financial Manipulation * Standard of Living * Dependency * Dictatorship American Style * Inheritance * Alienation It is not necessary to prove that something is wrong with the world. Everybody - of any creed, color, or intellectual persuasion, old and young, rich and poor, conservative and liberal, foreign and domestic - senses that something monstrous is destroying civilization. But no one can figure out what it is. The reason civilization is declining may not be loss of resources, or the uncontrolled obsession to reproduce, or the decline of literacy, or the continuing increase in government tyranny, or any such thing. Those may be mere effects, while the real cause may be a collective subconscious revolt against this steel, concrete and machinery. Since we evolved among forests, do we dare cut down every tree on earth? The thousands of visible stars that defined the night sky for our ancestors are now too washed out for urban eyes to see. Our loss of the velvet night is profound. Not only have we lost the stars, we have lost even the night itself. Here in central Wyoming, I live in one of the least populated regions of the country. Even so, I must trek well up into the mountainous wilderness before I can experience a darkness that is not encroached upon by artificial lights. Along with darkness, we have lost silence. The incessant and inescapable clamor of modern civilization is pounding continually against our eardrums, hammering its way inexorably into our subconscious minds. Surely this must have similar consequences to the Newspeak phenemena that I discussed in Chapter 2. There has been a social loss also. Many people exist like zombies, refusing to run the risk of interacting emotionally or intellectually with other people, but this leaves them with a vacant feeling in their hearts and minds so they switch on the TV and live vicariously, running no risk of being hurt but experiencing emotions they are otherwise missing. This counterfeit practice fills the need for emotional experience only until the next day when it has to be fed again. Before TV, people had no phoney out. They had to get their emotional satisfaction from relating to other real live people. But today they have become a gum-chewing, bag-rattling crowd of couch potatoes. A crowd that wants its entertainment overplayed so that it won't have to think about what's going on. A crowd whose senses are so dulled that its laughter comes out of a can. A value-deprived crowd that doesn't want to reach OUT for a feeling or a meaning. It wants to be clubbed in the head with the meaning, so that it doesn't have to reach. Maybe man can survive on earth this way, but his dreams can't. There is too much "civilization" and it has crowded out all the dreams. And there's no LIFE left for anyone. Just day-to-day survival. Average life in America: you're born, you go to school, you grow into an adult and join the rat-race, you get a job to survive and pay taxes, then you die. Happiness and beauty are psychological necessities. That's why we experience beauty in such natural-world phenomena as sunsets and rainbows, and why we experience happiness in successful value-achievement. But it must be authentic happiness - the brain is a natural, not artificial, organ. Many people have very little authentic happiness. TV watching is not authentic. Nor is the mad scramble to earn a living while focused not on genuine productivity but on extraneous things like keeping up with the Joneses or keeping your boss satisfied. Nathaniel Branden once commented on "the biological forces deep within our organism that speak to us in a wordless language we have barely begun to decipher." I rather suspect that it is more likely the case that we have forgotten how to decipher their language. The trappings of civilization have cozened humans to sever their direct links with fundamentally important values and "the biological forces deep within our organism" that impel us to the achievement of those values. Thus we live in what Rand has so aptly described as a condition of "cultural value-deprivation." * Principles have Consequences To understand the state of a society, one must discover the extent to which a given philosophy has been institutionalized and has penetrated the spirit of its citizens. On this basis, one can then explain a society's history - and forecast its future. This is what can make intelligible the fact of Hitler's rise, and the possibility of America's decline. If you have been taught - and accept - that oppression is proper, then you will participate in a form of gradual social suicide. You will, as a matter of course, help to spread within your society the attitudes that must be nourished in order to accept oppression. (They are, after all, your own attitudes.) As a result, a greater and greater percentage of the population will come to embrace social institutions that eventuate in the self- destruction of society. (Thus the continual victories for collectivist politics.) For example: Starting with the premise that sacrifice is a fundamental requirement of human existence, it is inevitable that laws will be passed mandating sacrifices. The unwillingness of an individual to accept the sacrifices that "the law" demands will be perceived as a violation of civilized decency. Thus even if a man starts out as benevolent, a consistent application of the collectivist principle of sacrifice will drive him, against all his better premises and feelings, to accept the necessity of violating individual rights. Here you see the indirect - and largely unrecognized - influence of philosophy on human existence. Imagine passengers riding on a train which, they have been told, is taking them to a distant utopia. At first all seems well, but as the train moves closer to its destination, the scene outside the windows becomes ominously bleak. Finally, the passengers catch sight of the destination. Instead of the utopia, they see starving children, chain gangs, and, in the distance, the barbed wire and sentry posts of a concentration camp. Frightened and angry, they attempt to negate their forward motion by running back INSIDE THE TRAIN. The attempt, of course, is hopeless; to save themselves, the passengers must get off the train altogether. In the same manner, the moral code of altruism will carry society to tyranny, regardless of short-term backpedalling. The only hope is finally, to fully reject altruism and assert man's right to exist for his own sake. * Freedom/Slavery schizophrenia It is prerequisite to mental health that a man be in spiritual contact with the knowledge of reality that he has. (See PSE chapter 6.) Thus an ignorant man, whose conceptual view of the world is limited, can live in a successful state of mental health if he will just recognize and act according to the view of reality he does have. However, a man with greater knowledge MUST recognize and act according to that advanced view - or else he will be neurotic - by being out of spiritual contact with the reality he perceives. A man living under a totalitarian government, who has no real knowledge of what freedom is, suffers a condition of enslavement, but he does not misperceive his situation, thus his only burden is that of being a slave. Citizens of the United States also suffer a condition of enslavement, but they have been taught that their nation was established in freedom, and that their ancestors were free, and all their lives they have been led to believe that they themselves are free. Devoutly but falsely believing themselves to be free, they refuse to acknowledge the fact of their enslavement. But the reality of that fact is inescapable. Once they are released from the school system and enter mainstream society, these slaves - having been thoroughly indoctrinated by the government with the notion that America is a free society and that they are free people - immediately encounter such phenomena as: selective service, driver's licenses, vehicle registration, income tax, property tax, business licenses, and the myriad regulations that control all aspects of their daily lives. Thus they have a double burden: the enslavement itself and also the psychological effects of the discord between the reality they live in and the falsehood of their beliefs. Is it any wonder that the subconscious attempt by their minds to integrate a firm belief in freedom with the inescapable facts of slavery should result in massive psychological distress? Enough to drive one to drink - or addiction of an even more self-destructive nature - or even suicide. The victim has chopped himself into pieces which he struggles never to connect - and then he sees no reason why his life is in ruins. Not knowing just what has happened to his life nor who to blame, he sees only that the quality of life has shockingly deteriorated, and that life is now so beset by apprehension for the future, difficulty in remaining solvent, and actual physical danger, that it is hardly worth living any more. And it is immensely difficult for him to fight this situation: having had his concept of freedom thoroughly depraved, he lacks the derivative concepts needed for active resistance to tyranny. When I hear someone say that Americans are free, I consciously and explicitly recognize that statement to be false. I also know subconsciously that it is false. Thus there is no conflict between my conscious mind and my subconscious mind. When you hear the same statement, you consciously and explicitly accept it as true. Your subconscious mind, however, knows - because of its inability to integrate its contrary observations - that the statement is false. In order to avoid the psychologically devastating (or at least distressing) process of seeing your most cherished beliefs refuted, you must suppress the knowledge of your subconscious mind - so that it will not conflict with your consciously held convictions - and accept only a selected subset of your observations. You must divide your mind into two parts: the set of observations that you consciously accept, and that disturbing set of observations that contradict your conscious beliefs. As time passes, this alienation process becomes more pervasive, as you come to deny a larger and larger body of your observations, and it becomes more intense, as you force yourself to deny a more and more significant body of observations. Since the fundamental function of a human mind is the process of integration, this continual segregation process results in a growing nervous tension, as your subconscious mind tries harder and harder to integrate these two bodies of knowledge. Eventually there will occur an explicit recognition of this conflict, accompanied by a psycho-emotional trauma proportional to the amount and degree of segregation that had previously occcurred. The rage and frustration resulting from this trauma (and/or from the sudden destruction of your most cherished beliefs) may so seriously derange your mental processes that you drive your pickup truck through the front door of a restaurant and then kill two dozen people. A man can accept enslavement - after all, most people throughout history have lived in a state of enslavement, and they have accepted this (although in many cases they did not like it at all). But what a man CANNOT do is believe that he is free while simultaneously realizing that he is a slave. It is not possible to integrate a contradiction. Any attempt to do so will make you insane. This is a major reason why half the hospital beds in America contain people who have mental, not physical, illness. Being unable to resolve the conflict between their environment and their upbringing, they wind up in mental institutions. It is also a major contributor to the widespread cultural derangement, and its accompanying violence, that so plague modern America. Facts are facts, whether you believe in them or not. They are immutable. The thing that depends on your cognizance of them is not the reality of the facts, but the effectiveness of your behavior - and your mental health. * Financial Manipulation When you manufacture products, you add value to raw materials, and you literally create wealth. But America is turning more and more to a different economic perspective: Americans make money now by paper manipulation, the error of which is bound to catch up to us because paper profits don't reflect real wealth. The fascination with Wall Street and junk bonds is so misplaced as to be crazy. Instead of goods, services, and work - realities of the physical world - Keynes' economic realities are mere symbols: money and credit. The advice of economic counselors is usually very good in times of affluence when the game is played with intangibles such as dollars, stocks, bonds, etc. These things have value in the same sense that bubble gum cards have great value among children. but a dollar is no more money than a hatcheck is a hat. Sooner or later people want their hats. Contrast the great fortunes of the early 20th century with those of the late 20th century. Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford made vast fortunes, but these were productive fortunes: they produced steel, oil and automobiles. The great fortunes of the 1980s resulted not from production, but from manipulation of financial assets. Never have so many made so much in return for producing so little. The world no longer has the patience for long-term investments. The vast increase of government interference in the market has resulted in a general economic thrust away from far-sightedness and the building of capital for the future, and toward destructive short-term looting of the stock of capital. Political Man is narrow-minded and short-sighted. He loots resources for short-term benefit. It is capital ownership in the free market that encourages Economic Man to look to the future, to safeguard resources in order to maintain their long-term value on the market. The increasing scope of government's control and its associated transfers of property rights from private individuals to government or to interest groups undermines the private property arrangements that support a free market system. This process creates considerable uncertainty about the future value of those private rights that have not yet been taken. When resource owners are relatively uncertain about their continued ownership of those resources, they tend to use them up relatively rapidly and have less incentive to enhance future production capabilities. Resources are then overused and underproduced. * Standard of Living I recently came across a prediction made by futurists back in the 1950s: "People in the 1980s will be commuting from their rooftops via personal helicopters, filing flight plans instead of fighting freeways." I got to thinking about this and said "Why not? There is no technological reason why personal helicopters are not widely available, or perhaps small VTOL aircraft." This led me to a related line of inquiry - a comparison of the American standard of living of the 1950s with that of the 1980s. Has it been going up? Down? Remaining about the same? Or is this a spurious question? It might be better to ask "Whose standard of living?" Some people do better, some do worse. Is it even possible to measure an "aggregate standard of living"? And what is the difference between the state of the economy and the standard of living of the people? I think there is a difference. I can conceive of a healthy, robust and growing national economy in which most people have a rather low standard of living (compared with what we have today). This would be true of America in the first half of the 19th century. The country was free, the economy was growing rapidly and uninhibitedly, but the people were starting from a rather low standard of living. On the other hand, during the 1930s most people were materially better off than their ancestors had been a century previously - but the nation's economy was in dismal condition. I surmise that "state of the economy" could be measured in absolute terms, but "standard of living" is only comparative. In terms of electronic appliances there can be no doubt whatsoever - a staggering increase in wealth has taken place during recent decades. The same is true for some other industries also: bicycles, fabrics, junk food (but whether this one constitutes a rise in standard of living is debatable). My tentative conclusion is that people have more material wealth today, but they have to work more to get it. So is their standard of living higher or lower? I don't know. Think back to the fifties (if you are old enough to do so), when an American family of three or four could live comfortably on the income earned by the father, the sole breadwinner of the family. That father could own a house, raise a family, and send the kids to college, all on a single paycheck. Today, however, one income alone will usually not suffice for a comfortable living for such a family. Both parents must work and still many families can't even afford a house. In a family of my acquaintance, the father, the mother, and the teenage daughter (this is the whole family) all work full-time jobs. And I don't think this is at all unusual. The dollar buys less, everything is more expensive. People struggle just to hold on to what they have, and can't seem to get ahead. Here are some data from the 1992 edition of the US Statistical Abstract: Families with working wives 1950:24% 1991:58% Families with working children 1960:6% 1982:12% Percent of total population employed 1960:29% 1990:44% Here is a comment by Harry Browne, from his book HOW YOU CAN PROFIT FROM THE COMING DEVALUATION. (Published in August, 1970): "Thirty-five hundred dollars for a Volkswagen?! That's an outrage!" Can you imagine being asked to pay $3500 for a Volkswagen? That's stretching your imagination quite a bit, I realize. And yet that day may not be very far away. And here is an item from NEWSWEEK magazine, August 29, 1977: After 28 years in the US market, the homely little Volkswagen Beetle is on its way out. Last week, after sales of 5 million models, Volkswagen stopped shipping them here. Since 1968 the Beetle's base price has raced from $1699 to $3699. No matter how much more wealth per capita improving technology makes possible, it seems there is always something to soak up the surplus and condemn ordinary people to a lifetime of labor. No matter how much productivity increases, people never seem to work less, only differently. So if they don't reap the fruits, who does? People today have a lot of material goods, but they have a crushing burden of debt and very little equity. In 1950, about one-third of the after-tax income of the average family was used to pay off debts. By 1980 that proportion had risen to three-quarters. America is a nation that has forgotten how to finance growth through earnings rather than debt. In the early 1960s, interest payments made by American corporations were 5% of their cash flow. By 1989 that had risen to more than 20%. This makes them more vulnerable than in the past to a economic downturn. If falling sales hit their cash flow, and many find themselves unable to service their debts, a wave of bankruptcies could follow in a domino effect as one company's inability to pay reduces another's cash flow even further. A key to the continued existence of any business is its ability to generate a stream of profits sufficient to finance future capital expenditures for replacement and growth. Small or large, it doesn't matter - this fundamental economic requirement must be satisfied. But the profits of American businesses are more and more being eaten up by interest payments and government regulations. This bodes ill indeed for future prosperity. Throughout history some nations gain power while others lose it. The evidence shows that nations that pursue policies of respect for an independent economic sphere - private property, the market economy, sanctity of contracts, low taxes, sound money, free trade, and unrestricted experimentation with technological advancements - tend to grow the fastest, establishing national bases of tremendous economic power. But this economic power always tempts governments to seize control over it, so they can pursue policies of military expansion and foreign adventurism or, in general, for the basic purpose of aggrandizing governmental institutions. But these policies become parasitic on the very forces that led to the economic growth in the first place; nations become militarily and bureaucratically top-heavy and overextended, saddled with debt and high taxes, and ever resistant to further change and necessary economic adjustments. In the end, such nations are usually wrecked by a growing disparity between statist ambitions and economic realities. We can see this happening in America in those areas where there is a growing similarity of life to that of some Latin American republics where all attempts of enterprising people to rise in life and make something of themselves are systematically squelched by the reigning bureaucracy governing all aspects of existence. For the last hundred years in America, statist intervention tried to preserve and even extend an industrial economy, while scuttling the very requirements of freedom and the free market which in the long run are necessary for its survival. For half a century, statist intervention could wreak its depredations without causing clear and evident crises and dislocations, for the free-market industrialization of the nineteenth century had created a vast cushion of "fat" in the economy against such depredations. But now statism has advanced so far and been in power so long that the cushion is worn thin; the "reserve fund" created by laissez-faire has been exhausted. So that now, whatever the government does brings about an instant negative feedback - ill effects that are evident to all - and what had been a problem solvable by free-market pricing and advancing technology has become a complex puzzle the resolution of which will require the complete dismantling of an all-pervasive system. But can the dismantling occur without catastrophe? Consider just one aspect of it: If all government subsidies were ended tomorrow morning, without any changes in the economy having been effected first, there would be much suffering, and probably starvation. The government is very cunning, and the economy of America is very resilient. But though the government may be very flexible, the principles it is violating are not - and sooner or later the causes being implemented will have their inexorable effects. The people I really feel sorry for are the little children - who will have to live with those effects as they become adults. * Dependency Millions who are now on Valium or other narcotic tranquilizers might go insane if their supply were cut off. They represent a frightening dependency on an outside life-support system. A simple edict of the government (or a terrorist bomb) is all it would take to cut off the supply of electricity, gas, petrol or anything else (even food) which is centralized in its production and distribution and therefore centrally controllable. If the electric power went off in Wyoming in the middle of winter, people would die. (A few years ago it did just that for four days - and indeed, some people did die.) This possibility should scare everybody - but hardly anybody even thinks about it. My idea of anarchism is not just opposition to a centralized State, but the advocacy of as much economic decentralization as is feasible for a civilized life. For example, I would like to see a solar panel on everybody's roof, and the consequent extinction of the power companies. Not that I have anything against the power companies (except, of course, when they have a legal monopolization of utility provision), but I am opposed to the institutionalized centralization of life-support that they represent. * Dictatorship American Style The Nazis and the Communists achieved their power not by destroying but by subverting the capacity of the individual to implement values. They simply used propaganda to swindle him into implementing values they had chosen. Today in America it is realized that any similar attempt would soon be recognized, by comparison with the tactics of the Nazis, and rejected. So today's American totalitarians must use another means to accomplish their ends - a different kind of swindle: Newspeak. Thus has been taken the next step in philosophical degradation: the individual's capacity to implement values has not been subverted - it has been destroyed. An understanding of the subversion process leads readily to a comprehension of the Nazi and Communist systems. But what of a system in which individuals are bereft of the motive to achieve any values at all? For their future I can see only degeneracy into total chaos. If a dictator were to rise up and command them, would they obey? This problem is compounded in America, where the "dictator" is not a value-oriented individual but is a bureaucracy itself comprised of valueless individuals. No centralized, cohesive, value-oriented structure can arise from the American populace. I am inclined to prognosticate a future for America not of dictatorial tyranny, but of chaos. The presently existing political structure does not have the potential to function cohesively in a dictatorial manner such as the Nazi government did; it contains too many disparate and mutually conflicting subgroups. Through the system of checks and balances the Founding Fathers established a political system whose operation is independent of the moral character of any of its temporary officials - a system impervious to political subversion. There are economic ramifications to this idea also: whereas the Nazis and the Communists channeled their nations' economic power into the lifeblood of centralized government, the American government is merely dissipating the nation's economic power into porkbarrel projects proposed by the myriad of competing federal and state bureaucracies. It is much more likely that all these will collapse from economic anemia than that they will coalesce into a centralized tyranny. On top of this, voters in America will keep on clamoring for the government to violate the laws of nature. Perhaps the most significant difference between the American government and a totalitarian government is that a totalitarian government has a form of institutionalized intelligence, but the American form of government is absolutely brainless. A dictatorial government at least has the unifying mind of the dictator behind it. A democracy has no mind behind it. For this reason it is unlikely to become a centralized tyranny, for it cannot select and implement a unifying central theme. Even with the imposition of martial law, could the FedGov station enough troops to control the entire country? And do so without the consent of the local authorities, who control the local police? As a local policeman once remarked to me: "The Lander police are not governed by the Supreme Court, but by the laws of the state of Wyoming. We do not change our behavior until we get a ruling from the state government." Before a dictator could arise in America, the present political structure would have to be largely or completely abolished. What would another civil war be like in this country if the participants were not divided into geographical factions? Maybe like the Spanish Civil War? But that was a strongly ideological war, and my contention here is that Americans lack ideology, so who would fight? Real power is institutionally dissipated into a large number of separate foci and there is no provision for its centralization. There is one, and only one, group in America that comprises a potential totalitarian entity. The police. Their explicitly held goal is to exercise total dominance and control over the citizens. If, in the implementation of this, they can obtain the complete cooperation of the other branches of government, America may become literally a police state, with the rest of government functioning primarily as a supportive substructure for the police. But it will not be a centrally organized police state. Since the time of Hitler and Stalin, our age has lacked easily identifiable villains of stature commensurate with their crimes against humanity. No longer the transgressions of exceptionally cruel and notable individuals, evil has been bureaucratized by the twentieth-century State and made the charge of relatively faceless bureaucrats, small in character and comprehension. Who knows the names of those who burned little children in Philadelphia and Waco? Throughout the world, natty figures in suits or uniforms have carried out monstrous suppressions, uprootings, and