This week's post is up, but it is at the new URL and host for the Mad Philosopher blog.  You can reach the post here.

The new URL, where the blog will continue (there will be no new material on this site) is www.MadPhilosopher.xyz.

All of the main posts have been moved to the new site, but all of the old "daily resource suggestions" will remain here for your reference.

Carpe Veritas,
​Mad Philosopher

If we were drawing direct comparisons between these two trifectas, I would say that vice is the inverse form of virtue. I defined vice as “any non-criminal activity which would prevent or inhibit the participant from effectively pursuing their telos.” Virtue, as an opposite, is fairly easy to describe by comparison: “a habit of action which aids one in pursuit of one's telos (or end).”
Since I have already outed myself as a deontologist, it may seem odd for me to be focusing on virtue for a blog post. However, as I mentioned in “New Logo”, the brutalism of a mere prohibition against violating the NAP creates an impoverished ethical framework by which one should live one's life. Even if I'm not murdering, coercing, or stealing from people, I am not likely to achieve happiness (take your pick of any of the, like, eight Greek words that have different flavors) if I am not pursuing some form of human excellence. Even a hedonist is really pursuing ataraxia (which is something akin to contentedness or tranquility), even if they are unaware of it.
One of the fundamental precepts of both virtue ethics and teleology is the assumption that one will be most happy when pursuing or achieving their end (telos). This assumption is awfully intuitive, and modern psychology seems to be providing pseudo-empirical evidence to bolster such an assumption, so I am reasonably confident in universalizing my own experience of such things. Of course, this virtue ethics/teleology requires a lot more exploration before one can just say “being good will make you happy”, obviously.
For example, one's telos could be anything. For the last two-and-a-half millenia, lots of stupid people and a few smart people have argued about this very subject. I'm planning on contributing to this mess (and hopefully helping sort some of it out) in my 95 Theses, those chapters are much longer than I could expect someone to read as a blog post or listen to as a podcast, so I'll have to be brief here.
Aristotle, and anyone who has Aristotelian influences, argues that one's telos is primarily knowable and possibly even determined by one's attributes. I say “attributes”, because it is the most philosophically vague term; each philosopher since Aristotle has tried to pin telos to a different aspect of a creature's being, but they are all related in some way or another to the faculties/functions/attributes/essences of the creature in question. I'm no exception to this accusation. I argue that there are higher-order and lower-order teloi, the higher-order relating to the categorical nature of a thing and the lower-order relating to the specific nature of the thing. A simple example of these things would be that of a hammer; a hammer's higher-order telos (categorical nature) is to hit things, however, a hammer can be a ball-peen, rubber, claw, sledge... each of which hit in a particular way, are designed to hit a particular material, or have additional functions which do not impede their utility as hitting instruments.
In a similar way, there ought to be higher-order, human teloi and lower-order individual teloi. A relatively less-controversial example of a human telos would be the necessity for growth (mental/physical/spiritual/whatever). An equally less-controversial example of a specific telos would be that of a naturally-gifted doctor; one could have the natural disposition and skill to care for others' bodies and derive happiness from the pursuit of such, but not every human would be “called” to be a doctor. Just like the case of the hammer, one's specific teloi can't come into conflict with their categorical teloi, by virtue of the ontological relationship between one's essence and existence. In the case of the doctor, caring for others' (and one's own) bodies can lend itself to one's growth and, if pursued appropriately, will even aid in such a pursuit.
In this way, one can establish both a Aristotelian list of virtues which ought to apply to all men and a much more subjective and individualistic list of virtues associated with specific teloi. I wish to reserve the actual list-writing for later (time and space constraints for today's post), but one can start composing such a list on their own. I would love to discuss such lists with people outside the blog, either in the comments below, via email, or on facebook. These discussions will help revise both the lists themselves as well as the theory we are using to compile the lists. What I want to do here is explore the specific nature of virtue, especially as relates to morality, ethics, and honor.
Virtue, defined as a habit, has quite a lot of baggage associated with it, but what matters for this discussion is to merely define “habit” as a “propensity for particular types of action”. Much like vices are habit-forming, virtues are as well. These habits often contribute to one's productivity, epistemic rectitude, security/self-sufficiency, humanity, etc. At a minimum, though, they contribute to one's character in a manner consistent with virtue ethics, existentialism, and a number of other ethical frameworks.
Where morality is a relationship between action and deontological proscriptions, ethics is a series of prescriptions predicated on individual value judgments and an understanding of how the world operates; I explored this in “Morality and Ethics”. Therefore, virtues are an element of ethics, in general. If one values ataraxia, an understanding of virtue would lead them to conclude that developing a habit of temperance (not the puritanical bastardization, but rather the actual meaning of “enough of all things”) will help one achieve ataraxia. If one values eudaemonia, an understanding of virtue would lead one to pursue industriousness or discipline. If one values apatheia, an understanding of virtue would lead one to pursue epistemic rectitude and objectivity.
How does one pursue such virtues? For fear of being branded an Aristotelian, I'd have to say “Fake it 'till you make it.” A praxeologist will tell you that a virtue is expressed in demonstrated preference, and I will tell you that demonstrated preference is, in fact, how one forms preferences in general. Performing an act that is virtuous (practicing one's art without external motivation is a disciplined action) aids one in forming that particular virtue; doing so consistently will ingrain the habit of doing such... which is the act of possessing that particular virtue. So, if I wish to be magnanimous, I ought to determine what behaviors are magnanimous and do them until such a point in time that it would require effort to refrain from performing those actions. Nietzsche, G.E.M. Anscombe, and Alasdair MacIntyre each have their own particular flavors of virtue ethics, and I recommend that interested readers pursue their works in order to come to a greater understanding of the specifics.
In the mean time, though, I believe that virtue can aid in a great many limit-cases when discussing anarchist morality and ethics. Remember, anarchism is a philosophy of personal responsibility. I have been accused by several people of “wanting to live in a world totally devoid of rules, like some sort of nihilist” and “wanting to live in a world in which I exist alone in the wilderness, like some sort of solipsist”; how a regular reader of this blog could come to that conclusion is beyond me. I may wish to live in a world devoid of crime, AKA a world with no laws and will do what I can to pursue a lifestyle in accordance with such, but the very nature or reality is that of rules; “If I drop this, it will fall,” “If you want to stay alive, you shouldn't pick fights with people better armed and practiced than you,” and every if-then statement in-between demonstrate this reality. Additionally, if one were to live a solitary existence, they would likely have their time wholly consumed with mere survival and asceticism, rather than a more common teloi, such as that of a profession or of philosophy.
What virtues allow for is reduced friction and uncertainty in an otherwise brutalist reality: in all reality, if something doesn't violate the deontological proscription against crime, it is morally justified. I may be more interested in living amongst others who pursue and express christian eudaemonic virtues, as opposed to mere brutalists. Conversely, I may wish to live amongst brutalists and be spared the social repercussions of being a libertine amongst Christians. What these virtues allow for is the sort of self-selection mentioned in my post on mereology. Additionally, when one is faced with a limit-case, such as Nazis at your door asking if you are hiding Jews, witnessing a mother (in an anarchist society) abusing her children, abortion in all of it's controversies, or cases of extreme discrimination, an understanding of virtue can inform one's actions in such a circumstance. Of course, one cannot produce a categorical moral statement concerning some limit cases (if one witnesses a crime in progress, one does not have a moral obligation to intercede), but one's own pursuit of virtue may encourage action (courage, honor, etc. would encourage one to intercede).

TL;DR: Virtue is primarily an ethical principle, much like its inverse: vice. It is a principle which dictates “If one wishes to achieve happiness (in whatever form), one ought to engender a habit of X.” This is because a virtue is best defined as “a habit of action which aids one in pursuit of one's telos (or end)”, and intuition and modern psychology suggest that pursuit of one's telos is a primary source of happiness for individuals. There exist virtues that are categorically applicable to all humans, and other virtues that apply to individuals, contingent upon their own unique construction. Virtues, while not necessarily necessary, are certainly useful in helping individuals pursue happiness and lubricating the gears of “society”.

 This last moth of posts seems to be “boring analytic philosophy month”. Defining property and rights, dealing in definitions and ontology, and now mereology. Before getting hung-up on what is undoubtedly a new vocabulary word, let me give you this week's question: “What is the relationship between an individual and a community?”

Mereology is a study as old as recorded philosophy that, while involved in every philosophical discipline, is seldom addressed directly. Modern understandings of the field are heavily informed by medieval mathematics, but it's a broader field than just parts of set theory. Many philosophy majors I know personally had never heard the name or question of mereology in either their studies of personal engagements until I had brought it up. This is likely because the question of mereology is often either ignored or merely answered in specific cases by other disciplines within philosophy. If the question of ontology is “what exists and in what manner?” then, mereology would ask, “What is the relationship of parts and wholes?”

I may be prone to subjecting my audience to raw, obscure philosophical questions, but even I am loathe to write in-depth concerning mereology... at least for a blog post. I think we can make do with just the question of this post and the paradigm established in previous posts. I trust that you can keep up and, if not, that you will email me or comment below and let me know.

As I have argued in the last two posts, collectives do not exist. If collectives don't exist, how can I begin speaking on the relationship between the individual and his community? I did leave the door open for communities to exist, within a narrow definition. As a matter of fact, I left the door open for three types of community to exist. Before getting into a taxonomy, though, I need to define what I mean by “community” and how it is distinct, ontologically, from “collective”. For now, I believe a sufficient definition of “community” is “a series of interpersonal relationships-” or, rather, “a series of individuals who hold a series of interpersonal relationships centered on one or more commonality.”

One will notice, if reading with an eye trained by my previous ontological discussions, that this would make a “community” an abstraction akin to a collective: something which exists only as an idea or a concept with no impetus of its own and serves only to inform one in a manner consistent with one's epistemic limitations. In exploring the taxonomy of communities, I hope to explore the specifics of the role such an abstraction plays and why I would grant it a stronger ontology than a mere collective.

The commonalities on which a community may be centered can range from something so banal as a common geographic location, common interest, common heritage... to something as intense and significant as a common life-altering event, vocational encounter, or a common goal, method, and discipline. These commonalities seem to be divisible into three types of character. By virtue of their definition, communities grounded in these commonalities can be said to have such character. These three types of character would be incidental, practical, and intentional. Based on the names I have chosen, I assume that many preconceptions and questions have already formed in your mind. I'll try to assuage such activities, now.

Let's just start with descriptions. An incidental community is just that: a series of individuals who hold relationships of coincidence. The easiest example is one of locality, especially in the postmodern age. Even if they are incredibly transient and flimsy, I have a number of relationships with people who live in my apartment complex. The sole basis of these relationships is proximity (and the friction it entails):competing for decent parking, upholding lease policies, random polite (and not-so-polite) encounters, etc. This same sort of coincidence exists on the freeway/highway, at the grocery store or bank, and perhaps even people that share similar attributes to myself, such as gender, skin color, geography of birth, height, or other inheritances.

I think that the most immediate observation one can make concerning incidental relationships, especially when looking with an ethical eye, is the total lack of homogeneity between individuals in the community. A brief survey of the bumper stickers seen at the common geographic locations, the Denver facebook network, a survey of white people, etc. will quickly indicate only a few minor statistical trends, all of which are better explained by external factors as opposed to the nature of the community itself (again,it's an abstracted tool). Due to this phenomenon, one cannot speak knowledgeably about specific individuals within an incidental community, even when armed with statistics, nor can one speak of them categorically. Not everyone at my apartment complex is poor, not all blacks are criminals, not all whites like Phish, not all Denverites smoke pot, and not everyone in Nagasaki are militaristic imperialists who deserve to be irradiated or vaporized.

That description sounds like one that could be called “practical”, I must admit. If any readers have a suggestion for a better nomenclature to differentiate between incidental communities and those which I am about to describe, please let me know.

A community of practical character could be considered “a series of individuals who hold relationships entered into or maintained due to practical considerations”. This involves business relationships, to be sure; doctors and patients, contractors and property owners, student's/families and school teachers/administrators are good examples, too. These considerations could also be centered on internet forums, conventions centered on a particular interest, or any club of one sort or another.

These commonalities are also quite transient. One anime convention is more-or-less interchangeable with another, one school is interchangeable with another (or any number of alternatives), employees and employers as well as clubs or stores (like Costco or Sam's Club) are equally so. Because an incidental relationship or community is merely a matter of coincidence, relationships or communities which are matters of active choice (aka. practical considerations) are marginally more tangible and representative of the individuals involved. One can speak semi-intelligently about metalheads, people who hang out at Hot Topic, or engineers. A lot of (frankly, true) stereotypes are a result of statistical trends in these self-selecting communities.

A sort of “practical community on steroids”, intentional communities now become our focus. Intentional communities are best described as “as series of individuals who hold relationships centered on common purposiveness, intention, and approach to such.” If teachers and families are practical communities in schools, the PTA/PTOs student councils, teachers' unions, etc. are intentional communities. Hippie communes; anarchist “collectives”; charities; governments, mafia, and other gangs; even some religious sects are examples of other forms of intentional communities.

Where a practical community, say, a gun show, is centered on a common utility (such as being able to buy or sell guns, exchange information, or not be reviled as a criminal for merely voicing an interest in self-defense), it lacks a certain intention or purposiveness. For example, one wouldn’t expect everyone, or even most of the people, at a brony convention to agree that they must all work towards the creation of GMO purple ponies with unicorn horns, or the extermination of all non-bronies. The KKK or (neo-)Nazis, however, gather around a central intention of exterminating or enslaving an entire group of people (usually members of certain incidental communities), evangelical Christians wish to “Baptize all nations”, communes exist for whatever commie/naturalist lifestyle one pursues, police exist to enforce laws, the Bloods exist to kill the Crips (and vice-versa), and the government exists to govern.

I used slightly different verbs when describing these different communities. It's ok, though, because the important mereological point to remember is that a “community” is merely individuals maintaining relationships betwixt themselves., not an entity existing in its own right. However, where the incidental communities likely only provide categorical claims that are tautological (“The black community is black”), and the practical communities present only statistical correlations (“people who tend to purchase Maseratis tend to be upper-middle class”), intentional communities provide more opportunity for both generalization and categorical claims. For instance, the claim “KKK members are racist,” is effectively incontestable; someone may find an instance which appears to be a non-racist KKK member, but such a circumstance would require detailed examination.

The “non-racist”individual could either be considered a “bad KKK member” (in the socratic vein) or not really a KKK member (due to definitions), but a more likely and more easily defensible claim would be the case which claims that the very membership in the KKK is an endorsement of the KKK's intention, therefore it is impossible to be in the KKK and not be racist. Even in the case of someone “going undercover” to break up the KKK, they are acting in bad faith, which presents its own series of issues which we don't have time for today.

What I mean to express by exploring this taxonomy of communities is that the first two types lack any ontology beyond being a mere abstraction, much like the collectives I addressed a few posts ago. An intentional community, while still lacking ontology in itself, does influence reality in a tangible way, unique from the other two. This influence takes the form of social, ethical, and moral qualifiers included in interpersonal interaction. Where a series of employers and employees is typically to be considered a practical community, if the employers have a stated intent, purpose, or method and are hiring employees for the sake of which, any employee which enters into that relationship is doing so in the same manner one would enter into the KKK or a commune.

In other words, one cannot be pro-life and work for Planned Parenthood or the US Military, one cannot join a hippie commune and not be a hippie, nor can one become a cop and not endorse coercion and theft, or any other example that may come to mind. Any seemingly contradictory instance is merely a case of an individual acting out of ignorance or bad faith. Ultimately, this is the reason there is no such thing as a “good cop” or an “egalitarian neo-nazi”; in choosing to join a community centered on the purpose of enforcing laws or eliminating Jews, one demonstrates a preference for such criminal actions, even if they are unaware of that reality.

TL;DR; Merelology is the study of the relationship between parts and wholes. This field of study applies when looking at the relationship between individuals and the abstract concepts called “communities”. In the case of coincidental and unintentional relationships, one could consider such a community an “incidental community”. In the case of a relationship entered into voluntarily, often out of practical considerations, one could consider it a “practical community”. Most interesting would be the “intentional community”, which would be entered into with the intent of fulfilling a particular goal or furthering a particular cause, held by all members of that community. Such a joining of an intentional community is an endorsement of the intent and methods implemented by other individuals within the community, insofar as they align with the community's intent. Awareness of this taxonomy is important when one makes statistical or categorical observations concerning various communities.

 Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds Government and society. And so, every time we object to a thing being done by Government, it concludes that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of education by the State—then we are against education altogether. We object to a State religion—then we would have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about by the State then we are against equality, etc., etc. They might as well accuse us of wishing men not to eat, because we object to the cultivation of corn by the State.

How is it that the strange idea of making the law produce what it does not contain—prosperity, in a positive sense, wealth, science, religion—should ever have gained ground in the political world? The modern politicians, particularly those of the Socialist school, found their different theories upon one common hypothesis; and surely a more strange, a more presumptuous notion, could never have entered a human brain. ~Bastiat

Last week, I denounced the existence of collectives in the name of anarchy. A few commenters requested clarification on this subject for a few reasons. I figured that I ought to shoulder the inevitable burden of addressing collectivism and the philosophical issues therein.

The first order of business is to clarify my specific claim which was made last post. Some people demonstrated a desire to adapt a radical and likely unpopular claim to better jive with their own worldview or better lend itself to discussions with non-anarchists. While I am certainly sympathetic to that desire (see my posts about the Pope), this issue is foundational and, therefore, requires a certain clarity and inflexibility. My claim was not ethical, claiming that one ought to do a particular thing concerning collectives. Nor was my claim a pragmatic one, saying that things would be easier if one ignored collectives in favor of individuals.

My claim is a categorical, unequivocal ontological one. My claim is that collectives do not exist. Collectives posses the same ontology as Xenu, lizard Jews, and human-caused global warming. They are a fairy-tale. As my selected examples of fairy-tales demonstrate, though, some people do insane and violent things in the name of such fairy-tales.

I'm about to get ahead of myself. Before exploring collectives and the results of believing in them, I ought to give a definition of what exactly I mean by the term. Clearly, I'm not claiming that hippie communes, political migrations, cults, or other random gatherings of people are not a thing; these phenomena are easily observed. I am raising the question of their ontological status, though. I hope to make that distinction more clear through this post. When I say “collectives do not exist”, what I am saying is “an entity which exists distinct from and beyond the functioning of its individual components is a metaphysical impossibility”, specifically in the case of agents.

At this point, I expect scientists and pseudo-scientists to reel and accuse me of ignorance. In physics, elementary particles which exhibit certain behaviors can coalesce into a larger particle which exhibits behaviors different from the elementary ones, without an account of how the elementary particles contribute to said behavior. Quarks and protons/neutrons are a widely-known example of this phenomenon. A significant portion of my personal philosophical pursuits have revolved around philosophy of science and epistemology (probably because disillusionment with astrophysics is what drove me to philosophy), but one will notice a lack of such on this blog. This is for a variety of reasons, but if enough people express interest in my 95 Theses, that may change.

Anyway, one such reason is because scientists and science fans are trained to be openly hostile towards philosophy of science. Your reaction to this paragraph may demonstrate this. Protons and quarks are mere instruments. They are concepts which serve a function; specifically, they express regularities in mathematically mediated observations. Because this is the case, it is unnecessary to explain how quarks contribute to the behavior of protons... it may even be impossible to do so within our current paradigm. Another way of saying this would be that quarks are not “real” in the platonic sense; they are a predictor for phenomena in a similar (but more accurate) manner as Aristotle's teloi or the medieval nature spirits.

