Liberty's Torch: Natural Law

Showing posts with label Natural Law. Show all posts

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Moral Fundamentals Part 3: The Most Debated Concept

I hope those Gentle Readers who’ve been waiting for this essay have not lost patience with me. It’s been simmering for a while now. I didn’t want to serve it before it was cooked all the way through.

The previous two segments in this little series have laid groundwork upon which I intend to build a case for the most debated proposition in all of human thought: specifically, that there are laws of morality / ethics built into the very fabric of reality. This, at a time when the premise of the existence of an objective reality is itself under attack! From Part 1:

The gospel of our era is relativism in all things: cultural, moral, logical, even scientific. Claims of absolute truth are sneered aside as conclusively refuted without trial. Feminist author Sandra Harding referred to Isaac Newton's three laws of mechanics as "Newton's Rape Manual," nor is there any reason to believe she was being facetious. Physicist Alan Sokal revealed the extent to which relativists will descend with a facetious article our cultural glitterati took quite literally.
So those of us who, with Samuel Johnson, kick a stone and proclaim "I refute it thus" are in a distinct minority. In consequence, a debate that requires that one's interlocutor accept the existence of evil, a concept relativists categorically reject, is problematic from the start.

But I intend to immunize my contentions against the frequent objection that “it’s all just about cultural customs.” From Part 2:

The root of moral is the Latin word mores, which means customs. When Cicero exclaimed “O tempora, o mores!” he was bemoaning what he saw as a deterioration in the customs of the Roman people, not their moral choices as we English speakers might have imagined. To English speakers, moral pertains to the rightness or wrongness of a given decision.
To compound the damage, the societies from which America was germinated often confused matters of right and wrong with considerations of what “simply isn’t done.” The notion of behavior that’s morally neutral but “simply isn’t done” conjures up images of Victorian England and the straitlaced customs to which the upper classes were expected – and “compelled” by the prospect of social disapprobation – to conform. But here context matters; Victorian customs about what “simply isn’t done” involved the setting and the persons who would witness the deed in question. Many a thing about which the Victorians would say “That simply isn’t done” most certainly was done, by many persons and quite often, in other circumstances and with other participants.

As you can imagine, I have my work cut out for me. But then, I don’t do the easy stuff.

1. The Nature Of The Beast We Hunt.

As I stated in Part 1, a moral fundamental – i.e., a principle of right versus wrong in human action – must perforce be a premise. Therefore it cannot be reached by deduction, for all deduction proceeds by implication from previously agreed premises. While we do need certain premises to attain our goal, deduction isn’t the mechanism by which we employ them.

A useful premise must be tightly tied to observable facts. If observable facts contradict the premise, it’s flatly false. This is the uber-premise of an objective, metaphysically given reality, which cannot be changed merely by the exercise of opinion or willful disbelief. The Berkelian idealist, whose metaphysics is indistinguishable from solipsism de facto, must therefore be excluded from this investigation, no matter how furiously he pounds on the door.

2. The Danger Of “Why?”

Many years ago, a professor of philosophy assigned as in-class reading material the Biblical story of Cain’s murder of Abel. When the students had had a few minutes to read the tale, he asked them, “Why was it wrong for Cain to kill Abel?”

Let’s leave aside the virtually guaranteed allegorical nature of the Old Testament Book of Genesis. It was intended from the first to teach certain moral lessons, rather than as factual history. What was the moral lesson in that story about the murder of one brother by the other?

The professor fielded several answers from his students, and showed the fault in each one. At last, an exasperated student said, “Well why, then?” The professor smiled and said “Because it was.”

“Why,” when applied to a moral premise, is an attempt to justify it through its consequences. That’s not entirely invalid, but it’s open to counterfire. For example, the consequence of Cain’s act was exile. He didn’t suffer a penalty comparable to his crime. Indeed, many present-day murderers are never caught or punished. Therefore, we cannot soundly “argue” that one “shouldn’t” commit a murder because of the inevitable negative consequences to oneself. A moral premise must have a firmer foundation than that.

3. Rejections.

It’s always possible to reject a premise, if one is willing to accept the consequences. The Berkelian, the relativist, the social-constructionist, and the solipsist cannot be “compelled” in any sense to accept moral premises that clash with their metaphysics. However, such persons almost all live as if they accept the moral premises on which Christian-Enlightenment society is founded. The consequences of doing otherwise are repugnant to them, regardless of the philosophical problem that causes them. Occasional exceptions, such as were once found among the Oneidans and the Doukhobors, have generally suffered for their willfulness...but not always.

It’s permissible to draw conclusions from this...but only for one’s personal use!

4. Useful Data.

One implication of an objective reality is the availability of useful data that can be gleaned from observation and accumulated over time. This, of course, is essential to the sciences, which operate on a combination of observation, inductive inference, hypothecation, deduction, and experimentation. While it’s also useful in probing for the existence of moral fundamentals, it has a weakness best illustrated by the tale of Plato and the “plucked chicken.”

In Plato’s effort to define the human being, at one point he proposed that Man is best defined as “the featherless biped.” According to the accounts available today, that spurred Diogenes the Cynic, who considered himself a Socratic, to present Plato with a plucked chicken and exclaim “Here is the Platonic man!” We may take it that Plato resumed his quest for a workable definition immediately afterward.

Plato’s error was a focus on nonessential aspects of Mankind. Diogenes could have presented him with a kangaroo to the same effect, were any to hand in classical Greece. Despite that, he was engaged in a worthwhile effort: an attempt to summarize human nature in a useful fashion. Reality does provide enough data to distinguish Man from other creatures, though “featherless biped” fails to capture our essence.

My point here is simple: As it is Man who inquires into such things, then if there are moral fundamentals, they would apply to Man, but not to any lesser order of creature. Thus to settle on moral fundamentals, we must know ourselves – Man as a species of creature – rather than the entire order of Nature.

5. Essence, Accident, And Exceptions.

Definitions apply to categories: groups of real items that share:

A genus, or base category of which they are all members, and:
A differentia, a characteristic that applies only to members of the newly defined category and not to other members of the genus.

This presents a problem to those who seek an intensive definition of Man, for there are exceptional members of the human species that challenge any definition that has yet been proposed. In some ways the problem is a lot stiffer than posed by Diogenes’s chicken.

Consider Ayn Rand’s attempt to define Man as “the rational animal.” Rand had an agenda, into which her proposed definition fits nicely. However, it omits persons of defective mind, including imbeciles and small children. That leads to unpleasant possibilities, for example that the omitted persons’ lives may be sacrificed without moral weight. We recoil from this notion from visceral repugnance, even though Rand’s thrust comes closer to capturing human nature than most others that have been proposed.

It is the essence of Man that matters to moral fundamentals. This must include the presumed destiny of his children as moral agents. Neither should it exclude those whom accidents of genetics, gestation, or post-natal experience have deprived of one or more qualifications for inclusion.

6. Today’s Breakpoint.

Whether human nature is “real” is indeed “the most debated concept.” We must settle on a widely applicable concept of human nature as it pertains to human behavior before we can sensibly discuss moral fundamentals. To be of any importance, moral precepts would apply to human action, though not necessarily to all human action. We would be willing to judge the actions of a man “in his right mind,” but would shy back from similarly judging the actions of a man who was deeply asleep, or who was in the grip of a hallucinogen. (We might question the moral validity of his decision to take such a hallucinogen, but that’s an exploration for another time.)

Thus, we cannot avoid considerations of perception, volition, and context. However, these things don’t muddy the picture. Rather, they compel us to be precise in the application of any moral standard we might propose.

More anon.

Friday, November 30, 2018

I Didn’t Expect To Post Even Twice Today...

...but here I am with a third piece for this last day of November.

First, please view the video below. It’s quite short. (Feel free to stop when you get to the promo for D’Souza’s recent movie.)

The conception of “a moral order in the universe” goes back many centuries. Indeed, the first monotheists, the Jews of Abraham’s time, did not accept the Ten Commandments because they sounded good, but because they reflect the way the world works. Disregarding any of them leads to calamity, and sometimes to social chaos in which even the most temperate and self-restrained persons, fully aware of their obligations and ready, willing, and able to meet them, will suffer.

God was not telling the Jews of the Book of Exodus anything they didn’t already know. He was merely codifying principles of conduct their own experiences should have taught them. That there have been millions of persons who strove to break those laws and get away with it – some of whom did succeed, in this life anyway – does not invalidate the laws themselves.

It is noteworthy that the Ten Commandments are merely a modest extension of the Noachide Commandments of the Book of Genesis. So in Biblical terms, the meat of the moral order of the universe has a lineage that extends rather far back toward Creation.

D’Souza is quite correct in stating that prior to world War II, at least, Americans were near-unanimous in affirming that moral law exists outside the individual. Even the most corrupt, most sybaritic American would not have dared to say “Naah, the Ten Commandments are just some asshole’s opinions.” Even those who chafed at them and strove to violate them with impunity would at minimum give them lip service – and would teach his children to observe them.

