Evil Days

Perhaps like many people I have struggled with ethics, the questions of right and wrong.  Unfortunately, this debate has been dominated by religions and idealistic political groups.  All that has been accomplished is a muddying of the waters.

Two concepts cleared the waters for me.  One is that ethics is simply a question of right action.  What actions will lead to a prosperous and happy life?  Good actions bring benefit and wrong actions bring destruction.  Admittedly, this is a simplistic version, but it captures the basic idea.  Good intentions can bring bad results and bad intentions can sometimes bring positive unintended consequences.

The second concept was recognising a connection between Natural Rights, Life, Liberty, Property, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and traditional moral teachings from many different cultures.  For example, when the 10 Commandments says, “Thou Shalt Not Steal” or “Thou Shalt Not Covet” what it is saying is that we must respect the property rights of others.  Likewise, “Thou Shalt Not Murder” is saying to respect your fellow man’s right to life.

If we respect the Natural Rights of others, then we find that we are on a pretty solid moral path.  I will add to this the implied right to protect your rights.  This keeps the villains at bay and the tyrants in check.

In philosophy, the branches of Ethics and Politics interconnect to form a cluster.  Ethics concerns itself with the actions of the individual and politics with the actions of the group, and more precisely the actions of those who presume to lead the group.

I am inspired to write this because I see the rise of evil.  This is the worst kind of evil.  It is not the Disney villain wringing his hands at his glorious evil.  It is the idealistic do-gooders with the best intentions at heart embarked on activities that violate the Natural Rights of others and is therefore evil.  For them the ends justify the means, so they will engage in evil actions with good intentions in hopes of a positive outcome. 

When the Socialists demand government money to help the poor, it sounds so noble.  When they speak out against the wealthy, it sounds so revolutionary.  It is the voice of the common man against the exploitation by the rich.

Let’s take this apart.  Where does government get this money?  It comes from taxation.  If you choose not to pay your taxes, then you go to jail.  This practice is commonly called theft, the taking of another person’s property by force or the threat of force.  So what the Socialists are calling for is for the government to steal more money. 

Of course they claim that they only want the money to be stolen from the rich, because they can afford it.  Who determines what constitutes rich?  At present, the average Briton works nearly four months of the year solely for the government.  There is a word for this too.  It called indentured servitude and it is a form of slavery.  So it is not just the rich who are being taxed.

They demand that we tax businesses.  When a business is taxed it figures the loss into its operating costs.  This is then passed onto the consumer of whatever goods or services the company provides.  Larger companies and corporations are able to spread the costs, but small businesses go under.

The Socialists demand an increase of the minimum wage.  This too is born by the businesses.  Again the large companies spread the cost and the small ones hire less people.  The unemployed who are willing to work for less than minimum wage cannot be hired and remain wards of the state.

Society can be divided into two factions.  There are the private employees who work to provide goods and services and thus increase the nation’s wealth.  Then there are those who produce nothing, but survive only by the production of the private workers.  This groups ranges from politicians, to bureaucrats, to public service providers, to welfare recipients, and to some students.  These are the groups with vested interests in socialist policies because this is where they get their money.  One group funds the other.

The relationship between the socialist and capitalist aspects of a mixed economy is like the blood farms in vampire films, like Blade 2.  If the humans become too conscious they might rebel, but if they are not conscious enough they are dead and therefore of no use. 

Many of these public employees may work very hard in difficult and demanding jobs.  Some have very important jobs, such as the police or teachers.  However, ultimately they do not contribute anything to the wealth and prosperity of the nation.  When their pay is taxed it is merely going back into the same pool from which it came.  Likewise, when they spend their earnings it is simply returning money into the private pool that it was taken from initially by the State.  In a socialist state, money is not made; it is simply moved around.

This is a medieval worldview that money is finite dating back to the false notion that wealth and political power was based on land ownership.  If someone has a lot of money, then someone else must be poorer for it.  This is a completely false notion.  It’s the economic equivalent of believing that the sun revolves around the earth.  Money is a symbolic representation of human production and trade and can therefore be increased and created.  The answer to poverty is not the redistribution of wealth (theft) but an increase in production and trade.  This is accomplished through less socialist policies and programs and not more.

