Altruism and Mother Theresa

It has been asked repeatedly whether altruism can actually exist. Even Mother Theresa has been doubed as an altruist, since, if the claim that no one can be one is true, then she was not.

The reason the Vatican published her letters of fear that for 12 years her God had forsaken her was to prove that indeed, she was an altruist.

Auguste Comte coined the word to mean: "the discipline and eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity." http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html

In Comte's use of the word he invented, Mother Theresa was indeed an altruist. All she wanted was to have her God speak to her, and he did not. Why do you think she looked so sad all the time?

It's amazing how people have twisted the word "altruist" to mean that no one can be one "because we all do things for our own benefit." If she wanted to work for 12 years without a word from God, she had a reason, which was "the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity.

"But "self-abnegation" is not to one's benefit if one thinks that that action has caused God to forsake you. If you hear from God on a regular basis while abnegating your sense of self in the service of other people, then you are benefitting, and cannot be considered altruistic.

Bill Gates and his wife have done more for the third world than 1000 Mother Theresas could do in terms of providing material needs. They are not in the Third World 100% of the time as the Mother was, so they cannot provide for the spiritual needs of people when they are not there. But do you think that when they do visit the places to which they send their philanthopy that the happy faces and filled stomachs and dancing and music provided by the villagers are not better for the spiritual needs of those villagers than a self-abnegating altruist with a sad and spiritless-looking face?

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Ayn Rand and Altruism

I answered a question for someone who asked about Ayn Rand's use of the word "altruism" and her vehement objection to it.

"I've heard people ranting and raving about Rand's ethics, and I must admit that I find it disappointing. She goes on about how "most philosophers" and the "history of philosophy" have favored altruism, but she provides no examples of who might fit these descriptions. I honestly can't think of a single philosopher who fits her idea of altruism, and it appears to me that her whole argument is rooted in a strawman argument: she is attacking an opponent who doesn't exist. How can a Rand fan defend her?"

ANSWER:

RAND: It is ideas that determine social trends, that create or destroy social systems. Therefore, the right ideas, the right philosophy, should be advocated and spread. The disasters of the modern world, including the destruction of capitalism, were caused by the altruist-collectivist philosophy. It is altruism that men should reject.

PLAYBOY: And how would you define altruism?

RAND: It is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships. In order to seek freedom and capitalism, men need a nonmystical, nonaltruistic, rational code of ethics -- a morality which holds that man is not a sacrificial animal, that he has the right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others, nor others to himself. In other words, what is desperately needed today is the ethics of Objectivism." http://www.ellensplace.net/ar_pboy.html

"Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

"Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime.There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one “package-deal”: (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance.

"Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes." http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/al...

Altruism: (Alter: other) In general, the cult of benevolence; the opposite of Egoism (q.v.). Term coined by Comte and adopted in Britain by H. Spencer. 1. For Comte Altruism meant the discipline and eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved self-abnegating love...As thus understood, altruism involves a conscious opposition not only to egoism but also to the formal or theological pursuit of charity and to the atomic or individualistic social philosophy of 17th-18th century liberalism, of utilitarianism, and of French Ideology. Dictionary of Philosophy: Runes http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html

[Comte] defines a theory of conduct by which only actions having for their object the happiness of others possess a moral value. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01369a.h...

Altruism is the opposite of egoism. The term “egoism” derives from “ego,” the Latin term for the English word “I”. “Egoism” should be distinguished from “egotism,” which means a psychological overvaluation of one’s own importance, or of one’s own activities. Rational egoism claims that the promotion of one’s own interests is always in accordance with reason. http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/egoism.htm#SH2a

THEN THERE WAS kant: By contrast, philosophers in the Kantian tradition conceive of altruism as a rational requirement on action. They claim there is no need to postulate a benevolent desire to explain altruism. Kant's initial argument appeals to his requirement that we may only act on principles that we can will as universal laws. Willing a world in which everyone has a policy of not helping others, while knowing that you will need help, would be inconsistent, so we must will to help those who are in need. Kant also argues for a duty of beneficence on the basis of the requirement of treating humanity as an end in itself. He argues that you must treat the ends of others as you treat your own ends. You take your own ends to be good and worth pursuing, so consistency requires that you treat the ends of others as good and worth pursuing. This suggests that we have reason to help not only those in need, but anyone we are in a position to help.http://www.bookrags.com/research/altruis...

The fallacy of altruism, or altruistic moralism (or moralistic altruism), is the sense that there is a general duty, or that morality as such requires us always, to act in the interest of others.http://www.friesian.com/moral-1.htm

OK, SO..............Because Rand was a rational egoist, and because altruism is defined as the opposite of egoism, anything not egoism is altruism. Collectivism of any sort, whether Marxism, Obama-ism (redistribution of wealth), communism, socialism, etc is thus altruistic, especially since Comte DEFINED it as being anti-egoistic, by making it "self abnegating love," whatever that is. An egoist would say you cannot love if you abnegate your personality.

