Tag Archives: legality vs morality

The Law is at War with You (Part 3, Conclusion)

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At the beginning of this article series, I opened with the question: Without the law what is to prevent someone from committing evil action X should they have the opportunity; and what then is the consequence?

From this question, often asked by apologists for legal ethics (those who assume that Coercive Authority, i.e. the State, is utterly necessary for human ethics to exist), two things can be assumed beyond a reasonable doubt. First, that the law is not necessary to declare moral value—indeed, that moral value must be known before the law exists (e.g. law is to prevent evil action X, an action of which its moral evil warrants the creation-intervention of law). And second, that evil has no negative consequence without law.

The idea that there is no consequence for immoral action absent law presents us with a contradiction; this contradiction is “resolved” by rejecting morality entirely, and replacing it with legality. Here is the contradiction: by asserting that there is no negative consequence for immoral action, an immoral action can no longer be defined as immoral. You see, in ethics, it is axiomatic that action and consequence are corollary, yet the law “splits” this corollary by making action a function of moral ethics and consequence a function of legal ethics. But morality and legality are two completely distinct ethical systems, each with its own very specific premises and corollaries and conclusions, and, most importantly, its own metaphysical foundation. (Morality is based upon will and choice, its metaphysics are individualist; legality is based upon authority and coercive force, its metaphysics are collectivist). They simply cannot be merged/integrated in any rational or efficacious way. So what happens is that morality by default becomes merely propagandistic conveyance for the implementation of legality, whereupon morality is discarded by the Authority (ruling class) and replaced with legality as the author and arbiter of the ethical value of both action and consequence. And this is done quite naturally, and is not necessarily consciously conceived by those arguing for the State and the Rule of Law or the ruling class. For as soon as we assume and accept that consequence must be a function of the law, then it becomes impossible to determine the ethical value of an action without also appealing to the law; and this is due to the inherent mutual exclusivity between legal ethics and moral ethics. This is the nature of ethics.

All of this being the case, in response to the question at the top of this article, we are forced to reply as follows:

Wihout law, why should we think that evil action X is in fact evil? In other words, how do we know that action X, or engaging in action X, is a bad thing?

The answer is of course that we do not; we cannot. Because by asking the question we necessarily concede that legality, not morality, is the only relevant and possible ethical system. Outside of the law, there is no ethic. Any action outside the law cannot by definition be called illegal, and thus it cannot be called unethical, and thus it cannot be called “bad”. The law, in accordance with the logical rules of ethics, is both prescriptive and proscriptive. It dictates which actions are good or bad (or said another way, it dictates the goodness or badness value of a given action) and it dicatates the consequences for actions. The law declares what you must do and what you must not (which is fundamentally oxymoronic, because one cannot do a “not”….so the law fundamentally dicates all behavior at root). And this is why law has nothing at all to do with choice and will. Human action is fundametally driven by individual will. But will is not recogniznzed by law, which by nature is coercive, not cooperative, which is why as time goes by, the law—the State, the Ruling Class—becomes more and more oppressive; it smothers humanity, it does not, and cannot, free it. The nature of the law is to dictate, not emancipate. Law rejects human choice and will, it does not provide some kind of cohesive and moral context for them. The “freeing power of democratic law” is just lie you have been told to make you more amenable to the whims of the ruling class, nothing more. You are coerced by very persuasive, euphonious, idealistic indoctrination, which is much cheaper and more profitable than state terrorism, gulags, guillotines, death squads, and gas chambers, and less messy as well. The chattel bear more service and substance if they walk willingly to their cages and pastures than if they struggle or try to run away. Though terror, gulags, guillotines, death squads, and gas chambers, or some manifestation thereof, will eventually appear no matter how ostensibly democratic a system is…and there are reasons for this, but they are a subject for another article.

Finally, I will end with this:

The law does not provide a context for the implementation of efficacious morality. Law is, according to the ethics of morality, entirely opposed to moral behavior.

In other words, the law is categorically immoral.

END

The Point of Law is to Eradicate Moral Consequence, Not Enforce it (PART THREE)

Authority, Ethics, forced compliance, government, individualism vs collectivism, Man's Ability, Metaphysics, Objective Relativity, reason, Violence, Voluntarism,

In the world today, collectivist metaphysics are a philosophical juggernaut, with virtually every school of thought, field of study, and religion in the world, including and perhaps especially the “hard sciences”, conceding these metaphysics as a priori, whether they are consciously aware of it or not.  Which, they usually are not because…well, who needs philosophy when you’ve got math, right?  Numbers beat reason every time.

