Monthly Archives: December 2019

The Law is at War with You (Part 1)

Ethics, forced compliance, government, law, morality

If the question is “Without the law what is to prevent or dissuade someone from (committing this or that evil action) should they have the opportunity and should they feel like it; and what then is the consequence?”  …yes, if this is the ethical question with respect to the law, and it is, then we can argue that the law is not necessary to determine the moral value of the action in question. Indeed, we can argue that to even ask the question in the first place is to admit that moral judgement must already have been rendered upon the action. So we know that by the very (ostensible) point of the law in the first place—to dissuade men from and to punish men for evil actions—that law itself has nothing to do with how and why actions are morally valued. In other words, if an action can be valued as “good” or “bad” outside the law, and indeed this value is an a priori premise of the law, then it can be concluded that the law has nothing at all fundamentally to do with moral ethics. And this is very important. Because what this means is that the law can neither fundamentally promotes moral action nor provides for moral consequence.

Let me explain.

Moral ethics are often the ostensible reason why men feel the need to apply law in defense of morality, but those who are committed to law as a conveyance of morality rarely, if ever, claim that law is the means by which morality is defined. And this makes sense, as the very definition of ethics as a bonafide philosophical category must include both action and consequence of  action—these are corollary. In other words, even men who are comitted to law as a means to implement morality accept that the morality of both actions and consequences are wholly defined and understood apart from the law. Said another way, even those who promote the law as a defense of morality tacitly admit that morality is a fully-formed, complete, self-sustaining/self-contained, comprehensive ethical system. It already describes what is good and bad, and therefore it necessarily describes the consequences of good and bad actions, and how to promote the former and prevent the other. The moral value of an action and the corollary moral value of its consequence necessarily imply the moral means of defending and promoting morality. Moral ethics don’t actually need the law. At all.

Which begs the question: why do we have law then?

I’ll get to that. But I suspect you already know/have figured it out.

Law is instituted in defense of morality only after moral actions and consequences have already been observed, defined, and understood. Ergo: “We must have law in order to prevent/punish people from/for doing this or that BAD thing”. That is, law is seen to be a tool of moral ethics. But here’s the problem: it has nothing actually to do with moral ethics…and this is the grand ethical irony. The Ethics of Morality already provide the utility for which the law is said to be necessary. In other words, in any true, legitimate ethical system—of which morality is indeed the only rationally consistent example—the prevention of and consequence for unethical action is endemic to the system. Morality provides for its own conveyances of prevention and consequence. It does not need the law…the law, as far as moral ethics goes, is utterly superfluous. Morality already endemically declares that “if thou do X then thou shall necessarily reap Y”. The future prevention of negative moral action X is the example/experience of reaping of the necessary corollary moral negative consequences of Y…both of which are defined and understood according to morality, not according to the law.

Which brings us to the next point in this essay series: The law then, by deduction of relatively simple logic, is not a tool of morality but a replacement of it. It does not save or protect the innocent, it wrecks the distinction between the morally innocent and the morally guilty, and places the declaration of ethical value squarely in the hands and the whims of a subjective ruling class (Governing Authority…the State). The establishment of a ruling class  is, as a fundamental premise, is the deposing of morality and the institution of legality in its place. And this is necessarily the death of humanity, not the salvation of it.

END part one

Why Our Government Can’t See Any of Us

Authority, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, Ethics, forced compliance, government, individualism vs collectivism, law, ,

If my fundamental social context is one where I operate as a function of what someone else will allow—that is, existence under the auspices of ruling authority (legal ethics, which is forced compliance)—then I can never really know who I am. Because what I am at root is a function of what I think, and what I think is corollary to what I desire, or will, which is corollary to what I choose. But if my social context is fundamentally one of forced compliance, and my choices fundamentally a function of what the Authority will allow, then choice is only relative, and my desire and therefore my thought, my mind, is never really of me. It’s of the Authority which seeks to exist through me, and in spite of the real me.

Within such a context, any claim of any citizen that they would prefer “more freedom” is merely a claim that they would prefer to be allowed more choice…but “allowed choice” is a fundamental contradiction in terms. He who wields the power to allow me to choose is he who is at root utterly in control of my choices, which puts him in practical control of my will and thus my mind and thus my SELF…in which case there is no actual me at all.  So “more freedom” here is just an iteration of authority over me—the power to compel me against my will. There is no such thing as freedom within the context of ruling authority (the State/Government). It’s an illusion at best; but mostly it’s just a bromide.