BUT DO NOT SAY IT DOES NOT EXIST, as many people claim. The questioner says it is a "strawman" argument. Others say no such thing as altruism can actually exist because no one can live by its requirements.

There are plenty of people out there who are trying to make it work. This web site http://www.altruists.org/about/altruism/ even calls itself "Re-Establishing Altruism As A Viable Social Norm", as if it ever was the norm.

In the sense that anything which is NOT rational egoism is collectivism is altruism, that is how Rand meant it. You can listen to a half hour debate about it that Rand had on a radio show here http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?p...

It is in the DEFINITION of altruism as "a theory of conduct by which only actions having for their object the happiness of others possess a moral value", that Rand objected.

Yet, there are those who believe that in order to produce happiness in one's own being, one MUST take actions which have as their object the happiness of others.

That is the true definition of "altruism."

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Sacrifice is Now the American Policy of Washington

Someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more

The Christian religion demands "sacrifice", obedience to the "commandments" given through a supernatural entity to its adherents, and a "selflessness" which was given the name--by the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte--of "altruism."

It is not metaphysically natural for men to operate in a psychological structure-of-mind that commits them to these things. Yet, this is also the structure-of-mind we are being groomed to live by under the Obama administration.

As Michelle O explained, "The truth is, [ ] someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more." James Lewis American Thinker

Sacrifice has become the purview of the government.

First, "sacrifice" must necessarily mean giving up something of greater value for something of lesser value, else it could not be sacrificial. For example, to give a tithing to your church is not a sacrifice if you think the work of the church is worth your money. It is only when you think your money could be used better elsewhere, but you are psychologically coerced by the culture of the church to give your money to them, that this act would be a sacrifice.

If we are expected to sacrifice part of our pie to someone who wants a piece of the pie that is not his/hers, we are expected to acquiesce. We are mandated by the Federal government to be our brother's keeper. This gives us little or no personal fiscal resources with which to protect ourselves. Now we must count on the government to take from our neighbors in order to give to us, after taking from us to give to another neighbor.

Second, commandments are impossible to follow to the letter and in spirit, one-hundred percent of the time. Commandments were made to be broken--so that Christians would have a "cross" of their own to bear. Such "crosses" are called by many names, one of which is the "original sin" of being "only" a human who cannot be perfect, but needs salvation.

In order to follow the commandments one-hundred percent of the time would take sacrifices that mere humans are not prepared to make. To "love thy neighbor as thy self" even when every thing your neighbor believes in and stands for would destroy every thing you believe in and everything you stand for--most certainly is impossible for mere humans to accomplish. Tell me how an American can love Osama bin Laden as he loves himself.

Ask yourself what kind of God would command you to love bin Laden. What God would ask that you altruistically not kill a man who is raping your wife? The New King James Version changed "thou shalt not kill" to "“You shall not murder", yet since the time of King James or before it was "kill." Manslaughter which is killing, however, is not murder. But it is killing. Manslaughter is often accidental, so the only reason the NKJV does not say "You shall not commit manslaughter" is because sometimes it isn't done on purpose; but you still go to prison for it.

What God would "visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children"?

I had a conversation with a group of men a few years ago, and one man who had been a failure all his life at nearly everything he tried, said with an air of resignation that he had "sacrificed his whole life."

At that moment it was not clear just what he meant. Someone who knew him much better than I challenged him.

"You have not!" said the man. "You don't know what it means to sacrifice, or you would have been successful by now."

The first man replied, "You are wrong. It is because I sacrificed that I failed. I sacrificed a good job with a good employer for the whim of starting up my own business when I had no aptitude for business. I sacrificed my marriage for a one-night stand. I sacrificed my health by getting drunk every night before going home, and it put me in the hospital with cirrhosis of the liver. I sacrificed my college education when I quit because the leftist teaching of the university pissed me off. One liberal philosophy teacher actually said I would grow out of the beliefs I had at the time. The problem is, I never outgrew those beliefs. I believe in them more strongly than I did then. But I sacrificed them, too, by not living up to them."

"Well," said the second man, "that isn't what I meant by 'sacrifice.' I mean you didn't try hard enough by giving up the things that would have made you a success."

"And I still say you're wrong," said the first man. "If I had given up what was necessary to be successful, that wouldn't have been sacrificing anything, it would only have been paying the proper price for the things I valued. Instead, I paid too little, and the sacrifice was getting nothing at all in return for what I did pay.

"The ultimate payment is my failure. All those years that I had a good job, all those years that I had wonderful wife are water under the bridge. I didn't do anything to put them in the bank. I robbed the bank. And now here I sit without any retirement, living from food stamps, taking temporary jobs because with my work history I can't get anything else considering the hard economic times we're in.

"Do you see what I'm saying?" he asked. We could all hear the regret in his voice, the self-judgment, and the recognition that he had finally learned the meaning of the word "sacrifice."

"If I had not done the wrong things, if I had not fallen short of doing what needed to be done at all the important moments in my life, I wouldn't feel as if I just want to cry over spilt milk right now. There wouldn't be any spilt milk. I'd have a refrigerator full of it, instead of a pocket full of food stamps.