Similarly, a biologist will discuss species or evolution in an anthropomorphized or teleological manner, “racists” will discuss statistical trends across demographics in a collectivized way, and sociologists or politicians will speak of “humanity” and “society” as if it were a tangible entity. There are nuanced distinctions between these examples and the physics example as well as distinctions betwixt each other. The primary distinction is the specific relationship between the individual and the whole. Where quarks are a tool to describe regularities when looking smaller than the atom, species, races, societies, etc. are tools to describe regularities when looking at unmanageably large numbers of individual instances.

In both paradigms, one must be very aware of one's ontology. A long-standing basic principle in establishing ontology is simplicity; something akin to Occam's Razor. If one can effectively describe, explain, and predict the nature of, say, a falling object using a tool such as gravity, one need not and ought not look for a coincidental explanation such as telos or “gravity spirits”. In the case of collective identifiers such as “species” or “society”, every significant behavior is explained by the behaviors of individual actors “within” the collective.

In other words, “society” or “species” are useful instruments for biologists or economists, but are ontologically superfluous. If, someday, one can determine what “real” object correlates to quarks, quarks would also become ontologically superfluous. This claim renders two significant outcomes.

The first is one of historical and scientific significance: in the same manner that believers in river spirits or flat earth theory are (appropriately) ridiculed, if science is allowed to continue progression, believers in “society” may be faced with similar reactions. Where virgin and child sacrifices used to be offered to spirits, modern-day sacrifices of comparable magnitude are offered to “society”. Such behaviors need to stop.

The second is one of philosophical and practical significance. Obviously, such a claim secures the case I made last week. That aside, one must critically assess one's belief and rhetoric concerning “society”. For example, a materialist/scientism-ist/pragmatist is faced with a significant challenge. When faced with a choice between identifying the behaviors of material bodies behaving in deterministic ways and the emergent properties of those behaviors or believing in a metaphysical (immaterial) entity which interacts with those material bodies, determining behaviors outside the laws of physics, most often these materialists will opt for the metaphysical option. This is intellectually inconsistent and eminently damaging to the case for materialism.

Materialism aside, people at large seem to consistently believe that “society” possesses attributes contrary to the attributes of its constituent elements. I often argue against such a claim when it emerges in the context of voting and law enforcement. For example, if individuals lack the right to dictate the actions of others (forcing gays to act straight, forcing nuns to buy other people contraceptives, shooting people for driving the wrong car), how can they delegate that right (which doesn't exist) to a representative, enforcer, or “society”?

The rhetoric concerning “society” oscillates between using “society” as a tool to accomplish personal goals (this is at the heart of electoral debates) and treating “society” as a force of nature to be mitigated and resisted (when one is on the receiving-end of “society” used as a tool). One must look no further than the “anti-war” movements on the right and left only being “anti-war” when the opposing team is in charge of the war.

This accusation goes beyond “society” and applies categorically. “Race” is a useful instrument for identifying genetic similarities amongst individuals and statistically analyzing unmanageably large populations. However, “race” possesses the same ontology as “species” or “society”; it exists as an epistemic tool, nothing more. Even when dealing with teams, gangs, or communities, (that is, associations of choice) one is merely dealing with individuals who may have common goals or proclivities. Such a community lacks ontology distinct from its constituent elements. If there are no individuals called “crips” there is not gang called “the crips”; if there are no police, there is no gang called “the police”. Additionally, with the possible exception of the Borg (TNG only, Voyager kinda' goofed it) one cannot interact with the collective, only constituent elements of the collective. I will renounce my strong position on the non-existence of collectives if someone will allow me to speak to and shake hand with “society”.

This position, despite what you may think, does not disallow the existence of “communities”. With a very minor degree of re-definition, community can remain. If, by “community”, one means “a collection of strong and interconnected interpersonal relationships”, communities exist everywhere. One needs only be cautious to not assign metaphysical or moral properties it communities which are not appropriate.

My more religious friends may appeal to panentheism or the Body of Christ/Communion of Saints as a counter-argument. This argument doesn't actually reject either concept; instead, it opens the door for a discussion concerning the nature of such metaphysical concepts and their relationship to the material world. To begin this discussion, I will suggest that such concepts operate primarily as eschatological phenomena and secondarily as an ethical heuristic.

One final note, as I am out of time: this is why such issues are self-defense, the tragedy of enforcement, and the state of war are so morally involved on this blog. Even though the police are such by virtue of a voluntary association centered on the pursuit of criminal activity, I do not believe asymmetric warfare against police as a whole is morally justified, but defending oneself from instances of extortion, kidnapping, coercion, and murder with lethal force is morally justified and ethically encouraged.
​

TL;DR: Last post, I was not claiming that one should merely behave as if collectives do not exist, but instead making the strong claim that the do not exist at all. Belief in collectives is ontologically and epistemically lazy and such laziness prevents the epistemic rectitude required for ethical action. Increased intellectual rigor with regards to “society” is required if one wishes to improve one's quality of life or the quality of life of others.

 I previously posted “Towards a definition of Anarchy” in an attempt to begin a conversation. Nearly a year later, I feel sufficiently equipped to push that conversation further.

In that previous post, I argued that anarchy is the rejection of institutions predicated on the crimes of coercion, theft, or murder. I explored the cultural and etymological roots of the term “anarchy” as well as the underlying philosophy, and presented a starting place for achieving a working definition of anarchy. That definition has served me fairly well in discussions on social media, in person, and on this blog. Over time, though, I have found it necessary to modify aspects of that definition and explore the necessary conclusions of that definition.

After a year of perpetual discussion about presumed first principles and their results, I believe I must explore the term from two angles: that of its linguistic uses and that of its philosophical importance. I, unfortunately, must explore its linguistic function first, as it will help clarify the philosophical definition.

Anarchy, as a word, can be used to describe a state of affairs. Typically, it is used as a pejorative when it is used in this manner, courtesy of your local propagandists. The state of affairs it references is one in which there is an absence of “archons”: individuals who claim the right to coerce or otherwise harm non-aggressors. The free -I'm sorry- “black” market is a prime example of one such circumstance, such as open-air markets in rural parts of Empire and developing nations. In some rare cases of the pejorative use, it may be accurate; but more often it is a distinct lack of anarchy that is misidentified as such on the news and popular media.

Anarchy can also refer to the philosophy of anarchism or that of anarchists. This is nothing new, of course; I often refer to anarchy as “a philosophy of personal responsibility”. Many assert that anarchism is predicated on the non-aggression principle (the NAP) as its first and only principle. However, as I hope to explore soon, the NAP presents many challenges when taken on its own. In “New Logo” and “Is Property Theft”, I briefly explored the issue of voluntarism as a positive assertion from the NAP, primarily because the NAP is a negative moral claim and, even if the claim is true, the positive inverse statement of that claim is not necessarily true.

Most of the issues arising from using the NAP as a solitary first principle is that its conclusions are either voluntarism or some other conclusion informed by the anarchist's other philosophical commitments, many of which result in impoverished or absurd worldviews. The fact that the NAP is a negative claim is what causes its dependance on other principles. This dependence is not an issue in itself, it is the theory-ladenness of the NAP's terminology in every iteration. A prime example of this issue is when “libertarian” feminists start discussing male “micro-aggressions” and criminalizing the act of having a Y chromosome. As I've discussed before, if the NAP is to obtain, one's response to aggression must allow for self-defense, up to and including the execution of lethal force. So, if “libertarian” feminists are to be consistent, they must embrace the perennial feminist slogan of “kill all men”. Somehow, this does not sound like a philosophy predicated on the non-instantiation of force (another way to say NAP).

If anarchy is to be predicated on negative claims, it must either be predicated on claims that are less-susceptible to mixing with bad philosophies than the NAP, or be predicated on a mixture of negative and positive claims such so as to form a complete worldview on its own. Let's begin with the negative first principles which may be more reliable than the NAP, possibly even axiomatically grounding the NAP itself.

I previously argued that anarchy is the rejection of institutions predicated on crime. That particular claim would be an ethical one. While anarchism may be a moral philosophy, I have found that all moral philosophies must be predicated on some other basis for moral or ethical claims. In “An Economics of Ethics”, I implied that ethical claims are best rooted in ontology and physics while morality must be rooted in ontological claims.

Anarchism is best served, then, in basing itself not in the rejection of particular institutions but, instead, some ontological claim which results in such an ethical proscription. One such commitment would be disallowing collectives from one's ontology. There is a series of fairly compelling arguments for the non-existence of collectives, but such cases will have to be made elsewhere, as this post is concerned with defining anarchy. For now, I will assert that anarchism is a philosophy which denies the existence of collectives, instead focusing on individuals and individual actions.

This focus on individual action can be informed by one of two suppositions: the existence of objective moral facts or nihilism. In the case of nihilism I must inquire as to why one who finds no meaning or purpose in anything would be motivated to embrace anything more than nihilism; I do not expect a satisfying answer. Even so, the case of a nihilist anarchism does not preclude ethics (as defined in “Morality and Ethics”), as most nihilists that don't just kill themselves tend more towards epicurean hedonism out of an interest in maximizing one's own pleasure. In which case, anarchism's minimum ethical framework may even seem a bit narrow to a nihilist. “Don't shit where you eat”, the nihilist ethical maxim, requires a degree of virtue and future-mindedness, whereas the NAP is merely a prohibition against a narrow list of actions which could be reasonably be considered crimes.

More reasonably, one could allow for the existence of objective moral facts. In another post, or perhaps, in a book I hope to self publish at the end of this year, I will make an introductory argument for the the existence of objective moral facts. Today, though, If we allow moral facts ontology, we can quickly come to see that objective moral facts can only be proscriptive: categorically disallowing certain behaviors for rationally self-interested individuals while not prescribing any particular actions. I've explored this discussion before in “The Dark Side”. As time goes on, I will expand that discussion into an argument in its own right.

I still refer to the NAP as shorthand for my own proscription against crime (coercion, theft, and murder) which could, technically, be considered an ethical proscription which obtains universally. This is due to an anarchist definition of “rights”: namely, a right rooted in the rejection of collectives' existence and a focus on individual action. Such a definition could be “a delineation of behaviors which one could justifiably defend oneself with any necessary degree of force.” It would, then, be reasonable to assert that provoking one's right to self defense is inadvisable under all circumstances.

What I am trying to express here is that the NAP (in whatever form) is a result of anarchist first principles, not a first principle in itself. It is certainly a useful rhetorical tool to appeal to the NAP straightaway, as “I think people shouldn't murder each other” is usually common ground for people. However, if that is the extent of one's education in anarchism, one will be prone to the mistakes explored earlier. Much like a man that becomes a Christian because “Jesus forgives you,” and leaves it at that, one will be prone to doing stupid things and giving the philosophy to which one claims to adhere a bad name.

Ultimately, anarchism is a moral philosophy. Predicated on certain ontological claims and on an informed understanding of the way the world operates. Anarchism is the conclusion that individuals ought to behave in a manner consistent with personal responsibility and not attempt to place that responsibility on the shoulders of others without their permission. This is primarily a practical consideration, but it is fully complimented by some forms of deontological frameworks, so long as they do not violate the ontological or ethical claims of anarchism. This consideration, I think secures anarchism from mixing with bad philosophies without requiring positive ontological claims.

I propose that a sufficient definition of anarchism (or anarchy, for simplicity) would be as follows: a philosophy predicated on the claim that collectives do not exist, only individuals; the claim that one is responsible for one's actions, and will face the inevitable consequences of those actions, which results in the claim that one cannot justifiably commit crimes (coercion, theft, or murder) under any circumstances; and the claim that one can and should defend themselves from crimes as well. At first glance, this definition may not seem too similar to the popular conceptions of anarchy, but one can quickly conclude from these claims that governments do not exist, only people do, and those that engage in government activities, such as taxation (theft), enforcement (coercion), and war (murder), are criminals and ought to be dealt with as such. In other words, anarchy dictates that one interact with ISIS, Ted Bundy, and one's local government bureaucrats and enforcers in a consistent manner.


TL;DR: My original suggested definition of anarchy was a good start, but it certainly needs work. The 2015 model of “Mad Philosopher's flavor of anarchism” is ultimately little more than an ontological commitment which, if consistently and logically applied, can (and frequently does) result in the rest of the assertions and arguments I have made on this blog over the course of the last year or so. Anarchy is a philosophy predicated on the claim that collectives do not exist, only individuals; the claim that one is responsible for one's actions, and will face the inevitable consequences of those actions, which results in the claim that one cannot justifiably commit crimes (coercion, theft, or murder) under any circumstances; and the claim that one can and should defend themselves from crimes as well. In other words, one can do whatever they want, but that doesn't mean that it's a good idea.

This week, I wrote up an extensive outline for a post concerning a more complete definition of anarchism than the one from about a year ago.  As I was preparing to record the audio portion, though, my brother arrived to help me with a project I started yesterday.  I didn't have time to record and write a transcript, so I will share the fruits of my labor with you.

 It should be no surprise that the issue of property should become so central on an anarchist philosopher's blog; nearly every opposing argument to anarchy I have encountered hinges on property rights or one's fear that their property should become insecure.

It also should be no surprise that intellectual property should come up so quickly; copyright law has been a cultural mainstay sine the Church and publishing companies had decided to try and control society's intellectual pursuits several centuries ago. IP is a subject almost as involved and arguably more convoluted than property at large, so I'm going to focus on one specific point concerning IP today and add to it more later on. I would have to, as property rights and IP intersect frequently with issues such as innovation and privacy. Some more definitions, some metaphysics, and one not-so-world-shaking claim are all I can manage this week.

What is intellectual property? Despite being a centuries-old cultural mainstay, IP law is very nebulous and unhelpful to rational inquiry. Only slightly more useful is the cultural and academic narrative concerning “stealing ideas” and channels by which one gives credit, which are somewhat informed by IP laws. Instead of teasing ideas out of these frustratingly ad-hoc narratives, we should look at the term and the high-altitude basics with fresh eyes.

So, “intellectual”. I tend to avoid metaphysics on my blog, instead reserving such exercises for in-person discussions and my still-unpublished book. I am essentially a substance pluralist, which means I am not beholden to the materialist doctrine. Today, I am going to be using terms such as “ideas”, “mental/intellectual substance”, “mind” and the like. While these terms sound like some sort of Cartesian dualism (to which I do not ascribe), I am aware that, in some form or another, there are materialist parallels to each of these concepts. For the sake of our discussion, we will have to assume that people possess minds and that the discussion of intellectual matters are concerned primarily with the operation of minds. I don't think this is too far a stretch for my readers.

Ideas are immaterial. Where apples or rocks exist independent from observers and act on their own (producing gravity, growing, decaying, interacting with their environment), ideas are contingent upon minds (or, rather a medium which can contain the idea, such as a mind). If there is an idea in my mind, it exists solely within my mind. Even as I write these words, the idea I am attempting to express resides solely within my mind. It is possible, though infinitely unlikely, that someone, at some point in time, may have an idea that is identical to the one I am expressing now, but it would not be the same idea, nor would we ever have a method by which to determine that it is identical.

This is due to the phenomenological barrier between our rational minds and the world around them. I am currently experiencing having an idea and attempting to express that idea in precise linguistic terms. I am expressing it in this way, hoping that by reading these words you, the reader, will be able to use this expression to construct a similar enough idea such that we will have a common language for expression of ideas. You can never see or experience the idea in my head, but you can attempt to construct a facsimile idea that is close enough.

In short, I cannot “give” or “take” and idea from you, I can only strive to provide you with the necessary components of an idea I wish to share. If I, for whatever reason, wish to prevent you from constructing a particular idea, I can attempt to avoid expressing hints at that idea. This is the basis of a secret. If I have an idea in my mind and wish no-one else to be aware of it, I can refrain from expressing it and even engage in behaviors that may prevent others from becoming aware of such an idea. For instance, Bruce Wayne can pretend to be a playboy billionaire too busy hanging out with loose women to be beating criminals in the dead of night, thus keeping his secret of being Batman.

Bruce Wayne is an excellent example, as he effectively demonstrates the nature of secrets. For example, the common inhabitants of Gotham have no idea that Bruce Wayne is Batman, primarily because they are ignorant of the requisite evidence to form such an idea. However, every iteration of Bruce Wayne is eventually exposed as Batman to someone else (Alfred, Dick Clark, Catwoman, Bane, etc.). The moment that a copy of the idea that Bruce Wayne is Batman is created, the secret is out. Such a secret inevitably spreads at a geometric rate, sparking the creation of duplicate ideas in fresh minds from the initial host, spreading like a virus and taking on a new form with each duplication.

If Alfred discovers Bruce Wayne is Batman, can Bruce justifiably kill or coerce Alfred in order to prevent such a spread of information? One may make a convoluted case that Alfred, by knowing something that could put Bruce in danger, is aggressing against him... but I don't have time to waste on such absurdities. All Alfred has done is construct an idea which serves to inform his understanding of the world. The material equivalent would be Bruce creating a tool, say an ax, in order to make woodcutting easier, and Alfred, seeing the utility of such a tool, fashions an ax himself to cut his own wood. It is possible that Alfred's ax may put Bruce at risk,(Alfred may snap, and murder Bruce in his sleep or a criminal may acquire the ax and use it in the same manner), but the mere fact that Alfred possesses a tool does not threaten Bruce. The same applies to Catwoman, Talia and Ra's AL Ghul, Bane, etc; regardless of who knows the alleged secret, the only thing that matters (morally speaking) is what they do with that knowledge.

Now that we've taken most of our time exploring the term “intellectual”, let's briefly turn our attention to “property”. My last two posts (here and here) explored the basics of property already. We don't have to go much further than we already have. I got the least amount of feedback to-date concerning these posts, so I have had very little opportunity to change my mind.

Two key requirements I have laid out for something to be considered property are thus: the alleged “property must be a discrete and identifiable object, and it must be transmissible. Given what we have already covered concerning intellectual matters, it becomes readily apparent that an idea is not really discrete and identifiable. Whether it be an immaterial entity within one's mind, a specific arrangement of cells and chemicals in a brain, or a series of magnetic charges on a metal plate, an idea is difficult (to the degree of being an impossibility) to identify as a discrete object. Additionally, an idea, in any of the forms I have just listed, cannot really be moved from one medium to another; they are actually merely duplicated with varying degrees of fidelity. Because “intellectual” things cannot meet the necessary conditions for property, “intellectual property” is an oxymoron.

“But what about books? You can own, trade, identify, and move books.” Books are obviously property; they meet each of the necessary and sufficient conditions we have already covered. However, there is a delineation between the material book itself and whatever ideas the book “contains”. The paper, ink, glue, etc. are discrete and identifiable, but the ideas that can be constructed by way of the material object only exist insofar as the mind is able to assemble ideas from its interaction with the material object. When one buys a book, one isn't buying ideas. One, ostensibly, purchases a book with the intent of receiving fresh inspiration for one's mind, but all they purchase is ink-stained paper.

“What about ebooks or software?” Legal fictions aside, we can look at identifiable, concrete actions and determine what is taking place. When one creates an ebook or piece of software, they are devising a particular series of on/off signals which are comparable to the phonetic and tonal sounds one makes when one performs a speech or holds a conversation. One can duplicate that series of signals with comparative ease, courtesy of modern computers. However, in order to create a duplicate, one must first have access to an existing instance of that arrangement of signals.