Hmmm.  To that I’d say: numbers are units of infinity, nothing more.  So be careful.  It’s easy to replace truth with abstraction when the abstraction you’re working with is designed to be rendered an infinite number of ways.  Give me infinity to work with, and I can come up with anything…by definition.  And thus, for mathematics to be in any way reasonable and relevant on the level of arrant and object reality, we must hem them in by rational consistency.  That is, by truth. That is, by understanding what is rationally possible and what is not, and from this, what is actually good and what is actually not.  And truth is a function of philosophy.  Period.

Anyway…

By the collectivist metaphysical premises which underly practically all subjects it seems, and along with these subjects society at large, the denizens of society seek to eradicate the “illegitimate” and “invalid” moral consequences of an “illegitimate” ethic.  Which is to say, of morality, as opposed to legality.  And thus the metaphysic in which this ethic is rooted, the Individual (I, the Self) is marked for death, figuratively unto literally, by “the people” demanding that the government nullify moral consequence through the power of Law, which government wields alone, as the One, True Authority.

To put it much more bluntly, people who have conceded the collectivist ideals of all the “truths” upon which a collectivist society is based will appeal to the State to use its giant hammer of coercive monopolistic brut force to pound into a bloody mash the individual freedoms of everyone in response to the unwanted moral consequences brought about by the choices of the evil or irresponsible.  In a society ruled by Law, and not morality, everyone is a sinner.  Everyone is guilty for the sins of everyone else.  And this is because under Law, there are no individuals, and this due to the collectivist metaphysics which imply legal ethics.  Man as an individual is insufficient—morally, intellectually, existentially—and thus the failure of some men (criminals) is merely the reflection of the failure of all men; so how can the Law treat those who commit no crime as innocent?  All individuals are merely latent criminals, which is why the Law is declared necessary in the first place.  The innocents therefore are punished for the crimes of the guilty, and this is how we think justice is done and how humanity is protected.  By using the State to destroy the distinction between the good and the evil, the innocent and the guilty, the responsible and the deadbeat, the giver and the taker, the host and the parasite, we wreck the individual at the point of his very metaphyscial reality, and by this we think we can eliminate his curse—his natural ethical failure, due to the choices he makes as an individual.  We take guns away from the non-violent; fossil fuels away from good stewards; money away from the generous; tobacco and other “vices” away from the moderate; and force licenses to ply trades upon the honest and compassionate; and so on.  We do this thinking we are protecting the innocent public, while all we are really doing is punishing the innocent for being individuals.

It need not be said that this never, ever works in the long run.  Appeals to the Law as a panacea for social ills merely enlarges the State, which like a gravity well draws to it every sadist, narcissist, and greed-monger who has the means and intelligence to get there, and heaps exponential misery upon the nation, compounding the very moral atrocities it claims to alleviate.  Without a shred of irony this farce continues, day in and day out, election cycle after election cycle, and no one seems to notice.  It’s shocking.

To remediate unwanted moral consequences, we, the lemmings of collectivist ideology, appeal to government violence—the use of state force to compel obedience through death and threats of death—to fix and prevent the fallout of poor moral choices…to clean up the messes left by individuals who have committed specific immoral acts.  Instead of encouraging better choices through a saturation of society with rational philosophy, we, without a hint of irony, appeal to the monumentally immoral act of using violence to force the innocent to comply with legal regulations which are deemed a collective necessity due to the immoral actions of some. In short, we use the law to burden the innocent for the crimes of the guilty.  This is not only irrational, it is an object evil.

As I have said, this will never work because to apply legal solutions to moral problems denies the real and root truth of the individual.  The individual is truth, the collective is a lie, metaphysically speaking.  Which means, when we are talking about the fundamentals of human existence, the individual is that from which reality flows.

The Law seeks to regulate the choice out of reality by using regulation to compel obedience, which is the antipode of choice with respect to root ethics.  But choice is actual reality, because the individual, not the collective, is what is real.  The individual is concrete; the collective, abstract.  To attempt to subordinate the concrete to the abstract is at best hope over reason.  To attempt to solve ethical problems by destroying that by which ethics has any meaning in the first place—namely, the individual—is the mere substitution of soundness for madness.  And this only ever multiplies and compounds unwanted ethical consequences.  It sews misery among the populace, it doesn’t resolve it.  Further, the implimention of an irrational ethic like legality is, itself, patently unethical, because it is immoral.  And it shouldn’t have to be said that you cannot solve or prevent immorality by appealing to immorality.  Yet, this is precisely what the Law is.

