Third try, now in plain text... I fear it is less readable now. This
seems not to have been passed on the first two times however, when
sent as rich text. Was it too lengthy...?
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Wim Nusselder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Aan: MD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Datum: woensdag 4 juli 2001 10:46
Onderwerp: Re: MD Real Libertarians Please Stand Up
Dear Glen and everybody else,
for I'm gonna try to answer Glen's 27/6 00:37 -0700 post and just
about everything all of you have written since before I go on holiday
:-) (which hopefully legitimises the length of this post),
I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long for a reply to your post,
Glen. You folks are writing so much, that I hardly have time to keep
up reading, let alone replying to those I find most interesting,
except on 1 or 2 days a week. And as a reply like this takes me
several such days...
I did find your post very interesting, even very amusing at times,
especially "When asked in the US Army what I was defending, my
response was 'smoking dope and bad-mouthing my country, sir'. The look
on the officers' faces was priceless. I even went so far as to hang a
Soviet flag on my barracks wall because 'that's the difference sir, we
are free men and they are not.'".
I agree that the freedom to smoke dope (a drug that 'values'* less
biological harm to the smoker than tobacco, if I am well informed) and
to bad-mouth your country is indeed very valuable, especially in the
countries where the US Army is occasionally sent to destroy drug crops
and to suppress liberation movements with modern torturing techniques
or to train local armies to do so.
Your fellow MoQ-libertarian Platt has been amusing himself (29/6
15:42 -0400) with provoking both our dear Italian 'humanitarians' to
admit they should "alleviate the suffering of the Nigerians? Or even
the Serbs next door?". As you live in (in your case even admit to
being a citizen of) the last remaining superpower and biggest arms
exporting country and (in your case) even admit that you served in its
army, it seems to me that you are in a much better position to
alleviate suffering in the rest of the world. Certainly not by
"swooping in and taking care of those poor Nigerians" (which you
rhetorically 'expected' Marco to support 29/6 20:51 -0700), but simply
by keeping your army at home and restricting your arms industry to its
home market.
Do I understand rightly (from your 2/7 9:48 -0700 post to Marco) that
your "real libertarianism" implies that the US should not deploy its
army outside its own borders at all and that a "really libertarian"
population would boycott US arms manufacturers when they export arms
to anyone using them for the wrong cause? In that case I DO hope that
your television performance persuades your countrymen and -women to
become more libertarian ;-)
You think that bad-mouthing your country is enough to keep your
government from unashamedly supporting the economic interests of
Americans who already consume far more than their fair share of
earth's resources? I am curious how your story went on. Did those
officers grant you your freedom? Did you go on testing your freedom of
opinion, for instance by setting fire to one of those
stars-and-stripes flags whose provocative presence irritates so many
people all over the world or to a copy of the Declaration of
Independence?
* I disagree with Pirsig that "A causes B" from SOM should be
translated as "B values precondition A" to conform to a MoQ. It seems
more logical to me (given the direction in which time normally flows)
to translate it as "precondition A values B".
Horse, replying to your 30/6 11:40 & 18:02 +0100 posts, I agree that
ad hominem arguments are the wrong way of establishing truth, the
highest static quality at the intellectual level. We are not only
trying to establish truth, however, but also trying to be instrumental
in the migration of other static patterns of value towards Dynamic
Quality. Ad hominem arguments, or "dragging opponents-in-argument over
the counter by the social patterns they cling to" as I called it in my
9/6 21:54 +0200 post to Matt, can be useful in that respect,
especially when they can be bounced back to their originators :-) .
Back to Glen.
Although it may have seemed otherwise, whether owning a rifle makes
one a citizen or a coward is not an area of total disagreement between
us.
We seem to agree that using armed violence is less valuable than a
more civilised approach. We only differ in the amount of trust in the
availability of more civilised approaches in some situations we may
run into and in the risk we are willing to take that such a more
civilised approach is not available when we need it. (And maybe for
you in the USA the risk of running into violent situations is higher
than for me in the Netherlands... and being a coward therefore more
excusable.)