"Do you understand me now? I didn't pay enough for the things I wanted. That was the sacrifice--losing the things I had because I didn't want to pay the piper what he was worth. The things I wanted were worth more than I was willing to pay. That is sacrificial. I sacrificed myself by being cheap."div align="justify">If the life you want is more important than love, it's no sacrifice. If living anywhere with the one you love is more important, THAT is no sacrifice.

Sacrifice means to give up what is more valuable for what is less; otherwise the word has no moral meaning.

On this basis I argue that Jesus' death was no "sacrifice" because the saving of souls was more important than one man's life. But there is another aspect: Jesus is believed by many to be God himself incarnate, meaning he knew he couldn't die anyway, so giving up his carnate life on the cross turns out to be a big cosmic joke played on humanity--it was no sacrifice, it was sleight of hand.

Yet, the Catholic church takes this stance:

"On account of the remarkable and unique coincidence of the priest, victim, and acceptor of the sacrifice, a first question arises as to whether Christ was victim and priest according to His Divine or according to His human nature. On the basis of the dogma of the hypostatic union the only answer is: although the God-Man or the Logos Himself was at once both priest and victim, He was both, not according to His Divine nature, but through the function of His humanity." [emphasis added] Catholic Encyclopedia

This means that it is even important for the Church to sacrifice the "dogma of the hypostatic union" of Jesus being God himself--for the lesser value of Jesus being a man.

It means nothing if God was sacrificed. God cannot die. Jesus was said to have been dead for three days before he was bodily taken to heaven. This dogma is necessary to convince us that upon death we no longer must bear the burden of being "just a man," but will, as did Jesus, be ressurected into a union of hypostasis with God. In other words, to achieve this blessed union we must live the sacrifice of being mere mortals first.

It is not a sacrifice to be mortal, to be man, to be animal.

"I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction." Ayn Rand; Anthem [emphasis added]

If your marriage is more important to you than a fling with someone you discover and have a passion for, it is no sacrifice to forego the fling.

Into the boundary

Of each married man

Sweet deceit comes calling

And negativity lands

Cold cold heart

Hard done by you

Some things look better baby

Just passing through

And it's no sacrifice

Just a simple word

It's two hearts living

In two separate worlds

Elton John

The "sweet deceit" of giving up a piece of your pie so that others can have what is yours is the deceit of Christian brotherhood transformed into social policy. So, why does everyone ask if we are willing to sacrifice this or that, for this or that?

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Obama's Economics in Wide Public Dispute

"Capitalism is based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights..."

"There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy," said President (Elect) Barack Obama on January 9, 2009.

With no respect on my part for the ignorance of a President who embraces Marxism and ignores the Austrian economic school of free enterprise, I can tell you that 200 of our leading economists who are not Keynesians say the President is wrong. This includes William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

They said so in full-page newpaper ads in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal [see below] against the trillion dollar spending binge proposed by democrats.

"The ad, sponsored by the Cato Institute, blasts the massive boondoggle that funds liberal projects under the guise of "stimulating" the economy."

"Keynes distilled a fantastically wrong theory of capitalism and of a socialist paradise erected out of paper money. Moreover, Keynes offered no theory of stagnation at all." Ludwig von Mises Institute

"Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned...

"The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve the common good. It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence." Ayn Rand

Keynesian politics embraced by President Obama and the Democrats deny the justice attendant with capitalism, of allowing the people to prevent, let alone clean up, the mess made by the government. Instead, Keynesianism adds layers of government on the layers of the mess.

Republicans also believe in Keynesian economics, to the extent that at present they are decrying those parts of the "stimulus plan" which are not "stimulating." They like certain parts of the plan. They don't want the parts that appear to be only pork.

However, if some of those pork projects were proposed outside of the stimulus plan, they would vote for it. So would I. Example: no one disagrees that the National Mall is falling apart and needs repair. But resodding it should not be called "stimulus" and be expected to help the economy, nor should any "stimulus" be called "government partnership" with capitalism. Government interference in the economy should always be voted down.

When the government becomes a "partner" with capitalism, capitalism no longer exists. Then, the system becomes what is called a "mixed economy." To the extent that the economy is "mixed" in this way is the extent to which that economy is socialist--or worst.

We are in a world of hurt right now, because of government actions in the wrong places, and government inaction in the wrong places.

The rallying cry of the laissez-faire capitalist is, "Get out of my way!" Our government is doing everything it can to stand in the way of economic recovery, which can only come from consumer interest in goods produces. When the government dictates where capital is to be spent, the consumer is likely to be uninterested in the product, because it is a politically-motivated product, like wind farms and goat milk instead of cow milk.

Let the market do its job. The job of the government is to keep a watchful eye on the ethics in the market place, so the Birney Madoff's of the world, and the Enrons, and the sub-prime markets don't ruin us in the future.

You can put my signature on that, too.

Read this important report:

majicJack rips off consumers; leaves behind spywar...