scatterings without entering the pages of history as striking despots. Considered individually, their outstanding characteristic is their mediocrity. There are no large-scale villains anymore, only colorless bureaucrats competing for common power and common rewards. They comprise a growing institutionalization of social analysis and social control techniques. An army of cops, judges, jailers, social workers, psychologists, therapists, sociologists, counselors, and other petty bureaucrats have swollen the payrolls of government and public institutions. In order to justify their budgets, they have had to postulate ever newer and more threatening social pathologies from which they can claim to protect us. More and more areas of life have been criminalized at the same time as the techniques of surveillance, interrogation and repression have been extended, refined and made more powerful. For all these groups the "discoveries" of child abuse, sexual abuse and drug abuse have been godsends. And each has benefited from the others' legitimization of an increasingly generalized attitude of repressive intolerance for any non-conformist belief or practice. From The Anti-Federalist: "If the people of America will submit to a constitution that will vest in the hands of any body of men the power to deprive them by law of their rights, they will perforce submit to anything. Reasoning with them will be in vain; they must be left until they are brought to reflection by feeling oppression - they will then have to wrest from their oppressors, by a strong hand, that which they would have retained by a moderate share of prudence and firmness." Cultural value-deprivation must inevitably result in a very docile population. Who in America believes in any idea (or any value) enough to fight for it? Certainly not the libertarians, and they are the closest thing America has to freedom-lovers. The totalitarians know what they stand for. The non- totalitarians will stand for anything. But maybe tyranny in America has a limit. Although Americans will not fight the actual institutions of tyranny, perhaps they will not accept unlimited tyranny without the sort of blind uprising which destroys civilization. Here I speak of uprisings such as that which followed the beating of Rodney King by the LA police - a rebellion directed not against the police but against the very neighbors and neighborhoods of the rioting people. * Freedom Alternative In early 1991, Mary Margaret Glennie claimed that she had received over 600 inquiries, about half of whom were serious about moving, and that thirty libertarians had actually taken up her suggestion. Although her idea is, in principle, a good one, I think her implementation of it is specious. The population of Fort Collins is 88K, a number hardly likely to be affected by even a large influx of libertarians. If she could instead get 30 libertarians into Loving County, Texas, they would constitute a substantial fraction of its population of 107. I first saw this idea for a "gathering of libertarians" in an essay in Reason magazine about 1985. That was the only sensible presentation of the idea that I have ever seen, as it gave an estimate of the potential political impact of such a gathering on several locales chosen for their low population. Every one of the numerous subsequent proposals (including Mary Margaret's) has merely suggested that the gathering should occur at the location where the author happens to reside! All these people expect everyone else to bear the inconvenience of moving - none of them is serious enough about implementing the proposal to be willing to move themselves to a location where such a gathering would have political significance. I have been watching the "new country" and "libertarian enclave" movements for many years and have yet to see any of them get off the ground (or out of the water - with the island-based projects). They have all been schemes requiring mass participation (such as the Fort Collins Freetown): if they can't enlist thousands (literally!) of libertarians, then their time and energy are mostly wasted. I think that this has been a major factor in the failure of these projects, and that if they were focused on individual participation for personal benefit rather than on mass involvement for political suasion they would have a much higher probability of success. They should be arranged in such a way that success does not depend on the number of participants, and should be set up so that an individual can see a personal benefit to be gained by participating. No immediate personal benefit would ensue from my moving to Fort Collins - that's why I won't do it, and that's why that project will never get off the ground: few others will do it either. The LP has been presented to the American people continually since 1972, but never has it gained the support of more than a tiny fraction of the general electorate. It has been argued that untapped support for the LP lies in the 50+% of the population that does not participate in politics, but the Australian experience belies this. The LP has made no more headway in Australia than in the USA. Leonard Peikoff claims there is still time and opportunity to save America: "The American spirit has not yet been destroyed.... There is only one antidote to today's trend: a new, pro-reason philosophy." He does not mention the history of the Libertarian movement during the 1970's, when a new, pro-reason philosophy was indeed presented to the American people. They turned it down. By 1990 the Libertarian movement and the LP had been so co-opted and corrupted that neither had any consistent pro-reason presentation to make any longer. David Kelley makes the same error, claiming that the American body politic is "a public that is hungry for values." If, as Kelley believes, the public is hungry for values, I wonder how he explains that public's enormous rejection of the LP. What would it take to convince these men that the American voters do not want a libertarian alternative? Consider an alcoholic who has been drinking a quart of whiskey every day for the past 20 years. It is not now possible for the alcoholic to come into possession of the health that he would have had in other circumstances. It doesn't matter at all if he now swears off whiskey and takes up gin or vodka instead - these choices would simply continue him along his path into alcoholic degeneracy. His only hope for any health, or even partial recovery in his old age, would be to swear off alcohol altogether. I view human society as being similar to that alcoholic. The accumulated effects of government institutions (effects which are increasing in intensity at an exponential rate) are reducing society to a state of degeneracy similar in malignancy to that of the alcoholic. Society can no more save itself by implementing a different kind of government than the alcoholic can save himself by drinking a different kind of alcohol. Society's only salvation lies in the total abolition of government. In this respect Rand was correct: you cannot have a political change without a preexisting philosophical change. But here too I believe there is no hope. The prevalence of Newspeak and the decline in intellectual caliber of the general population precludes the adoption of the philosophical rationality that is prerequisite to the restructuring of society. * Cultural Value-deprivation Rand describes the sensory-deprivation experiments, and then carries this notion further - to the idea of conceptual deprivation - observing that today's individual lives in an intellectual desert, locked in the equivalent of an experimental cubicle the size of a continent - where he is given the sensory stimulation of screeching, screaming, twisting, jostling throngs, but is cut off from ideas. If severe enough and prolonged enough, the absence of a natural, active flow of cognitive experiences may disintegrate and paralyze a man's consciousness - by telling him that no significant thinking is possible. This chronic lack produces a slow, gradual, erosion of man's emotional vitality, which is recorded and preserved by the computer of his subconscious, until the day when his inner motor stops and he wonders desperately why he has no desire to go on living. If a person is deprived of his values, he will have nothing to live for. Such people will trash their civilization with very little incentive. Another aspect of this conceptual deprivation phenomenon is what might be called principle extinction - the process by which people's ability to think and act on the basis of principles is extinguished. Visual agnosia is a condition in which the visual association cortex has been injured, resulting in the victim's inability to perceive the world as a whole picture. He sees only bits at a time and has lost the ability to recognize patterns. He is, in effect, a visual illiterate. A closely analogous effect results from the destruction of his ability to think in principles. Then he will be able to perceive only specific concrete instances of reality. He will have lost the ability to recognize the underlying patterns. Perhaps we could call this "cognitive agnosia." Americans are taught NOT to think in principles, and then - just to make sure they are thoroughly corrupt - they are given principles that are depraved. Newspeak goes even further, by distorting the very concepts used to formulate principles. In the long run, a hierarchical society is possible only on the basis of cognitive deprivation. So long as people are not permitted to have standards of comparison they never even become aware that they are oppressed. (This may explain the widespread manifestation of the Fallacy of Relative Privation.) Not only do they lack any impulse to rebel, but they also lack the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is. They can be granted intellectual liberty, because they no longer possess intellect. They can be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasp the enormity of what is demanded of them. They remain sane, in part, by lack of understanding - in a sort of protective stupidity. The more intelligent they are, the less sane they must be. The prevailing mental condition must be one of controlled insanity. But sanity is not arbitrary. Rulers of all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their subjects, but they cannot afford to encourage any illusion that impairs military efficiency. In philosophy, religion, ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one is designing a gun or a bomb they HAVE to make four. War is the main instrument by which governments are kept in touch with physical reality. This thesis has great significance for modern America, not so much as it applies to war, but as it applies to technology. We live in a society that is entirely dependent on advanced technology. If any major aspect of that technology is not sufficiently maintained, our entire civilization may well collapse. There are many people for whom work is the primary touch with reality. If important functions, such as personal authority and perception of accomplishment, are removed from their work the result will be impaired contact with reality, and a consequent decrease in their job performance. We can see the results in automotive recalls, on Three Mile Island, and other indications that the technological underpinnings of our civilization are eroding. * Inheritance At the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential. This view of man has rarely been explicitly asserted in human history. Today, it is virtually non-existent. Yet this is the view with which - in various degrees of longing, wistfulness, passion and agonized confusion - the best of mankind's youth start out in life. It is not even an explicit view, for most of them, but a foggy, groping, undefined sense of enormous expectation, the sense that one's life is important, that great achievements are within one's capacity, and that great things lie ahead. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of a culture which tells them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one's mind; security, of abandoning one's values; practicality, of abandoning one's self-esteem. Many who cannot dispense with their natural sensitivity turn to suicide: they see too clearly what sort of existence awaits them and, being too young to find an antidote, they cannot tolerate the prospect. If a young person has no real future to look forward to, his choices may well resemble those of a terminally ill person. People who cannot control their own lives feel either despair or rebellious frustration. This is the situation of the youth of America. What people don't understand is that the children soon learn to detach themselves from these emotions, but in the process they lose a large part of their capacity to feel ANY emotions. We hear of sensational, coldblooded crimes being done by children and youths, yet few wonder how these children and youths became so insensitive to the pain of others. Here is a letter printed in the Casper (Wyoming) Star Tribune, Sept., 1988: "I would like to thank the Natrona County Sheriff's Office, and particularly McGruff the Crime Dog, for recently visiting my day-care home and presenting their program 'Stranger Danger.' The children enjoyed the visit and McGruff helped the children understand the importance of staying away from strangers." Most people believe this sort of thing is commendable, even necessary for the safety of their children. And within the context of the violent society we live in, it is indeed desirable to alert one's children to potential danger. But consider the inevitable result of this sort of training: witnesses watched from scores of windows in surrounding apartment buildings as Kitty Genovese was murdered, but none of them did anything to help. And everyone wonders why, but the answer is quite simple: from nursery school to adulthood they have been trained to avoid strangers. On their TV sets, from Westerns to prime-time dramas, to live coverage of the Vietnam War, they watch strangers suffer and they remain passive observers. Viktor E. Frankl, in his MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING states: "At first the prisoner looked away if he saw the punishment parades of another group; he could not bear to see fellow prisoners march up and down for hours in the mire, their movements directed by blows. Days or weeks later things changed....the prisoner who had passed into the second stage of his psychological reactions did not avert his eyes any more. By then his feelings were blunted, and he watched unmoved.... Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel any more. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such commonplace sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him any more." Here is a sociologist's description of a family living in an American inner-city ghetto: "They had got used to the sound of gunfire. Everyone heard shots from time to time. After the first few occasions they had become curiously indifferent to them. Whoever was speaking would pause, then continue when the shooting stopped, just as he might when a jet aircraft passed overhead. It was as if they could not imagine that shots might be aimed at THEM. Surely, they were telling themselves, if we just lie low and hang on, the trouble will blow over." Just as one can, in the field of economics, analyze the "logic of choice," so one can focus on the "logic of coercion" - on the unintended but entirely predictable results of dishonesty and violence. And it need not be "real" violence. All this violence on TV: if you spend all your childhood and adult life watching it you may begin to believe that the normal, the usual, the only method of dealing with any sort of distress is to start drawing pistols and killing people, or calling on the government to do the coercing for you. The center of America might be insane. The country has been living with a fiercely controlled schizophrenia which has been deepening with the years. Every person who is devoutly Christian and works for the American Corporation is caught in an unseen vise whose pressure could split his mind from his soul; a state of suppressed schizophrenia so deep that the foul brutalities of the war in Vietnam were the only temporary cure possible for the condition - since the expression of brutality offers a definite if temporary relief to the schizophrenic. Many common people greet warfare as the first glad sense of great definite purpose dawning into stagnant and unillumined lives, as the opportunity to do something that might shed an interpretative light upon an existences otherwise apparently without significance. Socially and psychologically repressed, people are drawn to spectacles of violent conflict that allow their accumulated frustrations to explode in socially condoned orgasms of collective pride and hate. Deprived of significant accomplishments in their own work and leisure, they participate vicariously in military enterprises that have real and undeniable effects. Lacking genuine community, they try to discover or create a sense of community, if only that of fighting some common enemy. They thrill to the sense of sharing in a common purpose, and react angrily against anyone who contradicts the image of patriotic unanimity. The individual's life may be a farce, his society may be falling apart, but all complexities and uncertainties are temporarily forgotten in the self-assurance that comes from identifying with the state. The child knows no other way of life than the slave's way. Born free, he has been laid hands on from the moment of his birth and brought up as a slave. How is he, when he is at last "set free," to be anything else than the slave he actually is? Clamoring for war, for the lash, for police, prisons, and scaffolds in a wild panic of delusion that without these things he is lost. You cannot govern men brought up as slaves otherwise than as slaves are governed. Nor can you expect them to behave in any other way than as slaves and barbarians. In school, misbehaving students are punished for a host of reasons - but adults in positions of authority (i.e., government school administrators) initiated force against them to make them go to school in the first place. The discipline system the students have been immersed in is basically contradictory. When a child sees this kind of irrationality institutionalized in his social environment, what does this do to his sense of ethical values? Calling the students animals is unforgivable; it's an insult to animals. Animals generally behave quite rationally, but there is very little rational behavior in a public school. I prefer to call the students barbarians. However, this does great injustice to some of the students. Although there are many children who would be gentle and civilized individuals, they must cope as best they can with their irrational environment, which means many of them finally relent and join the barbarians. The moral and intellectual rot spreads and is handed down as, in several years, these barbarians begin to take part in community activities (what will happen when they get on the Board of Education?) and teach THEIR children the values they have learned. Thus viciousness becomes institutionalized into the social structure of society. Student behavior had better be improved upon soon, or it will be too late, because the new generation won't see the necessity of it when they come of age and join the establishment. This, I believe, is the basic cause of the decline in American education. The system is fundamentally self-contradictory and thus fundamentally self- destructive. And since causes do inevitably have subsequent effects, those effects are what we are seeing manifested in the schools today. Blaming the students is unjust. Juvenile delinquents have no 'better natures'; experience has taught them that what they are doing is the way to survive. They have been enslaved and subjected to torment. Now they strike back and subject others to torment. Since they have been taught, and believe, that causes do not necessarily have subsequent effects, they are not able to perceive the real cause of their torment. Thus they cannot identify the justified target of their anger. They vent their anger indiscriminantly, treating people, as representatives of society, in the same way that "society" has treated them. What schools mostly do is practice rigid age segregation, socialize children into narrow roles, label them into limiting categories, create meaningless problems, compel obedience and compliance above all other virtues, teach that life is segmented by ringing bells, and deeply indoctrinate children with the profound belief that government is an absolute necessity for civilization. School is the first coercive institution most of us endure, and it wears down our resistance to the later ones. It makes them seem normal. Sure, there are good and decent teachers, but the abstract logic of the institution drowns their individual decency in a sea of wickedness. One can understand why the contradictions of our society weigh so heavily on the young: no sane mind can integrate the contrast between the righteousness of a Secretary of State and the ruthlessness of a B-52; between the sanctimony of "a kinder, gentler, America" and the savagery of the Los Angeles Police beating Rodney King; between the notion that violence is fine against people 10000 miles away but shocking against injustice in our own land; between the equality demanded by our constitutional structure and the equality denied by our political structure; even between the accepted habits of one generation and the emerging habits of the next, as when a parent tipsy on his fourth martini begins a tirade against his son's marijuana. The generation that's growing up today has been thoroughly brutalized by the system. It's in their schools, their media, their political ideology - everywhere. It begins even in the nurseries. They're conditioned to the worship of violence and the statist cult - to view the power and strength of the State as the only criteria for establishing right. Their teaching idealizes the right of the strong to subdue the weak and glorifies the triumph of brute force as the expression of natural law. How do you get rid of a regime like this once it has taken root? You can't reason with it, because all you'll get is indifference, or contempt for what it sees as weakness. You can't bargain with it - a trading relationship implies equality, but all it understands is domination. You can't hope to coexist peaceably because your very existence represents either a threat or an opportunity for exploitation. One of the things that makes us so different from other animals is our ability to pass on to our children the sum total of what we and our parents have accomplished. That legacy of accomplishments - intellectual, artistic, spiritual, and material - is the content of human culture. To the extent that a society inhibits the transfer of this legacy, it is dooming its children to stagnation or retrogression. Even worse is the future of a society that transfers to its youth a legacy of ignorance and brutality. __ Chapter 14 LIBERTARIAN GUERILLA WARFARE * Rebellion against Government * The Peaceful Means Argument * Injustice is Everyone's Fight * The Problem of the Innocents * Questions to Determine Philosophical Orientation * Prerequisites of a revolution * Thoughts on Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare * Strategy * Tactics * Morale * Rebellion against Government When is it OK to rebel against a government? Is there some point where you throw your hands up and say "Enough!" and pick up a gun? If there is, has it been reached yet? Yes, there is such a point, and yes, it has been passed. For some Americans, it occurred in May of 1985 when the Philadelphia police deliberately (and legally) burned to death 11 people, including four children. For others it occurred in April of 1993 when over 75 people (including at least 25 children) perished in Waco, Texas. But these were merely specific personal breaking points for some people in one country. A more generally relevant answer to the questions would come from an examination of the underlying principles which justify violent revolution. Some allowances have to be made in judging the behavior of police - we cannot, after all, expect perfection, neither in a government police agency nor in a private defense agency. If a policeman accidently runs over your cat while he is chasing a bank robber, it would not really be reasonable to condemn his government to annihilation. Even cases of deliberate aggression would not necessarily justify rebellion. We cannot expect ALL police agents to be decent people at ALL times, but we CAN (and MUST) demand legal protection against the aggressions they sometimes DO commit, in the same way and for the same reasons that we expect legal protection against non-government criminals. As long as the government is structured so as to provide the citizens with legal protection against aggression by its own agents, it should not be condemned for the aberrant violent behavior that some individual agents may manifest. Even such things as the Rodney King beating would not justify revolution - if the perpetrators were brought to justice and punished for their crime. The line beyond which revolution is justified is crossed when the aggressive behavior that I have mentioned is institutionalized. By that I mean codified and legally accepted. To use the Rodney King incident as an example: the perpetrators excused their attack on the grounds that everything they did was strictly in accordance with codified police department procedures. This justification was legally accepted. (In a sane society, such an excuse would be grounds for including the police department training personnel in the trial - charging them with abetting an attack on a citizen.) Another very blatant example of institutionalized aggression can be seen in the forfeiture laws. Forfeiture is used to legally deprive innocent people of their property without a jury trial, and is one of the government aggressions that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were intended to forbid. It is at this point - when legally institutionalized procedures provide immunity to government agents who initiate force against the lawful behavior of free citizens - that revolution is justified. * The Peaceful Means Argument It is argued that violence is not justified as long as there is ANY non- violent protest procedure available. But to assert that violence is not justified so long as there are peaceful means is to assert that violence is NEVER justified, for there are ALWAYS peaceful means. George Washington could have become a faithful subject of the king, been appointed governor of the colonies, and used his position of power to effect many beneficial changes - peacefully. A good citizen could become a member of the mafia, and by working his way up through the ranks attain a position wherein he could considerably reduce the evils perpetrated by this odious organization. When knocked down by a common thug, you could resort to the peaceful means of appealing to his "better side" and entreating him gently to cease engaging in such undesirable behavior. Of course while you are talking - peacefully - the thug is bashing in your brains. It is easy to see the fallaciousness of the "peaceful means" argument. But in fact, you are obliged to restrain yourself to peaceful means only when your adversary refrains from using violent means against you. When one is fighting for his freedom against an armed and violent enemy he does not resort merely to verbal entreaties; he most certainly does not collaborate with his enemy; and under no circumstances is it conceivable that he should actually join with his enemy. Along with the principled invalidity of the "peaceful means" argument, there is a practical objection to it also. There is a sense in which libertarians and statists simply cannot even communicate, much less compromise. In the realm of ethics, they speak mutually incommensurable languages. You cannot persuade a man that his behavior is evil when his entire life is founded on the conviction that his behavior is good. There are indeed things about which you cannot argue - you can only fight. You can argue on the basis of practicality, and you can argue on the basis of ethical principle, but ultimately, when you are up against someone who will not see reason, you can only fight. It is not pleasant to kill any creature, but to pretend that one can live without doing so is self-deception. There has to be meat in the dish, there