Under the umbrella of ruling authority where my will is only “allowed” to be expressed, I am functioning merely as an expression of the ruler’s power to compel. Therefore, I, my SELF, have no actual value to the social equation. I’m a pawn in the plans of the ruling class, period, full stop. I don’t exist to them, and never did. We recoil at the thought of  a handful of people being shot to death in a movie theater by a psychopathic teenager, calling it a “senseless slaughter”, but we sing songs of heroism and tribute to and get all teary-eyed and sentimental about the thousands slaughtered in the span of minutes on the battlefields of government wars. This is because we are taught that in the context of doing things for “our country”, which fundamentally can only mean the State, which fundamentally means the ruling class, there is no such thing as an individual. And you cannot “senselessly slaughter” people who don’t actually exist. Death by the thousands and millions in defense of the collective ruling class is glorious; death by the handful via one acting “illegally” is a pointless tragedy.

Let us wake from our cognitive dissonance.

END

The Problem Science and Relgion Share: The Self

Identity, individualism vs collectivism, Man's Ability, scientific determinism, ,

How could man’s brain be created by God or nature, out of either “nothing” or the material of nature, to—by design—observe and conceptualize a singular Self (consciousness); and this Self as intrinsically distinct from God and nature…as separate, as absolute, as a constant, and not a direct function of God or nature? That is, how can God or nature, being wholly responsible for the existence of man, determine that man shall observe God or nature (or God and nature) as though they were outside of him? For that which is absolutely created and determined by divine omniscience/omnipotence or natural law cannot possibly possess a unique existential frame of reference by which the distinction can be observed and defined.

The real conundrum from both science and religion as they stand today in their particular orthodoxies is not evil, or free will, or finding absolute truth, or answering the Question of Everything. It is the intrinsically singular, absolute, constant Self of the invidual…the “I” of each one of us; the One existential reference by which we value and define all that we observe and all which exists, including God and nature.

END

“‘What is Government?’ Answered in One Paragraph”

collectivism, forced compliance, government, Violence

What is government? Well, it’s quite simple.

A group of violent people (aspiring ruling class) threaten the productive people with violence and take their property, then use some of the property to bribe the unproductive in exchange for greater power by which they further exploit the productive. Then the children of both the unproductive and the productive are indoctrinated into thinking that this arrangement mis a sociological virtue and a moral necessity. This goes on until the transfer of wealth from the productive to the ruling class (with the unproductive being the buffer between the ruling class and those they exploit…a combination of hired thugs and cannon fodder, to put it bluntly) must rely upon unsustainable debt, arrant political corruption, kangaroo courts and show trials, unfettered lower class immigration, and the distractions of circuses and sideshows and endless war, shortly after which the ruling class abandons the disaster and moves on to do it again somewhere else.

The end.

When Ethics Don’t Exist, There is No Such Thing as “Preferential Behavior” (Part 2)

Ethics, , ,

By removing man’s consciousness from the metaphysical equation, which the metaphysical primary of Existence most certainly does, we remove the singular conscious Self from man. And the conscious Self is the means by which man is able to assert that he IS, and by this is able to say what he IS NOT—he is able to make the distinction between himself and his environment, and this is the fundamental definition of Reality, period. Any other definition, and any other reference, is utterly beyond him…he cannot possibly know it. Therefore, by removing consciousness from metaphysics, man’s ability to define his environment and himself is fundamentally removed. And this of course makes it impossible for him to claim any real epistemological understanding (truth from falsehood), and lacking epistemological understanding he necessarily lacks ethical understanding (good from evil), because epistemology and ethics are of course corollary. The metaphysical primary of Existence then ironically removes man from Existence, placing it utterly outside of him, beyond his consciousness, and thus beyond his categorical frame of reference. In which case, man can claim to apprehend no actual ethics, because ethics, like epistemology, are a function of metaphysics…the metaphysics of Existence. And this is the root of the claim that “universal ethics do not exist”. As far as man is concerned, ethics are impossible for him, because his consiousness, being utterly subjective, being exclusive of Existence, is exclusive of not only universal ethics but anything universal at all…be it ethics, or truth, or reality on the whole. Because universality in the philosophical sense, and in the practical sense, is simply another word for objectivity. So the claim “universal ethics do not exist” can be rendered—and more precisely rendered—“objective ethics do not exist”. From this we can follow the logical progression to the claim “objective ethical behavior does not exist”. And this being the case, the idea that it is possible for man to act in a “universally preferable” way is irrational and pointless. Without universal ethics, there can be no standard for universally preferable ethics, because to say that there are no universal ethics is really to say that there are no actual ethics at all. And there can be no such thing as a preference which is rooted in that which does not actually exist in the first place. It’s an infinitely subjective preference, in other words…which makes it merely an opinion, full stop…akin to having a favorite color.