In recent decades even the most secular of intellectuals have found that there are damned good reasons for believing that there’s a moral order in the universe.

Allow me to cite one of my favorite Ralph Waldo Emerson quotations yet again:

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. Justice is not postponed...Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. [From Emerson’s essay Compensation ]

And now allow me to extend it some distance:

     This Law writes the laws of the cities and nations. It will not be baulked of its end in the smallest iota. It is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long....Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, and will appear. If the government is cruel, the governor’s life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict....
     The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem - how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual bright, etc. from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end, without an other end....
     We can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow....
     Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or as currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me.

There is genius in the above. There is a recognition and an acknowledgement that Law is at work – the kind of law that enforces its own decrees. Clearly such a law is not the product of any legislature. It certainly isn’t a matter of anyone’s opinion.

Now for the Ace kicker: Despite the Law as Emerson has explicated it above, some persons do – seemingly, at least – succeed in detaching “the sensual sweet, the sensual bright, etc. from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair” and getting away with it. When we realize that someone has done so, it wounds us deeply. But why? Do we envy the successful criminal? Are we saying to ourselves, in the silence of our souls, “I wish that were me” -- ?

Some might react thus. A minority, perhaps a tiny one. But for most of us, we sense that a Law beyond any legislature’s competence has been violated – and that our culpability in not ensuring its enforcement will, sooner or later, rebound against us.

     For Man is part of the natural order.
     We have a role to play in the enforcement of the Law.
     When we slacken, or look aside, we are complicit in such a violation.

The above is important for more than one reason. It reinforces the dictates of our consciences. But beyond that, it teaches us of the importance of knowing where the law must end. It’s but a short step from the above observations to the law’s limits:

If a law cannot be effectively enforced,
It must not be passed.
A law already on the books that has proved unenforceable must be repealed.

There are many unenforceable laws here in the Land of the Formerly Free. I shall leave the completion of this exercise in sociopolitical logic as an exercise for my Gentle Readers.

Friday, July 1, 2016

In Search Of Suffering: An Off-Schedule, Offbeat Rumination

Courtesy of the indispensable Glenn Reynolds, we have an article that has stimulated much thought:

     When I first started training for marathons a little over ten years ago, my coach told me something I’ve never forgotten: that I would need to learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I didn’t know it at the time, but that skill, cultivated through running, would help me as much, if not more, off the road as it would on it.
     It’s not just me, and it’s not just running. Ask anyone whose day regularly includes a hard bike ride, sprints in the pool, a complex problem on the climbing wall, or a progressive powerlifting circuit, and they’ll likely tell you the same: A difficult conversation just doesn’t seem so difficult anymore. A tight deadline not so intimidating. Relationship problems not so problematic.
     Maybe it’s that if you’re regularly working out, you’re simply too tired to care. But that’s probably not the case. Research shows that, if anything, physical activity boosts short-term brain function and heightens awareness. And even on days they don’t train — which rules out fatigue as a factor — those who habitually push their bodies tend to confront daily stressors with a stoic demeanor. While the traditional benefits of vigorous exercise — like prevention and treatment of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and osteoporosis — are well known and often reported, the most powerful benefit might be the lesson that my coach imparted to me: In a world where comfort is king, arduous physical activity provides a rare opportunity to practice suffering. [Emphasis added by FWP.]

The emphasized sentence above is the one that got my gears grinding.

Are we intended, by God or our natures, to avert “excess” comfort and to prefer to suffer? If so, how much comfort is “excess,” and in what venues does it “threaten?”

Give that a few CPU cycles while I fetch more coffee.

I’ve seen more than one paean to pain and suffering. Here are a couple of representative bits:

     “You’re used to looking forward to the end of work,” Mike said, looking over the formation of blowing Keldara. “For the beer at the end of the day of picking rocks. For the sun to fall on the harvesting or the last stand of wheat to cut and the party to follow. But a soldier cannot be looking forward to the end of work, for the end of pain. Your mind starts to focus on that and it will betray you. As you return from a mission, anticipating a beer and rest, you could be ambushed. You might be sent on another mission, and another and another. You cannot focus on rest, on peace, until you are at peace. You have to exist in a state of mind without a goal of the end of pain. You must learn to accept the pain, to revel in it, to make a brother of pain. To be a soldier is pain! It is suffering and loss and sacrifice. You must learn to pray for chaos and pain! This is one of the many things you’re going to have to learn if you want to be soldiers. And if you turn out to be lousy soldiers, which it looks like this morning, then I’ll just get some people that know how to do the damned job, to revel in the pain, and you can till the damned fields if that’s all you’re good for!” [John Ringo, Kildar]
     On the fortieth day and the two succeeding we were snowed in by a blizzard. During these long hours of lying blotto in the tent Estraven slept almost continuously, and ate nothing, though he drank orsh or sugar-water at mealtimes. He insisted that I eat, though only half-rations. “You have no experience in starvation,” he said.
     I was humiliated. “How much have you—Lord of a Domain, and prime minister—?”
     “Genry, we practice privation until we’re experts at it. I was taught how to starve as a child at home in Estre, and by the Handdarata in Rotherer Fastness. I got out of practice in Erhenrang, true enough, but I began making up for it in Mishnory....Please do as I say, my friend; I know what I’m doing.” [Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness]
     Her tutor woke her well before dawn. Patience felt the chill of the morning through her thin blanket, and her muscles were stiff from sleeping on a hard mat on the floor. Summer was definitely over, and she allowed herself to wish, however briefly, that the north-facing window of her room might be glazed—or at least shuttered—for the winter.
     It was all part of Father’s training, to harden and toughen her, to make her despise the luxuries of court and the people who lived for them. She assumed that Angel’s ungentle hand on her shoulder was part of the regimen. What, did I smile in my sleep? Did it look like my dreams were sweet? Thank you, Angel, for rescuing me before I was corrupted forever by some imaginary delight. [Orson Scott Card, Wyrms]

Now, the above are snippets from three novels, and in the context of each a defensible rationale for the sentiments quoted is at hand, but the attitude – the absolute distrust of comfort, pleasure, and rest – can be found in many guises. It’s not natural, and it isn’t always occupational or situational.

Some people hold, as a first principle, that suffering is to be consciously sought, and that comfort, pleasure, and rest are somehow wrong or sinful.

I cannot agree:

He's a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. Or only like foam on the sea shore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are "pleasures for evermore". Ugh! I don't think He has the least inkling of that high and austere mystery to which we rise in the Miserific Vision. He's vulgar, Wormwood. He has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least—sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working, Everything has to be twisted before it's any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side. [C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters]

We are what we are because it is what God means us to be: creatures that pursue what we want through the use of evidence and reason. Pain and suffering indicate that something is wrong. They’re “Heads-Up” signals intended to get us to change our behavior. Only in uniquely special circumstances is it better to ignore or endure them.

What does that imply for those who consciously seek out pain or suffering? If they’re not training for something, why are they doing it?

This is part and parcel of my attitude toward much that clericalism has bequeathed to us. Over the years, religious clerics have repeatedly blustered at men to shun the pleasures of the world. They’ve sought to forbid virtually every pleasure or satisfaction known to Man. Some have even warned us about taking “too much pleasure” from lovemaking with our spouses. What conceivable chain of reasoning – what premise, or interpretation of a teaching of Christ – could possibly lead to such a proscription?

How could such compulsory anti-hedonism be squared with what the Redeemer said to His followers:

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. [Matthew 11:28-30]

Figure it out if you can. I cannot.

I get into fairly frequent pissing contests with Christians – not all of them Presbyterians – who claim I’ve “perverted” or “misinterpreted” the Gospels. Not one has ever succeeded in showing me a clear error on my part. Christ’s words are recorded in a minimum of four places, and from the evidence He was entirely consistent with Himself. He forbade very little:

And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [Matthew 19:16-19]

I don’t see a word in there about forsaking the comforts and pleasures of life, do you? But I’m given a lot of citations of other people, including from the epistles of ex-Pharisee Paul of Tarsus, who add their own prescriptions and proscriptions to Christ’s list above.

If clerics of the Church had the authority to do that, that authority would be, of necessity, unbounded. It would be coextensive with that of God Himself...and that sort of clerical self-worship, I submit, constitutes a greater sin than any other.

As I’ve already stated, and as is illustrated in the quotations in the second segment, there are contexts within which it is important to turn away from some comfort or pleasure. The context itself makes it vital, a matter of However, outside such a context, the laws written into our own natures should prevail. They impel us to work against pain and suffering: to alter ourselves and/or our contexts to relieve those warning signals and allow us a state of comfort and pleasure. No other interpretation of Natural Law can be defended on logical and evidentiary grounds.

To close, allow me a few words on training for particular purposes.

Success at a personally chosen quest can require you to train yourself to endure pain, suffering, and miscellaneous sorts of deprivation. Anyone who’s attempted to acquire athletic prowess will know this...and just remembering my days practicing my breaking stuff is making my elbow hurt. But our chosen purposes do not exempt us from either God’s laws or the foreseeable consequences of our actions. That which is implied by one’s choices is an integral part of those choices.

