Category Archives: Metaphysics

Voluntarism: A brief series of arguments for why government for man’s good is a contradiction in terms

Authority, government, Metaphysics, Violence, Voluntarism, , , , ,

The presumption behind all government is that men, absent the “fail safe” of forced compliance to moral behavior (which is a contradiction in terms, because force nullifies choice; and without choice there is no moral act) must necessarily act to exploit others because man’s–that is, the individual’s–root nature is base and mendacious. This assumption has many problems, not the least of which is that it does not explain how those in government get a moral pass on their own inherent depravity.

Further, it also implies and then forces a collective identity because all governments must exist for a “collective” or “common good”, which, being outside the natural context of the individual, must fundamentally be defined as an esoteric standard, available fully only to those in authority (governing officers, who are really a sort of a political priesthood) who claim to represent this Common Good as its messengers and ministers.  However, the very fact that the collective good as a moral standard must elude the individual because of his inexorably and self-evidentiary singular existential and metaphysical context, means that the “common good”cannot possibly be manifest. Because of the singular nature of human existence, each person must decide for himself what is good or not, based upon a rational Standard of Good, which is the Individual, which means each person’s inexorable and absolute right to their ownership of Self. “Common good” must be forced upon the individual in object violation of their individuality, destroying them in favor of the new statist metaphysic: collectivism, as a function of the power (violence) of the State. This in turn undermines and eventually crumbles these governments which exist in service to “common good” because whether collectivists want to acknowledge it or not, without the individual, there is no public; there is no “common” society. Which means that there is no “common good”. Thus, all States founded upon such a moral standard are rooted in a contradiction which, beyond its label, can have absolutely no substance.

And there is no government which is not a function of collective identity, and thus “collective” or “common good”. Because such a government could only act and exist to serve the specific individual at any given moment. And there is nothing which can do that except the individual himself. In which case, it’s not a government, it’s free will; its cooperation; it’s voluntarism.

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The root problem of government is that it necessarily implies that men, absent force, cannot be expected to make moral choices; and therefore there is no moral standard that doesn’t ultimately rest upon violent coercion. This destroys man at his root metaphysic. It means that man must be compelled to morality, which is the corollary of Truth, in spite of himself. That is, in spite of his nature. That is, in spite of his existence. Meaning man cannot successfully exist unless the very  substance of that existence, his nature, is destroyed. Man must cease to exist in order that he may exist.

And it is upon this terrible contradiction that all governments are built.

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The use of force to compel moral actions is an object contradiction in terms. Absent choice, morality is a nullified concept. And an outcome not based upon a free act of the will of the moral and self-aware agent is not a moral outcome. That which denies the individual his individuality–that is, his free agency–cannot be said to ultimately benefit any individual.

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On the one hand, those who argue the necessity and efficacy of government will assert that men are by nature lacking virtue–“ineptitude and vices of men”, as von Mises once said–and therefore cannot be trusted to engage voluntarily into a moral sociopolitical system. And yet government, which is a collection of those very same men men, is somehow not naturally lacking virtue.

How does one square this circle?  How do we resolve the contradiction that says that men need government because they lack fundamental virtue; and yet government is comprised of men? How is it mere paradox instead of rank fallacy that individuals won’t naturally choose good, but collections (the governors and the governed) of individuals will?

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If it’s true that men, left to themselves, will necessarily dissolve into all manner of vice (murder, theft, deceit, and your basic general exploitation) then the last thing I would think makes sense is to give a minority of men the majority of violent, coercive power. You’d have to assume that those men could wield it righteously in order for good to be the rational outcome.

But of course as soon as you assume this you’ve undermined the fundamental moral (and metaphysical) argument for government in the first place:

That man left to himself, by nature (man qua man), will not act righteously.

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Absent the foundational and absolute right to violence to compel behavior, there is no government in any capacity. This being the case, force against man is not really minimized, as some minarchists argue is the benefit of government, it is absolute.