We also agree on the basic right and duty of self preservation. We
disagree on the translation of that right into an individual right to
possess and use arms. Only when you identify solely with a biological
pattern of value (your living body) "self preservation" translates
directly into "defending your self with arms" (when other means of
defence are exhausted). To the extent that you identify with a social
pattern of value (a society) averting your death isn't necessary for
self preservation. Societies of 2 or 3 people excepted (as in your
thought experiment of 30/6 10:36 -0700), societies that probably
aren't very essential in the further migration of social patterns
towards Dynamic Quality anyway (if only because DQ has had thousands
of year to experiment with small societies), any viable society is
still viable with one less member (you). To the extent that you
identify with an intellectual pattern of value the death of a single
person is even less essential to the survival of the pattern. No
intellectual pattern of value starts in one individual only. It builds
on lots of already existing ideas and several other individuals are
(or will be somewhat later) also in the position to combine them into
that specific pattern. The relevant intellectual patterns of value are
systems of ideas in which no single idea is essential. To call a
single idea (of which an individual can be the -first- originator) a
pattern of values, as people on this list often do, is not false, but
is comparable to calling one kind of chemical reaction in human cells
catalysed by a specific enzyme a biological pattern of value. If
poison obstructs that chemical reaction in one single cell, the human
organism may not even notice it. If this happens in all cells, the
organism may fall ill, but will usually overcome the illness. The
chances of smothering an intellectual pattern of values by killing the
originator of a single idea are comparable to the chances of
exterminating humanity as a species by obstructing one kind of
chemical reaction.
This last line of reasoning refutes Pirsig's case against capital
punishment. As quoted before in this thread from Lila ch. 13: "if an
established social structure is not seriously threatened by a
criminal, then an evolutionary morality would argue that there is no
moral justification for killing him. What makes killing him immoral is
that a criminal is not just a biological organism. He is not even just
a defective unit of society. Whenever you kill a human being you are
killing a source of thought too. A human being is a collection of
ideas, and these ideas take moral precedence over a society. Ideas are
patterns of value. They are at a higher level of evolution than social
patterns of value. Just as it is more moral for a doctor to kill a
germ than a patient, so it is more moral for an idea to kill a society
than it is for a society to kill an idea.
And beyond that is an even more compelling reason: societies and
thoughts and principles themselves are no more than sets of static
patterns. These patterns can’t by themselves perceive or adjust to
Dynamic Quality. Only a living being can do that. The strongest moral
argument against capital punishment is that it weakens a society’s
Dynamic capability—its capability for change and evolution. It’s not
the 'nice' guys who bring about real social change. 'Nice' guys look
nice because they’re conforming. It’s the 'bad' guys, who only look
nice a hundred years later, that are the real Dynamic force in social
evolution. That was the real moral lesson of the brujo in Zuni. If
those priests had killed him they would have done great harm to their
society’s ability to grow and change."
I have come to the conclusion that I disagree with Pirsig and still
condemn capital punishment and armed violence on MoQ-grounds.
No single human being is essential for social and intellectual
evolution. The harm done to a society's or a system-of-ideas' ability
to grow and change by killing a single human is infinitesimal compared
to the static social or intellectual quality of the whole (as is the
potential harm done by letting him live, for that matter). My most
compelling reason for renouncing capital punishment and the right to
kill in self-defence is that it bars me from experiencing Dynamic
Quality. If I have the arrogance to judge other human beings as having
so much less value than I myself that they'd better die and carry out
this verdict myself, this is a irreversible evaluation of them. I must
refer to an extremely static pattern of (intellectual) value to
legitimise it. I won't be free to experience Dynamic Quality any more
(in the person I judge, the persons who contradict my judgement or in
the whole situation).
A society('s institutions) can only legitimately judge the value of
individuals if the trial is surrounded with almost countless checks
and balances and the possibility to undo the verdict if new
information surfaces. Capital punishment can't be undone.
Killing in self-defence simply cannot be (intellectually) legitimised.
It's just a pitiable lack of more civilised approaches (Sam mentioned
quite a few in his 27/6 19:01 +0100 post). This is almost unpardonable
after thousands of years in which Davids have devised ways of enduring
Goliaths with the least amount of violence, except of course for those
who admit to barely having reached the social level of evolution by
equating "self preservation" and "staying alive at all costs" ;-).
(Yes, I know David killed Goliath as the story goes, but that was
about 3.000 years ago and before Stephen's [27/6 09:31 +0100] martial
arts were developed with at its pinnacle Aikido -almost non-violent,
completely without lethal violence-.) The most effective civilised
approaches to violence of course are preventive. I know of no
no-go-areas in the Netherlands, places were you can't go on pain of
being killed. Our society doesn't tolerate large concentrations of
people in dead-end situations. It helps them out.
However infinitesimally small my individual contribution to the
migration of static patterns of value towards Dynamic Quality may be
by renouncing capital punishment and the right to kill in self
defence, contributing to the Cause of DQ is in the end the only way to
give Meaning to my life. I have to do what I can and accept it's only
a drop in the ocean.
