Gradual Anarchism

You know something that I never really understood about the common stereotypes of anarchists is that everyone seems to think anarchists are violent.  This seems to me like claiming that all people who read Harry Potter are violent.  There are violent people who read Harry Potter.  Sure, there are violent people who are anarchists, probably because they’re looking for an excuse for their violence.  It’s just that the other anarchists aren’t up in their faces saying “don’t do that or we’re going to shoot you.”  That tendency has nothing to do with anarchism.  In truth, I would bet there are virtually zero violent anarchists, and there have never been very many at any point in history.  Anyone who thinks along the standard anarchist line, that the government exercises violent, coercive force and is inherently corrupt as a result, isn’t going to want to employ those exact methods.  The punks who just want to do whatever they want aren’t anarchists- they’re just criminals who want cheap redemption.

Real anarchists are depending upon the rise of individualism.  Even if nobody else does, they’ll continue to do their own thing, including paying taxes, dealing with bureaucracies, etc., whatever is necessary to survive in a corrupt environment.  However, when enough people start finding themselves, and start to feel the chafing of arbitrary power, we’ll find ourselves free soon enough along the very channels of corrupt power that has been such a problem so far.  Government is an adaptive entity, and it really has no choice but to deal with the objective reality set before it in the natures of its citizens.  If they’re weak, uneducated, and passive conformists then government has a freer hand to exploit them, their money, and the peoples of other countries with that money.  However, the converse is also true.  If the citizens are capable, intelligent, and rational, and value their freedoms then the government has little choice but to accommodate them.  Governments can change much faster than they would have you believe.  For example, the US government is structured to put the brakes on radical change, such as by having the senate serve six year terms, and having Supreme Court justices serve for life.  While this was a great design mechanism for smoothing out swings in popular opinion, if 90% of the country was committed to a personal philosophy of freedom and individualism the changes would become evident very quickly.  Even the most well-entrenched Supreme Court justice would blanch at the prospect of supporting an infringement on that national psyche’s doctrine.  In fact, 90% is massive overkill.  My point is that gradually growing the philosophy of anarchism is the only effective way to truly make society free.

My position on anarchism is quite mild.  Yes, anarchism is a great idea in the sense that an absence of mandatory, arbitrary government power is a good thing.  Yes, public order is not that difficult to create in a stateless society, in fact it’s probably far, far easier.  I suggest only one change from the current model of government, but it’s something of a doozy for those who haven’t thought along these lines before.  The Change: Participation in government must be completely and totally optional.  I need to clarify this point- I am not referring to (cue nasally voice) “oh, you don’t have to vote, that’s fine.”  No, I mean that if I decide not to participate that I pay no taxes, I get no services, and you have no moral authority to imprison or otherwise punish me if I disobey your laws.  You might choose to do so anyway, but then at least we’re clear that you are using hired men with guns to abduct me from my home against my will.

Let that soak in for a bit.  What if you could just choose to not be involved with a government?  A lot of people would continue as before, but then they chose it.  I have absolutely no problem with that.  Hey, after a few years maybe the government will have changed enough under its new optimizing influences that I might even rejoin it.  It’s certainly got a good basic blueprint- the Constitution and balanced powers and such.  Regarding those optimizing influences, if government participation is completely optional then I can withdraw from it and then go and create my own organization that fulfills some of the same functions, but of course, mine will do them better and cheaper or nobody will join me.  Maybe I’ll advertise the fact that my government has an extremely minimal set of laws that are clear and easy to understand.  Obviously the entire structure of my organization will be open for the public to peruse, or else why would anyone bother to trust me?  I could be asking them to agree that if they ever smoked pot, they’d agree to spend 20 years in in a rape gulag jail.  Who would want to join that?  More importantly, as owner of this government, I don’t want to have to build jails if there’s any way I can avoid it but still promise my customers law and order.  It’s in my interest to make participation as enjoyable and painless as possible, providing as many services as possible for as little cost as possible.  Apply this type of reasoning to every aspect of running a government and you’re approaching how awesomely powerful a solution The Change is.

The truly beautiful piece of this solution is that a “democracy” is where everyone gets to choose what they want.  The government’s sick perversion of this idea is that, rather than choosing what you want, you get a vote which is part of a mass decision-making process.  And whatever decision is reached by the masses, stands, irrespective of whether you like it.  Can you imagine if this same logic applied to other areas in your life?  “What am I going to have for lunch?”  The vote says the nation wants to buy hamburgers.  Therefore, you must have a hamburger along with everyone else.  It’s insanity.  If you wanted a hamburger you could just go out and buy one.  Or if you would prefer a sandwich or salad or anything else you can just go get that instead.  However, if you want something too esoteric then you’re going to have to work pretty hard to find or acquire it because nobody is going to be selling. it.  However if you think this exotic dish will appeal to a lot of people you can start your own company and sell it yourself.  Afterwards if lots of people do like it, then they can just go get it- from you.  Why we think freedom is great for insignificant decisions like what we’re going to have for lunch, but when we get to the really important decisions it’s vital that we be slaves is just beyond me.  Well not really- the obvious answer is that there’s not that much cost-benefit ratio in controlling what you have for lunch, but in taking half your income to buy weapons there is a massive niche.  The beauty of freeing people from their mandatory government participation is that they can be free in the ways they want to be free, and constrained in the ways they want to be constrained.  I guarantee that there will be at least one government (if that’s what you call it) for every significant niche.  Rather than voting into a massive pool, you vote with your feet and join wherever you like.  And if at any time that government displeases you or screws you over, you just leave and join somewhere else.