Universally preferable behavior. Well…what is actually preferable? Nothing. Because universal ethical behavior—behavior which is right as opposed to that which is wrong—cannot objectively be defined; it isn’t a thing. Man’s consciousness is removed from reality; man’s consciousness, specifically his conscious Self, is his sole frame of reference for anything which is real and thus true and thus good. And as goes the reference so goes ethics. As goes ethics so goes behavior. As goes behavior, so goes preferential behavior.

Ethics doen’t exist because You qua You don’t exist, and so your behavior doesn’t exist, which means there is no behavior to be preferred. Universal or otherwise.

Holding onto fundamentally untenable and irrational metaphysics (like those of Existence) will lead one down the wrong ethical path all the time, every time.

END

When Ethics Don’t Exist, There is No Such Thing as “Preferential Behavior” (Part 1)

Ethics, , ,

A couple of months ago I heard a relatively well-known YouTuber who discusses philosophy from time to time make the claim that “universal ethics don’t exist”. He said this in a video in which he was arguing for the legitimacy and efficacy of something he calls, rather oxymoronically, ironically, and paradoxically, “Universally Preferable Behavior”.

What he means by “universal ethics don’t exist” is that ethics are purely a function of human consciousness, and, by infrerences one can make about his beliefs based upon past assertions, and even open admission, he presumes that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, and this implies that it is fundamentally irrelevant to Reality qua Reality. In other words, the only rational and possible  frame of reference for ethics, both explicitly and implicitly—the individual, the conscious Self, the Thinking Human Being—is completely subjective with respect to Reality and thus Existence (the two are corollary). And if the reference for ethics is completely subjective, and this fundametally so, then ethical behavior is completely subjective. Which means that Universally Preferable Behavior, being a form of ethical expression—ethics, which are again utterly subjective, because they don’t actually exist, (that is, not universally, and by this he means means objectively)—can only ever be subjectively universally preferable.  Which is of course a contradiction in terms.

This person’s root problem, as is the case with…well, everyone who makes an irrational assertion about, well, anything, is the metaphysics.

Boy, those metaphysics are certainly quite wily it seems….they are the rocks upon which everyone’s philosophical ship ignominiously crashes in the end. From Aristotle to Augustine, Kant to Jordan Peterson…you’ll find their flotsam washing up on shore from time to time leaving graceless little trails of “not quite” upon the sand.

*

Whenever it is asserted that ethics do not actually exist, it is meant that they are nothing but a figment of man’s imagination, and this a product of man’s consciousness, which is itself considered merely a figment…anathema to Existence. Consciousness, being the source of the utterly conceptual, is itself completely abstract, perfectly ethereal…so it is assumed and asserted. It, like the concepts it inexorably and necessarily spawns, is entirely intangible, and Existence, as the metaphysical primary, demands that only the tangible, the empirical, the physical, the ontic actually are, in any fundamentally objective (which means “meaningful; relevant”) sense. Ethics are not real—they do not exist—because they are exclusive of the senses, and Existence has no frame of reference as a metaphyscial primary for what happens after those concrete things which can be sensed have been sensed. In other words, the application of what is “real”, as Existence defines it, by a conscious frame of reference is irrelevant to Existence. Never mind the unavoidable fact that consciousness is the only means by which meaning can be generated…that Reality can be interpreted and applied.  Existence as the metaphysical primary thus makes its own epistemology and ethics merely folderol…utterly subjective, and utterly inconsequential to the very metaphysical primary from which they are derived. Astounding. If sensing is entirely immaterial and fundamentally irrelevant to Existence—to that which actually exists—because it is inexorably bound to the conscious observer by which it gets the whole of its meaning and purpose, then sensing, itself, is incompatible with Existence…sensing does not actually exist. And thus, how can it be claimed that anything actually exists, since no one can actually see (or otherwise sense) Reality and the things in it, because their senses, being linked inexorably to their consciousness in order that what is sensed can be defined and thus said to actually exist (as this or that), are utterly subjective and fundamentally irrelevant to the metaphysics of Existence? And if it is impossible to sense that which exists, how can Existence itself be claimed to exist? And thus how can it be the metaphysical primary?