What is true for (defensive) violence against criminals (capital
punishment and killing in self-defence) is -mutatis mutandis- also
true for collective (defensive) violence: military intervention and
war in general. It would take me too long now to explain that,
however.
There is one more area of agreement between us, Glen, even when we
leave aside your assessment that "heavy psychedelics are not toys and
should be treated with a lot of respect". (It should have become clear
to you, that I won't ever toy around with them.)
I fully agree with you that "peace and order exist in society not
primarily because of laws but because most people agree on how to
behave." and I have no idea what gives you the impression that I am
"labouring under the illusion that actions of the state are always a
step forward in social patterns of evolution." I happen to consider
societies dominated by government to be only on the second tier of
four in social development. (I will elaborate on this in a later
post.) Actions of states trying to prevent development to a next tier
are indeed degenerate (and a lot of the international actions of US
fall in this category, I am afraid; the USA manages all to often to
align itself with those it calls "rogue states" in international
decision-making on non-proliferation of inhumane weapons, a
supranational court of justice and so on).
I also agree that historically "all government stems from an implied
threat: Pay taxes or ... . Behave or ... . Government is force. It
legitimises the use of force against the few by the acclaim of the
many (or it's supposed to)." And according to a MoQ social patterns of
value with government (from the second of my four tiers upward) as
their executive (cluster of) institution(s) legitimately do so to the
extent that the force is directed towards disciplining biological
patterns of value and lower quality social patterns of value and to
the extent that intellectual patterns of value have not yet provided
it with more civilised approaches to doing so. One can argue how much
legitimisation is now left for government using force (because
intellect has provided lots of alternatives, some of them implying
development of social patterns of value to next tiers in which
government is only of secondary importance). For once I agree with you
(and libertarians generally) that what is left of this legitimisation
is very little. Where we part ways, is when you legitimise using force
against a government that illegitimately uses force against you (or
against someone else). If it is moral to stand up for your rights
against a government using force against you, then there must be a
better way than to do so by using force against that government
yourself, because using force to prove that using force is wrong is
not very convincing.
My hope (29/6 12:01 +0200) that the (borrowed) description of capital
punishment as "killing people to prove killing people is wrong" would
end the discussion was vain. As only Rasheed reacted until now, I fear
I have to explain. The explanation applies to the broader "forcing
people to prove that using force is wrong":
A MoQ equates morality and reality. If something is true, it produces
"good" results, it "works". If something is "moral", it "works" and it
truly exists as a pattern of value. Morality is the test of reality or
vice versa, depending on which of the two is experienced most
directly. Experience of morality proves reality or experience of
reality proves morality. Use of force logically cannot prove use of
force to be wrong (no one will be convinced to stop using force by
using force). Once the level of intellect is there, the experience of
logic dictates that no action can be proved to be wrong by acting in
just that way. It won't work (either in the short or the long run).
Even if the morality of individual ownership of rifles would be an
area of total disagreement between us, that would not mean that a
debate about it could not enrich us intellectually and/or spiritually.
Maybe we would "not ... be able to teach each other anything", but it
would force us to dig deeper into our own sources of truth and DQ, as
having to write this e-mail is doing already to me.
I'm very touched by your "willingness to put [your] life on the line
to defend [my] right to think in ways [you] consider weird." I hope
you won't do so with a rifle in your hand, however, for that would
seriously discredit my type of weirdness :-)
Indeed "competition in nature is not a pretty sight, neither is
competition between societies". Intellect can paint a pretty picture
of it, however, as and when it is safe on its own level. Intellect can
also take the sharp sides of competition on the biological and social
levels, to the extent that it can tempt human beings into identifying
with intellectual patterns of value. Therefore it is not true that
"when I choose non-violence in the face of totalitarian dictators I
will perish from the earth" as you write. To the extent that I
identify with intellectual patterns of value or even with Dynamic
Quality, I can hardly perish in the clash between biological of social
forces. Not-identifying at all with biological or social patterns is a
bit difficult (Horse 3/7 01:07 +0100: "each and every human being is
created partly by biological patterns of value" to which I would add:
and social and intellectual ones). Choosing to identify with
intellectual patterns and/or DQ amidst clashes between biological and
social forces therefore takes a little courage. The phenomenon of
martyrdom proves that it is possible to do so. A lot of martyrs even
expected their martyrdom to be the most successful way of preserving
their essential selves.
Indeed "if you're not willing to stand up for your rights, then it's
certain that after a while you won't have any", but people like M.K.