Ultimately, the (ostensibly) easiest method of gaining access to that series of signals is to pay the creator or host for such access. Things like DRM are typically implemented with the intent of making alternative methods of access cost-prohibitive. In the case of software, limiting functionality to people and charging for a password to increase functionality is still a common practice today, even if it is somewhat hidden behind the user interface. A material comparison would be a factory producing fully functional and free cars with locked doors. The easiest way (in this case) to gain access to the car and drive it away would be to pay the factory owner for the key to unlock the door.

Based on these behaviors, I would say that electronic media or, rather, the data stored on those media, are not property. They are certainly intellectual, which disqualifies them from being property. Instead, when one “purchases” an ebook, software, or whatever, one is paying for the service of allowing access to an extant copy in order to duplicate it, for the service of providing a password which grants access to functionality, or some comparable service. If this seems contrary to one's intuition, I suggest one investigate how exactly services like Netflix operate.

The most informative part of this discussion, though, is a matter of the metaphysical and physical impossibility of theft. When something is stolen from its owner, the owner looses access to and control over the stolen item; that is the definitive quality of theft. Ideas (and data, a subset of ideas)can be copied, modified, and even destroyed, but they cannot be stolen. If it can't be stolen, it isn't property.

TL;DR: Metaphysics and science alike will admit that the phenomena of ideas are immaterial (or, at least, have not yet found the specific material components and nature of ideas). Both will also bolster the claim that ideas are not moved about in the same manner as material objects, but are mind-specific and merely copied from medium to medium. Based on our current definition of property and these attributes of intellectual things, ideas cannot be property. Therefore, intellectual property is an oxymoron and ideas cannot be stolen. Nor, despite laws to the contrary, can one justifiably initiate aggression against anyone else over an idea they have, not even Batman

 Is property theft? I used to be a hardcore commie in the spirit of Marx and Trotsky, so one could assume that I would simply say “yes” and go burn down a Walgreens or CVS.

 Of course, if property were, functionally or definitively, an exclusionary principle (this is my rock, go get your own), it would be forgivable for a collectivist to believe that personal property would be something stolen from the collective society. The working definition I presented last post is exclusionary, so I'm not likely to be making any AnCom friends this week.

How could the exclusive nature of property be theft? If one were to assume that the world at large consists of common resources and common welfare, there are certain logical and practical results that follow. Whether these resources are held in common among men, animals, plants, God, Gaia, etc. results in merely superficial differences. Logically, if a river, rock, oil well, or field of poppies is a common resource to all, individuals ought to be disincentivized, culturally, from taking from that resource. In all reality, if one believes that common resources exist (as opposed to either unowned and owned property) the inevitable conclusion is that “property is theft”. The fairy-tales of noble savages, taking only the fruit that had fallen from a tree and living in shelters made of driftwood and caverns seems to be the inevitable outcome of such a position.

I argue that even this outcome is insufficient, though. If we are going to consistently apply this rubric that property is theft by virtue of its exclusivity, than any act which would exclude access to a resource would be considered theft. (Side note to my AnCom friends, this is not a case of affirming the consequent as I mistakenly believed back in my commie days, but we don't have time for this discussion right now.) By discriminating who I work for, have sex with, or have a conversation with, I am preventing others from having access to the resources that are my labor, body, and mind. Not only is property theft, but so is any form of consumption, work, or even existence... which results in absurdity because letting oneself starve to death would be robbing the collective of one's intellect and labor.

This description, I guess, is not entirely fair. It is conceivable that one could make an argument that theft isn't categorically bad and that some level of theft produces sufficient utility to allow for it... but that's utilitarianism... which is moral nihilism, so we'll focus on more intelligent arguments. It is also conceivable that a system could be set in place which could allow for collective consensus. Theoretically, if 100% of the collective's members agree that a particular common resource ought to be invested in a particular manner, than one would be directed by the collective to invest it is said manner. The 100% consensus is crucial to this solution, though. If 99 people decide that a particular roll of toilet paper would best be invested by dividing it between collectivists numbered 001 through 035 but I'm collectivist 100 and I've got poo on my bum, I would likely disagree with the majority. If they go through on the plan to divide the roll of toilet paper amongst the senior collectivists, they are preventing me from having access to a collective resource. They are stealing the toilet paper from me. The majority has stolen from the minority and there is no amount of definitional gymnastics that can correct that.

The more inclusive a collective is, the more problematic consensus becomes. If the semi-intelligent collectivists had their way and the only intellectually consistent implementation of collectivism were to extend to all people, then the consensus of property use would be required from, at a minimum, the several billion humans on the planet. Assuming everyone plays by the rules (and that children are capable of consent) the human race would quickly starve down to a population small enough to achieve consensus, because economics. If we are to do as Pope Francis and other hippies do and begin involving God, cows, and soil bacteria in our collective ownership, though, consensus becomes impossible. God, cows, and bacteria are mute; they cannot vote on who gets to eat or clothe themselves. So, thanks hippie god, we collectivists get to starve now.

If I were to not try my hardest to come up with experientially viable premises from which one could conclude that “property is theft” in the vein of collectivist ideologies, I wouldn't be doing my due diligence. The issues we've run up against thus far are a result of assuming that one could own property and that collective ownership arises from individual ownership; while this is a standard application of philosophy (building from ontological simples to relationships of greater complexity), perhaps we could try the theological approach and work top-down. What if it is impossible for the individual to own property? Initially, I would say that all things are unowned. If all things are unowned, I'm not certain how something could be stolen. I guess we could define theft as “preventing access to”, and see if we get any new results.

Immediately, it is apparent that nothing changes from our initial attempt. “Preventing requested access to” might work better. If I discover food as I wander barefoot through the woods, it wouldn't be theft to eat said food, then. As a matter of fact, by turning it into energy for one cell of our collective, I am contributing to “the common good”. If Cacambo, the man who could not prevent my access to his service as a sherpa, also desires the food I have discovered, I must share. Initially, this makes sense; this actually most closely parallel's my formerly-held communist beliefs. For the sake of efficiency in such a world, it would make sense to build some sort of Rawlsian socialist government wherein rights are contingent upon the state's authority. For the ability to say “no” is ultimately the meaning of rights, and the collective consensus would be the enforcer of when it is culturally acceptable to say “no”. Sounds an awful lot like the moral nihilism of Hobbes' Leviathan, no? Electing kings to delineate and enforce “rights”?

Well, that's because it is. If one cannot deny others access to resources, even with exceptions granted by Rawls' utopia, one will ultimately wind up where we are in the American Empire and where we are heading. If I cannot deny my labor (taxes, cake bakeries, etc.), resources that I control and have access to (civil asset forfeiture, taxes, etc.), or even myself (social engineering, social justice cults, etc.), others can be expected to be constrained by the same rule. So, in the absence of 100% consensus, which has already been explored, we encounter the situation wherein I cannot deny your request to resources I am using or labor I can perform and, simultaneously, you cannot deny my request to the same. My request (and yours) is functionally equivalent to denying access to a resource, which is property (by our hypothetical definition) and therefore theft. In this way, we've come full-circle. This is moral nihilism because either theft is immoral and merely existing is theft and therefore immoral, or theft is not immoral and, based on our definition of theft and property, I can do whatever I want to anyone.

Therefore, property cannot be theft or, if it is, there is no reason to care. This negative determination, even informed by last post, isn't entirely satisfying; property is not theft, it is merely that to which one has access and over which one has control. I'm going to take my remaining space allotment to try and expound a positive case for property. All my usual qualifications apply: this case is not a necessary conclusion from the premises already laid out, this is not a categorical anarchist claim but only a claim made by an individual who happens to be an anarchist, I'm making this case for the sake of discussion and reserve the right to change my mind at a later time, etc.

I would go so far so as to say that the soundbite, “Property is theft,” is actually backwards. A soundbite that better fits my definition and determination is, “If it can't be stolen, it isn't property.” Of course, like all soundbites, this phrase is practically meaningless, it merely expresses the inverse case of the definition I provided last post.

More exciting and meaningful than soundbites would be the ideas of self-ownership and autonomy. Most anarchists, libertarians, Austrian economists, and the like often hinge their rhetoric and arguments on the principles of self-ownership. One can see why, based on the absurdities encountered while exploring collectivism and the attempted abolition of property, one would conclude that one must own oneself. If property is that to which one can lay claim, have access, and control over, who else could own one's self? Of course, it raises the question, “Can a person be property?” There is a lot of fodder here for linguistic and semantic inquiry in most extant languages concerning possessives as applied to the self; as much as I enjoy these discussions, though, I just want to make one quick philosophical point.

One definitional point of property I did not address last post is the transmissibility of property. In parallel to my earlier soundbite, if something cannot be transferred from one person to another, I am not certain that it could be considered property. So, if oneself is property, one must be able to forfeit control and access to one's self to another person. I would argue that, even in the case of slavery, in whatever form, one is merely separated from one's property or labor while still being oneself. I understand the utility of using self-ownership as a rhetorical shorthand, but, anti-prostitution rhetoric aside, one cannot “sell themselves”; ergo, one does not own oneself.

Bracketing centuries of metaphysics, what is a “self”? A materialist will tell you that your body and your self are identical. A dishonest materialist will tell you that your consciousness is your self and that it is an emergent property of the material arrangement of brain stuff. A lazy Christian will tell you that your self is your soul. A more rigorous Christian will at least say that your self is the unity of your body and soul. These answers, for all of the disparity in substance commitments seems to provide a consensus that the self is the specific arrangement of things that one has direct control over and access to and could not exist without. Based on that consensus, I would say that self-ownership is likely impossible, or problematic at best, but self-autonomy is a viable alternative that also fills the role that self-ownership does in AnCap philosophy.


TL;DR: Property cannot be theft. There is no way one could define property, or argue for collectivism, in such a way that does not quickly unravel into absurdity. If one finds oneself in a situation where people are shouting pithy one-liners at each other, a decent response to “Property is theft,” would be “If it can't be stolen, it isn't property.” Closely tied to issues with property and collectivism is philosophy of identity. In all reality, the breakdown in communication between collectivists and anarchists hinges on divergent commitments concerning identity, but that's a huge piece of work I'll have to chip away at slowly.

 Before I can argue about intellectual property, we must first have a working definition of property at large.

 Property, like the other concepts I've tried to define in this blog, is an idea that nearly everyone uses daily without much self-awareness. Of course, the precedent set by previous posts will be upheld here; my definition is going to be functionally approximate to common use, but counter-intuitive. A good starting place would be to identify the common understanding of what property is and what function it serves.

Property, in its common conceptualization, is simply an item, process, idea, or region of space to which one lays claim and society acknowledges said claim. Usually this claim comes in the form of a title, deed, or bill of sale (receipt) issued by the seller or government and the acknowledgment takes the form of deference to property and licensure laws (and all the violence inherent therein). Of course, an anarchist would be disinclined to use such a convention. Before throwing it out, though, we ought to explore the function of such a convention.

What function does property convention serve in contemporary culture? Ostensibly, it is a determining factor in the acknowledgment of rights and liabilities. If some thing is one's property, one has the right to do with it what one will; if said thing is not one's property, one can only do with it that which is permitted by the acknowledged owner. Of course, if this rhetoric is to be used as a definition of property, the state is the owner of all property by virtue of laws concerning what uses are allowed for all property. As a function, though, this idea serves as an excellent starting place for defining property.

What could be necessary and sufficient conditions for an item to be considered property, with an eye to producing a functionality similar to that mentioned above? I am not confident that I could fully formulate them here, but I must at least begin the discussion.

One such condition I believe to necessary is the discrete nature of the object in question. This is both a practical and a definitional concern. Where one could indicate a clearly defined object and lay claim to that specific object, it would be nonsense to indicate something nebulous or unconstrained and lay claim to it. For example, I could lay claim to a specific apple as my property and the claim could be easily constrained to the perceptible material boundary of the apple's flesh, but it would be practically and conceptually impossible for me to crop-dust the line at the DMV and then lay claim to the fart cloud permeating the room and everyone's nostrils. Another possible example would be for me to fence-in a distinct and limited area of land and lay claim to it and it may be a legitimate claim. Barring that being a legitimate claim, I can at least claim that the fence is my property.... which, given the basics of property rights, would be more or less functionally equivalent to claiming the land inside the fence.

However, laying claim to “all the land between this ocean and the next” or “from sea to shining sea” would be as absurd as, and logically equivalent to, claiming “all the apples”. It may be possible that, by way of trade (purchase) or labor, I may successfully acquire all of the known apples or all of the known land, but this is a circumstantial quality of that claim, not an essential or necessary one. What this means is that an apple or piece of land could be discovered to which I have not yet laid legitimate claim and I would then no longer own all of the apples or land, whereas, a categorical claim to “all the things” would mean that if a new “thing” were discovered, it would automatically be incorporated into my property.

In addition to being a discrete object, one must claim it in order for it to become property. A rock in a forest, unseen by man, may as well be a planet in the Andromeda galaxy: undiscovered, unowned, unimportant. A rock in my hand, though, is mine (unless the rightful owner has handed it to me... whatever). Of course, if two parties lay claim to an object, there must be some principle by which to determine whose claim is legitimate, but that problem should be explored later.

There are those who claim that whatever object is claimed, it must be a limited resource in order to become property. I hear AnCaps assent to that claim, but only because they believe it to be a tautology; all resources are scarce, only the degree to which they are scarce is in question. I also hear liberals and liberal-leaning individuals assenting to this claim. However, I believe this claim is assented to solely because it can serve the liberal agenda of eliminating property; in a post-scarcity world, property couldn't exist. I am inclined to agree that such a condition for property is tautological, but for a different reason than the AnCaps. In laying claim to portion of even a non-scarce resource (such as a bucket of seawater or a fistful of sand at a beach), one creates a particular type of scarcity. The sand owned by the individual in question is scarce by virtue of being his sand. It can be argued that such a distinction is meaningless, that his sand is indistinguishable from any other which is non-scarce... but the industry of religious and cultural relics would argue otherwise. Of course, this scarcity only exists so long as one cannot lay claim to the entirety of a resource, scarce or not, as I addressed above.

The next condition is complex and may be considered the deciding factor by which property is defined. Property could be considered an object to which one has the most full control over and access to. While this principle sounds straightforward and implies a Hobbesian brutality, it is far more nuanced and just than it sounds. Some examples really are simple and Hobbesian. If I wander into the woods and find our previously undiscovered rock from before, I can pick it up and claim it as my own. It is mine by virtue of being in my hand. If I bring it home and place it in my yard or home, it is mine by virtue of being on my property and in my control. If I were to claim it as mine, drop it in the woods where I found it and walk away, never to return again, anyone could claim the rock because I have forsaken control over and access to said rock.

This is where simplicity breaks down. What happens if I loan said rock to my neighbor, or rent it to a client? I abdicate physical control and access to someone else, how is it different from simply having gifted or sold it to someone else? An easy answer, which I reject, is “contracts”. Contracts, as readers of this blog will know, are as fictitious as the law in my mind. A lease or renter's contract amounts to nothing more than a promise with a written reminder of that promise. Which, incidentally, serves as an excellent launching point for my suggested solution. So long as my neighbor honors my wishes regarding the rock (contractually state or not), I still exert control over the rock, if indirectly. I may lack access to said rock, depending on the nature of my agreement with my neighbor, but insofar as the nature of that lack is temporary, my control of the rock serves as a substitute.

If my neighbor decides he values my rock more than his friendship with me, he may decide to violate our agreement and claim the rock as his own. In which case, he takes control of the rock and renders my lack of access to it permanent. These two factors being the determining factors of property would render the rock as his property. At this point, the Leviathan of social acknowledgment reawakens and rears it's many ugly heads. One method by which I could prevent or mitigate such an event would be to publicly establish my claim to the rock before lending it to my neighbor. At which point, if my neighbor steals the rock, I can call upon our community to place social pressure on him to return my property. I could also alert the community that I intend to retrieve my property at any cost, in order to dissuade the virtuous men of my community from interceding on my neighbor's behalf if such an attempt were to escalate to violence. In this way, the social forces I can bring to bear could still be considered “control”.

There are many technologies that lend themselves to this solution, though. Branding, titles/deeds, third-party records-keepers, smart property, remote bricking, social conventions, etc. have all come from the long-standing intuition of social acknowledgment. Even with such technologies, as a principled anarchist, I believe the utility of such solutions may be insufficient justification in light of the potential for abuse. One can turn to fictitious accounts of the wild west for examples of abuse of the contract/social acknowledgment solution to theft. These flaws are sufficient to encourage me to look for a better resolution, but this is one stopgap measure that seems to parallel the average person's intuition and lend itself to marketability. Other options have been explored and are in use today. I believe that a small enough community would have no need for such technologies, especially a community centered on anarchist principles. In the case of larger communities, I recommend reading Spooner, Rothbard, or (oddly enough) Proudhon for alternatives. Again, I believe in letting a thousand flowers bloom and seeing what works, but this particular issue and resolution is raised this time for definitional purposes.

The issue of theft gives rise to the last condition I have found to be necessary for a thing to be considered property; legitimacy of claim. My neighbor claiming the rock he borrowed from me as his own is considered an illegitimate claim and, therefore, theft. There is an overabundance of issues and theories concerning legitimacy of claim. Most straightforward of these issues and solutions is that of homesteading. It's a very involved discussion that I will explore further at a later date. A quick overview, though, is essentially thus: the first person to use or add value to an unowned object has a legitimate claim of ownership. After one establishes such a claim, one may give or sell it to whomever one so desires.

By extension, then, if one purchases property from someone else, one then has a legitimate claim to it. Of course, if the seller has stolen said property, there remains the issue of whether the original owner's claim or that of the unwitting purchaser is (more) legitimate. Thus far, I have not read or synthesized a categorical answer to this particular problem. Perhaps discussions with you, the readers, will help me to do so. In the mean time, I'm inclined to give the pragmatic case: don't let your stuff get stolen. If it does get stolen, get it back before the thief sells it. If you fail to do so, there's little cause to steal it from someone uninvolved in the crime. Maybe, if you ask nicely, you and the new owner can work something out.

This answer is clearly unsatisfying, so I will venture two cases that each have their own flaws, but may prompt appropriate discussion. If ownership is some metaphysical attribute that a person or piece of property has, then the claim of ownership that the original owner makes would be more legitimate than that of the thief or the unwitting purchaser of stolen goods, as theft would not transfer the metaphysical ownership from oneself to a thief... or we wouldn't call it theft and expect the thief to return the stolen property or equivalent goods. If, in fact, ownership is merely a term we use to describe a practical state of affairs, the purchaser of stolen goods has a legitimate claim to the property by virtue of having engaged in a voluntary exchange of goods, trading something of approximate value for something else of approximate value.

There also arises the issue of homesteading abandoned property, which closely parallels the limit cases of theft. I feel I've taken enough of your time this time around, and I believe any satisfying answers would have to be informed by the limit cases of theft and their resolutions, so we'll save that issue for later. For now, titles, records, blockchains, receipts, deeds, etc. are useful tools to try and avoid finding oneself embroiled in such an issue.

TL;DR; My working definition of “property” is, “any discrete object to which one has access, control over, and a legitimate claim by virtue of homestead or acquisition from the previous owner with the owner's assent.” This definition needs improvement and exploration, especially in establishing a principled resolution of theft and homesteading abandoned property.