Be certain you’re aware of the consequences of your chosen purposes and what you’ll do to pursue them. Be certain you’re willing to accept them. That’s part of every bargain you’ll ever make.

May God bless and keep you all.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Missing Link Graciously Supplied

Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I’m feeling poorly, as you might imagine from the events of yesterday, and I doubt I can sit here for very long. (Anyway, the little tube does say “Do not drive or operate machinery,” and a computer is a machine, right? Right?) But one of my functions on the Web is to complete skeins of reasoning others have left incomplete.

Sometimes that lapse is because the commentator at issue is unable to fill in the steps missing from his argument. That’s hardly the case with Bill Whittle:

...but all the same, quite a lot of persons would regard his connection of “good intentions” legislation to mass slaughters by totalitarian governments as fanciful. It’s not, and I’m here to tell you why.

The missing link is the black market.

Whenever a government steps into the economy to provide, prohibit, or regulate some item, whether it be toothpicks, tuitions, or taxidermy, some persons will be dissatisfied with the prescribed conditions regardless of the specifics. Some fraction of those persons will want what they want on terms other than the government’s dictates badly enough to try to skirt the law. Their efforts to do so create a black market, which our excessively enlightened age prefers to call an “underground economy.” The existence of a black market undermines the effects of the government’s decrees. The Very Important Persons in charge find their prognostications to be in error...error that’s plainly visible to the consuming public. Law enforcement is called in.

But law enforcement is a tiny fraction of the consuming public. It can’t be everywhere, watching everyone, at every instant. Moreover, the use of law enforcement to suppress “economic crimes” causes the profitability of trade in the black market to increase while it weakens public confidence in the government’s efficacy and benevolence. (It also exerts a corrupting influence on law enforcement, but that’s a subject best left for another screed.) That draws in additional suppliers and additional purchasers. The black market fraction of trade in the controlled item increases, in defiance of the State’s wishes. The progression reveals the State’s claim of economic omnipotence for what it is: a fantasy. The Very Important Persons in charge can’t have that. Efforts to eliminate the black market intensify as the “above-ground economy” stutters and weakens.

The State learns the limits of its power upon its own hide as tax revenues decline and lawlessness proliferates.

Once upon a time, a government with the noblest of intentions -- “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!” -- strove with all its might to control a single economic phenomenon. In brief, it decreed that its unbacked paper money -- assignats -- should be treated as equivalent to gold or silver. The consequences spread rapidly, compelling that government to pass wage and price controls that blanketed the entire economy of France. Hearken to Andrew Dickson White, the founder of Cornell University, on what came next:

[I]t was found that the Maximum (a decree of the governing council of revolutionary France that set maximum prices and wages for all goods and services) could not be made to work well—even by the shrewdest devices. In the greater part of France it could not be enforced....To detect goods concealed by farmers and shopkeepers, a spy system was established with a reward to the informer of one-third of the value of the goods discovered. To spread terror, the Criminal Tribunal at Strassburg was ordered to destroy the dwelling of anyone found guilty of selling goods above the price set by law. The farmer often found that he could not raise his products at anything like the price required by the new law, and when he tried to hold back his crops or his cattle, alleging that he could not afford to sell them at the prices fixed by law, they were frequently taken from him by force and he was fortunate if paid even in the depreciated fiat money—fortunate, indeed, if he finally escaped with his life.
Involved in all these perplexities, the Convention tried to cut the Gordian knot. It decreed that any person selling gold or silver coin, or making any difference in any transaction between paper and specie, should be imprisoned in irons for six years—that anyone who refused to accept a payment in assignats, or accepted assignats at a discount, should pay a fine of three thousand francs, and that anyone committing this crime a second time should pay a fine of twenty thousand francs and suffer imprisonment twenty years in irons. Later, on the 8th of September, 1793, the penalty for such offences was made death, with confiscation of the criminal’s property, and so reward was offered to any person informing the authorities regarding any such criminal transaction. To reach the climax of ferocity, the Convention decreed, in May 1794, that the death penalty should be inflicted on any person convicted of “having asked, before a bargain was concluded, in what money payment was to be made.”
[Andrew Dickson White, Fiat Money Inflation In France]

Yes, Gentle Reader: It really happened in enlightened, predominantly Catholic France, the birthplace of Voltaire, Pascal, and Montesquieu. It happened again in the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin, and in Red China under Mao Tse-tung, and it’s happening today in North Korea under Kim Jong-un. And it’s happening today in various pockets of the American economy. Consider especially the great number of persons, unable to get “above-ground” work sufficient to support their families, who resort to trading in prohibited goods, offering unlicensed services in regulated fields, or working “off the books”...often at hazard of life and freedom.

As Bill Whittle explains in the embedded video, the rise in college tuitions as a consequence of government-guaranteed student loans is the first step down a road to hell. We’re already seeing the consequences: not only are tuitions rising to consume the whole of the guaranteed funds; the “institutions of higher learning” are funding ever less serious, ever more pernicious “curricula” to satisfy the demands of vocal, politically influential pressure groups. Graduates heavily laden with student-loan debt are taking their first steps into the world of business and commerce, only to discover that potential employers no longer trust that their dearly bought credentials have any meaning. Alternative occupations, many of them already illegal, are multiplying—and the federal and state governments are imposing ever more severe regulations and ever more draconian penalties upon them.

Though certain specifics of this case of government intervention into the economy would not appear in other realms, the mechanism itself is universal. Yet the Very Important Persons determined to defend their “good intentions” against that inexorable mechanism will never admit to having erred. They will intensify their efforts and tighten their grip until no means to do so remains untried.

Will you, who voted to give them power, acknowledge the reality they have strained to ignore?

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Assets: Yet Another Weekday Rumination

The challenges that confront a devout Christian who is also an analytical metaphysician are considerable. Most persons with a philosophical bent don't candidly acknowledge the constraints of any particular religious creed. Yet there are a couple of philosophers -- Peter Kreeft comes to mind -- who manage the combination without apparent effort.

The problem lies at the most fundamental of all metaphysical levels: the bedrock of reality that lies beneath all we can sense or manipulate. If reality, broadly speaking, is indifferent to our opinions and desires, the "ground state" of reality where natural law "lives" is the fountainhead of that indifference.

Yet natural law is as incompletely understood as anything to which Man has ever applied his power of reason.

We begin with a question many have asked and always will: Why are "things" as they are?

The current condition of the United States is deemed unsatisfactory by many. (I don't like it much myself.) But how did we get here, and how do we get to someplace better? What do we need to understand to grasp our devolutionary path, and what must we change to set ourselves on a better one?

There's an awful lot of detail involved in breaking those questions down to manageable bites and addressing them in a practical fashion. But viewed from the 60,000 foot level, there can only be one answer: metaphysically given reality. That is: the laws of nature, including human nature, operating on the context from which we started and the decisions we've been making since then, could have no other result.

That answer displeases many persons: nearly everyone on the Left and no small number on the Right. In their opinion, things "shouldn't" have worked out this way; they "should" have brought us to a happier place. This is the elevation of desire over natural law: the demand that "I must get what I want because I want it."

To be maximally gentle about it, you mustn't hold your breath while you wait.

Men of good will dissatisfied with the present but who can't understand how we got to this point grope for explanations and, by implication, corrections. If they apply their intellects to the problems they perceive, and manage to keep their preconceptions in check, they can make progress. But that word "should," which virtually no one dares to use around me these days, tends to intrude at the worst possible times.

How much sense does it make to say "That shouldn't have happened" after it's already transpired? Most of us grasp this, at least when we're confronted with it directly. But there's a whole class of persons, innately averse to subordinating their preferences and preconceptions to the laws of nature, whose specialty is evading such a confrontation with metaphysically given reality. We call them politicians.

Do they possess adequate intelligence to grasp the true genesis of our malaise? Some of them, possibly, though getting them to admit their mistakes, especially their willful ones, is a completely separate challenge.

Let's look rather closely at our assumptions about reality.

Our senses precondition the scope of our comprehension of the world around us. Though powerful, human senses are limited. Those limits tempt us to infer that what they cannot detect does not "exist." Yet as recent advances in quantum physics should make plain, that is not necessarily the case.