There are many individuals dependent upon socialist policies, however when we look at the big picture we see that socialism makes people poorer.  Look at the socialist nations in Africa.  Over 500 billion US dollars have been given to African states to alleviate poverty, but they are poorer now than before.  On a more local level, it is estimated that one in five Scots are deemed unemployable due to lacking the most basic skills sets, such as literacy, numeracy, and social skills.  This is the result of three generations of government dependency.

For a libertarian, this state of affairs is evil enough.  However, it is not enough for the Socialist protestors.  They want more power to be given to the State.  Make no mistake.  These people are not revolutionaries fighting for the oppressed people.  They want the government to have more power and all the money.  Their only complaints are that the government is not authoritarian enough and that they want to control that power as they see fit.

Socialists have always targeted the underdogs as allies.  This is for the simple reason that there are a large number of them and they are easily seduced into biting the hand that feeds them in the name of a free hand out gathered and distributed by the government at the taxpayer’s expense.

So let’s talk about exploitation for a moment.  How is the worker exploited?  He sells his time, energy, and skill to an employer for an agreed upon price.  It is a voluntary trade for mutual benefit.  And yet, the socialists claim that he is exploited.  For me exploitation is being forced to surrender a percentage of my income in order to avoid incarceration.   For me exploitation is government regulation over every aspect of my life.  You smoke, so we’ll tax that.  You drive too much, so we’ll tax that.  You drink too much, so we’ll tax that.  You’re fat, so we’ll tax that.  Feeling exploited yet?

People tolerate the present state exploitation because the current level is within their comfort zone.  But with each passing generation people become more and more acclimatised to even greater levels of government control.  This they accept as just the way the world is.  But it wasn’t always like this.  Of course people learn that in school.  They are taught how bad things were before the State took control of their lives.  This they learn courtesy of the free education from state schools and the state approved curriculum.

And what are they learning in schools?  For one there is multiculturalism which is the idea that there is no Truth, only perspectives.  It’s an aspect of “post-modernity”.  So you may choose to believe in evolution or creation.  It does not matter.  If there is no Truth, then there is no morality.  Truth is the measurement by which we choose a course of action towards positive results, which is morality.  But without Truth, then there is no guiding star.  So how do we determine morality?  It is not determined by Truth, but by authority.  This is right and this is wrong because the State says so, because my religion says so, because the mass media says so, because the pop-majority says so, because my favourite musician or actor says so.

There was a spirit of a different age that faced the challenges of life as a matter of personal responsibility.   If you saw something that bothered you then you took responsibility and did something.  You donated time or money to a charity or in cases of foreign affairs some people formed militias and literally went to fight for the cause that they believed in.  Concerning social ills people sought to educate each other.  Check out this list of London charities in 1917, http://www.victorianlondon.org/charities/charities.htm

Today, everything is done through the government.  Yes, there are charities but not at the same level as in the above list.  Taking action these days means utilizing the force of government.  Demand taxes on fatty foods, demand smoking bans, demand more money to welfare programs, force people by law to behave a certain way towards each other, demand your government act a certain way in foreign policy or in foreign wars.

There have always been people who wanted to shape the world in their image.  This can be modest, such as commanding a household, or megalomaniacal, such as controlling a country.  Traditionally, this was accomplished by creating mass influence.  Today, all you need is government on your side.  The force inherent in government allows you to make others act as you and your allies see fit.  This avenue is pursued by business, special interest groups, and political organisation.  They by-pass public debate and go straight to making orders which are justified later.

There was a time when giving a man a hand-out was considered to be an insult.  It implied that he was incapable of personal responsibility.  It was a mark against his dignity. Today, the hand-out is considered by many to be a right.  The technical definition of the word “pauper” is someone who exists by the charity of others.

Beneath the rhetoric and handy slogans of the socialist activists is a dark heart advocating slavery and paupery for all.  They make promises of a better life for the people against the rich, but all that they accomplish in the long run is destruction.  What good can be achieved by preaching covetousness, theft, and the instigation or threat of government force?  I have not even touched on the promotion of discord turning class against class, race against race, and gender against gender all in the name of equality of outcome rather than the more proper equality of opportunity.