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Naturalism's Link to Humanism

Not All Metaphysics of Naturalism

Are Created Equal

One of the problems I have with other authors' definitions of "naturalism" is that I often see what appears to be mistakes, albeit sometimes they are small. But they become untenable with the larger context of that author's message, because until the mistake is fixed, the reader (me in this case) doesn't know what to make of it. So I write to the author and I ask for clarification.

On the Home Page of the Secular Web, a naturalistic and humanistic website, Paul Draper is quoted as saying that naturalism is "the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it." The conclusion is then made that, "Thus, 'naturalism implies that there are no supernatural entities."

Well, no it does not imply that, not as written.

To say "nothing that is not part of the natural world" leaves open the possibility, for anyone who thinks there is more than the natural world, of a thing that exists that is more than the natural world--like God. Mr. Draper leaves an open hole. I would have thought that leaving open such holes are mistakes of epistemology--or simply a gaffe of grammar or syntax, or even one of thinking faster than the pen can write.

It seems untenable with the larger message to leave such a hole.

So I wrote to Mr. Draper and asked him about the it. It seems it not a hole in his opinion, and is intentional and correct by his metrics of naturalism. It is a question, not of epistemology, in his mind, but of metaphysics.

"The statement," replied Draper, "that the universe is a closed system does imply that there are no supernatural entities because a supernatural entity is defined as a non-natural entity that AFFECTS THE NATURAL WORLD. Thus, naturalism as defined in the quoted passage rules out supernatural entities but does not rule in or out non-natural entities." [emphasis his]

The supernatural is defined as non-natural, yet this published naturalist author concedes that the non-natural may exist? And, isn't Draper's idea that no supernatural entities exist exactly what I said was implied?

Mr. Draper is an educated man and qualified as far as his peers are concerned, I'm certain, to be held in esteem, to be a published author, and to be the editor of Philo, "published biannually at the Center for Inquiry with assistance from Purdue University," reads the home page of the online magazine, concluding with: "Philo is the publication of the Society of Humanist Philosophers."

Interestingly, I found nothing in the Google search engine for the Society, except an ancient reference to Philo before Draper was Editor; and the remark in Wikipedia that it is a program of the Council for Secular Humanism.

The Council is responsible for many things. Originally called the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, it was begun by Paul Kurtz a naturalist humanist. "The council acts as an umbrella organization for a number of other groups, such as the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, Secular Organizations for Sobriety, African Americans for Humanism, and provides support for Center for Inquiry - On Campus. It also publishes several magazines and newsletters, including Free Inquiry," states Wikipedia.

Kurtz calls his form of humanistic naturalism "philosophical." Michael Friedman of the American Philosophical Association says this "philosophical" form "has reached the end of its useful life."

I am not a humanist of any sort. www.jcn.com/humanism.html lists 8 sorts. About secular humanism it says it is "an outgrowth of 18th century enlightenment rationalism and 19th century freethought." That ought to say something to those who understand rationalism. And freethought explains the slippery language used by humanists and by scientific and philosophical naturalists. While elevating science and reason, freethought does so at the cost of a rational metaphysics.

The website for the Council supports most of what Wiki states about it, and also makes this declaration:

"Secular humanists reject supernatural and authoritarian beliefs. They affirm that we must take responsibility for our own lives and the communities and world in which we live. Secular humanism emphasizes reason and scientific inquiry, individual freedom and responsibility, human values and compassion, and the need for tolerance and cooperation." [emphasis added]

Gee. I just wrote about this on Tuesday. It's kind of strange, sometimes, how the world goes around. The subjects that secular humanism "emphasizes"--reason, science, individualism, responsibility, human values, and compassion--are defined by that movement very differently from Metaphysical Naturalism. But what does it have to do with Paul Draper's differentiation between "supernatural" and "non-natural" entities?

To begin with, this: I never seem to be able to get answers from naturalists like Mr. Draper that make much sense to me. It all seems gray, undifferentiated by any substantiality, or it seems like metaphysical double-speak that goes round and round, stopping only long enough to get in the phrases "tolerance," "compassion," and a few others with similiar altruistic connotations--and they do mean it altruistically as I will show; there is nothing about justice connected to their phrases for "cooperation".

When I answered Tom Clark's critique of my comments to him about naturalism, he did not come back with analyses about what I had written. Apparently he couldn't match me logic for logic. Instead, he wrote, among other things:

"Ok, many thanks for these clarifications, most interesting. It would be nice if all [Ayn] Rand’s acolytes examined her philosophy as assiduously as do you, ending up with more nuanced conclusions about the legitimacy of compassion and limits of egoism." [emphasis added]

My "nuanced conclusions" on those subjects were that compassion was worthless in the wrong circumstances, and that there are no limits to egoism when defined as "rational egoism."

Clark is a dedicated humanist, and some of the contributors to his site also contribute to Philo. It seems, from the other things Clark wrote me, that humanists cannot accept egoism because they exalt altrusim.

"There are two errors," he writes about my ideas, "in addition to thinking we’re ultimately self-made. One is to suppose that in empirical fact we are merely self-interested creatures. But we aren’t; there are many altruistic bones in our body. Second, it’s to commit the naturalistic fallacy of arguing that if we are selfish by nature, that means we should be selfish. But there is no direct implication from a natural is to an ethical ought."