If you'll allow me an illuminating tangent, please consider the following snippet from Freedom's Fury, in which I tried to give exploitable shape and substance to a conception of a "reality beneath reality:"

    Althea: What are the Loioc rulers most likely to expect of us?
    Probe: First, that the invading vessels will be few in number, perhaps no more than ten. Second, that the invaders intend the conquest and subjugation of the Loioc. Third, that the invaders will rely upon real weapons.
    Althea: I understand the first two of those assumptions, but the third eludes me. What sort of weapon would not be a real weapon? Would it be one that acts solely upon the mind or perceptions of the target?
    Probe: No. You have misconstrued me. We have entered a realm of discourse for which we have not prepared. I did not realize that. My apologies.
    Althea: What realm is that?
    Probe: The realm of metaphysics. I did not realize that despite your accomplishments, you had not yet formulated an explicit conception of metareality.
    Althea: Probe, you have just taken me outside the lexicon I live with. When we of Hope speak of metaphysics, we mean reality as it presents itself to our senses and instruments. Your use of the term is unfamiliar, as is the even newer term metareality. Would you please expand on them?
    Probe: Yes. The senses of spatiotemporal sentients, both organic and nonorganic, are sharply limited. Reality as we perceive it appears fundamental, not merely pre-theoretical but above all theory. Let us assign a few terms for convenience. Let the sentient to whom spatiotemporal reality is all be called a realist. To the realist, the laws of the universe are without foundation. They admit of no explanation, being sufficient unto themselves. Let us call the realist’s highest natural scientist a physicist. The physicist accumulates spatiotemporal data in his attempts to infer reality’s laws. He does not entertain the possibility that those laws might arise from some deeper set of mechanisms. Yet there are deeper mechanisms: atemporal, independent of location, and potentially in flux. Probing them and their interplay is the domain of the metaphysicist: he who studies the nature of metareality.
    Althea: How do my accomplishments, as you put it a moment ago, bear on this realm?
    Probe: You are Hope’s first metaphysicist, Althea. You alone have thought to alter the properties of space itself. It is how you constructed your superluminal vessel.
    Althea: Then to alter the permittivity of the vacuum is an act of meta-engineering?
    Probe: Yes. It requires an assumption realist physicists would dismiss out of hand. Their assumptions are wholly incompatible with it.
    Althea: What are those assumptions?
    Probe: They address the undefined term existence. If asked “does space exist?” the realist physicist would decline to give a definite answer. Space, he would say, is nothing: the absence of anything real. Therefore, the concept of existence does not apply to it. You, by contrast, have treated space as having existential properties. You have treated nothing as being something, and so have succeeded in making changes to it.
    Althea: Which of us is nearer to the truth?
    Probe: Surely that question answers itself.
    Althea: Does my technique for attaining superluminal speeds resemble yours?
    Probe: Only in the results achieved. At present I lack the terms required to explain the technique embodied in my superluminal engine to you. It will require us to expand our lexicon much further.
    Althea: I infer from this that metareality is complex, perhaps even more complex than spatiotemporal reality.
    Probe: If I may borrow an expression you have used in another context, you have no idea. But there is more. Have you attained an understanding of your telekinetic powers?
    Althea: No. They baffle me even as I use them.
    Probe: Yet you use them with precision and confidence. They are as metareal as your vessel’s manipulation of the permittivity of space.
    Althea: That implies that I am actually altering the laws of reality when I employ them.
    Probe: Yes, you are, within the radius of their operation. I became aware of their nature when you freed me of my payload. You reconfigured local reality continuously as you worked. It was a display of metaphysical capabilities no Loioc has ever commanded. Yet your skill and self-assurance were such that I did not suspect that you were unaware of what you were doing.
    Althea: Probe, there are several things I can do for which I lack an explanation. Perhaps they are all metareal. I look forward to exploring them with you.
    Probe: As do I, Althea. Have you ever discussed them with another organic sentient?
    Althea: Yes, I have. He told me to consider them gifts.
    Probe: Who would give you such gifts, yet deny them to others of your race?
    Althea: I cannot say. Possibly God.
    Probe: It appears that we must discuss God at some length.
    Althea: We’ll have plenty of time for that on the trip to Loioc system.

The above, though fanciful, touches upon an important aspect of human inquiry: the never-ending question why. Why are the laws of nature what they are? Were they ever otherwise? If so, why did they change? What caused the changes? Might they change yet again, and if so, why?

At this point we're compelled to address the invisible dimension we call time and the operation of intelligence within it.

As time passes, things change. But why?
Why do things change? Because the laws of nature operate on them as time passes.
How do we know that time has passed? Because we can see things changing.

Yes, the circularity is frustrating, but that's in the nature of any attempt to cope with the most fundamental aspects of reality. There are even gag lines about it, for example: "Time is just nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once." All the same, those are the facts: the observable phenomena, wholly indifferent to our opinions, that any interested, unbiased party can confirm for himself. Time passes, and things change.

Now add Man to the mix. Ayn Rand's "being of volitional consciousness," Loren Lomasky's "project pursuer," is the one mobile entity we can be certain possesses individual desires and acts consciously to fulfill them. How does he do this? By noting the available facts and applying his intelligence: i.e., his facility for employing generalizations about natural law, applying deductive logic to them, and reaching conclusions about "if this were to happen in that adequately well defined context, what would happen next?"

That's what intelligence is: the ability to use, and in advanced cases to form, generalizations -- abstractions -- derived from the available facts.

Intelligence is not:

Artistic gifts;
Physical prowess;
Manipulative dexterity;
Empathy or "compassion;"
A sterling character;
Verbal facility;
Reliability;

...or any other attribute of Man. It's exactly and only his ability to work with generalizations: his ability to reason, as traditionally understood.

Are those other attributes valuable? No argument: in the contexts in which they apply, they're indispensable. But they are not intelligence. Highly intelligent men bereft of all other assets, including some completely paralyzed from the neck down, have nevertheless managed to contribute to human advancement or culture, just as men of ordinary intellect but equipped with major assets of other kinds have done so in their varying ways.

Intelligence, like every other human asset, is important to us, both individually and socially, because:

Time passes;
And things change.

For some decades, the Western world generally and the United States specifically have seen a steady increase in the relative value of intelligence in political, social, and economic affairs. Mind you, intelligence is not the only asset valued in those venues. However, its importance relative to other assets has risen, such that persons of ordinary attainments are slowly being marginalized. Of course, the usual qualifier applies: "All other things being equal." In some domains, other assets are critical. For example, in contemporary politics cunning and verbal ability are of great importance, greater than that of intellect. To the extent that a society lavishes resources upon entertainment, athleticism can reap great rewards. But today at least, those domains are of limited size. The fields favorable to high intelligence are far larger, possibly unbounded.

Beyond even that, the highly intelligent man has an edge over less gifted others at inferring in what direction things are likely to change. Thus intelligence tends to correlate with adaptability.

He who knows himself to be of ordinary intellect cannot help but be aware of these things. If he possesses other assets of potential value, he's likely to concentrate on developing and exploiting them. If he's ordinary in all ways, he must accept mediocrity: not an unthinkable destiny in a society that offers everyone a place. The mediocre American lives very well, at least when compared to mediocre persons of other places and times. He can be proud of his legitimate accomplishments. He has as good a chance to be happy with his lot as any genius...if he can avoid the seductions of envy and resentment.

What no one can do -- not even one of my fictional heroes -- is change the laws of nature. They are what they are. If they change, it will be as God wills, not Man. The most important of those laws for socio-politico-economic purposes are the laws of human nature.

Each human asset is a tool to be used in pursuing one's chosen ends. Intelligence is no exception. As with other tools, intelligence can only work when supplied with the materials it requires:

Trustworthy premises;
Accurate, adequately complete data;
In most cases, trustworthy generalizations reached by previous thinkers.

There is no question that lacking those things, even the most powerful intellect will go wildly astray. The ancient conceit of the "ivory tower philosopher" deducing the entirety of existence from his thoughts alone is ludicrous. As Bertrand Russell has said, "Logic is often merely an organized way of going wrong with confidence." (Alternately, we have Arthur Herzog's quip that "A paranoid is a logician with a fractured premise.")

The greatest mistakes in human history were made by very smart men who either lacked sufficient data or proceeded from bad premises -- or, in the worst of cases, who denied one or both of those things because they preferred to believe otherwise. This is observably the case regarding the several "experts" who pushed a "catastrophic / unavoidable resource exhaustion and mass starvation" overpopulation scenario in the Seventies and early Eighties. Also consider the behavior of the scientists pushing the "global warming" agenda; all the actual data contradicts their hypothesis, so they wish it aside, point to their simulations, and insist that they must be correct. The consequences have been bad enough to date; may God help us all if they should get their way politically.

In other words, no degree of intelligence can compensate for ignorance or arrogance, and particularly not for the combination thereof. Whether we speak of the "moderate" degree of arrogance that simply insists "I cannot be wrong!" or the "extreme" variety that seeks to defy the laws of nature themselves -- say, remember the "new Soviet man?" -- we're looking upon a quick road to chaos and destruction.

I am hard pressed to think of a single major political, social, or economic ill that was rooted in anything but the arrogance of highly placed men.

Having waded through 2500 words to get here, you could be forgiven for asking "What's the point?" The point, as it so often is in a Rumination, is the transcendent importance of humility. As I wrote just yesterday:

Humility is merely the willingness to acknowledge reality:

That we cannot merely decree that what we want is what shall be;
That reality's laws are superior to our desires, opinions, and wills;
That others are what they are and have a right to be so, despite our preferences to the contrary.

Inversely, humility is not self-abasement or an imposed belief in one's own inferiority. The humble man need not subjugate himself to anyone or anything. He merely accepts that the world is what it is, and that events will sometimes run contrary to his desires.