I recently spent a long weekend in New Hampshire. Despite the overall trip being fairly unpleasant for personal reasons, it confirmed my decision to migrate there.

There are a great many pros and cons involved in the process of migrating to the Shire. Some are philosophical, some are practical, and some are personal. I don't have the time or motivation to cover them all today, but I'll move through the highlight reel as quickly as I can.

The Shire is less un-free than anywhere else I've been in the country.

There is no such thing as half-free, but there are varying crime rates by locality. I make no distinction between public and private sector crime or institutional and individual criminals. In the Denver area, crime is out of control. I witness roadside robbery daily and armed gangsters prowl the streets in uniform, non-stop. I, personally, have been mugged several times in the last couple years. This is a comparable set of data to the statistics I have seen published. This is secondary, though, to the systemic oppression in the form of legal violations of rights. For example, taxation, gun control, vehicle and property regulation, licensure, insurance, drug policy, zoning controls, etc. present an unending litany of minor and major roadblocks to achieving human flourishing. Additionally, no amount of ethical or practical gymnastics can justify the threats of murder used to enforce these roadblocks. Southern California, Boston, Las Vegas, Arizona, Florida, Wyoming, and other places I've been seem to be comparable in both experience and statistics.

In the handful of days I was in the Shire, I saw a total of four cops. (I saw six times that number in the drive from Boston to the Shire, but that's why I'm not moving to Massachusetts.) That is the number of cops I see in Denver, daily. Of the cops I saw, two were assisting in traffic direction for an event in downtown Manchester, one was helping change a tire, and one was engaged in highway robbery... but in a really half-assed way. Anecdotal and statistical data seems to support this disparity in my experiences, so I'm not totally delusional in thinking life would be less rife with criminal interaction if I were to move to the Shire.

The most prominent body of anecdotal data is the numerous examples of law enforcement having been “trained” by activists in various towns in the Shire. By “trained”, I mean that being held accountable at all times by activists armed with cameras, knowledge of the law, and a culture of resistance has rendered law enforcement very cautious and professional. The Keene police department is rumored to be one of the most professional and benign criminal gangs in the nation, limiting a majority of their services to activities that would be carried out by private security in a post-state society. Of course, less coercion, murder, and rape is still coercion, murder and rape.

In Denver, it is illegal to collect rainwater, grow sufficient crops or livestock for either sustenance or profit. The area is rife with laws restricting basic liberties, especially gun control, licensure, labor unions, zoning, building codes... oh, and the taxes. Everything is taxed, heavily and repeatedly. The Denver law enforcement (and their bureaucratic accomplices) is often very vigilant for opportunities to enforce these laws, often quite zealously so. I've had “visits” from police because I was walking around my own apartment without a shirt on, for facebook posts I've made, and for driving an older vehicle. Weed is nominally legal in Denver... but that hasn't kept a few friends and acquaintances from spending time in jail. Conversely, there exist fewer laws restricting what one may own, what one can do with one's property, what methods of self-defense one may implement, and how much the state can steal from any individual in the Shire. Couple that with the mob enforcers being “trained”, and the case in defense of the Shire being less un-free is mostly complete.

I'm not alone in my decision.

The aforementioned disparity in the scope of government between the Shire and elsewhere is due to two phenomena which are related. The first is a cultural heritage. The state's motto, “Live Free or Die” is unequivocally liberty-oriented and has been taken seriously throughout history. Despite geographic proximity to the of the most misanthropic, powerful, and far-reaching empire in known history, the Shire has resisted gun control, moralistic legislation, and a number of other American hallmarks to this day. Because of this pre-existing, yet insufficient, culture of resistance to tyranny, the Free State Project decided to focus its efforts in the Shire.

The Free State Project is two distinct but entwined entities in itself. One such entity is the company by the name of “The Free State Project”. I am not a believer in or supporter of the company for many of the same reasons I do not support the Libertarian political party; but the company spawned the second entity: the people engaged in the project itself. The stated goal of the FSP is:

“The Free State Project is solely an agreement among 20,000 pro-liberty activists to move to New Hampshire, where they will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property.”

A great many people have decided that such a migration is a beneficial move for freedom-minded individuals (sorry about the pun). The FSP is, broadly speaking, an attempt to incentivize people like me to concentrate in a geographically local area and experiment in anarchy. I have met several people of outstanding moral, intellectual, and social quality in the project who have moved to the Shire. I would be remiss in not pursuing a relationship with them and assisting in their project as well as taking advantage of the fruits of their experiments.

These experiments are as numerous as the number of people migrating. People are running for public office as open anarchists, and enough people are voting for them to actually win elections. People are trying, with varying degrees of success, to live entirely off of alternative currencies, such as gold, silver, and Bitcoin. Permaculture, microfarming, and a cornucopia of sustenance and market farming practices are being used and promoted. Peaceful parenting, unschooling, free-range kids, nonviolent communication, the trivium and more and more efforts are being made to improve interpersonal relationships and self-awareness. Constant in-person, social media, and public content debates, arguments, and friendly explorations concerning the principles of liberty and alternative lifestyles are ongoing throughout the Shire and internet communities centered on the FSP participants.

  These communities and discussions exist elsewhere and online (which is technically everywhere), of course. I've participated in “Anonymous” protests, home school co-ops, Bitcoin meetups, philosophy clubs, and microfarming in Denver. However, each one of these communities were totally distinct and separated from each other and require a fair amount of effort and travel to find and participate in these things. Even in these groups, too, I exist in the margins. “Anonymous”, for their anarchist imagery and organization structure, are very SJW-leaning in their activities, for instance. Another example would be the philosophy clubs, which tend to focus on and endorse the clearly post-modern and statist metaphysics of Searle. In the Shire, a great deal of these communities overlap and exist more locally as a result of the intentional community of the FSP.

As great as I make the Shire sound, it's not the ultimate goal.

I often say that I'm going to New Hampshire to “find my liberty legs”. If it hasn't been clear in my blog posts, it is certainly in my book: I argue that belief and will exist solely in action. If I believe the things I write in this blog and, for example, will myself to be free, I must necessarily “walk the walk”. If paying taxes and obeying the law are moral and ethical evils, as I claim to believe, then I ought to do what it takes to cease doing so; the same is true of my beliefs that pursuing independence and human flourishing are ethical and aesthetic goods, if I believe that, I must necessarily pursue those activities. In the Shire, I will be far less likely to find myself in a kill-or-be-killed circumstance as a result of avoiding evil and doing good, but it is still too great a risk, given the ultimate nature of the costs associated with such a risk.

As such, migrating from the Shire to somewhere else, further away from imperial influence, is in order. Perhaps central Mexico, rural Greenland, Liberland, Cambodia, or anywhere with a weaker government that is less-interesting to the American Empire. Of course, such a move is incredibly risky. Without a solid grasp of local languages and customs, the laws that do exist in that region, and the skills necessary for self-sufficiency and freely living, my family and I would likely wind up destitute, imprisoned, drone-striked, or in any number of unfortunate modes of being. My time in the Shire is intended to be an attempt at learning the requisite skills, locating the next stopping point, making connections with other liberty-minded people, and possibly recruiting others to go the “the promised land” and found an intentional community there.

Remember, anarchy is a philosophy of personal responsibility.

Responsibility is impossible without reason and knowledge. Fear stands in opposition to all three of those things. One must avoid acting out of fear if one wishes to make rational and beneficial decisions. I bring this up because people have accused me of “running away” because I'm afraid of “they/them/those” and I've been accused of having not already moved to Somalia out of fear that I'm wrong. I have done all I can to rationally pursue cost/benefit and risk/gain analyses concerning these goals as well as engendering a spirit of discernment, and only time will tell if my analyses were correct.

I have taken on responsibilities and made investments throughout my life, and the goals and methods of achieving those goals that I have decided upon are directed at maximizing those investments and my ability to uphold my responsibilities. Maybe I'm mistaken; maybe, once I arrive at the Shire, I will discover that such a goal is best served by finding a state of being “free enough”... who knows?

TL;DR: I'm moving to New Hampshire because the cops are less evil, the laws aren't as far-reaching or draconian, there's fewer taxes, and there are more people there that think like me and value the things I value. I have a job lined up there that will start in about a year, and I'm applying and interviewing for temporary jobs to fill the time between now and when that other job will start. I would love to put my money where my mouth is and go to the Shire today, but I have a family to care for and must therefore be responsible in my pursuit of freedom, even with regards to interim steps towards it.

P.S. I initially produced this post before the NH rulers' decision to defund Planned Parenthood, granting them yet another feather in their hat as far as setting an example of how to pursue “liberty and justice for all”.

 It seems that my philosophy posts get less feedback than my more political or religious posts. I find this disappointing but unsurprising. Today, as you could guess from the introduction is a philosophy post.

Deontology and virtue, morality and ethics... I started discussing these relationships last week. It was only briefly exposed and not defended, so I guess I should probably defend those claims. The first claim was that any statement of “should” or “ought”, when concerning a person's actions, are either ethical or moral statements, without exception. I don't know if this statement really needs defense, as it it merely a definition. I would define moral or ethical statements, broadly, as statements that concern themselves with how one ought to behave or act.

Moral and ethical statements obviously rely on a framework for a determination of truth value. One cannot say “One ought to voluntarily work towards the extinction of the human race,” without a justification for such a claim. One such justification could be “Human beings are destroying the global ecosystem, therefore one ought to voluntarily extinct themselves.” That justification, though, can only be said to be valid if it is operating in a framework which dictates that moral statements are derived from some cosmic preservation principle (ignoring that humans are a natural part of that global ecosystem), or an aesthetic principle that is dependent upon the one uttering the statement, or a misinformed understanding of how one ought to achieve a particular valued state of affairs (if you value nature, humans ought to extinct themselves). Validity does not necessitate actually obtaining in reality, though.

In order to obtain, the statement and it's framework must comport to objective reality while also being logically valid and based on factual premises. “Don't murder because Jesus said so,” is an example of failing to meet these criteria while also stating a moral truth. I argue that “Thou shalt not murder,” is an easily defended and true objective moral fact. However, appealing to something Jesus is purported to have said is not an argument in defense of a statement, it is merely appealing to an authority hidden behind two thousand years of history. Additionally, exclusively using the Bible as a moral framework is impossible; without additional work done outside the realm of Scripture to inform one's interpretation of it will inevitably result in ridiculous statements, such as“homosexuality and abortion aren't sins because Jesus never mentioned them.”

If “Thou shall not murder,” is an objective moral fact, it requires some form of deductive or inductive argument to demonstrate its categorical nature and its unimpeachability. There have been numerous arguments made for such a claim, and I don't feel like pointing them all out. The first ones that come to mind, though, are Kant's formulation of the categorical imperative in “Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals”, Rothbard's defense of the NAP in “War, Peace, and the State”, or Ayn Rand's formulation in “Man's Rights”. Essentially, the shortest and easiest formulation of “Thou shalt not murder” is thus:

• Murder can be defined as “killing an individual against their will without first facing the threat of murder from that individual”.
  
• The definition of a right necessarily extends to all individuals. If one has a belief in a right they or another possesses, it must necessarily extend to all individuals.
  ∴ If one individual has a right to defend themselves from murder, all individuals have the right to do so.
  
• If one denies the right of another to be secure from murder (demonstrated by killing them against their will) one is denying this right to themselves, thereby willing the possibility that they may be killed by another.
  
• In willing that another be able to murder oneself, it makes murdering this individual definitionally impossible, as unwillingness is a necessary condition for murder.
  ∴ If one murders another individual (or argues for the legitimacy of doing so), it does not revoke murder's definitional status as a violation of a right.
  
  

I don't fully agree with this argument, but it is the shortest and most straightforward case for objective moral facts.

Of course, if one is arguing for objective moral facts, they are a deontologist of some sort. Most of which are divine lawyers, trying to figure out God's commandments based on revelation. While a noble effort, such activities are rarely compelling to those outside of whatever cult the divine lawyer is a part of. Deontology, then, is better suited to pursuing objective moral facts by way of rational and axiomatic inquiry into the nature of reality and of man's relationships.

Where Kant or any social justice warrior will argue that deontological maxims can be positive statements of rights, I argue that only the inverse is true. One cannot say with axiomatic certitude that “one must affirm life” is an objective, and therefore categorical, moral fact. An example of why one cannot say “one must affirm life” is because it breaks down in limit cases (and some not so limiting cases). For example, if one is witnessing a murder taking place, can one kill the murderer? Or, if one eats something unhealthy or neglects to devote all their resources to the sustenance of the brain-dead or the starving people on the opposite side of the globe are they committing a crime? Pope Francis' answers aside, I argue that these are obviously not the case. This line of reasoning is what has led to my mantra of “Murder, coercion, and theft are categorically unjust.” This far, these are the three behaviors I have found to be inconsistent with reason in every instance, by definition.

So, “Thou shalt not commit murder, coercion, or theft,” is a deontological objective moral fact. Something that simply exists no more or less than the matter from which my body is constructed, if in a different modality. Of course, as I've said before, this is a certainly stronger moral framework than what is seen in mainstream culture, but it is still incredibly impoverished. One cannot necessarily achieve flourishing by simply ensuring that their interactions with others are voluntary, as one may still do stupid and ill-advised things. The agent in question, of course cannot be coerced into not engaging in these voluntary, but ill-advised, actions. They can, however, be discouraged by rational persuasion. Enter: ethics.

Ethical statements, unlike moral statements, are not predicated on objective moral facts. These are positive statements that can be built on top of moral statements. These statements are subjective, based upon positive value judgments. “If one values the virtuous life, they ought to pursue virtuous actions,” for example. Some are very simple: “If one wishes to make money, they ought to provide products or services in trade with those who have money.” Others may be more complex: “If one wishes to prevent fishing entire species into extinction, one ought to purchase the bodies of water in which the fish reside or construct fish farms.” These more complex ethical statements are usually at the heart of the heated debates found on facebook and in politics.

These statements have a common grammar and syntax; they are all if->then statements. The “if” portion of the statement is an assessment of the value in question. Usually the value in question is an aesthetic or pragmatic issue. In other words, it's either,“I like this thing because it makes me feel good” or “This is a thing that I need/want in order to be fulfilled.” The “then” portion of the statement is the place in which action is informed. Once one has determined the value in question, the “then” portion is where understanding the causal nature of reality can say “this is the way that is most likely to achieve that valued outcome”. In order to utter a true ethical statement, then, one must actually understand the innumerable influences of reality on the particular valued outcome in question, at least sufficiently to make an accurate and informed guess. In the realm of human action, economics, biology, and other areas of philosophy are crucial in generating an accurate “then” statement. The reason I argue this is the case is simple: unintended consequences or acts of ignorance are unlikely to accomplish the valued objective and are more likely to prevent the accomplishment of that valued objective. Walter Block, in his “Defending the Undefendable”, demonstrates this very clearly, concisely, and evocatively.

This understanding of morality and ethics is why I have attempted to eschew use of the terms “good” and “bad/evil”. These words, in our common parlance, and even in philosophy have been reduced to mere aesthetic judgments. There is little distinction between “this pizza is good” and “giving money to hobos is good” or “sushi is bad” and “drugs are bad”. As a basis of morality or ethics, then, these aesthetic judgments are essentially meaningless. I can say, “If you think drugs are bad, then you shouldn't do them,” but that is the extent to which an ethical statement can be produced based on that flimsy of an “if” statement. If something can be determined as immoral (or unjustifiable, as I tend to refer to it) there is no need to make an additional aesthetic statement about it. If one is attempting an ethical prescription to others, they ought to have more compelling a case for the “if” in question than “it's icky and I don't like it”.

Remember, anarchy is a philosophy of personal responsibility. If you want to accomplish an ethical action, such as bettering the livelihood of the impoverished in the third world, one ought to ensure that they are well-informed as to what course of action is most likely to result in achieving that valued outcome. For example, just throwing money, food, and Bibles at them creates a perverse incentive to remain poor and continue to receive free stuff from other people. However, bringing an industry specific to that region (for example some sort of crop or livestock that will grow better in that region than elsewhere or acquisition of a natural resource found in that area) to the people and employing those that are willing to work will improve the infrastructure and quality of life for all of the people in the area.


TL;DR: In the interest of producing valued outcomes and maintaining one's own integrity, individuals ought to attempt to develop a solid moral and ethical awareness and grammar. In order to pursue this end, an awareness of deontological principles and the causal nature of reality is a necessary skill. Objective moral facts are few in number but categorical in scope: “Thou shall not.” Ethical statements are subjective and as numerous as there are value judgments, but must be informed by the objective causal nature of the universe. Before arguing on facebook about “If we just...” or “If you don't think this, you're stupid”, it would behoove the agent in question to assess their aesthetic premises and their fundamental values. After expressing those premises, the discussion is a matter of clarifying the “then” portion of an ethical statement.

Yes, the title sounds really bullshitty, but it certainly is an eye-catcher, isn't it? If you listened to last week's belated post, you may recall me talking about my journey to anarchism. When I was rounding the bend on my final approach to liberty, I was repulsed by certain environments I encountered and was kinda' forced to enter the philosophy of anarchism through the back door. The rabid paulbots were throwing temper tantrums over the media ignoring the existence of their messiah. The Libertarians were too busy voting, raising money, pretending to be freedom-minded while also pretending to be politicians and endorsing ridiculous concepts like abortion and gay marriage. The objectivists were being generally surly, demeaning, and staunchly atheist. The AnComs were too busy burning down private property to be bothered by the fact that the government was out to get us all. Most distressing, though, were the AnCaps.

“Wait, ain't you an AnCap?” Not quite. If you recall my post about the MadPhilosopher logo, I consider myself to be just a straight-up anarchist. Since before I had started this blog, I have been economically literate enough to know that capitalism is, for all intents and purposes, a necessary and inevitable feature of pre-and-post-state societies, but that doesn't necessarily make me an AnCap. Part of the reason I don't consider myself to be so is because of the experiences I had with them on my way to liberty.

My first exposure to anarcho-capitalism was under the more innocuous name of “Austrian Economics” when I was reading Rothbard and Spooner. I read these guys towards the end of my communist days, when I was trying to figure out why previous attempts at the communist experiment didn't work out. I was hoping to find a handful of controls that those dirty capitalists had come up with to ensure that products were manufactured within expected tolerances. For example, if I go to Home Depot, a great number of things are standardized. You've got X, Y, and Z diameters of pipes and fittings, and there seems to be the perfect supply available to meet demand; rarely would something run out, but there were only ever a couple dozen items on the shelves... and in communist experiments, people would cut corners to meet the letter of the regulations while putting in the minimum quantity of resources. “Make a million nails,” results in thumbtack-sized nails. “Make this weight in nails,” results in railroad spikes. And when it gets to the point of “Make a million nails that are exactly this size, shape, and out of this material... and if you don't, it's off to the gulag with you,” results in everyone saying “fuck it, I quit” and the USSR collapses overnight.

Clearly, I didn't get the answer I wanted. “Stop making regulations, and let people do what they will... don't worry, it'll all work out just fine,” isn't exactly what a communist wants to hear. I learned a lot, though; it definitely had a pronounced effect on my migration from communism to the Tea Party and then to liberty. I returned to doing research in the Austrian School when I was getting into objectivism, later on, and that's when I discovered the AnCaps. There was a specific distinction in the rhetoric of the Austrians like Rothbard as compared to the AnCaps I met: awareness of the is/ought divide.