have to be vegetables forbidden to flower; even the cycles of microbes must be sacrificed for us to continue our own cycles. It is neither shameful nor shocking that this should be so, it is simply a part of the great revolving wheel of natural economy. And just as we must preserve our physical species in these ways, so, too, we must preserve our moral species (those who love freedom) against others who wish to destroy it, or else fail in our obligation to pass on to our children the culture of freedom. If this notion of violent warfare shocks or offends you, it is because you have not been able to stand off and, knowing what you are, see what a difference in KIND must mean. You have not yet been able to recognize, and accept, that there is a profoundly important distinction between you and a policeman. He is not just an "ordinary man" who is merely "doing his job." He is a person who believes that is is not merely appropriate to use coercion but that it is necessary to do so. Your mind is confused by your cultural ties and your upbringing. You are still half-thinking of them as beings of the same kind as yourself. That is why they have you at a disadvantage, for they are not confused. They are alert and corporately aware of danger to their species. They can see quite well that if they are to survive they must be protected from the threat posed by your existence. In loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate your freedom; in loyalty to your kind, you must not tolerate their enslavement. If you still feel shocked, or doubtful, just consider some of the things that these people, who have taught you to think of them as your fellows, have done. The savage beating of Rodney King, and the deliberate burning to death of children, are legally-sanctioned expressions of government behavior. * Injustice is Everyone's Fight Some people claim that "injustice is everyone's fight." Others claim, as Thoreau observed, that "It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support." Does the choice of other men to act unjustly impose upon you a moral obligation to combat their injustice? Your moral stature is a function of YOUR choices, not the choices that other people make. Certainly a man has the real obligation not to participate in a vicious social system. But does he have in addition an obligation to actively combat such a system? Consider that if you accept, by default, the existence of an injustice, then you yourself (or your children) will be visited eventually by the consequences of that injustice. A man MUST be cognizant of his needs, whether those needs be biological (e.g., the need to avoid poison in his diet) or social (the need to avoid coercion in his society). Concern for the rights of others is a necessity if you care about your own future or the future of your children. But this concern for the rights of others must be punctilious. You must remember that the only "obligation" any man has toward you is to let you alone. He has no obligation to take any positive actions whatsoever regarding you or your situation. He has no obligation to combat your enemies. But he IS obliged not to join with your enemies in oppressing you. If he does so, he becomes your enemy. But as long as he does NOT do so, he may not be your ally - but he is at least a neutral. * The Problem of the Innocents Begin with the premise that rebellion must be selective - acting against tyrants and their supporters only - and must refrain from damaging innocent people. This leads to the question: who is really innocent, anyway? ATLAS SHRUGGED was published in 1957, and since 1972 the Libertarian Party has been vigorously bombarding the American people with knowledge of the principled distinction between freedom and slavery. Is there any excuse for any adults not to know what the difference is? No, there is no excuse for them. And you have no need to care about them. It is not in their behalf that you should fight the oppressive actions of their government, it is on your own behalf and also for the possible benefit of future generations. It is also on account of principle: One SHOULD fight against the evil of tyranny - it is the RIGHT thing to do for any person who desires to live in a world which is infused with Good rather than dominated by Evil. It is important to distinguish between victims and aggressors on the basis of their positive actions - on the basis of actual implementations of oppression. For example, a person who is subject to income tax is a victim, and thus you might say that a businessman is a victim because he is taxed. But observe that the same businessman is himself a willing participant in the implementation of taxation: he extracts taxes from his employees. An employee has a right to work for a living - that is a necessity for the preservation of his life - but he does NOT have a right to earn his living by depriving others of their property. Likewise, a businessman has a right to operate a business, but he does NOT have a right to deprive others (including his employees) of their property in the process of operating that business. Thus employers who collect withholding tax, merchants who collect sales tax, and any other professional people who aid in implementing the viciousness of government, must be considered victimizers even though they are also victims. The real question is not "Who is innocent?" but "Who is guilty?" The determining factors are the oppressive behavior (regardless of any assertions of intent - see CHAPTER 8) and the advocacy of such behavior. These attributes determine the guilty persons. Anyone who does NOT engage in oppressive behavior, or advocate such behavior, is innocent, even though he does nothing to combat tyranny but sit around and gripe. To complain about tyranny while submitting to it and taking no action to combat it is hypocritical: the complainer's actions and his words are contradictory - but what if the complaint is the only safe action he can take? Do not condemn a man for being a victim, nor for acting so as not to become a victim (except when his actions are themselves victimizing). In this context, there are three kinds of people: 1. Those who actively sanction, support and advocate statism. A subset of these are people who in practice do willingly participate in statism (such as sales-tax collectors and voters) even though they may protest some of the government's oppressions. 2. Those who say: "I don't care about tyranny. I am interested only in my immediate self-interest. In short, I should do those things that benefit me - even if the State should happen to benefit from them also." These are the people who invariably seek profits at the expense of their asserted convictions. The best examples of these people are the scientists who willingly sell their souls to the State in return for laboratories financed by loot. It is proper to do things that benefit yourself, even if you thereby become a victim of oppression. But it is NOT proper to willingly engage in oppressive behavior yourself. If the things you do actually constitute oppressive behavior then you are in the first category, regardless of your assertions. 3. Those who actively oppose the State and do all they reasonably can to avoid supporting it. The goal of a revolutionary should be to fight the first, ignore the second, and embrace the third. * Questions to Determine Philosophical Orientation How do you tell just what a person really is? You can't simply pose the straightforward question "Do you believe in liberty?" You will merely get a null-value answer: if he really does believe in liberty he will answer "Yes" but if he does not really believe in it he will also probably answer "Yes." It's like asking a man if he is honest - you get the same answer whether he is or not. You have to go at it in an indirect way, asking questions designed to circumvent his dishonesty (or his ignorance - many people would answer the questions without real knowledge of what is liberty or what is honesty). You must also allow for any self-delusion he has. What is important is not to ascertain the rationale that he uses to justify his behavior, but the actual motivation underlying the behavior. The questions should be constructed so as to pose a distinguishable separation between two phenomena. The important thing to look for when you ask them is NOT the clarity and precision with which the person identifies the distinction, but merely whether or not he MAKES the distinction. After all, you cannot expect an ordinary person to be a trained philosopher or logician, but you can and SHOULD expect him to be a decent human being, and thus to REALIZE that there is a distinction to be made, even though he may not be able to precisely specify that distinction. Here are some sample questions: Under what circumstances would it be proper for a group of men to do something that it would be improper for an individual member of that group to do alone? How do you distinguish between trade and theft? [according to Marxist doctrine, there is no distinction.] How do you distinguish between taxation and theft? What are you opposed to - the people running the government, the way they are running it, or government itself? Define freedom. Define slavery. What is the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of government? What are the proper functions of government? What is the alternative to government? What is the difference between Politics and Economics? What is the logical fallacy in the statement "cheating on a tax form"? Under what circumstances may the State justly place its welfare above that of an individual citizen? Would you be morally justified in killing an innocent person if that were the only way to prevent your own death? How do you distinguish between criminal and non-criminal behavior? Is there a distinction between moral principle (natural law) and legislative enactment (government law)? Illustrate your answer by reference to gambling and to the legal and illegal ownership of gold, whiskey and heroin. By what means do you propose to restrict behavior of which you disapprove? At whose expense will your proposed program be implemented? What part do you play in the political process of the community? What have you done to reduce your taxes? Do you judge both government behavior and non-government behavior by reference to the same ethical principles? Do you believe it is necessary for each individual to independently derive the ethical principles which he uses to govern his life? [The Nietzschean answer to this is "yes"] * Prerequisites of a revolution For a revolution or civil war to occur in a country, two conditions must be met: 1. The population of the country must be divisible into at least two mutually exclusive groups. These are the groups that would actually be shooting at each other during the conflict. For example, the Union army and the Confederate army. American Libertarians would, of course, see these two groups as "the government" and "the people" but I believe this view is false. We need only look at the Rodney King riots to see that "the people," when outraged by government behavior, did NOT attack the government but instead attacked their own neighbors and destroyed their own neighborhoods. 2. There must be possible a triggering situation that would precipitate the conflict. I believe that in America this is precluded by the general attitude toward tyranny. As I described it in Chapter 7, it rests on the phrase "too much." If you press a protester until you can get him to identify the foundation of his enmity, you will usually find that it is based on a statement containing some variation of the phrase "too much." He is not fundamentally opposed to slavery, just "too much" slavery. He is not fundamentally opposed to tyranny, just a level of tyranny that is "far beyond" what he judges acceptable. He is not fundamentally opposed to government interference in private lives, just "an excessive amount" of interference (or a type of interference that is not HIS proposed type of interference). It is very unlikely that, for this man, there will be ANY level of "too much" that would induce him to take up arms and rebel. In any case, such an ambiguous level would surely be different for each individual (just ask several and you will see). And thus NO level would suffice to precipitate a general rebellion. Because these two conditions are not (and I believe cannot be) met in America, I do not forsee a revolution occurring here. I suspect rather that our society will merely continue down the path of deterioration that it has been on, eventually collapsing into an all-enveloping chaos of uncontrolled urban rioting similar to that we have seen in several of our cities from time to time - most recently in Los Angeles after the Rodney King beating. * Thoughts on Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare Terrorism consists of acts of violence designed to affect the victims not merely physically but psychologically also. It produces, in the minds of the victims, a long-term anxiety resulting from not knowing who is going to be attacked, where the attack will take place, when it will take place, or what form of violence will occur. If the concept of terrorism is to be a psychological-psychiatric concept rather than a merely legal-political concept, its study should include many politicians, military personnel, police, businessmen (particularly armaments manufacturers), scientists and technicians in addition to the skyjackers and urban guerrillas to whom the term is usually applied. Imbuing fear into the minds of your enemy is a legitimate aim of warfare, thus terrorism is a valid tool of combat. However, there are few, if any, revolutionary groups in the world today who apply it properly. They fail utterly to make a proper identification of their actual enemy. Consider those groups usually - and properly! - labeled as terrorists. They are active in many countries around the world: the ETA in Spain, the PLO in Israel, the IRA in England. None of these groups makes much, if any, distinction between the government they are fighting and the people who are subjects of that government. They strike not only at members of the government, but also indiscriminately at the general public. In the minds of such groups, war is morally equivalent to bombing a prison because one has a grievance against