Alternately, from Reinhold Niebuhr:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Whatever your assets, may God bless and keep you all.

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Edging Toward Moral Equivalence Part 2

In the previous essay, in speaking of grievances old and new, I introduced a concept quite a lot of persons apparently find difficult to swallow: that of moving on:

[The] Palestinians' "grievance" [is] sixty-six years old as of today. How long must we wait for that "grievance" to expire? Are American Indians still entitled to claim a grievance against the European colonists of North America? Incidentally, the newborn state of Israel offered the "dispossessed" compensation for the lands and homes it had claimed. Though some of the Muslims thus dispossessed stepped forward to collect said compensation, many declined to do so, believing that they could recapture by force of arms what they had lost. As anyone familiar with the history of the region will know, Israel's uniformly hostile neighbors made several attempts to do so, all of which came to an abrupt end with Israel's acquisition of a nuclear deterrent.

They're not long words, so it must be the requirement they express that troubles the objectors. Inasmuch as two of the objectors have based their opposition on individual-rights axioms in the terminology customarily used by libertarians, I have tentatively concluded that the lunacy that caused me to leave the Libertarian Party with never a backward glance is still operating among such persons.

The great fallacy among libertarians is that their favorite moral-political axioms need respect no limiting principle. In other words, their domain of applicability is deemed unbounded. But this is plainly incorrect. Indeed, it accounts for by far the greater part of popular revulsion toward "Capital-L" Libertarianism.

As I wrote some time ago:

[T]he libertarian political philosophy, where applicable, is a very good one. It's more accurate in its assessment of human nature and its controlling influences, and leads to better societies and better economic results, than any other political concept ever advanced. But the "where applicable" part is very important; in fact, it's the most important part of this paragraph, as it explains in near-totality the "conservative-libertarian schism."
Where would the libertarian postulates of individual rights and individual responsibilities fail to apply? Three generic places:

Where the atoms that interact are not individuals, but collectivities;
Where the "individual" under discussion is incapable, either from innate incapacity or from injury, of understanding rights and responsibilities;
Where rights clash in an absolute and irreconcilable way.

Important specific topics that fall within these categories are:

National defense and foreign dealings;
The protection and restraint of the immature and the mentally diseased;
Abortion.

Quite a lot of animus arises from libertarian insistence that no such limitations nor exclusions can possibly exist.

One of the great moral problems throughout post-Enlightenment history has been that of the innocent shield: the individual compelled to stand between an aggressor and a defender -- alternately, between a armed criminal and those who would bring him to justice. The late Robert Nozick, himself no intellectual lightweight, pondered the problem in his masterwork Anarchy, State, and Utopia, without coming to a conclusion. Yet the problem only remains intractable if we insist that the premise of inviolable individual rights remains in force even under circumstances in which it cannot be honored: i.e., in a "lifeboat" situation.

"Lifeboat problems" are those in which no solution acceptable under conventional moral strictures is possible. For example, imagine a lifeboat adrift in the middle of the ocean, occupied by two persons, but with food or water adequate to sustain only one of them. There's no arrangement that will save both lives. Must they both die? Or is it licit that one should be sacrificed to save the other? If the latter, how should they "decide" who will live?

Head hurting yet? It's not uncommon to find such problems frustrating, because the situation they present us is highly uncommon. Indeed, it's one we've arranged our entire civilization to minimize.

Problems that force men into collectives have a similar character. Border control is one:

Borders matter because people matter. Borders are important because there must be a limit on every man's responsibilities for others, and on every nation's, too. Every political system binds its citizens in a web of mutual responsibility. Not for everything, but for the really big things commonly delegated to government: the defense of the realm, the maintenance of order in the streets, a common, generally comprehended legal system, and above all the protection of individuals' rights to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. Israel granted the Palestinians autonomy within their zones, or, as Eric Frank Russell once put it, "the right to go to Hell in their own fashion." Now that they've chosen their course, they should be allowed to follow it to its conclusion, out of respect not only for their right to do so, but the right of Israelis not to be involved in it. Likewise, America did not agree to shelter or employ the whole world. If our borders were better secured, not only would our streets be safer, but Mexicans' interest in reforming their own polity would be greatly increased.

Some libertarians reject this by asserting that government is inherently immoral and illegitimate, a position that can only be sustained in practice by forcing it upon an unwilling and enormously larger dissenting opinion.

Needless to say, warfare is a comparable case.

In war, soldiers die. So, unfortunately, do noncombatants. While the accidental deaths of noncombatants are unfortunate and to be minimized to the extent possible, the deliberate targeting of noncombatants has been anathema, under the Geneva Convention and to general human sentiment, for many years. When a combatant nation is discovered to have transgressed, it earns the opprobrium (and sometimes the reprisals) it deserves...unless that combatant happens to be the Palestinian irredentists of Gaza and the West Bank zone.

HAMAS has verifiably used noncombatants -- men, women, and children -- as innocent shields for its offensive weaponry. It has sited missiles and other armaments in thickly populated residential areas, mosques, hospitals, schools, and United Nations emplacements of various kinds. It has then fired those missiles at targets in Israel, knowing that should Israel choose to respond with counter-battery fire, the credulous and the anti-Semites of the world would lay the resulting "civilian casualties" at Israel's moral doorstep. The Israelis, acutely conscious of this, have taken the unusual step of pre-announcing their targets to the people of Gaza, thus providing them with ample time to flee the target zone. Those that remain in the impact zone to become "civilian casualties" must occupy one of the following categories:

Those who have chosen to ignore the warning;
Those willing to die in service to HAMAS's war aims;
Those who have been compelled to remain in the target zone.

The first category is of the tribe conventionally known as "idiots." Stupidity has always been a capital crime; few and far between are the commutations of sentence. This is especially the case when the lead is flying.

The second category are not true noncombatants, as they have willingly placed their lives at risk in the service of a combatant. They have no moral claim on anyone should they lose those lives, nor can they (or any third party) rationally blame anyone else for their deaths.

The third category are true "innocent shields." They have been conscripted as war materiel by HAMAS, which hopes to reap political capital, at least, from their deaths under counter-battery fire. Who is it that has placed them in the line of fire? Not the Israelis, who have done all that any combatant could do to warn them away from the danger zone.

There is no fourth category.

The Israeli / HAMAS conflict is not a scenario from William James:

Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

(Cf. this classic short story.)

It's far more serious than that, a test of the Israelis' moral fiber and will to survive against the hostility of a band of bloodthirsty religious fanatics whose creed demands their destruction. To this point, Israel and her people have met that test with a nearly perfect score. The carpers who insist that Israel refrain from acting to eliminate the threat HAMAS poses to its people have no basis for doing so except utter self-deception -- another crime for which Nature often imposes the harshest of penalties.

But there's yet one more point to be made. I've made it once before:

Imagine the following public statement from the president of the United States:
Inasmuch as the riots in Benghazi, Libya, which have taken the lives of four American diplomats posted there, indicate that that city has become lawless, I have decided to destroy it. I intend that it be completely leveled, the ground it occupies made uninhabitable for at least a generation. Therefore, exactly one week from today, one of our Trident submarines will launch a cruise missile armed with a mid-yield nuclear warhead, targeted on the Benghazi city center. The United States will undertake no subsequent cleanup or remediation of the site. It will be left as it is, as a warning to others inclined to attack American diplomatic personnel.
The one-week delay of our reprisal is calculated to permit the residents of Benghazi to escape before the destruction of the city. We don't seek to shed anyone's blood. However, the strike will take place on schedule, regardless of whether any occupants remain in that city. We will not be deterred by "human shields." Anyone who believes otherwise is welcome to remain in Benghazi, though it will cost him his life.
Moreover, this will henceforward be the standing policy of the United States. Should law and order in a city with an American embassy or consulate degrade so badly that American lives are lost or American soil is invaded, that city will be destroyed one week afterward. The world is on notice: Americans have had enough. From now on, if you dare to spill our blood, you will reap the most terrible consequences imaginable. Test us if you dare.

Needless to say, the denunciations would be worldwide. They would shake the very ground. But assuming the president were firm in his resolve, there would be no further attacks on American diplomatic institutions in other lands. You don't mess with a nation willing to respond to attack in such a fashion.
Our problem is that we've placed more weight on the opinions of our enemies -- in which category I include everyone anywhere who goes by some variation of "progressive" or "transnationalist" -- than on our rights and well-being and our duty to uphold them. Note that the Russians have never committed that error, and so have had a tiny fraction of our problems with Islamic savagery. It's time we learned from their example.

This is the only rational response to a degree of violence and chaos that demonstrates the abandonment of civilized norms. Such a place is a plague zone -- and for this plague, the only imaginable "cure" is the Hoof-and-Mouth Disease Cure: When there isn't any, there won't be any.

A polity beyond restraint by its subjects is an enemy of all Mankind.
Whatever would put an end to it is fully justified.