At any rate, I digress. Suffice to say that what this YouTube personality is essentially saying is that ethics are are a function of consciousness and thus not observable and thus do not actually exist  according to his metaphysics (Existence) and thus cannot be universal. Of course, this being the case, all he really does in the end is make an implicit argument for the utter rejection of any ethical propositions he might make, and from that the utter rejection of the sum and substance of his philosophy on the whole.

END part 1

There is No Such Thing as “No Such Thing as Absolute Truth”

Epistemology, reason, ,

The claim that there is no such thing as absolute truth is, of course, a bald-faced self-nullifying contradiction. If there is no such thing as absolute truth then the assertion that there is no such thing as absolute truth cannot possibly be absolutely true. It could be true, one might argue, to which I would say: perhaps I will grant you that, however it’s only possible truth, and not absolute truth. It can be known, perhaps, but not known for certain. But…hang on…if absolute truth is not knowable for certain, then how can it be claimed that there is such a thing as absolute truth? It cannot. And thus we must assert that there is no such thing as absolute truth. But this assertion then cannot be absolutely true…and round and round we go. Wash. Rinse. Repeat, as the bottle directs us.

So much for the faux profundity of idiotic, what I call, Dorm Room Philosophy—philosophical neophytes sitting around over a bong or a four pack of artisan beer waxing on with ivy league pretension about shit that no one understands because it’s nothing but tarted up nonsense. Nonsense on her prom night.

Let’s get one thing straight: Contradiction is not deep thinking. It’s make believe. It’s mysticism. It’s a galaxy far far away. It’s not philosophy. It’s not wisdom, and it’s certainly not truth…of any kind.

Back to the flummery of “no such thing as absolute truth”.

If there is no such thing as absolute truth, then what is the point of language? Indeed, how is language even possible at all? If there is no such thing as absolute truth then of course there is no such thing as objective truth…or of objectivity at all. Which means that language can serve no objective purpose. And this being the case, language contradicts itself…it becomes self-nullifying. It can make no certain claim, about anything, and this is an extension of the fact that it is impossible for the user of language (the Observer) to actually know anything…because there is no objective truth, which is to say, following the logic, that there is no truth at all. And if the user cannot really know anything then there is no fundamental point in any utterance, and thus communication is likewise pointless. Language then becomes categorically irrelvant at the most fundamental level. And that which is by nature irrelevant, based upon explicit,  endemic, necessary self-contradiction is indeed utterly impossible existentially. That is, you might say, as soon as it is manifest, it dissolves into non-being, because nothingness is the only thing it can “mean”.

And if language is impossible then so must be consciousness. For one cannot be self-aware…that is, one cannot know himself, cannot conceptualize himself and then name himself, if what he is is infinitely subjective, lacking any objectivity because truth itself is infinitely subjective and thus infinitely irrelevant. Impossible language is language which is infinitely subjective, which makes consciousness likewise subjective. But if consciousness only subjectively exists, and this fundamentally so, then consciousness, doesn’t actually (objectively) exist. Consciousness then is purely an illusion…which of course begs the question: an illusion of what? You see, from the frame of reference of he or that which is (or is said to be) conscious there is no difference between consciousness and the illusion of consciousness. Because how would he or it know the difference? How would you? How would you know the difference between he or that which is actually conscious and he or that which possesses only the illusion of consciousness? In order for you to claim that consciousness is only an illusion, you would have to know that the consciousness to which you refer is not in reality actual consciousness at all, but is in fact merely an illusion of consciousness. Which would imply that you have an objective frame of reference for actual consciousness, thus proving implicitly that there is, indeed, such a thing as actual, objective consciousness. And if there is such a thing as actual, objective conscioness, then there must be such a thing as objective language, which means there must be such a thing as objective truth. Or capital “T” Truth, we sometimes say. Which means there must be such a thing as absolute truth. And if there is such a thing as absolute truth then there is such a thing as absolute ethics (objective ethics) and absolute (objective) politics and absolute (objective) aesthetics. And pure reason (rationally consistent, utterly non-contradictory, thinking) is how you define them.

END