its sadistic warden. Indiscriminate violence is not only wrong in principle, it is also counterproductive in practice: many British people who might otherwise be sympathetic to the IRA's desire to see British troops pulled out of Northern Ireland are appalled at the spectacle of bombs killing their neighbors in the subway, and are thereby quite rightfully inclined to support the suppression of the IRA and its goals. A principled revolutionary group should strike only at ethically justifiable targets, and the general public is NOT such a target. As Murray Rothbard has observed (FOR A NEW LIBERTY pg269): "Revolutionary guerrilla war can be far more consistent with libertarian principles than any inter-State war. By the very nature of their activities, libertarian guerrillas defend the civilian population against the depredations of a State; hence, guerrillas, inhabiting as they do the same country as the civilians, cannot use weapons of mass destruction. Further: since guerrillas rely for victory on the support and aid of the civilian population, they must, as a basic part of their strategy, spare civilians from harm and pinpoint their activities solely against the State apparatus and its armed forces." Even actual terrorists recognize that, to some extent, they must side with the people against State tyranny - as in this account of how the IRA helps those opposing the occupation: After internment the Catholics went on rent strike, and there was talk of shutting off the water and the electricity if they didn't pay up. So what did Paddy do? He went round to the local betting shop, held up the cashier, raked in a few thousand quid, then went to the first house in the street and asked, "How much do you owe?" "Forty seven pounds and twelve pence." "Here's the money." And he went down the whole street with the cash and paid them out. The rent man came, knocked at the first door: "Mrs Murphy, you owe..." She paid it all, the book was signed, and so on down the row. The rent man got to the last house well pleased he'd got the money off all the street - and Paddy was standing there on the corner: "Hands up!" Took all the money off the rent man, gave it back to the bookie, and that was it. You have to admire that: brilliant. In order for a libertarian rebellion to succeed, it must be implemented very carefully - in principle and in practice. There must be careful adherence to the strategy of striking only against the oppressive behavior of the State, and not striking against innocent people who are themselves victims of that State. In so doing, the rebels will more and more bring the victims into sympathy with their goals rather than alienating them. A carefully controlled and directed attack on government could indeed be conducive to an ameliorative change in a tyrannous government. 1. By reducing the government's economic resources, it would reduce the government's ability to oppress its subjects. 2. It would reduce the oppressive motivation of individual government agents by giving them negative reinforcement for such behavior. The police might not care what publicity says about them, but they will care if there is forceful retaliation for what they do. Each will have to think before he continues his oppression, and ask himself what might happen to him in response. Armed agents of a tyrannous State respect the rights only of those whom they have reason to fear. It is, of course, impossible for a small number of freedom fighters to stand in force against the armed might of a government. But there is great potential for a few dedicated guerrilla fighters to accomplish a considerable amount of change in the behavior of a government. The weapons with which a government can be hit and hurt by an individual or small group of rebels are assassination and sabotage. If a few people hate the State fervently enough to fight effectively against it, the State won't be able to control the country economically because of the ruination of its expensive equipment. It can't just ignore the rebels or pretend they don't exist - the State will have to start putting men and money into a fight against them, and that will bring it closer to the day when the State will be politically and/or economically disabled, or at least reduced in its ability to impose tyranny. This fight would, indirectly, reduce the support for government in the general population, since government would have to increase the economic drain it imposes on the citizens it claims to be protecting - in order to compensate for the economic losses imposed by the rebels. So government will need more police and tax collectors to get the same amount of cooperation and resources out of the civilians - but that simply increases civilian resentment of the State. Consider the situation in America, for example. For two centuries the government has whittled away at freedom, gradually - with each additional law it passes - depriving the people bit by bit of their right to choose their own destiny. If the tyranny that exists today were to have been foisted in its totality upon our forefathers they would have risen in a rebellion even more forceful than that which they inflicted upon the tyrants of King George. The government could never have accomplished such a massive change in one fell swoop - it had to be brought about in a lengthy series of gradual encroachments: in small enough doses that the populace would be willing to accept each encroachment individually as being of itself insufficient to justify the immense rebellion required to bring down the entire government. But this process is a two-edged sword. In a like manner, the people could turn this sword against government and gradually reduce its tyrannical power over them. They could do this through a series of small encroachments on government power, none of them in and of itself sufficient to induce the government to undertake the expense of a major military mobilization, but all of them adding up over the years to the gradual reduction of government tyranny. But they can achieve this goal only if they make proper and effective use of the force they possess. To use it properly, they must make sure it is directed only against the appropriate target: government. And to use it effectively, they must make sure that it is applied in a way that will have the desired influence on government behavior. * Strategy Some of the primary precepts of warfare are: Force the enemy to abandon his intentions and submit to yours. Lessen the enemy's will to pursue his intentions. Disarm the enemy morally, economically, and militarily. The strategic aims of the rebels should be to make the State less capable of functioning and less determined to function. And to show others who hate the State that it is possible to strike effectively against it. Their long-term goals should be the sort of police protection law described below, coupled with the repeal of all victimless-crime laws. * Tactics A necessary part of this scheme is that two pieces of information be widely broadcast: To provide the negative reinforcement mentioned above, the rebels must tell the State exactly why they are attacking it and what it is they want the State to do. For example: "We demand the enactment and vigorous enforcement of a law making it a criminal offence for a policeman to interfere with the lawful behavior of a free citizen. Until our demand is met we shall continue to defend our freedom as forcefully as the government violates it. So long as we must live under the threat of government oppression, the government will live under the threat of our retaliation. We wish only peace and respect. If you will not see fit to grant us these things, then we will fight for them on the field of arms, a field of your choosing. You chose it when you sent your armed police into our lives." The rebels must also make sure the public understands their intentions. The public must know what the rebels are doing and why they are doing it. If the rebels attack the police and the public knows that their goal is to make everyone free from police brutality, or if they attack the IRS and the public knows that their goal is to diminish everyone's tax burden, then the public is much more likely to support (even if only tacitly) their ends. If the rebels don't get THEIR message to the public, then public opinion will be based only on the State's message. * Morale It may be asked, "Isn't it stupid and senseless to fight any war when there is no hope of winning it?" Mencken: "It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it only takes a few determined men and a sound cause." You, as an individual, and acting by yourself alone, CAN make a difference! If you can destroy just one police car, or in some way make just one cop reluctant to hassle people, then you have in fact reduced the extent of tyranny. If you make such a change, even a little one, then you've won something. You must be continually aware that there can never be an absolute, total victory. You have no hope of achieving any type of military victory over government forces, but if you act with prudence and restraint, the final political victory, the one that matters, will be yours. While it is true that the great power of government has absolute dominion over any small group of free people, it is also true that a man has absolute dominion over a hornets' nest. Your war will be a righteous war, a war fought to defend your rights and your honor against the colossus of the State. You have a new world of freedom to gain; your enemy has only a lost cause to lose. "But," it is claimed, "some policemen are good men who are only doing their jobs." An Allied soldier fighting the Germans did not question the particular character of each individual German he encountered, he merely looked at a man with a uniform and a gun, and he knew that man by those signs as his enemy, and he acted accordingly. Likewise, the rebel must not question the particular character of each individual policeman he encounters. It is by the uniform and the gun, and the ethical principles that those signs represent, that you recognize him as your enemy. By choosing to wear the uniform and bear arms against you he declares himself as being violently opposed to your existence. G. B. Shaw: "To kill a man in uniform who is your enemy is not an act of murder, but an act of legitimate warfare." __ Chapter 15 TO SHRUG - AN ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE FOR AN INDIVIDUALIST * Underlying Philosophy * Historical Precedent * Implementation of Shrugging * A Different World-View * Escape from the moneylenders * A suitable dwelling * Lifetime supplies * Income reduction * Occupation * Security * The Moral is the Practical * Recommendations * Bibliography Throughout all my writings, I use the word "Shrug" (always capitalized) to designate a certain activity. That activity is described precisely in the book ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand. This essay is a consideration of some aspects of that activity. If you have not read ATLAS SHRUGGED, you will probably find this essay to be somewhat obscure. * Underlying Philosophy All civilization rests upon the productive achievement of creative individuals. Without that productivity, the amenities of civilization would be little, if anything, more than a cave, a bearskin and a chunk of raw meat. Observe that totalitarianism is not creative. A Sherman Tank is not a tool of construction, nor is the revolver on a policeman's hip an instrument of productivity. A totalitarian regime can exist only if it is able to to obtain economic support from the productive members of society. Without that support the regime will collapse or dissipate, as it has no other means of maintaining its economic existence. The evil is that which is destructive and life negating. The good is that which is productive and life sustaining. Evil is impotent - literally impotent - in a very fundamental way. The only power evil has is the power it gets, one way or another, from the good. Consider any evil action which you can conceive of, and take a real hard and deep look at it. What were the means by which that action was perpetrated? What is the basis (particularly the economic basis) upon which the perpetrator rests? If you look far enough into the matter, you will find that somewhere, sometime, something good must have happened before this evil could have come into being. To make only one example (but a rather blatant one): A thief cannot steal from me that which I do not possess. His act of theft presupposes my act of producing that which he would steal. If I do not produce it, he cannot steal it. It is only my sanction that gives him his power. Without my good, he is impotent. Without me, he can not even exist. This is true not only of the simple act of theft but of ALL acts of evil, no matter how complex they may be in their insidious manifestations, and no matter where or how they occur - materially, intellectually or spiritually. As you can see, this is the basic theme of ATLAS SHRUGGED. All that is required for the defeat of evil is that good men stop their unwitting support of it. A productive person who uses his creative energies in support of totalitarianism is acting according to an irrational morality - he is providing sustenance for an evil that tends to destroy him. The remedy is to STOP SUPPORTING THE EVIL THAT AFFLICTS YOU. The functioning of your mind - the creative application of your intelligence, is something that is entirely under your personal control. The guns of a dictator, though they may destroy you, cannot compel you to think (Thoreau and Gandhi taught us this). It is simply not possible to enslave a free mind. Your body can be enslaved regardless of your personal choices, but the creative power of your mind can be manifest only if you choose to express it. * Historical Precedent The idea of Shrugging was not unique to Rand. Its advocates include such other illustrious names as Thoreau, Lane, and Ghandi. Thoreau: "It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.... Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence." In 1943 Rose Wilder Lane implemented yet another exercise in subversion, which was an attempt to reduce her income below taxable levels. It was merely the next logical step in her exercise in self-sufficiency combined with political resistance. Ghandi's policy of satyagraha can be viewed as an "activist" expression of Shrugging. Judge Learned Hand (1934): "Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes." * Implementation of Shrugging On dealing with the immorality of government, here are five courses of action to consider: 1) Refuse to engage in any implementation of your personal creative ability which benefits the State. Take your brains off the statist marketplace. Act so that only those who add to your life, not those who devour it, comprise your creativity marketplace. Do not abandon creative productivity, merely deny it to all who advocate statism. Reserve your achievements for yourself and those who will join you in the endeavor to build a sane and sensible world. This is the main ingredient of Shrugging. 2) Arrange your circumstances so that the State benefits as little as possible from whatever sort of menial work you do. 3) Propagate the philosophy of libertarianism. Make these ideas known to others who are seeking a means to combat totalitarianism. 4) Actively oppose the State in a political manner. 5) Contribute in a positive way to the establishment of a new civilization. Establish for yourself a lifestyle which will demonstrate that rationally moral behavior is in fact eminently practical in one's personal life. * A Different World-View Ayn Rand never advocated Shrugging (in fact, she was firmly opposed to the action) so there has never been any discussion of the nitty-gritty aspects of "how to do it." Nobody told me what to do after I Shrugged. I had to figure it out for myself. Most of my life's work since I Shrugged has been devoted to finding how to live an economically comfortable and secure existence while denying the State any benefit from my creative ability. The result of this has been the implementation of a lifestyle that maximizes my standard of living while minimizing my exposure to the oppressive elements of society. I have been disappointed with most other libertarians because they manifest very little of any practical use - because they seem to want only to TALK rather than really DO anything to achieve freedom. To object verbally while non-violently submitting to (and economically supporting) an aggression is the behavior of a hypocrite whose talk and actions are diametrically opposed. My own goal has always been to eschew collective activities in favor of better ideas to apply to individual life, firmly believing that society will not be changed by people hollering and shouting in and about nation-wide mass movements, but will be changed only by people who choose to alter their own personal lives to live in accordance with a rational morality. If there is ever to be a society of free men, there must first be free men to comprise that society. Assembling them into a society would be an interesting proposition, but the act of becoming free is the individual's self-responsibility, not mine. I believe the best path to a free society is not via the alteration of government, but its abolition. Although I am in sympathy with those libertarians who seek freedom by means of social reform, my own primary focus is on the achievement of individual liberty and economic self-betterment. I am not concerned with getting other people to adopt Objectivism, but rather in reaping the rewards of living an Objectivist life myself. I think it unfortunate that other people do not accept this kind of life, but I do not consider it my job to induce them to practice good health - either physical, mental, economic or social health. I think also that it is rather a waste of time to try to do so - after all, the Libertarian Party has been at work since 1972, but still gets only about 1% of the votes. And too, it is over a third of a century since the publication of ATLAS SHRUGGED. Those mature adults who are intellectually self-responsible will have learned by now of the existence of the Objectivist philosophy. I have neither hope for nor interest in the others. If the vast majority choose to be fools, I can say only "Let them live with the consequences of their foolishness." Most people who ask the question "Is there any hope for saving society?" will settle only for an answer that by its nature would enable one individual to make singlehandedly a mammoth immediate alteration in the situation. This is not my type of answer, and I believe it to be a futile approach to remedying the situation. I view the situation, and my approach to it, as a physician would view a society suffering under a catastrophic epidemic. He would not sit back, wringing his hands in dismay, lamenting the fact that he alone could not produce an immediate and total cure for the epidemic. What he WOULD do is simply pick up his little black bag and commence to treat as many afflicted individuals as he possibly could. I believe society is suffering from a disastrous epidemic of irrational morality, and that the remedy lies in the practice of a rational morality by each individual - especially by a certain type of individual: those capable of a high degree of productive achievement. At an early age I started developing a world-view that can see outside the normal American lifestyle. I was in my early 20s when my fiancee and I went shopping for a house in the suburbs. We looked at a couple houses, noted the prices, and learned about financing arrangements. At this point I paused and the mathematical wheels in the back of my IQ160 brain cranked round a couple times. I said "Hey! over the course of a 15-year mortgage we will be paying almost TWICE the purchase price of this house! I'm not gonna do that!" The real-estate agent just gave me a funny look (I've been getting that funny look all my life) and terminated his presentation. And I began thinking about alternative lifestyles. It didn't take me long to discover that there are also other people interested in alternative lifestyles - and not much longer to learn that by and large they are a bunch of losers. They don't drop out to find a better life; they drop out because they can't cope with the life they have. The few exceptions to this are those who drop out because of their environmental concern. A laudable motive, but these people throw the baby of technology out with the bathwater of pollution by renouncing any use of civilized technology in the primitive lifestyles they establish. People interested in a "natural" lifestyle seem to have no concern at all for any of the technological prerequisites of a decently civilized life. Many appear to see not much further than grubbing for roots and cooking over an open wood fire. Even Thoreau did a lot better than that! Our conflicting motives and disparate goals precluded much collaboration at all between myself and these people. I think the best of the lot that I encountered was the Back-To-The-Land SIG in Mensa, but even they were a considerable disappointment to me, their primary focus of attention being the collecting of recipes on how to prepare natural foods. I wasn't interested in learning 47 different ways to cook organic turnips. My concern was "What am I gonna cook them WITH?" I was also surprised at how very few of them actually had any genuine intention of converting their daydreams into real life. They were almost all city dwellers who had no notion of any practical procedure for getting Back To The Land, and no genuine motivation to find or create such a procedure. I had a philosophical motivation (based on my decision to Shrug) and also the economic motivation that I described above: I was strongly opposed to spending the major part of my life supporting the moneylenders. * Escape from the moneylenders The first element of my economic strategy was to escape from the moneylenders. When most folks begin their working life they immediately start making payments on a car, paying off a mortgage (or start paying rent, which is probably worse in the long run), and in other ways making long-term committments to moneylenders. They get economically locked-in to this syndrome and then find themselves in a situation which is very difficult, if not impossible, to break out of. They HAVE to live where and how they do, in order to keep making payments so that they can continue to live where and how they do. The procedure for breaking free of the moneylenders would be quite different for people whose financial situations were different. One man might need to scrimp and save for a long time, whereas another might only need to divert immediately available resources from one area to another, but unless you can get out of this "eternal debt" syndrome you will never be truly free. * A suitable dwelling "To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates....The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?" .... Thoreau The biggest expense most people have is the cost of their housing, so I gave a lot of thought to what kind of dwelling would be suitable to the lifestyle I wanted. I had no intention of giving up the comforts of a civilized life, especially since my philosophical principles require no such sacrifice. It is not at all necessary to settle for what Rand described as Galt's dingy little quarters: "a long, bare garret with a bed in one corner and a gas stove in another, a few pieces of wooden furniture, naked boards stressing the length of the floor, a single lamp burning on a desk.... the wooden rafters of his ceiling.... the cracked plaster of his walls, the iron posts of his bed." Extending the idea of "escape from the moneylenders" to include escape from other institutions that have economic control over everyday life (the foremost among them being the utility power companies), I concluded that what would be appropriate to my goals would be an inexpensive, energy-independent, mobile dwelling possessing the comforts of modern technology. I considered living in a motor home, but I quickly discovered that motor homes and travel trailers are NOT designed for permanent residence, and are even less than not designed for living in a cold climate, [I went to college to learn how to write like this?] and are certainly not energy-independent, or even energy-efficient. I wanted a home that would be inexpensive to construct and maintain, be mobile, and still have all the amenities of a civilized existence. So I decided to create one myself. I began by doing renovations of vehicles - converting them into little "rolling homes." I gradually figured out how to use my knowledge of physics and engineering to convert an old van, truck or bus into a very nice little house - an inexpensive, energy- independent, non-polluting, transportable dwelling - for a whole lot less money than the cost of a new house, or even the cost of a new motor home. After building several such dwellings - and living in one of them myself for a few years - I came to realize the truth of Thoreau's observation: "Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have." Either as a permanent alternative to a fixed-box type dwelling, or as a temporary transition between the city rat-race and a rural existence in the country, a motor home offers an inexpensive and comfortable lifestyle. As a transition device, a motor home offers the city-dweller the means by which he can get out of the city in whatever spare time he has (weekends, vacations, holdidays) and travel about in the country seeking land and housing suitable to his desired rural lifestyle. If he does find land without a dwelling on it, he will have a temporary living arrangement after he has left the city and is building his permanent home on the land. As a permanent residence, I think this sort of home is a wonderful way to beat the housing racket with its multi-kilobuck lifetime mortgages for shoddily constructed boxes with built-in and almost irevocable dependence on the energy companies. A nice little home can be built in an old school bus for a modest amount of money and, if carefully done up, will keep you cozy and warm in the coldest climeates (I have lived quite comfortably through 20 Wyoming winters). It's amazing what living in a Rolling Home does for your economic situation. Gone are the mortgage paymnts. Gone are the rent payments. Gone are most all of the utility bills (a small house takes much less energy to heat, and if, like me, you don't drive it too much, gas is a small expense). Gone are the huge tax bills laid on a stationary house. Sure, there are still some living expenses but they are a tiny portion of the expenses associated with a "regular" house. I can live on a MUCH smaller income than I needed before. And then, of course, there are all the benefits of mobility. If I don't like it here I can always fire up this old clunker and trundle off down the road, seeking warmer climes, more congenial neighbors, or even just a different view from my window. Some comments on technology: many people seeking an alternative lifestyle reject technology. I think this is a mistake. I have a very high regard for technology - insofar as it is the practical application of human intelligence and creativity to the problems of living a SANE and SENSIBLE life in the environment of this planet. What I greatly object to, however, is the use of technology in irrationally insane manners that inhibit decent human life and contribute to the destruction of earth's environment. The big difference between me and many other environmentally concerned people is that unlike them, I do not advocate the destruction of a pricelessly valuable tool (technology) just because it is being used by some vicious people for improper purposes (don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!). So I integrated two usually disparate ideas - a profound love for the ecology and an equally great respect and admiration for technology - and thereby established a style of life that incorporates all the stated objectives of the most enthusiastic environmentalist as well as all the comforts and conveniences available from modern technology. I worked on the technological problems of self-sufficient living for many years, concentrating on the use of solar energy as the primary source of household power, and I found that a motor home - or a trailer house - makes a splendid dwelling if it has been designed and constructed to be energy- efficient (very well insulated) and frugal in its use of heat, water, and electricity. The operating expenses of such a