Gandhi proved that there are better ways of standing up for your
rights than armed violence, even if they still may have to be adapted
for use against more totalitarian and dictatorial regimes than British
colonial rule.
I still hold that "whether non-violence would succeed against
totalitarian dictators is not a valid argument" for your right to
individually possess and use arms. You think US government could
change overnight into a totalitarian dictatorship? Seems hardly likely
to me, whatever idiots you elect. That gives you ample time to stem
the tide in other ways before you might need your rifle to kill the
dictator.
As my time-travelling machine is temporarily being repaired, I cannot
prove to your satisfaction that "Socrates would not be remembered for
establishing the independence of intellectual patterns from their
social origins (Lila ch. 22) had he defended with arms his right to
brainwash the youth of his day with Ratio". He apparently thought so,
however, and a certain Jesus of N. thought so even more explicitly,
asking him followers not to use their swords when he was arrested. So
I am in good company when I hold that accepting capital punishment was
for Socrates the better and/or the more effective (the same according
to MoQ!) way of standing for that right. That provides me with a
second, less compelling, argument against capital punishment by the
way: to the extant that Socrates (and lots of martyrs after him) was
right, capital punishment may even strengthen criminality to the
extent that it stems from degenerate intellectual patterns of value
(like Timothy McVeigh's). Never create a martyr against you if you can
prevent it! Posthumously they are the most dangerous foes of all! Of
course any punishment, i.e. any social response to criminality that is
not sufficiently backed by high quality intellectual patterns of value
may strengthen criminality. As it is said: prison is the best school
for criminality there is.
I can however explain to you why I did not use my time-travelling
machine when it was still functioning to kill A. Hitler. I "didn't on
the" exact "grounds" you mention: "that killing is wrong",
implying -given MoQ, which equates morality/wrong with
reality/ineffective- that according to me killing A. Hitler would not
have averted WWII. Depending on circumstances and timing it might have
postponed WWII, but it might just as well have caused (or be used by
fascists to incite) more popular support in Germany to start it even
earlier. Exiling the German Kaiser to the Netherlands after WWI did
not stop German imperial dreams either. On the contrary. It was one of
the humiliations of the peace of Versailles that incited fascism. A.
Hitler was not the only fascist. Only genocide on all Germans could
have killed German fascism ... and would have created an even more
virulent fascism as a result among other peoples identifying
themselves with the martyred Germans. And ... wouldn't it be a bit
arrogant for any individual to go back in time to kill A. Hitler
knowing that so many individuals were there at the time and would have
wanted to kill him, but didn't succeed? Why would I be more
successful?
By the way, one of the things for which A. Hitler was rightly
condemned, was having the arrogance to decide that certain kinds of
human beings -Jews, gypsies, homo-sexuals, mentally handicapped- could
better be removed from the gene pool of his Aryan race. Your
argumentation for capital punishment of serial killers (29/6
21:26 -0700) comes dangerously close. Would you recommend removing
every "sick cookie" from the gene pool, i.e. everyone that is only a
biological pattern and/or has only sick thoughts (if any) in your
assessment?
In your 3/7 16:04 -0700 post to Rasheed you tell us "that the founding
fathers expressly stated the citizenry should be allowed to own the
same kind of firearms the Army was equipped with" in order to enable
them to beat the Army "if the Army ever tried to overthrow the State
or if the State became a tyranny". Do you think the founding fathers
would or should have legitimised private ownership of nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons if they had already existed? If yes,
McVeigh would have blown away the whole of Washington. If no, private
ownership of firearms would not avail the citizenry against the Army.
I don't and didn't intend to offend you with anything I wrote. From
your reaction on my calling you a coward and your country backward I
surmise that it is not easy to offend you anyway: You just declare
that I am free to think what I like and that you are willing to put my
life on the line to defend my right to do so and ... don't answer the
point I am trying to make by calling you a coward and your country
backward.
Well, the story about your experience in the US army can be read as
self defence and I gladly concede that you're not a coward if you dare
to act in that way and that your country is a little less backward
than I thought if those officers let you get away with it unpunished.
(Did they?)
I did and do intend to provoke you into giving away the static
patterns of value you identify with in order to establish (together
with you) whether they are of the highest available quality. If I
interpret your reply rightly, a "real libertarian" does his utmost to
identify exclusively with his biological patterns of value (his living
body) and the idea that individual freedom should be maximised (not
with any social pattern of value and not with any intellectual pattern
of value that does not include this idea). (The difference between a
"real libertarian" and a "true libertarian" seems to be that the first
does not hold the hypocrisy of an author against the products of his
pen whereas the last does :-)
As a test whether you don't identify with any social pattern of value:
if the discussions on this list would make you concede that some
aspect of your libertarianism which you covered on TV is false, would
you tell that on TV (risking your reputation and/or your programme's
ratings) or would you fuzz around, change to another subject or just
go on telling them something you now know to be false?