Humanists take issue with Rand's clear disdain of altruism. I accept her disdain completely, because she did not allow the definition to become watered down by humanistic definitions that make it seem as if "altruism" is merely being human to one another. Rand fiercely upheld Compte's definition; after all, it was Compte who coined the word.

"For Comte Altruism meant the [ ] eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love..." [emphasis added] http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html Devotion to the good of others when coupled with selfless love--a contradiction in terms--is duty, and duty has nothing to do with rational compassion, yet such irrational duty is the field of secular and other forms of humanism.

I replied to Clark that "'to commit the naturalistic fallacy of arguing that if we are selfish by nature, that means we should be selfish,' is the definition of 'logical' egoism," not rational egoism which Rand knew was the necessary form of egoism for man to lead a rational life. http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/egoism.htm

Which leads us to the rationality of humanists and scientific and philosophical naturalists. Every concept has only one antonym, though many words are connected to more than one concept, so you must choose your concept carefully. Sometimes, depending on the way a dictionary has separated concepts, the differences are unclear. Definition 2) may seem to one's logic to be the same as 3). Such differences are subtle and sometimes not even legitimate.

But if the ontological concept of "natural" has the antonym of "not-natural", then "supernatural" must be a sub-set of "not-natural." Mr. Draper does not see it that way.

"I define a 'natural entity'," he wrote, "as an entity that is either physical or that is causally or ontologically reducible to physical entities. Skyscrapers, for example, are natural entities by this technical definition. There are, of course, other senses of the word 'natural' in ordinary language."

So far I agree, but then he went on: "Non-natural entities by my definition are entities that are not physical and are not reducible to physical entities. Perhaps abstract objects are non-natural, but that's debatable."

Since abstract objects are concepts of human thought rather than Platonic Forms, and since thought is natural, I would refuse to debate it. He does not make clear what any other objects are that he might define as "not physical and not reducible to physical entities."

"The supernatural is a subcategory of the non-natural", he continued, a complete reversal of my Metaphysical Naturalist position. "If there were any supernatural entities, then they would be entities that, in spite of not being natural, nevertheless affect natural entities."

The way I see it, God, if He exists, is natural, not supernatural. Why should we see Him as anything other than natural? We see Him as supernatural because then we do not find ourselves able to have empirical evidence of God, and we do not want empirical evidence, except perhaps for the indirect kind. Ronald Reagan's comparison of the physical world to a dinner table laden with food--that had no chef--comes to mind. The physical world "revealed" to our senses are all the evidence that supernaturalists say we can ever have, unless they are also of the opinion that revealed revelations e.g. Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, are possible.

However, Mr Draper tells me, "For while we have empirical evidence that the natural world is closed (our success in discovering natural causes of natural entities), it would be idle metaphysical speculation to claim that no non-natural entities exist."

From this we can infer than Mr. Draper knows of no non-natural entities, yet insists that the category must remain an open one in order not to "idly speculate" that the category is empty of entities!

This is the road that humanism plows, one of metaphysical mud and muck from which no logic can be ascertained except that of definitions with no clear denotations; and capitulation to the idea that clarity is egoistical and egoism must be "logical" rather than "rational" and therefor must be rejected (despite a very big difference between them); that egoism is the opposite of altrusim (which it is) and, that altruism is the metaphysical mud and muck that humanists prefer in their metaphysics over any form of egoism.

They do, after all, accuse Rand of being "black and white," "too concrete," and even "irrational."

Objectivists "strike me as being pretty irrational when it comes to ideas about the self and free will," Clark wrote to me, "and it seems to me this irrationality supports a morally objectionable radical individualism, see my critique here."

I will let his critique stand on its own, and see whether or not I can pull my feet out of humanism's muck without losing my shoes. If the category "non-natural entities" is an empty category, yet it contains a sub-category (supernatural,) then I can walk on water.

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Catholic Insistince on Altruism to 'Spread the Wealth'

The 'Common Good' is Coerced Altruism

I have a list of twenty two blogs I try to scan daily, but the demands of writing my own blog, of trying to get a distance-based academy organized, working a daily job, and attending AA meetings and doing AA service work does not give me much time for the other blogs. I have to pick and choose. Some days I find nothing worthwhile; other days, like today, I found something I like--the blog that teaches me something.

It was on the Acton Institute Power Blog, named after Lord Acton who "made the history of liberty his life's work; indeed, he considered political liberty the essential condition and guardian of religious liberty."

http://www.acton.org/research/acton/index.php

What was it I learned? That Catholics have used the common good "as an excuse for more government involvement in peoples’ lives and the installing of socialistic, 'spread the wealth' programs." Dr. William Luckey

I dashed off a comment at the end of his blog. In the "Academy Blogger" I have debated the issue of "altruism" as being (originally) the Catholic version of the "eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity." [emphasis added] see "altruism" http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html

The common good is therefor altruistic, requiring a lowest common denominator of the ego, common from one man to the next, a place where one must relegate his/her ego in order to eradicate self-interest, rational though it may be, or not; and where the common good is attained by devoting one's self selflessly--as if that is not an incomprehensible contradiction--in an act of totally "eradicating" the self.