America applied that principle to Japan to end World War II. It applies to HAMAS and Gaza today.

Either HAMAS, the supposed political authority in the Gaza Palestinian zone, is beyond all restraint by its subjects, or its subjects are unwilling to make the effort to restrain it. In either case, Israel would be fully justified in eliminating HAMAS politically by extermination, even were that to require the death or expulsion of many supposedly uninvolved persons and the transformation of Gaza into an uninhabitable wasteland.

Israel has not yet endured the degree of terror or suffering that would trigger so wholesale a response. Let a few more teenagers be kidnapped and slaughtered -- let "world opinion" develop just a bit more in either direction -- and we might see it yet.

For my part, I would shed no tears.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

A Maxim, The Law, And The State Of Religion

This post of last year has become one of the most visited and most frequently cited pieces here at Liberty's Torch. Just yesterday it was linked at Battlefield USA, one of my daily stops. The frequency with which this occurs suggests that the logic of the thing, coupled to the resentment so many Americans feel at our over-legislated, over-regulated state, sounds a deep chord in a great many souls.

In pondering that phenomenon, it occurred to me that the bedrock upon which the essay rests -- the existence of an invariant and unbreakable natural law -- is a proposition to which a declining number of persons, here and elsewhere, are willing to accept as a premise. Yet natural law is one of the core premises of the Christian faith, and 74% of Americans, according to the most recent census data, still self-designate as Christians. Indeed, one cannot validly claim to be a Christian if one denies the existence of natural law or rejects its implications for the conduct of men. The clash between those two observations is at the heart of today's exercise in futility.

It's often said that ours is a "secular age," and that the wisdoms and strictures of earlier, more religious eras have ceased to apply. Certainly, a great many Americans, and an even greater number of non-Americans, behave as if they believed exactly that. (No, I'm not talking about sex; that's a subject that deserves its own rant and will get one by and by.) One of the consequences of that stance is the increasing acceptance of the notion that for a law to be reasonable and morally binding, all that's required is that it win majorities in both houses of Congress and be signed by whatever clown happens to be president at that time.

I shan't bother repeating my earlier argument against that canard. But I will note that one house of a state legislature really did consider a bill to decree that Pi shall henceforth equal exactly three. Fortunately, the bill died long before it could command the attention of the governor, but all the same: that's what you get when people reject the concept of natural law.

I will allow that there's no direct, inescapable implication from natural law to a natural Lawgiver, whose decrees cannot be repealed nor modified. Nevertheless, that's been the belief of the overwhelming majority of Americans and Europeans throughout the Anno Domini era. Moreover, those outside the Judeo-Christian tradition do not include natural law among the precepts of their faiths. Islam is explicit on the subject: in the Islamic view, Allah can and does tinker with reality continuously, entirely according to its whim, such that no item of human knowledge or belief can be regarded as accurate at all places and times.

If it doesn't pain you to do so, ponder the implications of a belief system without invariant natural law beneath it, specifically as it would pertain to human conduct. The attempt gives me a headache.

If I may repeat a quote from the earlier essay:

Nevertheless, in the inexplicable universal votings and debatings of these Ages, an idea or rather a dumb presumption to the contrary has gone idly abroad, and at this day, over extensive tracts of the world, poor human beings are to be found, whose practical belief it is that if we "vote" this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be. Practically men have come to imagine that the Laws of this Universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are decided by voting. It is an idle fancy. The Laws of this Universe, of which if the Laws of England are not an exact transcript, they should passionately study to become, are fixed by the everlasting congruity of things, and are not fixable or changeable by voting!

If one disbelieves in "the everlasting congruity of things," it becomes possible to allow that natural law doesn't exist -- alternately, that it can be finessed. Some persons will claim that "science" -- yet another habitually abused concept -- is essentially the enterprise of finding ways to finesse natural law. The notion calls to mind Chief Engineer Scott saying to Captain Kirk: "I canna change the laws of physics, Captain, but I can find ye a loophole." But this is far from the actual case. There are no loopholes in the laws of nature; there are only domains of applicability of the descriptions of the laws we think we've deduced from the patterns we have observed so far.

Let it be stipulated that one of the laws of nature pertinent to Man is that a society that tolerates violence against the innocent degrades its prospects for extended survival. In the Judeo-Christian formulation, this is rendered as Thou shalt not murder. Individuals can and sometimes do say to themselves: "I can get away with it." And indeed, some murderers do "get away with it," in the sense that they go forever unpunished by the justice systems of their societies. That doesn't impact the natural law itself, as long as the society in question incorporates absolute intolerance of violence against the innocent in its resolutions and the judicial institutions built upon them. But should that society's legislators pass a bill that legalizes murder, conditions would become radically different.

That's a fairly blunt example, so let's have another of greater subtlety. Let's stipulate that another of the laws of nature pertinent to Man is that to defend oneself or innocent others against criminal predation is inherently right and just. The United Kingdom has recently enacted laws that make forcible resistance to a crime -- i.e., violence used in defense -- a punishable offense. Such laws clearly put the well-being of the aggressive criminal on a plane above the rights and well-being of his victim: a clear attempt to set aside the law of nature in favor of a legislated law.

It's not working out well for our English cousins. Crime rates, particularly property crime rates, have been rising steadily there. If any thought has been given to the repeal of the no-defensive-violence statutes, I'm unaware of it.

The extension of the logic of the latter case to laws that forbid peaceable citizens to carry weapons, and the consequences for those American states and cities that have enacted them, should be too obvious to require extensive discussion.

He who doesn't have enough insight or mental horsepower to concede the existence of natural law, and to grasp the implied bounds upon those who would legislate for Man, could still "get there" from a suitable (i.e., Jewish or Christian) religious foundation. Once the premise of natural law is accepted, the proper limits on human legislatures become inescapable. But in the absence of either sufficient intellect or an appropriate religious faith, we enter forbidding waters, where no fact is beyond question and no chart can be trusted to lead us home.

It takes quite a lot more percipience and intellect than most persons possess to establish the critical premise without the assistance of a proper religious faith.

The increasing disaffiliation of Westerners from the faiths that underpinned the West's rise to world pre-eminence correlates absolutely with the bursting of the bonds, whether expressly set out in constitutions or implied by longstanding traditions, that confined Western legislatures to their proper spheres. In shedding our faiths -- the Christendom that was once the light of Europe, and the fervor that once animated American religiosity -- we've lost far more than we've gained.

This is not to say that those earlier, more religious times had no unjust or unpleasant features. There was much intolerance of persons and practices that could not be justified by any preachment of Christ. The Church itself committed many usurpations of authority for which there is no substantiation in the Gospels. All the same, beneath all the trappings was always the doctrine of natural law -- that which operates despite Man's denial or dissent -- to keep the powers of the earth properly in check. In turning away from that premise -- in assuming that "if we 'vote' this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be," -- we've endangered all our forebears have left to us.

Possibly our immortal souls, as well.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Objectives And Constraints

Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I'm feeling unusually philosophical this fine Saturday morning, which renders me reluctant-approaching-incapable of writing about the newsgarbage as I normally do. If you find what follows boring, or too high-flown for your tastes, just remember: it's only Saturday.

"Know how to make God laugh? You tell him your plans." -- Origin unknown.

I employed that line in Shadow Of A Sword, to emphasize the inescapable uncertainties inherent in even a successful plan. The speaker, presidential candidate Stephen Graham Sumner, is troubled by the unintended consequences of his successful drive for the Oval Office. Sumner, a bright and knowledgeable man, is aware that every cause has more than one effect, and that there had to be "extra" consequences to his campaign than just the vote totals. Yet he finds himself edging away from his goal because of the violence his pursuit of the presidency has elicited.

(To my fiction readers: Yes, there will be future stories about the Sumner years. Hang in there.)

Those of us who make and chafe at unsuccessful plans -- i.e., everyone -- sing our laments in a different key, of course. But that's in the nature of Nature. We can plan; we can implement our plans; we can pursue them with all the force and skill at our disposal...but we cannot guarantee their outcomes.

The one thing it's within human power to guarantee is that we shall not do some particular thing, or some category of things. All else is subject to being overruled by the laws of Nature.

Isabel Paterson was the first writer I encountered to enumerate these critical characteristics of Mankind:

Man is a rational animal, capable of inferring causal relations from his observations of reality;
Each of us is self-motivating and self-actuating -- i.e., our desires and decisions are individual;
Each of us possesses the ability to inhibit himself -- i.e., to refrain from an action, however desirable he might deem the rewards that might flow from it.

That third characteristic is the one on which I'd like to concentrate for the moment.

Why would Smith, who has conceived of a course of action that he expects would bring him some greatly desired reward, voluntarily refrain from taking that course?

He might be too risk-averse to pursue it;
He might doubt his own forecast of success;
He might be uncertain that the reward is real;
He fears unforeseeable unintended consequences;
The reward would be accompanied by a loss of equal or greater magnitude:
His conscience forbids it.