There is another evil in the world and I will admit that I am not as outspoken about it as perhaps I should be.  I am of the belief that for the Romantic the purpose of life is to enjoy it.  Happiness and pleasure are worthwhile pursuits.  However, I advocate what I call Rational Hedonism. 

This model is taken from the writings of Epicurus, the first philosopher to seriously look at the idea of happiness.  He wrote that pleasure that brings pleasure is to be embraced.  Pleasure that brings pain is to be avoided.  Pleasure that defers a greater pleasure is to be avoided.  Any finally, pain that brings a greater pleasure is to be embraced.  He also wrote that the three ingredients of happiness are friends, freedom, and contemplation.

Adam Smith wrote, “A person who can acquire no property, can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible.”  If a person feels that the path to independence and a greater pleasure is blocked to him, then he will only due what is necessary to service his immediate desires.  Today, we call this consumerism.

"The nation that has no higher god than pleasure, or even dollars or calico, must needs be in a poor way. It were better to revert to Homer's gods than be devoted to these; for the heathen deities at least imaged human virtues, and were something to look up to." --Samuel Smiles

The idea of consumerism ties into my ideas earlier on socialism.  Remember the vampire keeping the human barely alive?  The trick is keeping the human occupied with bread and circuses.  As long as the majority of people retain enough of their wealth to consume then they will not questions their state.

I have written in the past of my frustration in discussing political philosophy and ethics with people whose primary goals are consumption.  They could care less, but by God they have an opinion.  They proceed to defend the status quo and regurgitate the party line like automatons.  The end result is usually irreparable damage to any relationship that there may have been.

I often sound off against the government, but the fact is I do not blame politicians, for me to do so would be as foolish as criticising a lion for eating meat or a businessman for trying to make a profit.  Historically and presently, politicians enjoy the pretence of virtue and affect a caring image, but the truth is that he is an opportunist.  He will move with popular opinion.  We all get the government that we deserve.

The evil days can be blamed on social conditioning from schools and mass media, but at the end of the day it is a pill we have chosen to swallow.  The evil is not in some distant capital.  It is in your community, in your neighbour, and quite possibly in you.

I’ll finish with this.  I was always of the belief that what made man unique among the creatures of the Earth was his faculty of reason.  I have written on the subject in the past arguing that man is first an animal that reason over the notion that man is a creature that feels.  I have since learned of another faculty, perhaps the faculty that ties both reason and feeling together.

According to Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiment what makes humans unique is our imagination.  We use imagination in conjunction with reason to create invention and we use imagination in conjunction with emotion to produce sympathy.

Through imagination we hypothesize how the world works.  Through imagination we can walk in another man’s shoes.  We use our imagination to share the pains, joys, and victories of our fellow humans, be they real, distant, or fictional.   I have been convinced that all that makes mankind special and unique is this faculty of imagination.  It makes us human.

Bearing this in mind, Smith had a few things to say about true believers – the ideologues.  These are the people who believe in the ideal system.  Today we call them the social planners or central planners.  They are also the supposed revolutionaries who belief that if only society would accept the tenets of their belief system the world would be an ideal place.  I simply call them socialists, but that phrase is limiting.  It equally applies to those who place their ideology before the people they purport to care about.

From a certain spirit of system, however, from a certain love of art and contrivance, we sometimes seem to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures, rather from a view to perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system, than from any immediate sense or feeling of what they either suffer or enjoy.

The man of system…is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it… He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.

intoxicated with the imaginary beauty of the ideal system, of which they have no experience, but which has been represented to them in all the most dazzling colours in which the eloquence of their leaders could paint it. Those leaders themselves, though they originally may have meant nothing but their own aggrandizement, become, many of them, in time the dupes of their own sophistry.

The beauty of Adam Smith’s works, to which I will add the Romantic philosophy of Classical Liberal thought, is that it is not based on ideology but on principles.  The difference between the two is that an ideology provides one with a cold and unimaginative blueprint very specific in its structure.  Principles are not so much an elaborate painting, but rather a connect the dots leaving each of us to paint our own picture through our imagination, reason, and emotion.  This allows the people to fit the structure and not impose the structure on the people.   For me, this is the moral path and not the vain preachings of a religious or political ideologue.