This is most certainly not the same as what our Founders meant by the "general Welfare," when they wrote that phrase in the Constitution; it is the opposite. The "general Welfare" is the protection of the sovereignty of the individual, sovereignty composed of all the powers not delegated to nor prohibited to the Federal government or the governments of the "several States." Whatever is left over, (and almost everything was "left over" until the administration of FDR's "New Deal",) is necessary for the operation of a free individual.

We no longer retain the right to our individual sovereignty. But I have covered that a dozen times in this Blogger. The Choir Sings the Hymn "Individual Sovereignty" Power Reserved to the People, Respectively Laissez-Fairre: the Economics of Individual Sovere... Tocqueville and Individualism et al.

The "general Welfare" is justice in the political arena, which includes economics. The "common good" has become the language used to hide the injustice of imposed altruism.

Anything imposed against what is just, is coercion; anything imposed to insure justice, is not coerced. Each of these ideas is what it is by definition. You could turn each statement around and make the same arguments: Coercion is that which is unjustly imposed; coercion is not that which is justly imposed.

What is justly imposed must, by the same definition, take only as little from an individual's sovereignty as is needed for the "common sovereignty," i.e., government instituted of, by, and for the governed themselves.

It is true that there must be coerced "common good" among people who are not willing to abnegate their egos to society. The best of the recent examples of an uncoerced person was Mother Theresa, who we now know abnegated her ego to the will of a God who she thought, for twelve years, had deserted her. That, aside from the willingness of Jesus to be crucified for all others in the human race, is as altruistic as one can be and not be coerced.

But going that distance is much more than Dr. Luckey is talking about. "This [coerced] version of the common good is the foundation for some people’s idea of distributive justice, but actually it is based on the 'Robin Hood fallacy' of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor." [emphasis added]

What is distributive justice? "[T]he first relatively simple principle of distributive justice examined is strict egalitarianism, which advocates the allocation of equal material goods to all members of society." [emphasis added] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [see also No Justice in "Luck Egalitarianism" ]

How does Dr. Luckey know it is the Robin Hood syndrome? Merely "by reading Aristotle and St. Thomas. Both of those great thinkers say that government must rule for the common good, but both of them oppose 'common good' to the 'particular' or 'private' good. . . nowhere in Aristotle or St. Thomas does it say that the common good is the exclusive or even main province of the government. They merely give a negative prohibition that the state cannot make laws which are good for only one segment of society." [emphasis added]

One segment of society is exactly what distributive justice is about: the use of coercion to force altruism on those who have, for the benefit of those who have not.

Ayn Rand made an unwitting error in her Playboy interview of 1964. But her error was in not being able to see the future, and the rise of a popular Marxist like Barak Obama.

"Collectivism," she said, "as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead."

But in the very next breath she was absolutely correct, and she is still correct to this day; "But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism," she continued, "have not yet been discovered."

Forty-eight years later, her second statement is still correct, and that is why collectivism was allowed to remain alive: the world has still not "discovered" the nature and the source of capital.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
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The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
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© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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Tocqueville and Individualism

Tocqueville Was Wrong about Individualism for its Own Sake

What is "self-interest well understood," the virtue Alexis de Tocqueville found that Americans claimed for themselves?

Tocqueville said, in "Democracy in America", that Americans had mastered the concept of “self interest well understood.” His definition was that we understood that we had to give up a small portion of our personal sovereignty to others in order to get a large portion of what we want. We understood, he said, that we had to think of everybody once in a while instead of just ourselves and when we did that, we would get MOST of what we wanted.

Giving up a small portion of our self-interest is the concept that John Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau and others called "common sovereignty." In the American Constitution, the American ideal was of "individual sovereignty", which the Colonialists abstracted from "common" sovereignty; it was translated back into "common sovereignty" with the phrase "general Welfare," and by the democratic republican form of government.

Individual sovereignty was radically defined by the limitations upon the powers of government concerning the powers of the States, and especially of "the People," which was not a collectivised "people," but another abstraction made of individuals.

"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. in a review When all of the possible behaviors and acts of men are added up, the "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, [and which] are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," give considerable sovereignty to the individual person. http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/10/free-assemblage-of-metaphysical.html

Tocqueville qualified his endorsement of "self-interest well understood", however, when he makes it clear that he did not understand this "common assumption of the day", saying the pursuit of self-interest for its own sake is simply the best means available to our leaders and educators of encouraging social associations; that it only works when supported by free political institutions, and that it may do little to underpin the virtues of courage and the and what may be characterized as the habitualization of altruistic behavior.

While his conclusions are correct, his premises as stated above didn't get him there. Individualism practiced for its own sake is not for the purpose of discouraging social associations by those who practice it; it is for purpose of encouraging only those one wishes to engage in without lending support to those one opposes. That is the right of someone who owns his own sovereignty, as we all do. To practice it for any other purpose is the practical description of "soft altruism," whereby we go along with things we do not politically approve of because it is easier than fighting it.