The AnCaps I met, either through their ignorance or a misunderstanding on my part, seemed to equivocate that which is economically advisable as identical to that which is ethically desirable. This was disappointing to me; AnCaps were clearly the inheritors of the Austrian School, but they lacked the moral awareness of their predecessors. My motivation for communism and the subsequent ideological migration was primarily a moral one, as fits in the rhetoric of Aristotle, Aquinas, Marx, and Trotsky, and to hear “That which is profitable is that which is moral,” rubbed me every wrong way. I am totally open to this interpretation being mostly due to misunderstandings on my part, though.

The communist projects, ostensibly, are an attempt at adapting economics to ethics. Ironically, the Tea Party, in their own fucked-up way, are engaged in a similar project: attempting to adapt politics (the widespread application of violence) to ethics. Even Rand and the objectivists are engaged in that project: adapting public consciousness to ethics. So, to see AnCaps seeming to do the reverse, adapting ethics to economics, was so contrary to my methods of reason that I didn't know how to process it. Now that I've mentally acquired my liberty legs, I see anarchism as an attempt to adapt oneself to objective moral facts... something that Christians ought to be more sympathetic to.

In hindsight, I think that I misunderstood mostly due to the paradigm I was operating in, adapting various things to ethics. I think that one thing that didn't help, though, was the lack of philosophical knowledge on the part of the AnCaps in question. I think I'm gonna try to fix that here. That which is profitable is not necessarily moral. It could be profitable to rob a liquor store, but it's a violation of one's right to be free from theft and is therefore immoral. On a long enough timeline, I argue, that which is moral is most profitable. For example, not robbing a liquor store will most likely play out better for one in the long run. Even virtuous things, such as sustainable living or industry, when done responsibly and rationally, are likely to play out well in the long run; investments in oceanic desalinization would have suddenly become incredibly profitable in California in recent years and the same can be said for growing homegrown organic hipster-feed.

What do I mean by this is/ought, ethical/economic divide? As I said, when talking about Paradigmatic Awareness and Moral Ambiguity, one's actions ought to be informed and rational. Statements of “should” or “ought”, when concerning a person's actions, are without exception either ethical or moral statements. (Taxonomic note: I consider moral statements to be statements as relate to objective moral facts and ethical statements to be “if->then” statements predicated on value judgments, but that's a different blog post that hasn't been written yet.) Moral statements are relatively easy: something is either moral or immoral, depending on it's status as relates to deontological principles... you know, murder coercion and theft are immoral. Ethical statements are a little more involved, and tend to be at the heart of a lot of angry internet arguments: “If you care about poor people, you've gotta vote for this rich guy,” or whatever.

In order to make an accurate ethical statement, one must understand the intricacies of the “if” and have a solid grasp of the way the world works in order to produce the appropriate “then”. This is where economics comes into play. It goes well beyond “if you want to pay rent, you probably shouldn't buy this meth,” and even beyond, “if you care about poor people, you should probably lift employment regulations so that they can get a job.” For example, an understanding of basic principles of economics can inform decisions that have nothing to do with money itself. This is because economics is about management of scarce resources, not just money. For example, if I have a limited amount of time and I'm trying to maximize my gains in family relationships, self-education, and general pleasure, then I should probably try to generate an overlap in applications: do something educational with the family that isn't boring as hell. Knowing when to cut one's losses is another useful piece of information: cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, utility assessments, etc. are, too.

In other words, it's not a statement of morality to say eliminating perverse incentives can incentivize productive behavior; however, it is an ethical statement to say “if you want to encourage productive behaviors in moocher and looter classes, then you should try to eliminate perverse incentives.” I'm not talking matters of political policy, mind you. After all, managing the widespread application of violence is immoral and if one wants to make the world a better place, then they should opt-out of political engagement.

Remember: anarchy is a philosophy of personal responsibility. How can one hold themselves to a moral or ethical standard if they don't know how to accomplish their goals or even set those goals? If one wishes to travel to a third world country and improve the quality of life of the people there (preaching religious views included, but optional), they ought to understand what behaviors are being incentivized by showing up and just giving things away or doing the work oneself. Without educating and assisting in the development of infrastructure, gifts and labor are more harmful than helpful. Before trying to do good, one must know how.


TL;DR: Economics and ethics are two different fields of study. However, ethics devoid a solid understanding of how the world works is useless at best and misanthropic at worst. As much as statists will try to deny it, economics is an excellent instrument for understanding human action. Basic scientific literacy, including physics, chemistry, economics, etc. is necessary for the development of a solid ethical grounding. This distinction and requirement is important to acknowledge explicitly when discussing economics and/or ethics with non-anarchists, lest outsiders misunderstand.

A second audio-only post in a row?  The reason why is explained in the recording.  I promise, guys, after my "vacation" in New Hampshire next week, I'll be back on top of getting regular OC out to y'all.

https://soundcloud.com/mad-philosopher/musings-on-my-autobiography

This is an audio-only post.  No transcript, no outline, unrehearsed.  The planned post for this weekend is taking a little longer than anticipated, but I felt I should at least record something for the sake of our Soundcloud sponsor, Anarchist Lexicon.

 Has Mother Church wielded the sword and shackles of the state for so long She has forgotten the use of the shepherd's crook?

A Response to Laudato Si

As is usually the case, the Pope did something and the liberal media came in their pants with excitement. My less-involved Catholic friends and some non-catholic friends then asked me what he actually said and did and what it means, media spin aside. I make it a point to read Encyclicals as they come out, as often as possible. While I'm skeptical of Catholic social teaching for a number of reasons, it would be unbecoming of a Catholic intellectual critical of some social teachings to not keep abreast of progress made in that regard. Also, with the persistent questions from others, I find that it is beneficial to myself, my friends, and our relationships to be able to provide a service in the form of translating 170-odd pages of teaching that's very involved and built on millennia of scholarship into something digestible to a more secular mind.

In interest of defending Church teaching against the portrayal it will receive in the mainstream (RE: pagan) culture, I spent a good chunk of yesterday and this morning reading and re-reading Laudato Si and reading many short commentaries written by various clergymen and lay Catholic journalists. I have several pages of handwritten notes, addressing specific things that were said, the general theme of the encyclical, and its relationship to history and standing Church teachings, and I'm not sure how much use those notes are going to find in this post, as there's some very important general themes that need to be addressed. These issues far overshadow individual lines or phrases that may be misinterpreted or otherwise used contrary to the goals set out for the encyclical, so these smaller issues may be overlooked in this post.

The most important point to get out of the way is the relationship between Catholic social teaching and the general body of scholarship within the Church. Many Catholics, even devout Catholics do not understand the role that the encyclicals and other works in Catholic social teaching play in the Faith. Catholic social teaching is not Doctrine or Dogma, it is not an infallible pronouncement by the Pope acting alone and in persona Christi. Catholic social teaching is, essentially, the magisterium of the Church saying, “Based on what we have to work with, here, this looks like the best solution to a particular problem the Church faces.” In the case of this encyclical, it identifies several problems, some real and some imagined, and looks for a root cause for these problems in order to make “a variety of proposals possible, all capable of entering into dialogue with a view to developing comprehensive solutions.” In such a dialogue, “...the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion; she knows that honest debate must be encouraged among experts, while respecting divergent views.” This post (that will be wholly invisible to the magisterium and to those who could and would affect change) is an attempt to address the issues presented, their root causes, and continue the dialogue sought by Pope Francis. No, I don't claim to be an “expert” as indicated in the encyclical, but I am confident that I am no more or less an expert than a substantial majority of the people involved in and affected by this dialogue. As such, I am as entitled as anyone else to express my informed assessment of the situation.

This document is essentially three different encyclicals blended together in a frenetic and haphazard arrangement, a departure from the more analytic and procedural voice and style of Francis' immediate predecessors. It may sound strange, but I will do my best to explain what I mean.

One of the encyclicals is an assessment of mankind's relationship to it's environment, the role that we play in our environment's well-being and the role that our environment plays in our well-being, both spiritually and physically. It explores how exploitative and irreverent practices with regards to creation develop vicious attitudes within the practitioners which results in the exploitation and irreverence being directed at other human beings as well. In a surprising but well-defended argument, the Pope lays out how industrial monoculture farming is culturally related to inhumane medical experimentation and abortion, for example. This encyclical reads as a slightly less poetic text that one would expect Francis' namesake to have written, waxing on and on about the glory of the Creator as seen in His creation, our role as stewards of that creation, and the teleology of all things. This encyclical appears to be addressed to the traditional audience of the encyclicals: the people of the Church in the world at large and within the magisterium. It calls for a pastoral approach centered on acknowledging the almost panentheist nature of reality, how God Himself is part of his creation and His presence in His creatures must be respected, lest one fall into the habit of not acknowledging that same presence on one's fellow humans. With typical Franciscan flair, the primary focus is on how the poor are marginalized and harmed the most by these irresponsible and irreverent practices.

Another one of the encyclicals is drawing a connection between this renewed environmental focus and the greater body of Catholic teachings, the relationship between abortion, postmodernism, consumerism, the destruction of the family, the evils of war and violence, etc. These passages are, unsurprisingly, the main focus of the articles popping up all over the internet titled some variation of “Ten things that the mainstream media will ignore in Laudato Si”. This encyclical is, essentially, a reaffirmation in the long-standing tenets of the Church: Abortion is murder, contraception is bad, gay marriage is a metaphysical impossibility, postmodernism is an intellectual cancer that is killing humanity and faith, etc. The only new addition to this litany that is presented is to try and add “and mind your greenhouse gasses” somewhere in-between “Postmodernism is bad,” and “We have to be careful with GMOs.”

The main focus for everyone, myself included, is this third encyclical. This one is addressed to “world leaders” and the UN in particular, as opposed to the Church and its people. This encyclical is rife with praise for worldwide economic manipulations, the use of government violence to accomplish the ends of the Church, an appeal for granting all governments more authority and force to implement stricter environmental regulations, broader economic manipulations, and redistribution of wealth. This encyclical explicitly calls for a progressive carbon tax, a world government with a navy and police force with authority to supersede national governments, national and local governments to implement “free” public housing and utility access, and heightened enforcement of drug laws.

Worse, though, than pleading with the state to use it's swords and shackles to coerce responsible behavior out of humanity at large, Francis takes a page out of Pope Urban VIII's book. Overstepping his authority in moral and theological matters, the Pope attempts to side with the “scientific consensus” and endorse a worldview that is anti-scientific and empirically falsified. Declaring human-caused global warming to be an existential threat to creation of a magnitude equivalent to the great flood which God repented of in Genesis, Francis demonstrates that he needs to hire better researchers and ought to be more reticent before declaring Galileo anathema. He makes this mistake twice, in rapid succession. After demonstrating an unwillingness to critically assess the legacy academic stance in light of empirical evidence in science, he does so again in the realm of economics. Using Keynesian economic prescriptions and “green” socialist rhetoric, he creates a straw-man of the free market which is even more flimsy and caricatured than those manufactured by liberal college students on social media.

  There was one line, in particular that required a double-take, a re-reading, and it ultimately elicited a violent reaction from me:

“Civil authorities have the right and duty to adopt clear and firm measures in support of small producers and differentiated production. To ensure economic freedom from which all can effectively benefit, restraints occasionally have to be imposed on those possessing greater resources and financial power. To claim economic freedom while real conditions bar many people from actual access to it, and while possibilities for employment continue to shrink, is to practise[sic] a doublespeak which brings politics into disrepute.” p96

This quote is taken from the midst of pages upon pages of diatribe against international outsourcing of labor, speculative investment, development of trade infrastructures, the automation of menial tasks. While lamenting these actions, the Pope calls for an increase in the policies which are the direct cause of them. Economic regulations, such as the minimum wage, intellectual property legislation, and progressive corporate taxation and subsidies creates innumerable perverse incentives within the market, as a natural matter of course which is empirically verifiable. To blame “the market” and paint such claims as “a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals,” demonstrates a wholesale ignorance of the science that is economics. One should expect a former scientist to understand the limitations of his understanding of others' fields and at least call upon them to inform his opinion. If he has done so, he needs to look harder for a reliable resource.

The reason this sudden interest in mainstream sciences and display of ignorance in these matters is offensive is because the Pope is a moral authority in the world, and to draw upon obviously false data, bundle it up in moral language and issue ethical and political proclamations demeans both the sciences he misrepresents and the position which he occupies in the See of Peter.

These three encyclicals are blended together in a manner that makes them inextricable from each other. In one sentence, Francis will point out a theological understanding concerning substantive relationship of the trinity, move to an analogy concerning the nature of agriculture, and indict private ownership of resources. Because of this, it is impossible to tell where the Pope is addressing individual Catholics and exhorting them to consider their role in creation from a theological perspective and where he is exhorting politicians to use violence in order to protect the poor in the developing world from global warming from an economical perspective.

There is no denying that people everywhere in the world are facing ecological crises: living in cities that are not conducive to human flourishing, living near industrial mining operations, facing evictions from tribal lands or private property in the interest of economic gains for the powerful, the destruction of biodiversity in inhabited areas, and a general disregard for the inalienable rights of human beings are all issues that need to be addressed, and quickly. However, to blame “the free market” when there is no such thing, to pin the blame on people that are merely doing their best to survive when faced with systematic violations of their rights, and to fall back on methods that are the direct cause for the decline of Christianity and the rise of the postmodern world seriously misdiagnoses the cause of the problem and results in a very dangerous situation, both in the world at large and in the Church itself.

This political edict in the guise of moral teaching places those that are well-versed in science and economics in the difficult position of trying to justify the teachings of the Church that are explicitly contrary to what they know to be true. Some may lose their faith, either in the Church or in reason. The loss of faith in either is a tragedy, and it can be prevented simply by Francis double-checking his work and being cautious not to overstep the bounds of papal authority. An even greater tragedy than some umber of individuals losing their faith due to a contradiction in moral teaching and empirical fact is the alienation that such teachings has formed between the Church and the people and institutions best situated to aid the Church in pursuing a more Christian world. Economists the world over are denouncing the Church and discovering the long-standing trend on Catholic social teaching towards full-blown socialism. The scientific communities that tend to lean more socially and fiscally conservative (like the Church) also happen to be the ones that have disproven any substantial causal relationship between human activity and global climate change, in outright ignoring their findings, the Pope has alienated the scientific community once again, driving the long standing wedge between reason and faith even further. Even in moral and philosophical circles, there is outrage that the pope would undermine basic human rights (such as the right to be secure in one's property) for the sake of the rights of woodland critters and soil bacteria, which is explicitly done in this document.


TL;DR: Despite all of my defenses of Pope Francis to-date, my re-interpretations of his words in the light of reason and Church teaching in order to explain to others how one can rationally support his teachings, there is no way to deny that he is a full-on socialist with a callous disregard for economics and science. While I am not a sedevacantist or about to apostatize, this is an excellent opportunity to begin picking apart the whole of Catholic social teaching and calling for reform in the Church, not concerning matters which are doctrinally secure (such as prohibitions on gay marriage or abortion) but concerning instances where the Church draws too heavily on philosophically and scientifically flawed information. Many lament that this encyclical will be remembered as “the global warming encyclical”. I lament it as well, the global warming was merely a pretext for pushing a theologically-backed call for one world socialist government, and to remember it as the “global warming encyclical” discounts the very real damage that has already been done by the document to the integrity of the Church and the incalculable damage that will be done if world leaders heed the Pope's plea.

Discovering that the See of Peter is occupied by a died-in-the-wool socialist is a good opportunity to review Church history. I've found, in my limited education of the subject, that the delineation between a Doctor of the Church and a heretic is a razor-thin one between those who are willing to admit the possibility of error and those too prideful to do so.

Only time will tell.

You can read the full text of Laudato Si here:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

If someone were to have read my post concerning honor and engaged in critical discussion, they may have accused me of being a non-dualist. Claiming that honor and same are the same thing would sound to many as if I'm saying “good” and “evil” are the same thing. I am not a non-dualist, but you may not believe me after hearing/reading this today. Today, I'm addressing another ancient concept that nobody seems to understand in this, the postmodern era: justice.

You hear about “justice” every day: SJWs demanding that straight white men be burned at the stake for “social justice”, different victims or criminals becoming the focus of “justice for this guy” mobs, in the statist prayer “liberty and justice for all”, justice in music, television, movies, lectures, C-span, everywhere. Reading Plato, one sees justice presented as “giving to everyone what they are owed” which is often interpreted through the lenses of “an eye for an eye” and “repay your debts”. Something often addressed alongside justice, and often used to help define the limits of justice, is mercy. People point to the beautiful occasions in which someone forgives the man who killed that person's entire family or something and say “faith in humanity: restored”. Christians, inspired by Thomism, love to juxtapose mercy and justice as opposites and then struggle to argue that God can simultaneously possess two opposites to an infinite degree, which is simply absurd.

“Blasphemy!” No, not really. It is the very definition of absurdity to simultaneously hold that both A and non-A are true. No amount of special pleading (mystery) or symbolic logic can change that. I'm not saying God isn't infinitely merciful or just, only that Aquinas made yet another mistake. As a matter of fact, I'm dropping this God talk in favor of philosophical exploration of justice and mercy themselves. Those of my readers that are both intelligent and theologically-minded will be able to follow this line of thought to its necessary conclusion concerning God's nature.

Most people, as I understand it, believe that justice is either some formless and vapid idea like “equality” or “fairness” or that it means “retribution”. “This guy did something bad, so we have to do bad things to him.” Very few people will argue with that description, only the specific reason for or implementation of it. “That guy raped someone, so we must lick him in a rape cage (prison) for the rest of his life.” “This lady stole some money, so we must take everything she owns or earns until it is paid back... and a little off the top for me.” There's always arguments as to how far is too far, like the death penalty; “should we murder a murderer?” but rarely is the more fundamental question asked.

Is doing “evil” to “evildoers” justice?

I'll leaver that question for your rumination while I address mercy. In the ancient world, mercy was a vice that only the most powerful could afford. In the Christian world, it was a benevolent act that even the most impoverished peasant could perform towards even the most powerful king. In the post-Christian world, it's a meaningless feel-good word for being nice. In each of these eras, the meaning of mercy has been assumed to mean “staying the execution of justice.” Debt forgiveness, governor pardons, jury nullification, victims and their families forgiving criminals, for example. Mercy, then, is shown by those too helpless to extract retribution on those with power. The paradigm case would be millennial SJWs getting jobs and shutting up.

Of course these two concepts are at odds. If justice has been a perennial issue of rights, honor, and morality throughout recorded history and mercy has been a more recent afterthought, it is no wonder that so many are confused, There are lots of exciting logical conundrums which emerge with this juxtaposition of two aesthetically pleasing opposites. I'm not sure I need to explore them right now, as everyone has read a book or watched a movie which hinged on one such conundrum or another. Any Christian that hasn't wrestled with these problems has not critically assessed their faith. It's a very real concern: when does one do evil to evildoers and when does one forgive them? I believe I have a solution. I'm not about to take credit for it, as the inspiration at least comes from the first couple centuries AD.

Our understanding of justice and the function it serves is wrong. Mercy, then, is also misunderstood, due to its status as wholly dependent on justice for its meaning. If justice is people getting what they deserved, people ought to do their best to keep their distance from me; as I've mentioned in a recent Daily Resource Suggestion, “Nobody deserves anything. If we deserve anything, it is nothingness.” Unsurprisingly, this is a Catholic belief; that's why theologians are so desperate to make God merciful.