Replacing morality with legality destroys and brings abject misery to humanity for the simple reason that collectivism is a lie by virtue of it being a metaphysical contradiction. That is, it defies reality.  And there is no power in the universe which can change reality.  This is because power is, itself, real, and therefore can only ever confirm reality.  Even if that confirmation comes in the form of a Roman cross, a guillotine, a killing field, a concentration camp, a gulag, mass starvation, or a mushroom cloud.

END PART THREE

The Point of Law is to Eradicate Moral Consequence, Not Enforce it (PART TWO)

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As I stated in my last article, the bigger the State the smaller the moral consequence. To be clear, the reduction in moral consequence is more of a psychosis, rather than a manifest reality, and this due to the substitution of morality for legality in the minds and thus the practical sociology of the populace which has been incessantly indoctrinated into the collectivist metaphysical premise for thousands of years.  There is of course no actual eradication of moral consequence, because this is impossible via legality. Collectivism, you see, due to its object rational error and its rank violation of that which makes consciousness, conceptualization, agency, and all by which truth can be known and thus reality defined, experienced, and made possible, is a lie.  A fantasy.  Thus, all such “effects” of collectivism, whether they be described as positive or negative, are purely psychosis—a belief that that which cannot exists does exist, and efficaciously so.  Further, the actual destructive consequences of collectivism are not due to collectivism qua collectivism, or collectivism per se, but to the attempt to apply madness to a reality that is ipso facto utterly exclusive of the collectivist lie, and can only respond to truth, even if the truth is that society is attempting to conjure up a lie and make it true. Which is what governed societies do. And which is why they all torment the denizens of the world to some degree or another and collapse so dreadfully.

At any rate, because morality and legality are entirely different ethical systems, legality will not merely augment morality, but must necessarily replace it.  The greater the replacement of moral consequence with legal consequence, the greater the perception that moral problems—everything from crime to education to economics—are being handled.  Though this is the perception, and may perhaps be true by strict collectivist definition, the remediation and prevention of moral problems in society is only because the individual—he who exercises morality, itself…who exercises will and choice—has become more and more marginalized under Law.

The individual is antithetical to the collective ideal, which is the philosophical rationale for all societies which are ruled.  Which is to say, all societies.  That is, to governments and “the people” as a collective Ideal which the government represents as its tangible incarnation; which is to say, as It’s Authority to assert itself through violence upon individuals.  The individual, being an agent of will, is the practical manifestation of morality, whereas the government, being an agent of force, is the practical manifestation of legality.  Thus, individual moral consequence is perhaps technically mitigated by government, but only because government mitigates the individual at his very existential root.

Moral consequence is a product of one’s will, choice, and action.  The individual is existentially—by his nature, that is—in direct contrast and opposition to government, which is a product of force, compulsion, and obedience.  And therefore individuals who accept that government and law have legitimacy—or, as is so oft annoyingly equivocated, have a “legitimate role”, whatever that means…it’s double-talk, really—must necessarily accept that their own individuality is an impostor, or an illusion, or a lie, or all three, regardless of what they might say, or think, or think they think, because collectivism and government are corollary.  You do not get government without a prevailing societal acceptance of the collectivist metaphysic.  Period.  Full stop.  And if collectivism is the metaphysical standard of society, which the presence of government objectively proves, then legality must be the ethical standard.  And if legality is the ethical standard, then morality is irrelevant by definition, and thus so is the individual.

If it is Good That Guns be Made Legal Then it Must be Good That They be Made Illegal: Legal Ethics Belong to Authority, Period