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I think we confuse the right of collective self-defense with the right to compel behavior by violence or threats of violence before any actual offense occurs.

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The idea that there is no free market absent the ever-present threat of violence, which I submit is itself a form of violence, seems a contradiction in terms. How is man either free or moral if he acts out of fear of violating the State and not because he understands it is wrong to violate another man? The State is not the moral standard, the individual is.

And I’m not saying the state is evil. I’m saying that forced morality is a contradiction in terms. Which means the state is neither evil nor good. It’s impossible because it is a contradiction.

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The moral do not need to be governed, for they are moral. The immoral will not, or cannot, recognize the State’s moral authority. This means that the only way for the State to “work” is if it threatens the first and neutralizes the second. And neither action equals freedom by any legitimate definition. So you merely get a State which exists for the sake of its own power; its own legal “right” to violence for the sake of violence.

 

 

Existence is Relative Because Location is Relative

Metaphysics, Time and Space, , ,

Existence must have a location…that is, if something exists, it must exist somewhere. And somewhere must be relative. Otherwise, there is no distinction between the thing said to exist and where it exists. It simply exists where it is itself.

But to say something exists at the place of itself is nonsensical. “Itself” is not an answer to the question: “Where does a thing exists?” In fact, such an answer really translates to nowhere. In other words, if a thing doesn’t have a specific location other than itself, it doesn’t have a location at all, because “itself” isn’t a location, it’s a definition. And if a thing does not exist in a location then it doesn’t exist anywhere. And if it doesn’t exist anywhere then it cannot be said to exist at all.

Therefore, everything said to exist must exist in a location relative to something else. This makes any given object’s existence co-dependent upon the existence of another object (or other objects). Which means that existence cannot be the metaphysical primary. Because it is not singular.

Why “All Lives Matter” is the Rational and Moral Declaration

Authority, Ethics, General Philosophy, individualism vs collectivism, Metaphysics, Violence, ,

It is a pathetic and frustrating thing to be labeled a racist (as I recently was) by simply pointing out that humanity is rooted in individuals, not groups like “blacks” and “whites”; that racism is a function of individual beliefs and action, and therefore cannot not be ascribed to individuals because of some trite, subjective group/institutional affiliation; and it is also exasperating to hear it asserted that saying “all lives matter” is–by some backwards, inane Marxist “logic”–an anti-black declaration when in fact it is merely pointing out THE objective ontological fact which makes Truth, Reality and Morality possible at all.

When someone calls you a racist for saying “all lives matter” they are simply proclaiming their collectivist beliefs, which necessarily spawn ethics and politics that hold violence to be the primary and ultimately only efficacious way of compelling moral behavior. In other words, those who declare it racist and thus evil to express the rank ontological truth and fact that all lives matter is implying that they really believe that NO lives matter.

Not black. Not white. Not yours. Not mine. Not their own.

The Denial of Reason as Truth’s Foundation is the Denial of God, of Self, and of Reality

Metaphysics, Objective Relativity, , , , , ,

You cannot believe, or have faith, in something irrational. And this is because what is irrational is impossible, because it cannot be defined in any measure, because the definition of something cannot contradict the very thing which is being defined.  And at the root of what is an irrational definition, I submit, is contradiction: the attempt to combine mutually exclusive concepts to create meaning (I explain this in more detail below).  Further, that which is impossible because it cannot be defined cannot then, by definition, exist; because whatever exists must have some kind of consistent definition…some identity, even if it’s only “that thing”.

It’s interesting to note that Jesus Himself never said that God can do the impossible. What He said was “with God all things are possible”. I surmise that there is a very good reason for this. To say “God can do the impossible” is to say that God can make the impossible possible, which is a contradiction in terms and violates the very logic and conceptual consistency by which God Himself, along with everything else, is defined in the first place.