I have intentionally avoided discussing justice from the utilitarian position, as they equivocate justice with political ethics: “Whatever laws and violence are shown to maximize pleasure for the most people, except the obvious answer of 'none'.” “Justice” as “deterring crime through punishing those that break the law” is a subset of the utilitarian stance. I call it moral/legal equivalence, and that's all the time I want to waste on it today.

If justice is not retribution or deterrent, if it's not repaying debts and taking an eye for an eye, what is it? If mercy is not the suspension of justice, what is mercy? Justice is restoration, and it is growth. Mercy is the proper application of justice. Doesn't make sense? Good.

Justice exists betwixt individuals. If one were to exist alone in the universe, there would be no party for him to injure or be injured by, there would be no party to establish or show justice to. In this way, justice is a concept that is only manifest between individuals. If one is injured by another, whether it be the intentional commission of a crime or an unintentional destruction of property or honor, their relationship is also damaged. If justice were merely returning harm for harm, both parties are rendered worse off than before the execution of justice and their relationship is damaged doubly so. If justice were merely the replacement of damaged goods, justice could not be applied in circumstances in which the damage is incalculable or immaterial such as the loss of a child or the stripping of honor. Justice (or mercy) could not merely be the forgiveness of transgressions between individuals, as whatever harm has been affected is still present and the relationship will remain damaged after the initial act of forgiveness.

Justice, if restorative, would require the growth of all parties involved. If one party were to be harmed by another, for both the property damaged and the relationship between individuals weakened, they must grow beyond the damage done. Harm itself is contrary to growth, even if it allows at times for growth that would have been otherwise impossible, so returning harm for harm is not justice. The replacement or repayment for damaged goods can be incorporated into an act of justice, as it is an attempt at restoring the status of things to their original state. As mentioned above, though, such an action alone cannot be justice and such an action may be impossible as some things are irreplaceable and relationships cannot return to previous states. The same goes for forgiveness, it is necessary but not sufficient for restoration of relationships and statuses.

The specific implementations of justice are contingent upon the circumstances of the injury between parties. What is required to grow beyond a stranger scuffing someone's shoe is orders of magnitude lesser than what is required to grow beyond a friend or family member murdering one's family with a chainsaw. In the first instance, a more sincere apology and offer to make amends and a subsequent act of forgiveness and re-polish or replacement of the shoes (by either party) is all that is required. In the latter case, the one concerning a murder most foul, I know not by what means one would grow beyond the loss of one's family nor if a relationship could be restored after such an inhuman crime, and I hope never to discover the answer.

Such a limitation is not a limitation of justice, but of those that ought to pursue it. Justice is one of the greatest expressions of discipline and the quintessential foundation of community for, without the mutual guarantee of justice, individuals are left to their own Hobbesian devices, unable to even raise a family. This is mercy, the manner in which justice can restore peace, community, and flourishing, how justice allows the growth of community despite the spectre of risk and bad actors.

Clearly, there is a tension between justice and self-defense. If I am obligated to defend myself, my autonomy, and my property at all costs, how can justice be applied once my assailant is dispatched? In some ways, it cannot; whatever relationship my assailant and I had is severed the moment he chooses to commit a crime against me, and it cannot be restored once he is dead. This tension ought to serve as a reminder to avoid exposure to crime and to encourage one to attempt de-escalation before resorting immediately to violence when someone is being an asshole.


TL;DR: Justice is not punishment, nor is it getting even. The only logically consistent description of justice is that it is restorative. Justice is a mutual concession of guilt and effort to grow beyond damages caused. There are limit cases to justice that can and ought to be explored, but first principles and the immediate fallout of those principles ought to be explored first, especially because this understanding of justice has been largely ignored in modern culture.

 Haven't you heard about how alien lizard jews did 9/11 to get the chemtrail program off the ground? It's all part of the plan to take your guns and re-establish the supremacy of the white, cis-male, capitalist, patriarchy. No? Well, how about how american doctors, under the orders of the federal government, injected syphilis into a bunch of black people (calling it a vaccination) and watched them slowly die an agonizing death? No? One more: did you hear about how the founder of Planned Parenthood openly admitted to being a racist and founded the company for the sake of implementing a far-reaching eugenics program and the intellectual and political elite applauded her for it? No? Not surprising. The terrifying thing about this list is that two out of three items are a matter of historical fact easily verified by reading documents published by the actual perpetrators of the crimes in question. The lizard jews, however, are a little better at covering their tracks.

For the longest portion of my life, I have been what is commonly referred to as a conspiracy theorist. At one point in my life, I could have made Alex Jones himself blush The term and practice of conspiracy theory has an interesting and colorful history, but that's a different story for a later time. Today, I want to explore the nature and role of conspiracy theory in the life of a liberty-minded individual. I believed in alien/government conspiracies of control and technology, worldwide economic planning conspiracies, international government conspiracies, class warfare conspiracies, and more. Smaller in scope, the events around September eleventh, 2001 had led me to strongly distrust the official story which emerges in real time when varying types of crises arise.

Looking at myself, making use of the Hobbesian fallacy of introspection, I think I can identify two causes for one to become a conspiracy theorist. If one has a skeptical disposition but is indoctrinated to believe in “higher powers” without rational justification for that belief, one is forced to either eschew or modify ad-hoc their beliefs when faced with rational criticism. In the case of conspiracy theories, lack of evidence is often considered to be proof of conspiracy, implementing the same rationale as a witch hunt, the internment of Japanese Americans, or McCarthy-style paranoia. It's easy for an irrational belief in celestial parent figure who constantly messes with your life to become a belief that extends to “capitalists” or “all males” or “space aliens”. There may actually be a God, and there may actually be conspiracies, but irrational beliefs in them are just that, irrational. Once one can rationally prove or make a compelling case for such things, it becomes less a theory and more a justified true belief, AKA knowledge.

The second, and likely common, cause for one to become a conspiracy theorist is one of... well... immaturity. If one finds themselves frequently at a disadvantage and lacks the means to overcoming said disadvantage, one can easily fall into what Nietzsche calls “Bad Conscience”. We don't have time here to really explore Nietzsche (If you, the reader would like me talk more about Nietzsche, let me know. I would love to make at least a full Nietzsche post.), but a super-high-altitude description of “bad conscience” is in order. Bad conscience is basically embracing and fetishizing one's own weaknesses while demonizing powerful traits and those that one feels disadvantaged against. Whether or not the perceived disadvantage one faces is real or not, it is a natural behavior to pin advantage and blame on someone else. Just because it's natural doesn't mean it is beneficial or righteous, though. Ultimately, as with every other instance of adversity, one must overcome or circumvent one's disadvantage or consign themselves to death.

How does the externalization of adversity demonstrate immaturity? In itself, it doesn't. However, if that externalization takes the form of “the Jews”, “the patriarchy” “gun grabbers”, “those Christians”, “Satan”, or whatever other shape-shifting omnipotent boogeyman one can cook up, it demonstrates an unwillingness or inability to educate oneself as to the actual circumstances and how one might overcome them. Again, it very well may be the case that Satan sits on the masonic throne and tells the Jews to go out and impoverish the world for their lizard overlords... but that isn't the immediate issue one faces in day-to-day life. If you can't get a job, it could be more because you've demonstrated irresponsible tendencies by getting a women's studies degree on a credit card and a little less because of the patriarchy. In either case, whether or not the conspiracy exists, it is at least intellectual immaturity and could be emotional or social immaturity as well. Here it is, people, an admission that I was once immature. Hell, I still don't believe the official story of 9/11 and I think the Titanic was sunk intentionally, make of that what you will. Why is it immature? Because, if one is at a disadvantage, one must be able to diagnose and overcome that disadvantage; going “Oh, well, it's not my fault... it's impossible to overcome the Bilderberg conspiracy,” renders one unable to grow and overcome adversity. If one is not actually at a disadvantage, yet they see a conspiracy of boogeymen, they develop a learned helplessness and cannot flourish.

Also of note is the manner in which these conspiracy theories influence society once enough people agree that it is the truth. “The Jews” ruined the 20th century German economy, “the Capitalists” oppressed the Russian proletariat, “Islam” blew up the world trade center, “the patriarchy” raped everyone ever all the time, “Satan” made everyone in Africa black and consorts with witches in Salem, “the speculators” caused famines, “the Church”intentionally slowed scientific progress, “Americans of Japanese descent” were plotting to overthrow wartime America's empire... do we need more examples? The problem with conspiracy theories and mobs of immature, angry people is the way that it collectivizes “the other” and justifies the oppression and slaughter of innocent human beings. Conspiracy theorists feed state violence.

More important than what happens when conspiracy theories become popular, more important, even, than the way immature people will be kept from flourishing, is the way that they distract from more real and actionable issues. The reason I took so long to realize that any organization predicated on coercion, murder, or theft is intrinsically unjust and misanthropic and any job which requires such is unjust and misanthropic, and that I have a responsibility to avoid such practices is because I was distracted from such things by “the evil globalist capitalist cabal”, “secret government/alien alliances”, and a handful of other conspiracies. I see so many people seeing systematic oppression by laws and law enforcement in Ferguson and Baltimore but being distracted from their oppressors by the spectre of “racism”. Conversely, I see people witnessing oppression by federal edict in southern Nevada but being distracted by the spectre of “socialism” (the Republican caricature of it, not the intrinsic nature of statism).

When people are so terrified that ISIS, Mexicans, or Chinese entrepreneurs are going to invade the country and behead Christians, steal their jobs, and give them more government, they forget that the laws passed, armies sent, and crimes committed in the name of defending against these boogeymen will eventually be turned against themselves. When people are bogged down in looking for a specific imperial agendas, like “the war on local government/guns/cash/women/minorities/gays/Christians/the environment/etc.”, they are distracted from the root issue that is empire itself. Even in libertarian circles, many are prone to forgetting that the enemy is the state itself as opposed to just the Federal government, the patriarchy/racists/sexists, neighboring governments, the Fed, lizard Jews, chemtrails, vaccination programs, or any other lesser, symptomatic, nebulous enemy.

If a man were to approach you, brandishing a gun and demanding your money and your obeisance, what is a more pressing matter: the mugger standing before you or a cabal of 1%ers sitting on a private island thousands of miles away? If your livelihood were contingent upon the whims of a sociopath living down the street, what would be more of an existential threat: your unruly neighbor or a guy who really hates white people, humps goats, and prays to the devil on the literal opposite side of the planet? If your king declares that you have no right to raise your own children, own land, or avoid being conscripted, wouldn't that be more concerning than which patch of dirt he happened to be born on? What I mean to ask is that if there were a demonstrable and immediate existential threat, why would one concern themselves with a merely possible and nigh-unstoppable future crisis?

Besides, the burden of proof rests heavily on conspiracy theorists. One need only to say:

Murder, coercion, and theft are unjust
Taxation is theft
∴ Taxation is unjust

This is all that's required (with appropriate definitions and such) to undermine the legitimacy of all governments, whereas a conspiracy theorist must often resort to grainy photographs, redacted segments of declassified documents, receipts from trash cans, numerology, and the rantings of this hobo over here in order to show that the UN performs satanic rituals to oppress women and George Soros needs to steal all your guns in order to join the club. If you set a standard of proof for, say, the existence of God (or his non-existence), that same standard must be applied to the existence (or non-existence) of Krishna or Sasquatch. Unless one is willing to say that the absence of evidence of God's existence if proof that he exists (there are some nutjobs who say this), that same claim cannot be made about a Japanese-American conspiracy to hurt the war effort.

Of course, some conspiracies are real. Some are incredibly high profile and far-reaching.Pop culture sites, wikipedia, and even history textbooks will occasionally feature conspiracies so convoluted and successful that no one would believe a movie that had the same plot. These conspiracies serve as easy examples as to why the state is the enemy, but they are not required in order to make a compelling case. For example, mandatory vaccination programs are categorically unjust as they deprive people of their bodily autonomy and self-ownership. It doesn't hurt, though, to point to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and ask how one can know that they will only be injected with what they are told they are receiving (or that it is safe, for that matter).


TL;DR: Conspiracy theories typically distract from more pressing and manageable crises. Those who engage in conspiracy theory also tend to demonstrate an unwillingness to improve themselves, instead choosing to allow themselves to be a helpless victim to an omnipotent boogeyman. In the case that conspiracy theory influences state policy, millions are subjugated and killed. One must remember that politicians and cops are the enemy, not because they are gun grabbers or racists, but because they are politicians and cops. In a free world, “the patriarchy” and Islam would have no ability to conspire in any manner that would affect you or me. It is only the violence of the state which allows for conspiracies to harm the human race.

Dear Mom and Dad,

We rarely find time to talk anymore. I guess that's what happens when you have eight kids and your son has three more. Rushed, oft-interrupted, and emotionally-charged bursts of conversation are not conducive to mutual understanding, and I understand you are too busy to read and understand everything I write. While considering this reality, I've decided to address my confusion over our philosophical disagreements and consolidate my ruminations into the most direct and concise letter I can write for your to read at your leisure. Depending on how the letter turns out, I may publish it as an open letter on my blog, for others to better understand as well.

Really, the heart of my confusion is centered on mom's disparaging and dismissive attitude towards my ideas and understanding of the world. I have arrived at this stage of my understanding primarily due to your influence. Dad's perennial pragmatism and skepticism gave me a high standard and difficult challenge for rational methodology and mom's example for action has given me a healthy respect for intuition and substantial consideration regarding virtuous and moral action. In a way, I guess I'm concerned that I may have put you on a pedestal and now require more form you than you can provide, but I am extremely reluctant to admit that possibility. So, here I will write the things I feel you have taught me and how they have led me to the conclusions I have reached; hopefully, it will give us somewhere to begin understanding each other.



If an idea or approach is discovered to be false or does not work, eschew it for what is and does:

When I was a little kid, I often had great ideas or plans which were poorly engineered. Clubhouses which required far more than the few pieces of scrap wood I had available, for instance. While he may not have had the greatest method of explaining why, dad was very good at pointing out why the idea was impossible and providing a more realistic, comparable plan. After the school system had demonstrated that it wasn't working, mom pulled me out and attempted home schooling. At which point, you perpetually modified and refined the curricula and methods of schooling. Trying different methods for allowance, chores, discipline, and personal liberties, keeping what worked and dropping what didn't was a constant state of affairs growing up. It seems that ethos is still in full force today.

It shouldn't take too much explanation to see how this ethos has had an effect on my journey thus far. Primarily, identifying and learning from mistakes. Whether it be my approach to studies, finances, personal life choices, whatever, I'm not afraid to admit error and strive to rectify it, and to rectify the subsequent mistakes made in the attempt to rectify, ad infinitum. Philosophically, I have always had a set of needs. I've applied this ethos to fulfilling those needs, moving through pursuits such as paleontology, vulcanology, meteorology, astronomy/ology, cryptozoology, theology, astrophysics and demonology, ultimately settling on philosophy. Along this path, I've found what fulfills this need and what doesn't

This process has served as a useful tool for self-awareness, but I will save that for later. For now, I will move to the things you have shown me which have been consistently shown to work.




Deontological maxims supersede practical considerations:

This is a truth that was a long and hard task to learn. For a long period of time, possibly due to the environment in my early childhood, it was hard to critically assess the position that, “The ends justify the means.” “If my goal is noble enough and attainable, the most direct course of action to get there must be taken, regardless of how undesirable the course of action may be.” This claim, in it's myriad forms, consistently saw resistance from you. “Murder is still murder, even if it's for a good cause,” was a common response I would get.

As I warmed up to the idea, for example, that the ten commandments are non-negotiable, I explored the real world and hypothetical ethical dilemmas which would test such a deonotological maxim; trying to expose inconsistencies and contradictions with such an approach became a daily exercise. So far, after trying to break deontology, all I have found is that a clearly-defined and concise set of maxims are the most resilient and reliable basis for moral action. Sometimes, these maxims set a standard too difficult to achieve; this is due to human failings, though, not the mind of God to which we ascribe these maxims.




It is infinitely more honorable to set a moral standard, strive to meet it, and fail than to set a low standard or otherwise make no effort:\

These moral maxims, such as “Thou shalt honor the LORD above all else,” “Thou shalt not murder, steal, or covet,” and their necessary conclusions, “Love your neighbor as I have loved you,” and “Uphold the dignity of the human person,” can be more demanding that one can manage at times. This is not an indictment of these maxims, but instead an empirical fact of the human condition. When faces with this fact, one may choose to dissemble and rationalize or justify their failures and accept them or, worse, to simply give up altogether. I've lost too many friends and seen too mane others loose friends to this temptation. Seeing you strive to more consistently meet that standard, and succeed, has demonstrated the honor in doing so.

Rather than striving to meet such a standard, I would often attempt to reinterpret these maxims or rationalize my status. You dissuaded me for doing so, mostly by example. It helped that, as I explored limit cases of these maxims, you made an effort to resolve issues or directed me to resources wherein others made the effort. Often, neither you nor the sources could provide a compelling resolution, but instead gave me the tools needed to do so for myself. The important trend through this process was the need for integrity: if someone abandons honesty to themselves and their standards, it is tantamount to lying.




Acting justly is more important than comfort:

Between the maxims mentioned above, the need to act in accordance with those maxims, and the need for integrity, one has a duty to accept responsibility for their situation. Again, this is something I learned from your example, first, and be exploring the philosophy behind it later. Simply assessing your circumstances and making what is ostensibly the best choice available, even when it will be difficult or uncomfortable. Those instances when we would move, switch to hippie food/medicine, move to homeschooling, etc. seemed to demonstrate that duty and the discomfort associated with it. Discussing my situations concerning college, marriage, kids, work, etc. with you also followed that trend.




To engage in or directly benefit from immoral action is to be complicit in that act:

Part of acting justly despite discomfort is to avoid immoral action. When I was younger, I had a hard time understanding why you would discourage ideas of what would be a clearly profitable venture: varying from things like selling vices or running (relatively) harmless scams. The recent example would not be wanting Tommy to be a security guard for a pot shop. While I may disagree with you on specific questions of morality, I think we all agree now that selling one's morals for profit is unacceptable.




That which is immediate and actionable supersedes, distant, future, or theoretical concerns:

Even though it may pay the bills to sell cocaine out of the Church garage, and may make enough to be comfortable on top of paying the bills, but the ends do not justify the means. There's a story stuck in my head that I think dad told me, but even if it was someone else it sounds like all the other stories about poop brownies and the like. There was a olympic rowing team that lived together and whenever someone wanted to do something, the team would ask them, “Will it make the boat go faster?” At face value, it would seem to justify the idea that the sole justification of the means is in fact the end.

That interpretation is incredibly naive, though. The olympic rowers found themselves in the circumstance that they were olympic rowers; the olympics was upon them and they had a demonstrable and immediate goal of making the boat go the fastest. In their case, the olympics is as distant or theoretical as getting shot is when on a battlefield or being corralled onto a train in 1939 Poland. That is to say, not very abstract. When faced with a choice, as one is thousands of times a day, the primary consideration of that choice ought to be, “is this option just, in and of itself?” and then whether the demonstrable outcome of the action will “make the boat go faster”. After that analysis, the “what if?” and big picture enter into the equation.

This is how I was coached with regards to Boy Scouts, college prep, financial issues... Dave Ramsey's version of this is “debt is bad, mmk? Avoid selling your future for unnecessary gains (like one does with a car loan). Use what is on-hand to solve the problem.”