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     Though I do understand why we are concerned that America’s second amendment may be suspended by an increasingly overt form of government autocracy, what we should not be is surprised. Once morality—moral ethics—has been replaced by legality—legal ethics—then we must understand that what is legal may be rendered illegal at any moment and for any reason without any hypocrisy nor rational violation on the part of the Authority (the State, in this case), which exists as the practical and necessary manifestation of the Law.
     Why is this?
     Well, legality itself is the problem. You see, legality makes all men criminals because it criminalizes will. Our (mine and yours) own choice to act on our own behalf is subordinated to the Law….indeed, that’s the whole point of law—we may act only insofar as we are allowed to act. Our individual wills then are not free…they are hedged in by the law, and guided necessarily to their eventual and inevitable complete nullification, which the Law implies according to its philosophical premises. This nullification of will by law grows more overt and obvious over time by nature and necessity, regardless of what kind of political officials are put in charge of the law’s carrying out. The pebble which is dropped will fall, no matter the character of the man who lets it go. This is why all governments must and do eventually snap the bloody trap of collectivist despotism…government, ironically, is the trap which becomes trapped. It’s in the premises. That is, it’s the nature of government. Government by its very root philosophical purpose and meaning is independent of man’s will. That’s the whole idea. Under law, which means under authority, which means under government, it’s not about will and choice, it’s about obedience. This is obvious and I hope needs no explanation…legal dictums are commands, they are not suggestions. And the most benevolent ruler of all cannot change this fact, because if he did, he would not be a ruler in the first place. A contradiction in terms—e.g. a ruler who does not RULE, for example—cannot be made manifest. It cannot be made real.
     To summarize the above, man’s will is nullified by law. Obedience to the law is the ethical standard, not morality, which has to do with will…with choice. And obedience to the law really means obedience to the Authority, without which the law has no practical relevancy and thus no functional existence.
     So now to guns, specifically.
     The problem is not that guns may be made illegal (and almost certainly will be), the problem is that some ruling class of political elites think that they have the right to subordinate man’s will to that which they decide to allow…by law. The problem is not that guns (or anything else for that matter) may be deemed illegal, it’s that we accept that our lives are futile absent an Authority (government) which claims for itself the right to allow man to act—which means to exist, at root, once the logic is teased out—by placing him under law, and thus which subordinates his will entirely by making it subject to an external ethical standard (the Law) utterly in the hands of this Authority. So, while it’s technically correct to state that it’s wrong to make guns illegal, the bigger issue is that we accept that they should be subject to legality at all.
     My overarching message here is that you cannot synthesize morality and legality. They are completely antipodal ethical premises. If we accept that guns are properly subject to the law, then why do we cry foul when the Authority makes them illegal? To accept legal ethics is accept that the Authority—which IS the practical incarnation of Law—knows what should and should not be allowed at any given moment. What you want became irrelevant the moment you agreed that the Law was good and by extension that government was good and by extension that your existence should be ruled, not chosen by you. So to say that guns should be legal and not illegal is some very, very fine hypocrisy, quite frankly.
     Unless you happen to be one of the ruling elite.

How the Law Promotes Crime (Part Two)

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The law, by making right and wrong a function of obedience, thus nullifying morality by nullifying choice, does not provide any fundamentally rational incentive for the individual to avoid the behavior the law forbids under threat of punishment via the state. The law tacitly proclaims the individual irrelevant. Even more than irrelevant. Counter productive; an aberration; anathema; a mistake; unnatural. The individual, you see, is self-aware, which means that he thinks for himself, and has an absolute frame of reference from himself (singular) that demands that he exist and act to and for himself. This is of course not what the state wants; it is not reflective of what the state needs and what the state is. The state, by its nature, demands that all individuals view reality from the perspective of the state, and act to and from and for ITSELF. Because the state is Authority. It is the incarnation of the collective ideal to which all men are then bound. The collective ideal is the reality which necessitates the Authority of the state…to compel individuals out of their individuality and into the collective.

But the individual of course cannot do this…for he only observes reality from a single existential position: himself. By his nature and because of that nature the individual chooses. He must chooose. He must will.

Because knowledge (thought) is rooted in distinctions between truth and lie, and good and evil, knowledge is the practical working out of these distinctions. And the practical working out of these distinctions implies choice. But the law sees choice as anathema…as completely unnatural. The law is force, and force has nothing to do with choice. Man cannot choose to obey because obedience implies force, and force makes choice irrelevant.

Absent choice—absent will—man has no frame of reference for himself. A man whose choice is considered illegitmate must also consider his existence illegitimate. For absent choice the distinction between right and wrong and true and false and good and evil are irrelevant to him, and thus any knowledge, even that of his own SELF, is entirely meaningless. And this, taken to its logical intellectual conclusion, means that no one actually exists to obey the law in the first place. As soon as the law becomes the ethical standard the individual ceases to exist. He cannot obey because he isn’t real. His very nature is anthethical to reality as defined and accepted by the state. And thus the state’s law delegitimizes man at the level of his root existence. And because he has been delegitimized, he cannot be truly, rationally, incentivized to obey.