Let’s look at it this way:

The difference between all things being possible and doing impossible things is in how we define and thus identify “things”. There is no such thing, and can be no such thing, as a square circle, or an elephant which is also a bird, or a left turn which is also a right turn, or man’s Will which is also God’s Will, or a free choice which is also a pre-determined effect of the laws of physics. These are not things at all…they are concepts without the reference of reason–of conceptual consistency–and thus are never manifest nor observed in reality for the very reason that they lack a specific identity; they lack the necessary existential criteria (as far as man’s perspective is concerned) of being a conceptualized single, specific thing at any given moment.

So because these impossible, identity-less “things” cannot actually BE anything at any given moment there is no way that God can manifest them. They defy reason; they flaunt conceptual consistency. And God can no more do that which is unreasonable than he can, Himself, be unreasonable. For God to “do the impossible” is to reject the very means by which man can know and define God and himself in the first place; and that means is reason–conceptual consistency. For if there can be such a thing as an up which is also a down, or a white which is also a blue, or a Will or choice which is also an effect of an external determining cause, then even God must admit that there is no legitimate reference for Truth; that there is no reason He, or you, or I, can give for something being what it is as opposed to what it is not; what is true as opposed to what is false; what is good as opposed to what is evil. And when this happens, understanding and knowledge is demolished, and therefore, nothing has identity, not even God; not even man. And that which has no identity cannot be said to exist at all because the question “What exists?” cannot be answered.

Once that question can no longer be answered, God is dead. And so are we.

It is only by believing in what is rational, in what is reasonable, in what has conceptual consistency, that there can be any belief at all.

Experience is Not an Argument

Epistemology, General Philosophy, Metaphysics, , , ,

Today on Facebook, Breitbart News posted the following quote from Holocaust Survivor Martin Greenfield:

“The United States is the best damn country the world has ever known. Anyone who disagrees with that hasn’t been where I’ve been, hasn’t seen what I’ve seen.”

As lovely as that sentiment might seem, and though I respect Holocaust survivors immensely, the assertion is really nothing more than a non sequitur. In a couple of ways.

First, it is a categorical fact that no one has been where anyone else has been nor has seen what anyone else has seen. This is because any given person, by definition, cannot be anyone else. Everyone, simply by virtue of their being born, has their own absolute frame of reference by which they experience life.  The very fact that I am not you means that I cannot and will not experience existence as you do. I will never be where you are or see what you see, because we are infinitely different.  And because this is a simple ontological axiom, and therefore is universal to human experience, one cannot base an assertion upon it. Because the presupposition of such an assertion is that if you had seen what Mr. Greenfield had seen, and had been where Mr. Greenfield had been, you would, in fact, agree that the United States is the best damn country the world has ever known. But the infinite distinction of individual experience makes this an impossible scenario. And because it is an impossible scenario, precluded by the facts of rank existence, it is an illegitimate argument. It is irrelevant.

Next, we should remember that experience is not the equivalent of reason. What you have seen or where you have been is not a legitimate substitute for what you think about what you have seen and where you have been. You simply cannot base an argument upon perception alone; you must base it upon a rationale.  That is, a philosophical interpretation of reality (how you define what is true), which is rooted in your belief system.

So, when Mr. Greenfield says “America is the best damn country the world has ever known”, he is not, in fact, arguing from experience…because this is impossible. Why? Again, because observation is not reason. He may think his experience as a Holocaust survivor suffices as an argument, but reason demands that this cannot be so.

If Mr. Greenfield wants to argue that the U.S. Is the world’s greatest country he must provide an actual reason, not merely a perception. And if his reason, rooted in his fundamental beliefs, is not rationally consistent, then it is false. Period. Full stop. And no amount of experience, no matter how profound, can make it true.

What is Hell?; What is Death?; What is the Worm?

Epistemology, Metaphysics, , , , , ,

Hell is being Me and not knowing why I am Me in a way which does not make Me an absolute function of that which is outside of Me, and therefore must utterly determine Me, and thus contradict Me. Death is the absence of reason by which I can explain not how I am an effect but why I am the Cause. The insatiable worm is being “I” and yet having no real definition of “I” qua “I”.