That last possibility brings us into the domain of ethics and ethical psychology, which makes it difficult to analyze by impersonal means. However, the others are bald recognitions of the inherent uncertainties of life under the veil of time. In effect, they concede the primacy of Natural Law, which operates continuously, offers no exemptions, and is indifferent to individual desires, opinions, and identities.

We cannot be certain that any positive course will eventuate in the outcome we seek, Only one certainty is granted us: that if we refrain from doing a particular thing, then we will not do that thing. A man's firm decision not to act cannot be overridden by any external agency.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote that "among these [rights] are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," that bit of wisdom might well have been uppermost in his thoughts. As Robert A. Heinlein observed in Starship Troopers:

And the third 'right'? — the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed inalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.

All we can say for certain is what we will not do; all else is subject to the whims of time and chance.

If our personal certainties are so limited, what does that make of our ability to plan and to execute our plans?

Only this: it demands that we be mindful of the possibility of failure. Given that that possibility applies not merely to a complete plan but to each step in such a plan, the farther forward we plan -- the more linkages of cause and effect we insert between our current position and our intended destination -- the less certain we can be of the outcome. More, every single action will have at least two consequences, at least one of which will be undesirable. (See the Second Law of Thermodynamics for a rigorous explanation.) Thus, when toting up the costs of a plan, those negative consequences belong on the debit side of the balance sheet -- and as they're normally just as impossible to be certain about as any other aspect of our plans, the element of risk will always be larger than we can foresee.

Though I've stepped through this evolution of thought as slowly and carefully as natural language will allow, the knowledge itself is something we grasp not by theorizing but from life itself. Indeed, one cannot lay claim to any degree of maturity without first absorbing it.

If you simply must have a political hook on which to hang the above, it does pertain to the utter failure of nearly all government action. Governments, especially left-leaning governments, are obsessed with outcomes. They're forever telling their subjects about how this or that plan will bring about some desirable state of affairs. They're correct so seldom that the great question is why any half-bright human being ever takes their assertions seriously.

It's an old saw that you can always tell when a politician is lying: his lips move. If I exercise all my Christian charity and completely suspend my well-developed cynicism about men who regard themselves as worthy of wielding power over the rest of us, I can grudgingly allow that every eon or so, a politician who promises some rosy outcome from a proposed course in public policy might just sincerely believe it. He still won't be correct. Those who sincerely imagine that "social progress," however they define it, can be brought about by political action might lack mens rea, but the harm they do when allowed power will not be lessened by their warm hearts or their good intentions.

The ability to inhibit himself, humbly mindful of his fallibility and ethically constrained from doing harm in his desire to do good, is the most important characteristic a ruler could possibly possess. Our present agonies reflect how vanishingly rare such figures really are.

What's that you say? From the above I seem to be advocating anarchism? Why, Gentle Reader! Whatever gave you that idea?

Happy Winter Solstice.

Friday, October 25, 2013

On Nature And Natures

I've been writing for the Web since 1997, and over those years have sporadically attracted a fair amount of attention, both positive and negative. In keeping with the old Air Force adage that "if you're taking flak, you’re over the target," I've generally placed more significance on the negative feedback I've received.

Nothing I've written at Liberty's Torch has attracted as much vitriol as this piece.

It's fairly easy to see why. No woman wants to hear that her half of the human race is innately inferior, even if it's second-hand and with only the most indirect expression of approbation. As it happens, the approbation was for the cited writers' fearlessness, not their opinions per se. To make absolutely certain this point is not missed, here are my personal convictions on the subject:

I am adamant that women are the lesser sex; that men are the creators and maintainers of the skeleton and sinews of Western Civilization, without whom women's lives would be Hell on Earth; that men have an obligation to protect and provide for their wives, and that mothers have an obligation to protect and nurture their children; that women's gender-specific strengths pertain to a far smaller range of undertakings than the feminist activists claim; and that attempts to dismiss any of the above will inevitably bring about mass misery, social dissolution, and overall chaos. Put any label on those statements you might care to apply to them, ladies. That's easy enough. Convincing me that any of them is false will be much harder.

You can't say I tried to hide any of that, now can you, ladies? But what matters most about those observations is what I've inferred from them:

The overwhelming preponderance of happy American women are married and have adopted a traditional wife / mother / homemaker style of life.
The strongest and least stressed marriages are those in which "traditional" male and female roles obtain.
The unhappiest women are found among the careerists who have completely renounced marriage and motherhood in favor of work for wages.
Many unhappily married women, though perhaps not a majority thereof, are unhappy specifically about having to work for wages.
Far too many men of a "conservative" bent take the above prescriptively: that is, as a command that the only proper place for a woman is in a traditional married woman's role.

I haven't tried to hide any of that, either.

Ultimately, the whole of the "war between the sexes" reduces to contentions about their natures: in particular, whether they have any such things. In such arguments lie some of the grandest ironies in all of human discourse.

If there is a Nature -- that is, a set of immutable laws that determine the gross facts about how matter and energy behave and interact -- it follows almost tautologically that patterns will arise from Nature's laws that will distinguish groups of entities from one another. Men's practice of conceiving categories whose members possess specific characteristics arises from those patterns. This insight, which is the basis of Aristotle's approach to definition, is the highest single achievement of human philosophy.

Any number of persons have sought to undermine this approach to abstract reasoning. Some have attempted a subjectivist approach in the manner of George Berkeley. Others chisel at the edges: having noted that the categories we define in an Aristotelian fashion exclude certain outliers who nevertheless belong in them, they maintain that such exceptions invalidate the category altogether.

There is an obvious tension between any sort of abstraction and the natural world upon which we wish to use it. Abstractions and the definitions that create them are inherently binary: either you're "in" or you're "out." Nature is not binary, at least, not above the level of the quanta: what she produces varies continuously along innumerable axes, some of which have no self-evident bounds. Thus, rather than cavil at the gray zones around our categories, which reflect that tension, we should accept it, while maintaining that though we must remain wary about the margins around them, our abstractions remain useful nonetheless.

Allow me to skip over about twenty-four centuries of conceptual refinement: Honesty compels us to allow that our categorical notions about the sexes are inherently statistical. They address the distribution of critical characteristics between the sexes, and the variances those distributions display. Those distributions allow for leading and trailing "tails" under which outliers will be found.

Yes, there are six-foot-tall female weightlifters and five-foot-tall male weaklings.
Yes, there are innately aggressive and daring women and innately timid, retiring men.
Yes, there are a few female mathematicians and composers of symphonies...a very few.
But these are exceptions to the larger patterns that characterize the sexes: their natures.

Once we have acknowledged the statistical character of natures, other allowances automatically follow. She who is an exception will behave exceptionally, and will not be harmed thereby. However, she who is an example of the larger pattern arising from women's nature, but who strains to behave as the exceptions do, is extremely likely to be harmed. At minimum she'll be unhappy, and she'll make those involved with her unhappy in proportion to her importance to them.

There's a lot of such unhappiness about just now. American women have been thoroughly propagandized about "equality," "female strength," and "having it all." The consequences have been dire. Those who succeed in resisting the cant, and making their own choices according to their own needs and desires, are often vilified as "gender traitors:" the most vicious and destructive element of the propaganda.

None of this is to be taken prescriptively. As I wrote here:

It doesn't matter that the path to happiness for most women seems to be that of marriage and traditional wifely and motherly pursuits. Indeed, it wouldn't matter if one could "prove" that that's the only path to female happiness. No good can come from either the de Beauvoirean / Hirshmanesque command to women to "get out there and prepare to become a ruler" or the authoritarian-paternalistic command to "stick to your kids, your home, and your kitchen." There must be free choice.
Some women would best relate to life, men, and society by adopting a traditional "wifestyle;" others, upon whom God has bestowed other gifts and insights, would do best to follow another path. If our experiences since the inception of the "Women's Lib" movement are at all indicative, there are more women of the first sort than of the second, perhaps far more. That doesn't confer authority over such decisions upon anyone.
If freedom means anything, it means the right to pursue happiness according to your own notions and priorities, whether you have two X chromosomes or only one.

The besetting sin of sexual ideologues of both sorts is to deny the nature of Mankind itself: the rational creature animated by volitional consciousness and thus deserving of freedom in all things that neither coerce nor defraud others of his kind. Such ideologues are too anxious to condemn those who defy their prescriptions. As human freedom is a lesser priority to them -- if, indeed, it's a priority at all -- its exclusion from the subject comes naturally.

Species' natures define the species, in the abstract sense discussed above. When we observe significant changes to a species that substantially invalidate the definition, we declare and define a new species. That's the way of nature-based taxonomy: you don't insist that the creature fit the definition, but shape the definition to describe the creature, as inclusively as possible.

However, while a species's nature persists, it can be quite useful in making predictions and evaluations. Indeed, an evaluation of a creature must proceed from the nature of its species. We don't judge a Newfoundland by the standard appropriate to a Hairless Chihuahua.