It is impossible to judge the heart of another, for your sake you must give them the benefit of the doubt even when judging their actions:

The way I have best seen this expressed is Hanlon's Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Dad has consistently stated and re-stated this claim in some form or another at every occasion I have judged another person. It took an embarrassingly long time to come around to the idea. Philosophically, I call it the “phenomenological/epistemic barrier”. That is, one is privy only to one's own internal experience, it is impossible to directly apprehend the outside world, especially the internal experiences of others. One has an indirect access to others' behavior (the same way they have access to the behavior of a rock, tree, or beast) but not to the internal experience corresponding to the behavior.

One can, with varying degrees of ease, judge the behavior. For example, dismembering an infant with scissors can easily be identified as the crime of murder, regardless of whether the murderer's internal experience reflects that behavior. The CIA could have slipped the murderer some crazy drugs, he could be indoctrinated by the medical school system to do so, or he could simply have dementia. I can't judge his internal experience and call him evil or insist that he is going to hell, but I can say that he has murdered a baby. However, some cases are not so clear-cut and it would not be unjustified to err on the side of caution.




Question the auspices of authority (the only authority is epistemic):

This is something that I think I watched you learn which, of course, is what taught me. My early life experiences like my appendicitis ordeal and elementary school career demonstrated the need for skepticism when interacting with an individual or institution, even if they have the credentials (like an M.D., 100-ish years of history to back them up, or a teaching certificate). The authority of the doctor, teacher, administrator, or priest is not some metaphysical or divine attribute, but instead an epistemic one. The doctor is an authority in medicine insofar as his knowledge of the field is accurate. Not all doctors, teachers, etc. are created equal. Hearkening back to how those who have no standards tend to dissemble and rationalize, those that lack authority tend to lean on their credentials and auspices of authority and, subject to skepticism, are therefore not to be trusted.




Independent research and conceptual reasoning countermand the status quo:

Alongside authority, the status quo is also subject to skepticism. Your rejection (or partial rejection) of vaccines, standard education models, debt-oriented finances, moral/legal equivalence, and the “2.4 kids and a puppy” paradigm is the logical extension of the skeptical approach to the auspices of authority. Independent research can be anything from getting a second opinion from another authority to actually doing the requisite work oneself. Very little on the internet is true, of course. For that matter, very little outside the internet is true, either. This makes independent research incredibly difficult; by extension, that difficulty makes finding an actual authority equally difficult.

What, then, can one rely on when searching for factual or true knowledge? Conceptual reasoning can guide the process, at least. The application of careful deduction, induction, and abduction is ultimately the only tool one has in discernment between different claims, authorities, or options. Of course, like a hammer and nails, reason is useless without experience. All epistemic crises aside, the facts one is able to discern as immediate and actionable often come into conflict with and overcome the status quo. That's because the status quo is an emergent property of human nature.




The human condition is such that utopia and systematization is impossible:

Back in my Marxist days, dad frequently said things like “people don't work that way”, “You can't program society like a computer”, and “who is going to program the computer you put in charge?” Meanwhile, mom was vocally denouncing standardization, especially in education but also in medicine and just about everything else. That, coupled with the Scriptural education you provided, paints a pretty clear picture about the relationship between the human condition and utopia. Utopia being the Greek word St. Thomas More made up which means “no-place”.

Namely, that relationship is radically irreconcilable. In spite of rejecting gnosticism, I am certain that corporeal paradise as we can conceive it, is fundamentally opposed to the human condition. This is not a failing of the human condition, but instead one of utopia. Utopia, in all of its implementations, requires humans to be standardizable, equal, replaceable, and incapable of growth or change. Humans are none of those things; attempts to make them such are doomed to failure.




Coercion doesn't work, neither does rules:

Coercion is essentially any engagement which can be reduced to, “Do/don't do X, or else.” In hindsight, almost every moral crisis I had faced until recent years was a result of being coerced. Sometimes, the coercion was an explicit statement as above. Other times, the coercion was inferred from consistent exposure to the above statement or the behavioral equivalent. I don't want to air dirty laundry, new or old, especially as everything is essentially forgiven and forgotten or is still a secret and not yet beyond the statute of limitations. Having been on both the giving and receiving end of coercion, even in the form of rules that are “for your own good”, I have seen how such behavior does infinitely more harm than good and, on a long enough timeline, ultimately fails to accomplish its intended end. Besides, the ends do not justify the means and coercion undermines the human dignity of the victim in every instance.




Contracts are bullshit:

This is something I have to pin on dad, so you can skip this portion, mom. This comes primarily from our discussions on social contract theory. I unknowingly, used to place undue metaphysical belief on the social contract. You brought this to my attention be demonstrating how the social contract has no effect on the physical world. In a world such as Hobbes' state of nature, there is no difference between two people backstabbing each other over a limited resource and the leviathan's people/leaders backstabbing each other over other issues. The social contract has no more effect in the real world than any other metaphysical fairy-tale. I can believe in ghosts all I want, but that will not change your behavior. The same is true for “real” contracts. Ultimately, any contract signed is nothing more than a promise which alludes to the integrity and ability of the signers to uphold that promise, a-la the social contract. Admittedly, there is a difference between the social contract and a “real” contract. That is, a social contract attempts to coerce its “signers” with the boogeyman of anarchy and a “real” contract attempts to coerce its signers with the threat of government violence. But we've already had this discussion.




The dignity of the human person:

More important than the practical issues concerning coercion, there is a moral issue. Being created in the image of their creator and being given a special moral quality which is at the center of salvation history, there is a certain revealed dignity to human persons. Even “natural man”, a.k.a. Pagans, are aware of this dignity, expressed in our reason, will, and relationship to each other and the divine. Actual catechesis aside, you taught me this be way of debate, example, and counter example, just like all the other items in this letter.

I'm going to circumvent the whole Plato vs. Aristotle, “human being” vs. “human doing” debate and just assent to people possessing their own dignity by virtue of being human. Ultimately, that's the only available underpinning for individuals' duties and rights, but I'm trying to avoid getting too philosophical and lengthy in this letter. I'm just going to stick to the duty (or right) to life, in the interest of time. Simply by virtue of our relationship with out creator, humans have inalienable rights. Chief among those, that from which they are all derived, is the duty to life.

Simply put, it means murder is wrong. By extension, coercion (the threat of murder) and theft (depriving one of their resources used for living) are wrong. Accidental murder, that is, killing someone through avoidable circumstance is still murder. For example “If I leave this toxic waste near the well, people may get poisoned and die. Oh, well, I'm will do it anyway.” So, abortion, murder proper, the death penalty, and war are necessarily a violation of human dignity. Additionally, abdication of one's humanity and person-hood is an offense against human dignity. I imagine this is the basis of mom's paranoia concerning drugs, but I'm not sure. I am sure, though, that intentionally allowing oneself to be objectified, abased, or to lose one's free will/discipline is a violation of human dignity as if they had done the same to someone else.

I guess this is as good a place as any to ask why you changed your mind with regards to the American proxy war in the Middle East. When Bush Jr. wanted to re-invade Afghanistan and Iraq, I fell for the propaganda. You were quick to try and dissuade me from that position. A decade later, I came to your earlier position by a different avenue, that is, by way of the dignity of the human person. I was surprised, then, that mom is so anxious to continue that war and the slaughter of millions of innocents that she tried to dissuade me from supporting. Dad is a bit more coy on the subject, but I think he agrees with mom.

Find what you love and pursue it; make it a tool for survival:

I have a million interests and desires, but the all grow from a root desire which is a love affair I have with Truth and my family. Unfortunately, there is a very limited market for these things in a world rife with lies and captivated with misanthropy. That's not an excuse, but an assessment of my situation. Why does it matter though? I mean, the aspect of the “american dream” you preached to me the most was entrepreneurship and the ability to turn one's loves into a tool for living. So, then, I ought to determine how I and my family are called to live and do what we can to fulfill that vocation.

“If you're not growing, you're dead.” Another nice soundbite from dad that I now totally agree with. In each aspect of one's person, if they are not growing, they are dead. Spiritual, mental, and physical growth, at a minimum, is required for one to uphold one's dignity and pursuit of Truth/flourishing/perfection/“the good”/whatever. Mental growth is clearly the aspect of person-hood I am most disposed towards, with a constant pursuit of numerous “-logy”s and “-ism”s and such, seeking to ground my rational faculties in Truth. Mental growth alone has it's limits. To pursue mental growth, spiritual and physical growth are required. People and action are required.

I am confident in a great many beliefs I have as to what my own vocation has in store for me, and only slightly less confident in what I feel my family's vocation is. Of course, to come to such conclusions, I have to constantly work together with them; I know only myself, and must rely on them to know themselves.




Exit Strategy. Have a concrete goal with demonstrable success/failure criteria and have a contingency plan:

There is so much I have to write on this and the preceding subject, as the main initiative for this letter is to try to figure out where our misunderstandings lie in general, but most especially concerning moving to New Hampshire and later fleeing the american empire. Unfortunately, I'm running out of steam for writing this letter, so I'm sure you've run out of steam and time to read it.

One of the many books dad is never going to write inspired this one. I know I took his treatise on eschatology and turned it into a practical tool, but you grab truth where you can find it. I don't know how much I need to expound on the heading, it seems straightforward enough.




So, what?

This collection of beliefs and lessons has obviously influenced my worldview at large. I think I've spent far too much space and time exploring these ideas, so I will try to wrap this up quickly. Really, I can't understand why you would be so dismissive and crude about the things I have come to understand and what I intend to do. I totally understand disagreeing, as we have always had disagreements, but those disagreements were (generally) calm and rational. Yelling, name-calling, and repeating fallacies is unproductive and neither calm nor rational. It certainly won't change my mind as previous discussions have.

I don't find the beliefs I have to be too extreme. Due to the dignity of the human person, no one has the right to murder, coerce, or steal from another. One has a duty to life, in the fullest philosophical sense of the words. One has an obligation to uphold whatever responsibilities and obligations one takes one. One must have rational justification for one's actions, derived from these first principles.

I find myself in a position where I have taken on the responsibility for the well-being of four other people whom I love dearly. I have this responsibility in the midst of a disturbing situation. This situation is one where I live in a culture centered on misanthropy and death. A society where myself and my children are treated as livestock, coerced into various behaviors by the perpetual threat of murder, routinely stolen from, and ridiculed for pointing these things out. A brief study of history demonstrates an unavoidable cycle of imperialism, where we are currently in one of those cycles, and the fates of those unable to predict such historical cycles. Most importantly, the situation is such that a murderous gang of kidnappers with no accountability, far more firepower than I possess, and a predilection for kidnapping children from those who have beliefs such as mine operates in my neighborhood (funded by the money stolen from me, no less).

A simple cost/benefit analysis revels a clear course of action, especially when the well-being of my children, all the way down to the state of their immortal souls, hangs in the balance. We must assess what fundamental needs we have, what desires we have, and how to change our environment to best fulfill those needs. In order to achieve the flourishing we seek, we must be able to avoid or counter the coercion, murder, and theft we may encounter. That is categorically impossible where we currently live, therefore we must go somewhere else. We must go somewhere where we will either not encounter such things or have more of a fair fight against them. The simple matter of fact is that it is too late in this place to fight back and I don't want myself or my children to face the circumstances that naive Catholics have been faced with in first-century Rome, 18th century Prussia, 20th Century Poland/Germany/France, and at least a dozen other places and times.

I am fully aware that I am to be a martyr, but martyrdom comes in all shapes and sizes. I would like to be a martyr worth emulation, even if never recognized by historians. I would not hesitate to kill or die for my children, so why should I hesitate to forego creature comforts and worldly status? If the status quo is such that I could take advantage of criminal activity, imperial decadence, and misanthropic agendas if only I would forego my conscience or “move to Somalia”, I would side with morality, reason, and my conscience. Not for my sake, but for my kids, so that they will not have this dilemma foisted on them because I didn't feel like addressing it.

I don't need you to understand. I don't need you to agree or condone my ideas or actions. What I need is to understand you, your actions, and help giving you a chance to prove me wrong. I wrote this down so you could read it at leisure and approach the discussion more calmly and rationally and so that you could see that I still value our relationship and your opinions, even if they are wrong.

 Welcome to “honor part two”. Wonderful, right? I spent a good fifteen minutes of your life rambling about ancient concepts that are quite evidently dead, and the best way I can find to spend another fifteen is with a sequel. If you bear with me, I can show you what I see.

Something I did not articulate in the last post is that honor, in its purest ultimate form, is unobtainable by humans; the human condition is such that perfection is unobtainable in this lifetime. We still ought to try, though. No human being has ever demonstrated that they were entirely consistent, self-sufficient, powerful, courageous, just, and intelligent. Instead those that are honored are honored for specific ways in which they demonstrate virtue, not for being perfect. One could honor a soldier's combat prowess while also acknowledging the fact that he is a murderer or honor a bank robber's tactical reasoning while also acknowledging that he is a looter.

This is important because there are people we can look at and say, “I want to have the athletic skill of that man, so I will emulate him... but, unlike him, I'm going to try to avoid doing drugs and beating my girlfriend.” Similarly, one can say that someone is a “good thief” or a “good cop” in that they excel at a profession, while still being aware that the profession in question is immoral. If you haven't noticed yet, I avoid using the words “good” and “bad” with regards to ethics, as our language equates “good” with utility and “bad” with discomfort, neither of which apply in ethics. In this way, honorable action can appear to take on a multitude of incongruent forms.

The character of an honorable man does share certain commonalities across every specific instance of honor, though. They are active, personally engaging their environment in a manner which is efficacious. They are consistent, not stumbling into being honorable but instead consistently acting in accordance with principles for action. They are defiant, not in the way of being stubborn and childish, but in a virile and confident resistance against injustice, misfortune, or the petty squabbles of lesser men.

The aged farmer clawing food from a drought-scorched field, a spartan blocking the advance of Xerxes' army, the scholar pursuing the truth in a society of liars, the Batman pursuing justice in a city of criminals, and the father leading his family to refuge from wicked men are all examples of honorable action. Looking at all of these examples, which I argue to be a representative sample, we will find several commonalities. They each face adversity in some form or another, whether it be the result of personal choices or environmental misfortune. They determine an appropriate course of action, whether it be fight or flight. They are willing and able to sacrifice everything they have in order to pursue that course of action. They do not expect others to do their work for them. Most importantly, though, they are not inviolate. Not planning ahead, resorting to misanthropic agendas, mis-diagnosing the problem, not living life in a manner consistent with achieving flourishing, reliance on vice, naivete, the list of shortcomings is quite long.

So, we're halfway into a post titled “The Death of Honor” and I'm still continuing last post. What is the death of honor? Ultimately, the death of honor happened at the hands of the puritans. One day, I will share my full indictment against puritanism, but today really has little to do with puritanism; it merely dispatched a decrepit shell of what honor once was. Most of the work was done by the state.

It is no secret among historians that the sate, any state, has a vested interest in concentrating and standardizing populations. There is a fair amount of scholarship as to why this is the case; most popular and accessible of which is the writings of James C. Scott. The only reason pertinent to this discussion is that of dependence. If the state is to justify its theft and coercion, it must convince its victims that they need the state to commit these crimes for the sake of their survival. By securing the infrastructure for urban environments and taking advantage of the human tendency towards paranoia in crowded spaces, the state can convince its victims that without the state no one could build the roads or protect them.

I am certain you can already understand why the attitude of dependence is antithetical to the concept of honor but, before I address that, I want to address population concentration. I briefly touched on the Dunbar number before, and the time has come again. The Dunbar number is basically an expression of the reality that the human person is constructed such that one can maintain only a limited number of meaningful interpersonal relationships. Honor is closely tied to that number; normal honorable acts can only effectively serve as setting an example within a community of a few hundred people at most, and extraordinary honorable acts are limited to a couple thousand. I am currently working on an “Intro to the Dunbar Number” post, but for now, I will have to direct people here if they want to learn more about it.

Ultimately, by concentrating populations greater in number and density than the human person is built to handle, individuals are forced to begin interacting with other individuals as if they were merely objects in their environment. An object is not given attributions of things such as honor and virtue. One doesn't have the ability to legitimately honor the girl making one's coffee, the man taking away one's trash, or often even one's own grandfather, simply due to ignorance and the constraints of the lifestyle of a population-dense area.

“Now, wait a minute,” you're saying, “What about Martin Luther King, John Paul II, and Murray Rothbard?” Well, they're dead... so... “Ok. How about Pope Fancis, Stan Lee, and Edward Snowden?” These people certainly have done honorable things that are worth emulation, but have you ever met one of these three? Do you go out for coffee together, go to the same school, church, or bar? Unless you know them personally, you only know a story of a thing they did. These stories are quite useful in demonstrating socially preferable behavior, but only in the same way that Hector, Moses, or Bruce Wayne demonstrate such behavior: as mythology. In concentrating populations to unhealthy degrees, honor becomes an attribute of myth as opposed to man.

More importantly, the mindset of dependence which is instilled by excessive population density is strictly antithetical to the development of honor. Where honor requires that one takes responsibility for one's situation, good or bad, and takes the initiative to improve that situation, dependence insists that the work be done by someone else and that the credit, good or bad, should go to that someone else. When a king conscripts labor to build the roads and aqueducts according to a central plan, he is credited by those that develop a dependence on those commodities. When the kings' men stop neighbors from invading or pillaging, the king is credited for that security. When the kings' men pillage and invade, it is seen as the necessary cost of these other things. Out in the fields, though, men are left to their own devices and still successfully travel, procure water, and ward off aggressors with little or no assistance from the king. These activities engender spirit of self-sufficiency, productive action, and responsibility, which overrides any sense of dependency and encourages honorable action. A less-than-perfect but only recently lost example is the anti-or-small-government sentiment amongst bands of farmers and other producers in rural areas of North America.

The modern democratic equivalent of this dependency vs. honor paradigm is readily available, however. The common citizen saying “there ought to be a law”, and attempting to accomplish one's own ends by use of the ballot box as opposed to direct action is dependent upon his domesticators, whilst the “outlaw” identifies a need, whether it be a market demand or the homeless needing food, and fulfills that need, the law be damned. It may very well be honorable to grab a weapon and interject oneself between a murderer and his victim whether it is a back-alley assault, an abortion, or an ISIS beheading, but there is no honor in demanding that someone else do so. It may be honorable to advocate good causes and to expose misanthropy, but there is no honor in demanding that others should compel good behavior or kill those that exhibit bad behavior. It is even a possibility that there could be honor in assaulting me for my possessions, but there is no honor in sending someone else to do so.

The state is the death of honor. In order to restore this essential virtue, one must establish a geographically local community with a reasonable number of members and engender in themselves the virtues on which honor depends. In the interim, one ought to do what they can to become honorable whilst establishing deep, authentic relationships with friends, family, employers, customers, etc. Stop asking “is it legal?” and start asking “what is just and righteous?”
One cannot obtain external freedom without first becoming free internally.

TL;DR: Honor requires that one be willing and able to assess a situation and take matters into their own hands. The ethos ingrained in subjects of the state is antithetical to these requirements. So long as a culture is dependent on reputation systems, laws and their enforcement, and a mentality of irresponsibility, honor will remain dead. If someone may be faced with the need to call 911 or is anxious to keep their gold stars, they are not free. Without honor, freedom is impossible.