The state will claim that the law safeguards the best interests of the individual (sometimes by explicitly collectivizing him, a la Marxist totalitarianism). But this is impossible because it cannot recognize him. And the individual, I submit, understands this fact in his base instinct, and therefore the market for crime goes up because the law provides no meaningful reason to obey it. All it can offer as a disincentive is punishment, but this inevitably fails because for man to be perpetually under law he is, implicitly, already punished, and perpetually so…for existing. And so if the desire or reward for committing a crime outweighs the chances of getting caught or the penalty, then crime, by the very ethics which underwrite the law, is going to be worth it. Crime thus has implicit value. And this, dear readers, is why there is a market for crime.

Further, and even more troubling, is that a given individual may view the commission of a crime—the disobeying of the law—as an expression of his truth…of his individuality. And thus he may feel empowered and even free by his crime. Of course certain acts defined by law as criminal can certainly also be immoral—as in the case of theft or murder, for example—but the criminal, should he intuit in his soul nothing more than that the law renders his individuality meaningless, will not apprehend this. He may engage in crime as a sort of means of self-expression, not understanding that just because an act is illegal does not mean that it is not also actually immoral.

Now, for those of us who do understand that violations of other individuals are immoral, the law at root has nothing to do with why we do not commit such acts. We do not commit them because they are illegal but because they are immoral. We reject them upon the truth of their immorality in spite of the law, understanding that the law has nothing to do with evil or good, but only with power. I submit that if someone refrains from murder simply because he does not want to be punished then he has committed murder already in his heart…because he has conceded the law’s false morality and rejected the value of the individual. For there is nothing truly immoral under law because the law does not recognize morality’s one true and rational standard:

You, and me.

How the Law Promotes Crime (Part One)

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We are led to believe, in western Democracies, that legality and morality are related.  We are taught that our governments make something illegal because it is, at root, immoral.  We pride ourselves in our ability to discern true evil from true good and then dictate behavior to men, through the coercive power of the state and according to the law, in the service of the good, where the good is not merely what is subjective according some ultimately unproven/unverified root assumption about the nature of reality (metaphysics), but is Absolute…or as close as humanity can come to it.

The truth, however, is that legality and morality are entirely different ethics, as I have discussed in previous articles on this blog. If something is illegal, then it is only immoral apart from the law. That is, what is illegal may be immoral, but it can be so only when it is removed out from under the auspices of law and the metaphysics from which law stems.  That is, though an illegal act may also be immoral, the law cannot recognize it as such.  It is NOT immoral according to the law.  This is because ethical behavior dictated by law precludes choice, because the law FORCES behavior via the coercion of the state regardless of one’s will to engage in it or not.  This is the nature of law…this is the whole POINT of law.  Obedience, not choice, is how the law is fulfilled.  And obedience means that ethics are rooted in authority—the State—and the authority’s legal imperative to compel man to submit to the law by violence, if necessary.  To underwrite ethics by requiring submission to authority as the means by which ethical behavior will be brought about renders choice irrelevant.  “Obey or die” is the fundamental mantra…meaning that under law the authority, the State, has the right to force you to act in specific ways that the law deems ethical, up to and including your death.

Morality on the other hand—that is, true good—demands choice, and so it can have nothing fundamentally to do with law.  To be moral means necessarily to act morally.  And the only means by which one can act morally is to will it.  To choose it.  Only choice makes an act truly moral or immoral.

The reason that crime is never eliminated in a society ruled by law and not by choice has nothing to do with human nature—that “there will always be bad people” as we are so often told.  This is merely a form of ethical determinism which ultimately renders morality irrelevant, and paves the way for rapacious and mendacious men to seize power under the guise of “keeping the peace” or “ensuring a civilized society”.  It’s all a lie.  If you don’t belive me, take a cursory look at America’s national debt and then ask yourself how a financial liability like that happens in the absence of selfish, power-drugged, self-worshiping boobs.

The answer is, it doesn’t.

Further, the argument “there will always be bad people” is non-falsifiable, which makes it tautological, and ultimately nonsensical.  The argument is that there will always be bad people because man is inherently bad.  In other words, there will always be bad people because there will always be bad people.  But here’s the truth:  The reason why crime is never eliminated under the rule of law is because law, by necessarily excluding choice, wrecks morality.