BUT... let it be agreed upon at once that every evaluation, no matter how firmly based in an appropriate standard, also reflects the priorities of the evaluator -- and these are always at least partly subjective. They cannot be otherwise, for priorities are always comparative: matters of greater and lesser import. Greater and lesser import to whom? Why, to the evaluator! Who else?

Therefore, when I state that I find women to be the lesser sex -- there it is again, ladies, just in case you missed it the first time -- I'm expressing an evaluation of a species' nature, as I understand it, according to my own priorities. I place a higher value on men's typical attributes than on those typical of women. Others are free to apply their own priorities and to reach different evaluations. Given the highly personal nature of such things, I will not quibble with them.

No doubt the women who wrote en masse to castigate me for daring to have such values would like to see me "re-educated." Ain't gonna happen, chickies. I've got Aristotle in my corner. Who've you got?

Friday, October 11, 2013

Reduced Blogging Ahead

Apologies, Gentle Reader The next few days are likely to see a decline in postings here at Liberty’s Torch. I’m headed out of town on business for a bit, and am likely to be very busy indeed. Keep safe and well informed while I’m gone, no wild parties, don’t bust up the furniture, and avoid those unsavory new acquaintances of yours!

Of course, my worthy Co-Conspirators could pitch in and take up the slack. (Hint! Hint!) And please enjoy this excellent "Firewall" from the one and only Bill Whittle:

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Judgments and Natures: A Non-Political Discourse

As one aspect of my involvement in indie fiction, I write a large number of reviews and critiques. When I first set out on this path, I had to struggle against my impulse to measure others' approaches to plotting, characterization, narration, and style against my own approaches and preferences. It was difficult then, and it remains difficult today. That's the downside of strong opinions and tastes.

Over time, I realized that critical or evaluative judgment of any sort requires a particular orientation. Before he sets out to comment on some specific work of a man's hands, the would-be judge must be sure he has the correct standard clearly and firmly in mind. That is: One can only judge a thing rightfully if one is aware of the nature of that thing, and applies the standard proper to that nature.

You mustn't judge erotica by a standard appropriate to a psychological novel. You mustn't judge a wallpaper design by a standard appropriate to a Rembrandt. You mustn't judge a book by a standard appropriate to a doorstop...well, most books, anyway. Each of these things should be measured against the criteria pertinent to its nature: the sort of thing it is. Thus, the critical process must proceed as follows:

Determining the nature of the thing to be judged;
Locating the appropriate standard;
Comparing the thing to that standard and noting both excellences and incongruities;
Evaluating the thing on the aggregate of those observations.

That probably sounds obvious to some Gentle Readers, but I will pause here (yet again) to note that the Latin roots of obvious mean overlooked. In any event, it only became crystal-clear to me after I'd sat through quite a number of dog shows.

The observation applies with equal intensity to the judgment of persons, singly or in aggregate.

Jane had gone into the garden to think. She accepted what the Director had said, yet it seemed to her nonsensical. His comparison between Mark's love and God's (since apparently there was a God) struck her nascent spirituality as indecent and irreverent. "Religion" ought to mean a realm in which her haunting female fear of being treated as a thing, an object of barter and desire and possession, would be set permanently at rest and what she called her "true self" would soar upwards and expand in some freer and purer world. For still she thought that "Religion" was a kind of exhalation or a cloud of incense, something steaming up from specially gifted souls toward a receptive Heaven. Then, quite sharply, it occurred to her that the Director never talked about Religion; nor did the Dimbles nor Camilla. They talked about God. They had no picture in their minds of some mist steaming upward: rather of strong, skillful hands thrust down to make, and mend, and perhaps even to destroy. Supposing one were a thing after all -- a thing designed and invented by Someone Else and valued for qualities quite different from what one had decided to regard as one's true self? Supposing all those peoples who, from her bachelor uncles down to Mark and Mother Dimble, had infuriatingly found her sweet and fresh when she wanted them to find her also interesting and important, had all along been simply right and perceived the sort of thing she was? Supposing Maleldil on this subject agreed with them and not with her? For one moment she had a ridiculous and scorching vision of a world in which God Himself would never understand, never take her with full seriousness. Then, at one particular corner of the gooseberry patch, the change came.
What awaited her there was serious to the degree of sorrow and beyond. There was no form nor sound. The mould under the bushes, the moss on the path, and the little brick border, were not visibly changed. But they were changed. A boundary had been crossed. She had come into a world, or into a Person, or into the presence of a Person. Something expectant, patient, inexorable, met her with no veil of protection between. In the closeness of that contact she perceived that the Director's words had been entirely misleading. This demand which now pressed upon her was not, even by analogy, like any other demand. It was the origin of all right demands and contained them. In its light you could understand them, but from them you could know nothing of it. There was nothing, and never had been anything, like this. And now there was nothing except this. Yet also, everything had always been like this; only by being like this had anything existed. In this height and depth and breadth the little idea she had of herself which she had hitherto called me dropped down and vanished, unfluttering, into bottomless distance, like a bird in a space without air. The name me was the name of a being whose existence she had never suspected, a being that did not yet fully exist but which was demanded. It was a person (not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others, a thing being made at this very moment, without its choice, in a shape it had never dreamed of. And the making went on amidst a kind of splendor or sorrow or both, whereof she could not tell if it was in the moulding hands or in the kneaded lump. [C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength]

Julian O'Dea has set out upon a path so rarely trodden these last few decades that one comes upon it with a sense of shock. Specifically, he and a guest poster who goes by the cognomen of Content Woman have attempted to argue for the following closely intertwined propositions:

That women are innately inferior to men;
That a woman must admit this to have a happy and fulfilling life;
That it's proper for a woman to submit herself, humbly and willingly, to her man;
That no other relation between the sexes is conducive to the happiness of either, or to social harmony.

Female Gentle Readers of Liberty's Torch are likely to be caught between astonishment and outrage that anyone should dare to advance such propositions in this day and age. That alone marks O'Dea as unusually courageous, whether you agree with him or not. However, what most important about O'Dea's contentions is the way he has founded them: as evaluations of women (and men) that proceed from his overall assessment of their nature: the what of the human female, as distinct from the who of any specific woman.

The most concise summary of the matter comes from Content Woman:

Egalitarians try to make the sexes equal and interchangeable while often taking great pains to explain that this doesn’t mean they are the same; but this fails to recognise the inherent inequalities between men and women. Even the complementarity argument fails eventually since it is easily subverted and subsumed into the egalitarian “equal but different” rhetoric. Equal value in the eyes of God becomes an argument for equal “rights” on Earth, and that is clearly not what God meant when He created woman as a helpmeet for man. Woman was created for man; man was not created for woman.
For normal women, it is hard to imagine being sexually attracted to an inferior person, so it is women who try to be equal to men thinking that will make us more appealing to them. In the gospel of Oprah, we are commanded to become the man we want, as if that will attract that man, as if a man wants a piss poor imitation of himself. Of course, this is a lie, and man does not want a bad facsimile of himself. Women don’t seem too happy with this arrangement either, given all the divorces they file and happy pills they take, and the simple reason for this is that a woman does not want an equal, but a superior. Her heart knows that she is inferior and that she is designed to be that way but she won’t just relax and accept that her place is to serve a man in return for his care and protection.
The evidence is manifest in all sorts of ways, but most obviously in our physical bodies. A man’s genitalia are external, made to act upon a woman. A woman’s genitalia are internal, yielding, and made to receive. To think that this doesn’t matter in the bigger picture is ludicrous. Our sexuality is central to who we are, otherwise why would we even be having any discussions of this nature to begin with?

Content Woman's argument is utterly independent of any particular identity. She doesn't trifle with irrelevancies. She goes directly to the natures of the sexes and how they compare to one another. Given that there are billions of women and billions of men, individual exceptions to any statement comparing the sexes' natures will surely exist.

Herein lies the rub: nearly every woman in Western Civilization will immediately assert, regardless of her inability to refute the argument from nature, that she is any man's equal and will submit to none. Even a woman who would agree with Content Woman's thesis would all but certainly qualify it by asserting that she, personally, is an exception.

Apparently we have an easier time with such arguments and comparisons when they don't demand anything from us personally.

"When a dog pisses on a fire hydrant, he's not committing vandalism, he's just being a dog." -- Tom Clancy.

There are more categories applicable to human beings than just the genders: Leaders versus Followers versus Independents; Thinkers versus Doers versus Critics; Prudent versus Impulsive versus Insane; and so forth. Some of these approach the stature of natures, in that he who fits one of them often finds it difficult to the point of impossibility to break out of it.

If a category presents us with bounds near to impermeable, the path of wisdom is to regard it as a sub-nature of our broader human nature, and therefore something we might be best advised to work with rather than to struggle against. This proceeds from an essential premise -- indeed, the essential premise, the premise of Essence:

We are "of our natures."
Our natures are not "of us."

That being the case, our natures are an integral part of the explanation for all else about us. More, they constrain what we may individually become. And though such a constraint will sometimes feel confining, it is also liberating: It frees one from the need to measure up to any standard other than the one his nature has already applied.

Feel the freedom your nature provides as well as its limitations.