home can easily be reduced to a few hundred dollars per year (assuming it stays parked in one place). The lifestyle I have developed consists of more than just an unusual dwelling; it is a comprehensive set of practices that have led me to substantial economic success while reducing my being victimized by the government. Through the practice of this lifestyle, I have lowered my living expenses to not much more than what I spend in the supermarket, and an income of less than $200 per month (in 1994) can support me very comfortably indeed. I have a higher standard of living than anyone else I know, but my income is so small that I pay no income tax. * Lifetime supplies After I had reduced my housing expenses to just about nil, I had all that "mortgage money" to spend on other things - and I soon found a lot of other things to spend it on. Another aspect of my lifestyle that has proven to be extremely economically advantageous has been my converting of money into merchandise. It really doesn't take much money (or much storage volume) to acquire a lifetime supply of X. For X, just substitute anything that you need to live comfortably and that can be stored away indefinitely. Socks, for example. If you have a few dozen pairs of socks in the back of your closet, then you don't have to be at all concerned that the price of socks is increasing continually - or that those socks may vanish off the marketplace entirely. Recently I took a brand new pair of trousers out of my storage trunk. While I was ripping off all the tags I noticed the price tag attached to the waistband. I thought it might be interesting to see how much the price had risen since I bought them, so I stopped in at the store where I had purchased them seven years ago, and was told: "Oh, those pants aren't being made anymore - they're no longer available!" I'm sure the lady thought I was completely crazy, because I burst out laughing. If you save dollars, the government simply eats them up via its inflation of the money supply. But if you convert those dollars into books, tools, clothes, or even just cans of beans, then you beat that inflation. The government will eat your dollars, but YOU will eat those beans! * Income reduction The best way to gain economic freedom is to cut expenses. People who squander their prime years on excessive work to pay unnecessary expenses, and then spend the remainder of their lives working just to stay sheltered and fed, can't enjoy much freedom. As part of her exercise in subversion, in 1943 Rose Wilder Lane began an attempt to reduce her income below taxable levels. My own implementation of this has been a great success. As of 1992, the base (federal) taxable level of income in the USA is above $5000 per year. This represents over twice the amount necessary for me to live comfortably. For the final 14 years of my working life I worked two 8-hour shifts per week at or near the minimum wage (as dishwasher/janitor in local restaurants). My standard of living rose continually during that time, mainly because almost the entirety of my income was "disposable income." I had followed Ms Lane's example and reduced my living expenses to just about nil. My standard of living has been rising continually since 1975, when I had fully implemented my lifestyle. Whether I consider the amount of material wealth that I possess or the amount of leisure time available to me or the amount of time I must devote to earning my living or the amount of economic security I have. In all these respects I am better off now than I have been at any previous time of my life. An interesting thing about all this is that I believe ANYBODY could do what I have done. Anybody in America could work 10 years at minimum wage and then retire for life. As screwed up as it is, this is still the richest society the world has ever seen. * Occupation After I had thought about Atlas Shrugged for a while, I realized that Shrugging is appropriate not just to someone at or near Galt's level of productive capability, but to anyone who is concerned with the ethical propriety of his life. I believe that even though there are immense differences between Galt and a track walker, they are differences in quantity, not in quality. Thus Mr. Walker may well have just as legitimate a concern for the ethical propriety of his behavior as Galt has for his. When I contemplated the question "If Galt steps down to the level of the track walker, what would the track walker step down to?" I came to this as the essense of Shrugging: do not pay tax on your creative ability. I believe that EVERY person has some creative capacity, and that the proper way to respond to government is to deny it the benefit of that creativity. "Physical labor as such can extend no further than the range of the moment. The man who does no more than physical labor, consumes the material value- equivalent of his own contribution to the process of production, and leaves no further value...." Rand Consider that it is not just taxation per se that supports totalitarianism, but the exploitation of productive achievement. No government could survive merely by taxing ditch diggers, track walkers and dishwashers. These people do not create civilization (although I readily admit that they do help maintain it); civilization is created by those whose productivity generates the need for ditch diggers, track walkers and dishwashers. The taxes imposed on a dishwasher will not support a totalitarian state, simply because the dishwasher does not generate wealth. He merely manipulates the wealth generated by someone who is functioning at a considerably higher level of productivity. If this "someone" were to stop generating wealth, eventually there would be nothing for the totalitarian State to tax - and it would perish. If you wish to strike at the State then strike at its root - deprive it of its economic foundation. The functioning of your mind - the creative application of your intelligence, is something that is entirely under your personal control. The guns of a dictator, though they may destroy you, cannot compel you to think. * Security There are three major aspects to my security. The first is that my house is both mobile and energy-independent. Even though I have not moved my little house in over ten years, I could readily do so if the need ever arose. Since my domestic utilities are almost entirely solar-powered, I am not dependent on outside hookups. I do not have blackouts or brownouts; I am not subject to power rationing, and they can't raise my rates! The second element of my security is that I have provided for my future in ways that are linked as little as possible to money. I own my home, and it is quite capable of housing me for the rest of my life. Thus I will never have to worry about getting money in order to provide myself with shelter. I have sufficient clothing and other household goods on hand to keep me comfortable for longer than I expect to live. Unless all this property is physically destroyed, I will never have to obtain money to replace any of it. I have, in my parlance, "pushed self-sufficiency all the way to the bananas." All the way to those things that I cannot provide for myself and cannot lay up a lifetime supply of (such as bananas). I am as unaffected as I can be by the government's continual destruction of the American economy. The third element of my security is that my philosophy, and and the fact that I actually LIVE by it, are so unthinkable to stateolatrists that I am essentially invisible to them. I call this the Thompson Invisibility Syndrome (see ATLAS SHRUGGED Part3 Chap8). This syndrome is their response to someone who is so far removed from their frame of reference that he is psychologically invisible to them. Their ignorance is my shield. * The Moral is the Practical "You have been using fear as your weapon and have been bringing death to man as his punishment for rejecting your morality. We offer him life as his reward for accepting ours." John Galt Now that Rand has given us the basic science of a rational morality, it is up to each individual to figure out how to apply that basic science to his particular situation - to deduce the "technologies" of living. It's very easy to drop into the interstices - once you are able to see them. But perceiving them requires the adoption of a suitable philosophical frame-of-reference. Objectivism is not a mere philosophical assertion, but a living, concrete procedure by which a rational individual can learn the laws of the universe and implement them in his personal life. This living, concrete picture is itself profoundly convincing: it produces conversions and commitment to the idea of rationality. As this conversion and commitment spread to more and more people, it will become a movement, adherence to which will distinguish one as enlightened, and ignorance or denial of which will mark one as intellectually retarded or superstitious. People who ignore Objectivism are simply going to become irrelevant. Whether you are a rocket scientist today or a hunter-gatherer of 25,000 years ago, the extent of your failure to live by rational principles will be reflected in the extent of your failure to flourish. The more you use your mind properly, the more you'll flourish - succeed at survival. As the economy of America becomes more and more fouled up by government, those people who can bypass their dependence on this economy can function more efficiently. Those who continue to live within the mainstream have their economic efficiency diminished by a parasitical government. I have proved in my own life that he who actually lives by the morality of Objectivism can thereby have a HIGHER standard of living than the large majority of people in America, who are hobbled, ethically and economically, by circumscribing their lives within the authoritarian frame of reference; and that the adoption of such a lifestyle is much less expensive and much more technologically feasible than most people surmise. Amidst a population of individuals employing one strategy, I employ a different strategy which has a higher payoff. As Rand repeatedly asserted, "the moral IS the practical." * Recommendations I believe the best way to go about implementing the lifestyle I have described would be to start by buying a pickup truck as your first (or next) vehicle. When you are financially ready to do so, buy a camper to put onto the truck - or a small trailer to pull behind it. Spend weekends, vacations, and as much time as you can living in this thing. This will prepare you for later full-time residence, and teach you what domestic facilities you should modify or add in order to create a satisfactory situation. If you are the adventurous type and want to skip this intermediate preparatory step, then buy a large gooseneck trailer-house. You might want to consider buying a gooseneck flat-bed trailer and building your own house on it. I have lived for 20 years in a 30-foot school bus and find this plenty large enough for one person (and three cats) to live in. If I were to do it over again, I would opt for a truck/trailer combination, as that makes for more transportation convenience. When you want to stay parked in one place for any length of time, it is convenient to just detach the truck for your occasional trips to town. Once your little house is fully prepared, take the next big step by moving permanently into it. At this point your economic situation should take a big leap upward as you begin to reap the benefits of the rent/mortgage money that you no longer have to pay out. Two things you should consider doing with that money are stocking up with supplies of merchandise (such as the socks I mentioned above) and investing in a pension for your future years. It shouldn't take much to convince you that the government's Social Security scheme is of dubious value. There are other ways in which you can provide for your future. The best I ever found is: Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association College Retirement Equities Fund 730 Third Ave New York City 10017 800 226-0147 To initiate your participation in TIAA-CREF it is not necessary that you be a teacher. It is only necessary that you be employed, in any capacity, by one of the many educational institutions that comprise the Association. Once you have become a participant, you remain so for life regardless of your subsequent employment. During the late 1960s I invested several thousand dollars into this scheme. That money was put into a wide array of commercial and industrial enterprises (not into government bonds!). Today, about thirty years later, I can begin drawing an annual pension that will pay me, each year for the rest of my life, an amount of money greater than the sum total that I invested so long ago. When you have got yourself set up in your new lifestyle you can begin to think about changing over from full-time work to part-time work. For the final 14 years of my working life I worked only part-time (as a dishwasher and janitor). I usually worked one or two days a week - and had a five- or six-day "weekend." I went into full retirement at the age of 48, and have been living quite comfortably ever since. * Bibliography: From Loompanics Unlimited Box 1197 Port Townsend, WA 98368: THE ALPHA STRATEGY by John Pugsley Convert your money into merchandise. FREEDOM ROAD by Harold Hough How to establish life in a motor home. HOME IS WHERE YOU PARK IT by Kay Peterson How to live in a travel trailer. TINY HOUSES by Lester Walker Inexpensive, self-sufficient little homes. ROLLING HOMES by Jane Lidz A&W Publishers, 95 Madison Ave, NYC 1979 HOW I FOUND FREEDOM IN AN UNFREE WORLD by Harry Browne Macmillan 1973 HOW YOU CAN PROFIT FROM THE COMING DEVALUATION by Harry Browne 1970 Arlington House, New Rochelle, New York The best-ever textbook on economics. Unfortunately, now out of print. J.C. Whitney Co Box 8410 Chicago IL 60680 Parts, accessories and appliances for cars, trucks and RVs. If you intend to build your own motor home, this company is an excellent source for parts and equipment. __ Chapter 16 Errata CHAPTR16: For "Errata", read "Erratum" I would appreciate being notified of errors of any kind in these writings, or of any statements that could be clarified so as to make a better presentation. Thanking you for your consideration, I am David King 58 Spring Valley Drive Milford, Wyoming 82520