The only way to eliminate crime, you see, is to eliminate the market for crime.  The only way to eliminate the market for crime is to incentivize people to stop buying it, as it were, which in turn demands that men will stop selling it.  And the only real and fundamental way to disincentivize crime is to define and value it according to what is truly immoral; and the only way to do that is to make ethics a function of choice, not obedience to the law. Once we define crime as truly immoral, and rationally and objectively so, and value it as such, man can understand that it is rationally and objectively destructive to himself, at all times and in all contexts.  And thus, the consequences for crime are real, absolute, and existential. [Note: A discussion of morality as a function of an objective metaphysical premise—that is, a rational definition of the nature of reality—is beyond the scope of this article; please reference this blog for other articles dealing with this topic.]

Law cannot make crime immoral, as I said, because it invalidates choice.  And so, at root, law cannot give a real, rational reason why people should avoid it.  “So you don’t get punished by the authorities” is not a real, lasting, or fundamentally meaningful incentive because the consequences for crime defined by law are not really objective, and thus have nothing to do with the fundamental nature of reality.  The consequences of crime defined according to the law have nothing to do with any real devaluation of man qua man.  The law serves the authority at root, not the individual.  It has nothing to do with man, and thus it says nothing about his true worth and his true value and his true morality.  And I submit that men instinctively know this.  And that is very, very important.

The law is not “to the man”, so to speak, but to the state.  To the authority.  Violations of law are not violations of morality when morality is defined according to the ethics of law, which is the only way the state CAN define it, because  the state is FORCE, by its very nature, not choice.  Thus, the commission of crime is really only bad for the state—the authority—not for man, himself, as far as the law is concerned.  And I believe that men instinctively know this as well.  Therefore, as far as the individual is concerned, who has been taught that morality is a function of law, breaking the law is only “bad” if he gets caught.  So crime becomes a gamble, not an act of immorality.  If one can commit a crime beyond the eyes of the authority, then there is no consequence for crime. The commission of a crime says nothing about the individual, morally and existentially speaking, because the law is not about recognizing his individuality and therefore his will and choice, but rejecting the legitimacy of these things, and thus is about nothing more than subordinating him to the authority.

Without the authority to enforce it, the law is neutered, and the law cannot define moral and immoral behavior, so a man not caught hasn’t actually done anything wrong, according to the law.  Unless you are caught and punished, you never did anything bad, because “right” and “wrong” are only relevant if the law judges you.  And before the law can judge you the authority must catch you.  So crime, again, legally speaking, is merely a gamble.  A game of chance; or a game of desire.  A high chance of evading the law can make the commission of a crime very rewarding; a desire that transcends the fear of getting caught and/or the pain of punishment makes it worth committing the crime.  But a truly immoral act is never worth it…and can never be worth it.  Period.  A truly immoral act can destroy the individual at his very root Self, now and forever.  And this, and only this, will ultimately deter men from acts of immorality, and eventually weed out from humanity those who would choose such acts for whatever vile reason.

I am, of course, not suggesting that men break the law…that would be an entirely false and foolish interpretation of my arguments here.  I am suggesting that if society’s objective is the elimination of crime, then we must understand the difference between morality and legality, and why the two are not compatible, and why the former is rational and the latter is not, and how thus the latter ironically guarantees the perpetuation and promotion of that which it seeks to end.

The Only Moral Plumbline

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The only efficacious and rational moral question you should be asking yourself, which applies to every instant and instance of your life, is not “What should I be doing?”, or “What have I done?”, but “Is what  I am doing right now a direct violation of another human being (and a simple “cause and effect” concept can be applied here…to wit, is it a lie, a theft, a damage to property or body/mind, a murder)?” If the answer is “no” then you are acting morally; you are being moral.

No other moral question is rational, and therefore no other moral question is relevant. The reason for this is simple: What isn’t–that is, what you are NOT doing–cannot subject you to any moral valuation–because it does not exist.

Now, certainly, what you have done in the past, though it does not exist (as such…without getting into the sticky tentacles of the purely abstract nature of time) can be used as a legal and pragmatic standard. But it cannot be used as a moral standard for the simple reason that it does not necessarily represent your moral nature, which is now (and now is where everyone perpetually exists). Now is where man’s nature resides, and man’s nature is the only rational target of moral judgment. You might judge a past action as “moral” or “immoral”, but the “morality” or “immorality” of a past action does not necessarily have any rational bearing on the moral state of your person, because your person is always now. And the moral state of your person is the only thing that can be valued as moral with respect to morality qua morality. Past actions, which we might judge as moral or immoral can, again, be used for pragmatic or legal reasons, but not to judge one’s root moral state. And there is no rational moral condemnation for anything besides the root state–or the nature–of an individual.