Choosing not to fight those cases of "soft altruism" which are most evil and that carry the biggest consequences, allow our educators--*90% left-liberal in public institutions)--and our leaders--(Democrats in the electorate outnumber Republicans 4 to 1)--to encourage and to legislate more and larger shares of collectivist policies and public practices.

"Appeasement is not consideration for the feelings of others, it is consideration for and compliance with the unjust, irrational and evil feelings of others", and "is an attempt to apologize for his intellectual concerns and to escape from the loneliness of a thinker by professing that his thinking is dedicated to some social-altruistic goal." Ayn Rand

If Tocqueville never used the word altruistic, his supporters do. "Tocqueville’s defenders of self-interest argue from its strength, and rather than urge people to deplore and transcend an inclination so powerful, they defend its legitimacy. They hope to turn self-interest against itself by maintaining that one’s own interest is, as a rule, best secured in pursuing a general good. Well understood, self-interest even requires a certain degree of sacrifice." "What Tocqueville Would Say Today"; Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop; Hoover Digest

Perhaps Tocqueville was working from the thoughts of Edmund Burke, who wrote in 1790 in "Reflections on the Revolution in France", about "An enlightened self-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us, will identify with an interest more enlarged and publick."

But the public interest is not supposed to be like Barak Obama's misleading idea of "communism," whereof he said John McCain would "be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in Kindergarten." http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/obama_im_sorry_to_see_my_oppon.php

What Obama is unwilling to tell the American public is that his teacher did not take his toys and redistribute them to the other children. The American Founding Fathers wrote in the Constitution about providing for the "common defense" and promoting the "general Welfare." But in no way were they asking us to infer, in order to "promote the general Welfare," (which is politically not the same as "the common good",) that we had to accept the teacher taking our toys if we had too many, in order to prevent us from practicing individualism for its own sake.

Just because some men don't believe in practicing individualism for its own sake, does not mean the they can take it, then break it like loaves and fishes to be shared with others who do not believe it should be practiced by those from whom they took it.

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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Saturday's Musing, CutN'Pastes, and Quotes

CATO Concerned with "Who" Gets to Implement Income Taxes; not Concerned that Income Taxes are Wrong
"Poor Charlie Rangel. The chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee got some bad press in July when the sweetheart deal giving him four rent-controlled apartments became public knowledge. Now he’s getting another dose of bad publicity because he somehow forgot to report $75,000 on rental income for his luxury villa at the Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic.

"New York State law classifies filing a false city or state tax return a felony punishable by up to four years in prison..."

"In a good tax system, governments only tax income earned inside national borders – the common-sense practice of “territorial” taxation. As such, the only government that should be concerned about Rangel’s Domincan Republic income is the Dominican Republic. The Ways & Means chairman is only in trouble with American tax authorities because the United States has a very imperialistic system of “worldwide” taxation. [italics added]


"It’s worth noting that the chairman has not tried to fix this policy. Indeed, he wants the make the IRS bigger and the tax code more onerous."

Now wait a minute--in a good tax system, a government would not attempt to tax the means of production, meaning it would not tax the efforts to produce, which means it would not tax the produced earnings of either individuals or of corportations. What would replace income tax is outside the scope of the discussion, namely that taxation of productive capacity reduces that capacity.
Cato-at-liberty http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/



CATO Gets This Wrong, Too
Cato-at-liberty reported that during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, John McCain spoke about pledging federal support for alternative energy so the United States can reduce the amount of energy it imports from abroad. Cato-at-liberty then tied it to another project, quoting the Repulican candidate: “When I’m president,” McCain told cheering delegates, “we’re going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much. We will attack the problem on every front.”

Cato-at-liberty then asked: "Specifically, where did that $700 billion number come from?
That is far more than what we pay for imported energy. In 2007, Americans spent less than half that amount—$319 billion—for imported energy of all kinds, including oil and natural gas. Even with higher energy prices in 2008, our total bill for imported energy this year will be nowhere near $700 billion."

When I first heard McCain make that pledge, about a week ago, he didn't seem, then, to tie it only to the money we pay for oil. It seemed he was talking about the money we altruistically send to help nations in poverty, and to help feed them, and to help care for them medically, etc., when in the end all our altruism gets us is criticism on the political front from some of those nations--not to mention a bigger tax bill.

I think if he wins, one way he will lower our taxes is by vetoing money to those nations. McCain "vowed that he would halt aid to hostile countries [by saying] 'We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much..." [italics added]
Minneapolis Star Tribune, MN http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGQD_enUS290US290&q=McCain+nations+that+don%27t+like+us+very+much

Atheists Who Don't Deny the Existence of Gods?
Austin Cline's blog in About.com states: "Many people insist that atheism is really the denial of the existence of God" but that this "pretends that atheism is exclusively about their god, the god common to Christians, Jews, and Muslims."