I am now going to provoke you even further (as the trick with the
coward and the backward country didn't work well enough). What if I
told you that maximising individual freedom is a very bad start for
any intellectual pattern of value as "freedom" is essentially an empty
idea?
Freedom means the absence of other static patterns of value. It
doesn't offer a new static pattern of value in return. E.g. a rifle
owner can use his rifle to overthrow a tyranny but also to start a
mafia. Whether a "really libertarian" intellectual pattern of value
(if such exists, for "maximise individual freedom alone will not do
for a pattern) has real value depends on the other ideas you combine
with "maximise freedom" into a pattern. Tell me what they are and I
will explain to you that "real freedom" means freedom from those
ideas, too. A "really libertarian" 'society' will be left with
"freedom to do as you please" and only biological values to guide your
behaviour.
"You own a gun/atomic bomb/whatever? I have a right to own one, too!"
Only deterrence will keep people from using their weapons, but when
they start making agreements to limit anyone's freedom to own the more
destructive kinds of weapons, someone will rightly experience this
agreement as a static pattern he/she will want to be free of. Who/what
will guarantee the balance of power that prevents mafia structures to
come into being? I may have a right to own a machine gun, but if have
only the money to buy a simple rifle, my neighbour who does have a
machine gun can simply disarm me and all other neighbours without
machine guns and force us to act as his mafia gang.
"You exploit the earth till beyond what its ecosystem can endure? I
have a right to do so, too!" There is no way out of prisoner dilemmas.
Any way out requires social and/or intellectual patterns of value
someone will want to be free of.
Please explain to me why "really applied" libertarianism would not be
the surest and quickest way to hell.
Pirsig wrote (Lila ch. 3) "Of all the contributions America has made
to the history of the world, the idea of freedom from a social
hierarchy has been the greatest." You bet! He is an American,
identifying with the American social pattern of value. Whether he
likes it or not, that pattern implies a social hierarchy, even if only
the hierarchy of those who do and those who don't conform to "American
values", starting with "freedom". And this hierarchy implies -if
carried to its extreme and not moderated by other patterns of value-
restricting the rights of those who -according to him- fail to conform
and maybe even "removing ... from the gene pool" those he considers
"sick cookies" that utterly fail to do so.
The other side of the picture of America's contribution of "freedom
from hierarchy" to the world, is that America is forcing upon the
world an addiction to material wealth, to boundless maximising of
biological value, that will kill humanity if it goes unchecked,
leaving only pre-social and pre-intellectual humanoids. America is
forcing this "contribution" on the world by appealing to the
quintessential social drive in other peoples: wealth gives Americans
status, so we want it too! America may have obliterated social
hierarchy internally to a large degree, but it has instituted a global
hierarchy instead, with itself in the apex. Hence this unholy pride in
your Great Nation Americans often exhibit.
I don't think the idea of freedom from any social hierarchy is a great
contribution to humanity. If rigorously implemented it removes the
social level from between the biological and intellectual levels, all
but killing the intellectual level in the process. I trust that this
is impossible, but I fear that trying to so will create even more
degenerate social patterns of value (e.g. on the global level, as
explained) than we have freed ourselves from.
Your fellow libertarian Platt (even if only a "true" and not a "real"
one :-), wrote 29/6 15:42 -0400:
"Why many Europeans do not hold freedom above security is a mystery,
especially after suffering for so many centuries under totalitarian
regimes of religious zealots, corrupt kings and ruthless dictators."
I'll tell you why: after this history Europeans are not so much afraid
of what all kinds of "sick cookies" happening to come into power can
do to us, for they can only harm our biological and social patterns of
value and possibly our intellectual ones if they are smart, but of
what they can make us do (like A. Hitler setting whole hordes of
civilised Europeans, including Dutch, to his task of killing of those
he considered "sick cookies"), for that harms our very sense of
Dynamic Quality. Please leave us some of our most valued static
patterns of value and spare us the risks of a freedom that kills even
new static patterns of value the moment they are created by Dynamic
Quality, for we fear the degenerate static patterns of value that we
would have to fall back on. We know them all too good!
Freedom is at best Dynamic Quality without static quality. It can't go
without equality and brother/sisterhood.
With ever friendly greetings,
Wim Nusselder
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