Also, you'll have to bear with me on the wonkiness of my recordings.  Audacity keeps doing something weird and I haven't been able to figure it out just yet.

Still working on getting the nest post properly recorded, but in the mean time I have something amusing I made and wanted to share:

This is a scan of my notebook (obviously).  This page has a list of things that I've got to write about at some point.  Most of these items are partially researched and outlined and in various degrees of completion.

Due to the holistic nature of philosophy, it is difficult to choose the path to follow: "I will write about X, which leads to Y, which leads to Z."  Because there are many things that are prerequisite for other things: "After Y I will write about Z, but C is a prerequisite for Z, too... I guess I'll put that before Y."  As I write and research each specific post, I take the things that apply to other posts and fill them in.  Once something has enough material to write a post about, I clean it up, finalize the outline, record the audio, write the transcript and post it.

This specific page is the first one I have filled  in my notebook, so it's a little less organized and specific than the other ones I have.  Some of these have more-or-less run fallow for the time being, while others are just about ready to be recorded and posted.

Suggestions for posts, comments regarding ideas on this list, comments in general are greatly appreciated.  Yes, I have a real post that is just about ready to be published, I just need some quiet time in my apartment to do some more audio work, which is hard to come by with three little girls.  It will be up ASAP.

Several weeks ago, I made a post about the opposite of honor. It is long overdue that I should address the root of all social virtues: honor. One will notice that I write more about the handful of things that one should not do as opposed to what one ought to do. Today, I intend to shrink that ratio a little bit. What is honor? Isn't it some ancient concept that society has advanced beyond? Isn't honor something like following the orders of your superior? That's not very anarchist... Wouldn't an anarchist denounce honor societies out-of-hand?

A more important issue to address than these questions lurks behind the ivory paywalls of academic literature and the veil of history. Modern conceptions of honor are, fundamentally, the opposite of the true nature of honor. Popular culture and medieval theological writings conceive of honor as dutiful obedience to one's leaders and adhering to social norms. This conception of honor is comically shallow and presents a great deal of self-contradiction, as is explored by numerous sci-fi and fantasy works. I don't have the space and time right now to address this unintended straw man and all of it's problems which have been created by history. Instead, I will have to simply define and describe true honor. So, forget anything that you have seen about honor that was produced since Marcus Aurelius, and come with me to the ancient world.

-cue time-travel harp and ancient-sounding music-

Ancient Greece, a region populated with several dozen city-states: some of them more free than others, some of them ruled by kings, some ruled by mobs of slave owners, some of them were pseudo-hierarchical warrior cultures. This region and time is credited with the birth of philosophy as we know it as well as serving as the foundation of western culture. It was also a time and a place, like all places and times with states, a region constantly faced with the prospect of war. In order to flourish in such a region, one would have to either submit to being owned by a powerful man or engender virtues in oneself such so as to be self-sufficient.

There are different types of virtue, and flourishing in its fullness requires all of the virtues, but today is devoted to one specific virtue. Honor is a social virtue. It is an internal, personal disposition to certain behaviors that concern themselves with one's relationships with others. Honor is a virtue that can only be developed in community, but what is it?

The original words for honor, which later became the Greek kleos and the Latin dignitas, originally meant something akin to “trophy”. It was a physical object which represented an accomplishment that would be given from the community to the individual responsible for the accomplishment. Most often, honors were the spoils of war granted to the soldier who demonstrated how one ought to conduct themselves in battle. Other times, though, honors would be granted to those who demonstrated how one ought to innovate, parent, lead, teach, or even farm. These honors would be given publicly and were expected to be displayed publicly. Over time, honors as physical trophies became overshadowed by honor as a social reputation. An honorable person was one who demonstrated a paradigm behavior that others could acknowledge. In this way, honor was essentially setting the example.

During this time, there existed an interesting linguistic situation. The word for honor represented a single, integral concept that modern languages have teased apart and made two diametrically opposed terms: honor and shame. Honor, like many ancient concepts, was a very complex and rich tradition which defies surface exploration. It was a trophy, a reputation, and a feeling all bundled into one. These were nearly indistinguishable from each other and the same term applied to each of the three independently at times. When one received or established their honor, they would have a particular set of feelings associated with that accomplishment.

When put on a pedestal, one ought to feel self-satisfied and proud, even. One ought to be humbled by others' recognition of one's accomplishments, and feel a certain degree of self-consciousness or nervousness. I'm not saying this as an introvert who doesn't like attention, but because of the nature of honor; at the heart of honor is an expectation of integrity and consistency. Having demonstrated one's character such so as to be granted honor means that the village children will be pointed to oneself as the role-model: “You see, little Apollonius, if you want to be magnanimous, try to be like Alexander, son of Phillip.” Alexander ought to feel the eyes of his neighbors and inferiors on him at all times, scrutinizing his actions.

Alexander has no obligation to his inferiors. He has no moral obligation to uphold his honor, especially since it would have to be given to him from someone else, freely and without solicitation lest it would be meaningless (much like the medals on a President's uniform). Meaningful honor cannot be granted to one's self. Of course, if Alexander drops the ball, finding work may become difficult. There is a certain circumstance of expectation for one with honor which must be taken into account if one wishes to flourish.

These feelings and circumstances should look familiar to those acquainted with the modern religious concept of shame. Initially, as western cultures developed terms for shame, it was essentially synonymous with humility. Not the flimsy Thomist “just roll over and take it” version, but the ancient stoic “don't exaggerate your accomplishments, just be aware that you are being watched and let your actions speak for themselves” version. Shame originally meant “the feeling you should get concerning your honor,” which used to be the meaning for the word “honor” when used in the context of feelings.

Incidentally, some cultures would honor undesirable behavior, as well. One would be honored for their cowardice, dishonesty, or promiscuity. In which case, the shame felt would be more akin to the popular modern conception of the term. This specifically, is simply a fun bit of trivia as far as the issue at hand is concerned, but it may come up in later posts.

What is important to the issue at hand? So far, we've only tried to clear up some small degree of confusion regarding a term that has been repeatedly co-opted throughout history. We haven't really defined or described it. So, what is honor and what does it look like? As I already said, honor is a social virtue: a virtue pertaining to the manner in which one relates to others. It is essentially setting the example. What kind of example?

An example of virtue. Ancient virtue. Virtue, as a Latin word, really means “manliness'. Manliness meaning “the paradigm example of what a human ought to look like, in appearance and behavior.” I will make a post later about virtue specifically, but for now I will focus on the attributes of honor. Honor is a demonstration of virtues such as integrity, justice, courage, and self-actualization. A man of honor, ultimately, is a man who is free and willing to do the most righteous thing without the aid or encouragement of others. Instead of saying “someone ought to do X” or “There ought to be a law”, a man of honor simply does X and demonstrates how it ought to be done without seeking payment or recognition.

Clearly, honor is a virtue largely contingent upon other virtues. One cannot, for example, step-in when someone is committing a crime against someone unable or unwilling to defend themselves unless one first possess virtues like courage, magnanimity, and the martial virtues. One cannot engage in intellectual pursuits and eloquently and passionately introduce others to esoteric knowledge unless one first possesses the virtues of diligence, discipline, and reason. Unlike crime, honor is more fluid and less axiomatic in its specifics. However, it's definition is quite helpful in identifying honor when one witnesses it. Honor is a character trait whereby one is prone to consistently demonstrating exceptional virtue in their interactions with others.

Remember, anarchy is a philosophy of responsibility. In the absence of the perpetual threat of murder for disobedience to arbitrary moral claims, alternative cultures of cooperation must endure. Honor, shame, and social relationships have always been crucial to the functioning of free societies.


TL;DR: Instead of confusing honor with a pseudo-Christian bastardization of servitude and approval from one's masters, one ought to read ancient Greek ad Roman stoics and scholarship concerning them. Honor is centered on the social virtue of living well and setting the example as to how one ought to flourish.

Who is John Galt?

 In Catholic culture, it is common to describe someone's personality, temperament, and spiritual charisms by way of a particular analogy. There are “Good Friday people” and “Easter Sunday people”. I believe there is a protestant equivalent of “Old Testament people” and “New Testament people”. Good Friday people tend to be more prone to despair, legalism, talk of duty and fire and brimstone; Catholic guilt runs deep in Good Friday circles. Easter Sunday people, alternatively, tend to be more prone to wearing rose-tinted glasses, overemphasis on mercy and forgiveness and belief in happy-surfer Jesus; liberalism tends to creep into Easter Sunday circles. Now, these are, of course, caricatures intended to convey a point to people who are less-involved in Catholic culture, but the claims are still valid. I used to think I was a Good Friday person, with my tendencies towards the Metal ethos and pathos. As time went on, though, I realized that my particular brand of duty, guilt, and forgiveness do not match the generally-accepted sense of a Good Friday person.

I live in the world of Holy Saturday. I live in a world in which we have killed God and have to live with his blood on our hands. What does such a world look like? It is a wold where, yesterday, we knew where we were going, what we were doing, and we had a direct line to the divine, He was sitting right next to us at the dinner table. Today, however, he is gone. He is somewhere we cannot see and we can't even prove to ourselves that He didn't just vanish altogether. Today, we don't know anything more than the fact that we are lost, adrift in a world devoid of the meaning it once held. We hope that tomorrow, He will come back and fulfill all of the promises that were made... but we can't be certain that it will happen. We thought we had it all figured out, and then (even though we were explicitly warned) we were surprised by the execution of our Lord and our subsequent despair associated with it.

If this world looks bleak and unrealistic, that's fine. It certainly is bleak, but not unrealistic. We face certain epistemic crises that remain unresolved. The problem of induction, which has no solution, tells us that we cannot truly prove anything meaningful to our lives through experience or reason. The eschatological questions: “What happens when I die?” and “What happens if the world ends?” cannot be answered with any degree of certainty and all we have to go on are some well-reasoned guesses and books written thousands of years ago by people who claimed to have a direct line to the Truth. In other words, even though God himself may, in fact, be the cookie elevated in sacrifice over the altar tonight, I have absolutely no way to tell. All the empirical tools I have at my disposal tell me it is just a cookie, and the best logic can provide me is a well-reasoned guess that it may be more than it would seem. I have to accept that guess on faith, though, the same faith that tells me that the sun will rise tomorrow and that others experience consciousness in a manner comparable to my own. Even more difficult to rationally explore and prove would be the idea of life after death and redemption versus damnation.

However, as Paschal thoroughly explored in his corpus, there is quite a lot at stake here, and guesswork is ultimately all we have. I find myself compelled to carry out my affairs in a manner consistent with this tension between nihilistic despair and extra-rational faith. I must act in a manner consistent with my own human flourishing in this life, but always with an awareness of the possibility of an after-life as well. Ultimately, it is the only rationally self-interested way to approach the horns of this dilemma which surpasses our limited human perception and reason. This isn't to say that I don't try to engender a healthy and fulfilling relationship with God, only that it is incredibly difficult to do so when His only avatars are other human beings as equally repulsive as myself and a silent piece of bread.

The tension of Holy Saturday is the tension of being a rational creature both unwilling to despair and unwilling to forego the ratio which allows this tension in the first place. It is the tension of the philosopher, of seeking Truth, despite the impossibility of fully acquiring such a thing. It is the tension of the pilgrim in a foreign world. It is the tension of a moral actor amidst the amoral. It is the tension of a sinner, a criminal, a vicious creature striving for something greater, striving for perfection, a will to power, an upsurgence of life, and a desire to flourish in a world that is finely-tuned to allow for one's existence but only barely so. It is the tension of being truly Catholic.

“I am reckoned among those who go down to the Pit; I am a man who has no strength, like one forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom thou dost remember no more, for they are cut off from thy hand. Thou hast put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep.” ~ Psalm 88

Red, black, and yellow? Is that some Illuminati Jew symbol? Didn't you put an uglier version of this logo on last post? What's wrong with the nice, simple, easily dismissed anarchy Ⓐ you were using? Why should I care about a picture on a blog I don't read? These are all legitimate questions.

The new logo, like the blog itself, is intended to be a conversation starter. The idea for this design actually emerged as a result of my frustrations in trying to find a lapel pin with a respectable-looking anarchy Ⓐ. I eventually gave up and said, “I will have to design my own.” Of course, if one has to design their own product (especially a costly product), there is no excuse for not designing it in a manner consistent with one's own desires.

My desire for a lapel pin that looked nice but also looked like the anarchy Ⓐ was to be able to start conversations in the least obnoxious way one could start such conversations, like a sort of respectable bumper-sticker. Of course, if I were to ever encounter someone who is even slightly educated with regards to the history of modern political thought or the philosophy of anarchy, the simple red and black Ⓐ may cause some confusion.

Wait, what? Isn't the red Ⓐ the definitive anarchy logo? Haven't you made the case that anarchy is, as a philosophy, incredibly simple and straightforward? It's the rejection of criminal institutions. Simple and straight forward.

It is simple in theory, but humans tend to make things more complicated when putting them into practice. Time for a history lesson. One upon a time, avoidance of coercion, theft, and murder were widely the daily routine. Free exchange of goods and services and people minding their own business was far more common than kings stealing, armies murdering, and sheriffs enforcing, statistically speaking. As social technologies and infrastructures develop and become more efficient, the daily freedom of action diminished due to efficiency in government. After a time, empire collapses and freedom returns. Rinse and repeat.

I am speaking vaguely and mythologically on purpose, as this narrative is cyclical and each cycle consists of generations at a time. In the course of a more recent cycle (circa 19th century AD), a certain philosopher named Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is credited with resurrecting an ancient Greek concept called anarchism. The anarchy he resurrected was, philosophically, in its nascent stages. The Greeks that were prone to mentioning anarchy always did so from the perspective of statism and provided very little development before passing the torch to gnostics and other heretics in the early centuries AD, which did not bode well for the philosophy's development under christian empires. As a philosophy, it is motivated by the same moral principles today as it was at its inception, but a great many more considerations have been provided with regards to the necessary conclusions of those moral principles.

Proudhon's infant anarchy was a radical reaction to imperial statism and institutional violations of human rights. In his fully justifiable fervor to do away with that which is inherently criminal and misanthropic, Proudhon made the mistake of throwing out several ideas that were misrepresented to him and institutions that were not inherently criminal but only incidentally so. Influenced by the popular philosophical zeitgeist of modernism and communism, witnessing the historical relationship between the Church and the state, and the state-like behavior of aristocratic industrialists, Prudhon rejected the ideas of religion and capitalism. This mistake made his particular brand of anarchism indistinguishable from secular communism in practice: a violent revolution of the poor against their oppressors and those who resembled their oppressors in favor of a social justice warrior utopia of violent atheist egalitarianism. The classic punk-rock anarchist Ⓐ is commonly associated with this brand of anarchism, “anarcho-communism” as it is now known.

Something needs to be made clear here. Two things, actually. First, even though I used to be a straight-up commie when I was younger, I am not an ancom. Second, Proudhon was correct in rejecting the state-like behavior of the industrialist aristocracy and the Church's use of state violence in pursuit of worldly power. The mistake was believing these crimes to be intrinsic to the philosophies of capitalism and religion instead of a result of individual human failings or the influence of the state.

Fortunately, the philosophy of anarchism has not yet waned. Others have taken up the mantle of anarchism from Proudhon and further refined and developed the philosophy. Most notable of which are likely Spooner, Rothbard, and Mencken. Something all three share in common is the fact that they were all economists. Real economists, not Keynesian socialist bullshit artists... Austrian economists. They were also abolitionists. In the moral pursuit of eradicating the crimes and slavery of the state, they applied their understanding of the human condition, as received from economics, and cleaned up anarchism. They saw the political correctness, feminism, egalitarianism, and socialism embraced by ancoms for what it is: statism.

In response to the red and black ancoms, these second-generation anarchists billed themselves anarcho-capitalists, agorists, voluntarists, and a handful of other names. Being economically minded, these men were more aware of the marketing challenges of advocating freedom in a slave society. Some boldly called themselves anarchists, trying to reclaim the truth; others, justifiably, took the easier and arguably more productive route of adopting wholeheartedly the name, “voluntarist” (or voluntaryist). This, more human-friendly, brand of anarchism took on the yellow and black V of voluntarism to differentiate themselves from its communist progenitor, while still hearkening back to its heritage.

Something else must be made clear here, as well. No, I'm not an ancap. More importantly, the excessive focus on voluntary interaction and economics has come at the expense of an awareness of a deeper, more fundamental, aspect of anarchy. If one's rights are directed at the goal of human flourishing, there must be more ethical rigor and development beyond simply determining whether or not an action was voluntarily assented to. Anarcho-capitalism (aka real capitalism) may also present certain complications in practice, not as severe as the practical results of anarcho-communism, mind you, but results which resemble the environment which produced Proudhon in the first place. In a society devoid of the pernicious influences of government and absent a more developed ethics, a feudal-grade series of corporate rentership fiefdoms is likely to develop. One needs to look no further than Google, Facebook, or Goldman-Sachs to get a taste of what this would look like. If you see nothing wrong with any of these companies... just go back to sleep.

If I am not an ancom or a voluntarist (ancap), what am I? Well, as far as this conversation is concerned, I am an anarchist. I reject all belief in institutions predicated on coercion, theft, or murder. I recognize my responsibility to secure my rights to liberty and property in pursuit of flourishing and acknowledge the same in others. I pursue the abolition of slavery, including the slavery of the state. I believe human interaction is largely voluntary and all agreements and exchanges ought to be voluntary, but that is not a necessary result of anarchism, not the point of origin, nor is it the goal. I believe that, in a state-run society, the truly rich are such at the expense of those who cannot purchase their freedom from the law, but I am not opposed to the legitimate acquisition of material wealth or social influence.

So, the new logo is designed to be identifiable to one with even a basic exposure to anarchy, in either of its popular brands. It is designed to convey that I am either a mixture of both or neither. It is designed to look cool, obviously, and it is designed to resemble a hex or Illuminati doo-dilly because everything is. Most importantly, it is designed to start conversations. As a lapel pin, it can start real conversations, IRL. As a simple logo on a website, it can serve as an identifier for my radical notions and aggressive philosophizing.

Best of all, it can instigate conversations amongst anarchists. We need more discussion amongst ourselves, to try and better understand our own position more deeply. I would love to see Christopher Cantwell, Sloane Frost, and Brian Sovryn go on a retreat together for a weekend. We can all benefit from sharpening our teeth on each other and forging deeper friendships and support structures, as free men are a small minority in today's world. As I pointed out in “Is Anarchy a Bad Word?”, we face a tough marketing challenge against an institution with a mandatory 15,000 hour child indoctrination system; every little bit helps.

Remember, more important that changing people's minds by way of symbols or rhetoric is to simply do what is right and pursue flourishing. Setting the example has always been more productive than arguments or advertising. Without an identifier and an explanation, though, the example set will be too esoteric for others to follow.


Tl;DR: The red and black Ⓐ is typically associated with anarcho-communism. The yellow and black V is typically associated with anarcho-capitalists (aka voluntarists). The new logo, a work in progress, is supposed to be suffix-agnostic, so it's got both logos integrated in one simple design. Please give feedback on the history lesson, the logo itself, or on the idea behind the logo. Also, Please, please, let me know if you would be interested in purchasing a lapel pin at a reasonable price. Manufacturing the pins requires a certain large number be ordered at once, due to the casting model that is used. I can only get my pin if I want hundreds of them or if enough people want to reimburse me for their own pin, thereby reducing the cost to me.