Why doesn't it apply to any god, like Diana or Zeus, or like Ngai, the Maasai name for God? Why doesn't it apply to the Xhosa name of Uthixo? to the Chinese God Shangdi? I'm certain there must be atheists in those cultures who deny the existence of any and all gods.

But Cline goes on, adding, "[That definition of atheism] focuses on a narrow sub-set of atheism and atheists to the exclusion of all others." What other atheists are there but those who deny the existence of gods?

"Standard dictionaries," he says, "list 'disbelief in god or Gods' as the first and primary definition of atheism."

Does this mean that an atheist can believe gods exist, but not believe in them? What nonsense is that?

Sarah Palin is "Nebulously Like Me"
"She's a gutsy gal with a lot of personal appeal. She’s a former Miss Alaska runner up, a big-game hunter and an NRA member, a basketball player and a sports fan. She’s tough in the motherhood arena, choosing to have kid #5 even knowing he would have down syndrome; she gave birth and was back to work in three days and still makes time to use a breast pump at night. It’s the intangibles that could make her a big help to McCain—the nebulous sense of “like me” and [she's got a] “good story” that comes from her humble origins, can-do, unpretentious demeanor, and her penchant for all-American stuff like hunting and sports."
Jean Kazez "Talking Philosophy" http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=374

Christ With a BIG Penis
"A statue by Terence Koh of a tumescent Christ in Gateshead has led to predictable howls of outrage, followed by the now familiar scratchy noise of lines being drawn in the sand. "Enough gratuitous offence to believers!" says one side; "enough kowtowing to religious sensitivities!" say the other.

"This case is actually clear-cut because the Christian suing the Baltic Centre is theologically confused. Every good Bible-believing Christian must know that Christ was all God and all-man (which is an impressive 200% being) and that he is "one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are" (Hebrews 4:15). That means it is orthodox belief that Christ had a penis, which was at least once erect. Even the evangelical minister who taught us RE knew that, and I remember him admitting how troubling he found the thought of his saviour suffering sexual temptation.

"But not all complaints about religious offence can be so easily dismissed as failing on their own terms. What are we to say of these?

"Saying that we have a right to offend skips over the question of whether we are right to offend."
Whether or not someone is "right" to offend is not yours to choose, Mr Baggini. No law could ever be structured on the "correctness" of one's free speech offences.

"Free speech is indeed precious, but that doesn't mean that we have to defend without qualification every moron who abuses it. [W]e should not always be in as much of a hurry to defend the offender, even when we allow their right to offend."

Defending the offender's right to free speech is not the same as "defending the offender" of his offences, Julian.
Julian Baggini http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/03/art.religion?gusrc=rss&feed=artanddesign

Are You Contradictory About Your Beliefs About God?
The Philosopher's Magazine Online asks, "Can your beliefs about religion make it across our intellectual battleground?"

"In this activity you’ll be asked a series of 17 questions about God and religion. In each case, apart from Question 1, you need to answer True or False. The aim of the activity is not to judge whether these answers are correct or not. Our battleground is that of rational consistency. This means to get across without taking any hits, you’ll need to answer in a way which is rationally consistent. What this means is you need to avoid choosing answers which contradict each other. If you answer in a way which is rationally consistent but which has strange or unpalatable implications, you’ll be forced to bite a bullet."

It is going on midnight, and it's been a long day. I think I'll take TPM up on their game, but not until I've had enough sleep to use my critical thinking skills.http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/god.htm

Quotes For Your Weekend

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.
W. Edwards Deming

Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time? Senator Jesse Helms

All my life I've wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific. Lily Tomlin

In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest; -- guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time. Thomas Carlyle

There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it. Christopher Darlington Morley (1890-1957)

"The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt." Ayn Rand; "Atlas Shrugged"

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. Walt Disney

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us. Jane Austen; "Pride and Prejudice"

The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats. Ayn Rand

"The American Dream [is] one of the greatest ideas in the history of human achievement . . . It thrives today in an age when its core components of freedom and opportunity are open to more Americans than ever before. It holds a real, identifiable place in the American heart and mind, and it informs the aspirations of everyone from farmers to software developers, from detectives to bankers, from soldiers to social workers . . . It defines us as a people, even as we add to its meaning with each new chapter in our national experience and our individual actions."
Dan Rather

Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you still have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analyses, you have got not to forget to laugh.
Katharine Hepburn

Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades. A mode of conduct, a standard of courage, discipline, fortitude and integrity can do a great deal to make a woman beautiful. Jacqueline Bisset

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.
Erich Maria Remarque; "All Quiet on the Western Front"

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny — it is the light that guides your way. Heraclitus

The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: Initiative, Imagination, Individuality and Independence. Edward "Eddie" Rickenbacker

Anger is always concerned with individuals, ... whereas hatred is directed also against classes: we all hate any thief and any informer. Moreover, anger can be cured by time; but hatred cannot. The one aims at giving pain to its object, the other at doing him harm; the angry man wants his victim to feel; the hater does not mind whether they feel or not. Aristotle; "The Art of Rhetoric"

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