So…unless you are directly violating another human being at the moment, you are not acting immorally. (Certainly and obviously, if you have a history of direct violations of others, reason would instruct you to change, or face the very real legal and practical ramifications of your behavior, which you have earned; also, existential condemnation is the consequence of an evil nature…so, if you are a repeat violator, you are in danger of throwing yourself into everlasting hell. And I’m not kidding. But that’s a topic for another article.)

Further, the reason I stipulate “direct” violations is because indirect violations are by definition subjective violations; they require conditional truth, as opposed to absolute Truth, and hence their innate insufficiency as moral qualifiers. In other words, indirect violations are those which must be qualified by an “if”: IF we assume that behavior X occurres in context Y, THEN we can call behavior X a moral violation. For example, IF we assume that the military is a fundamentally murderous enterprise, THEN we can say that all soldiers who have killed in battle are murderers. Of course, we can see the dubious integrity of such a standard, and the implicit collectivist ideology which undergirds it. The idea of claiming that ALL people who act under the auspices of a given ideology are all individually evil, while it may be true, is not necessarily true. I would argue that since immorality is a violation of individuals, then immorality must be gauged by its specific effects on specific individuals. This makes ideological context fundamentally irrelevant with respect to moral violations; but not “morality” per se…that is, morality as ethics–the ethical gauging of ideas which may lead to specific violations of specific individuals.

I submit that members of every group, no matter what its ideological basis, can be morally judged only according to their specific individual actions. This is why I completely reject armed revolution against governments, for example…it ends up hurting, punishing, or even murdering those who cannot rationally be said to have directly violated another individual. Cops, soldiers, various sundry workers and politicians…people with families who may have never done anything other than live and work within a given sociopolitical context, which, though it may be ideologically false, does not make living and working under it a moral violation. This is because ideologies are by nature collectivist, and collectivism cannot serve as the plumbline for individual acts of immorality (or morality at all for that matter). And morality qua morality only exists at the level of the individual.

Apropos to this, I believe that to collectivize immorality means to risk condemning men by nothing more than their group identity. And that is the root of every evil  that has ever existed.

Dictated Good is Not Morality, it is Legality

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

Dictated good does not equal morality, it equals legality. And if there is legality there can be no morality because they are at categorical odds with each other. Legality is “right” behavior compelled by violence–by the explicit “right” of violence possessed by the Authority, most often the State, to complete by force behavior to an abstract standard called “The Law”.  Thus, legality nullifies choice because violence to compel outcomes makes human will irrelevant.

“Obey or else” is not a choice; it is the antithesis of choice because punishment (the “or else”) is not something that can SERVE the individual; rather, it is the removal of his ownership of self, which is commensurate with the removal of his existence–which is literal when death is the punishment (and the ability to legally put to death is the very irreducible thing which underwrites all of governing authority; without which, there is no government). And if choice is nullified then moral agency is moot. That is, if one is not choosing to do good then there is no good being done, period. Which means that under the auspices of “dictated good”, or “right behavior” made manifest by violence (or the threat of violence, or punishment, which is the same thing) of the Authority which has been established specifically to govern human social interaction (which includes economic value exchange), there can be no moral act. For I submit that when morality is said to be a function of, or even a corollary or partner to law-keeping, then morality is impossible. Force, which necessarily and utterly underwrites the law, in any measure contradicts choice in absolute measure because the two are mutually exclusive. They cannot be integrated.

The Law Cannot be Moral, it Can Only Be Legal

Authority, government, individualism vs collectivism, Violence, Voluntarism,

Dictated good–that is, the establishment of “law” under the auspices (and given absolute efficacy and purpose by the State–centralized, consolidated violence) of Governing Authority (power) to subjective and abstract ends, like “common good”, or the “people’s mandate”–is not morality. It is legality. And the two are completely antipodal. For if the law, not the individual, is the standard of morality to which men may be forced then choice is irrelevant. And if choice is irrelevant, moral agency is irrelevant. And if moral agency is irrelevant then there is no morality.