We are approaching the conception of a Dispute Resolution Organization, but we’re not quite there yet.  These governments will necessarily need to cooperate because of the nature of their environment.  Their customers/citizens might be dispersed throughout a certain area.  Although I can imagine a DRO basically owning an entire city and everyone in it belonging to that DRO.  That model could definitely work.  Perhaps that’s the future of communism, where everyone’s needs are taken care of by producing to the extent of their ability.  Anyone who wants to join that city can do so.  I suspect that there would be a severe shortage of high-capability individuals, but maybe there’s a solution to that problem that our future communist DRO will find.  Anyway, in the event of an incident involving individuals from different DRO’s, the organizations would represent their customers.

Let’s say somebody is accusing someone else of theft.  Obviously both DRO’s want to have conclusive evidence that their resolution is just, one way or the other.  They don’t want to let a guilty person go unpunished, and they really don’t want to punish someone who’s innocent.  Let’s say they conclude he’s guilty and the DRO’s make an agreement.  The thief’s DRO will fine him the value of the TV plus damages and legal fees, as per his contract to pay fines if he is found guilty of a crime, and give it to the victim’s DRO, who will then give the victim the value of their TV plus pain and suffering damages or whatnot.  If the thief is unable to pay these fines, then their DRO will cover the damages in the form of a loan and give the thief an honest chance to earn it back.  If the thief is a serious repeat offender for crimes more serious than just petty theft, the DRO will probably terminate service because it’s cheaper to have model citizen customers, and he’s not helping the DRO or anyone else.  Of course now you’re probably asking why the thief should care that his service has been terminated, since now he can steal whatever he wants and no DRO is going to punish him.  Well, he has the slight problem that if he was to be murdered then nobody would look into his death, except maybe DRO’s interested in finding out if one of their customers did the killing, or possibly some charity organizations.  He has no representation for wrongs against him, and no services provided by DRO’s.  However, more seriously, businesses have absolutely no incentive to trust him, and simply won’t do business with him, or they might charge more to compensate for the risk of dealing with him.  He might find it impossible to find somewhere to live, buy food, or get a job.  However DRO’s would have great incentive to pick up people like him, even though they’re a bit riskier than longtime customers, and might have to pay a little more for equivalent services, they get exactly the sort of basic representation and credibility they need.  Also, a DRO  would presumably  be designed to deal with new customers, providing the right incentive structure to make it more advantageous to be honest and forthright, while at the same time being enjoyable and providing valuable services

I have yet to meet someone in person who has conceived of the possibility that government participation doesn’t necessarily have to be mandatory.  If the topic shows up, usually I am met with either apathy or a “but you have to vote” mentality.  The latter group is especially annoying because their response clearly indicates they totally misunderstood my argument, and they can’t even visualize the idea of not being a part of a government.  Clearly you don’t have to vote, and though it’s probably a good idea, that’s not what I’m talking about anyway!  Give the people the option of choosing their government, or creating one that suits their needs, rather than merely giving them a vote to move a colossal mass of humanity just that fraction of an inch.

Ancient Wisdom

I just read a fascinating article, about how ancient knowledge is, strictly speaking, younger than modern thought. Somewhere in the middle I was struck by the remarkable feeling of “why on earth didn’t I think of this?” I suppose to some degree I’ve always thought this, but never articulated it. When you read older texts the natural inclination is to pick bits out, I like that, I like that, that’s just nonsense, and that’s freaky but there might be some truth to that… and so on.

That the article is a response to Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is actually a coincidence, but I suppose I need to address some of the ancient wisdom aspects of the stoic school of thought. At its core, stoicism is a single tenet in similar fashion to cynicism (philosophical Cynicism, not the colloquial use). Stoicism is the belief that the pursuit of truth, the application of rationality, will make you happy. Cynicism says that being virtuous will make you happy, and stoicism extends that by saying that being virtuous is the pursuit of truth. All evil is the product of ignorance, bias, error, or some other irrationality. To me this seems perfectly obvious, but I imagine most of the people reading this are puzzled by that assertion.

Well, let’s start with the basic question here: What is morality? Morality is adherence to a moral system. A moral system is a set of principles governing ideal or preferred behavior for human action or choice. Ethics is the art/science of determining what system of morality produces the most desirable behavior. So basically what we’re saying is that if everyone could conclusively figure out what the best behavior for them would be, they would do it because by definition that’s the behavior that is best for them. The basic argument here is that morality is not arbitrary: it has a very definite function of producing the most positive gain for you, as well as everyone else. Therefore, the application of reason to figure out the best course is essentially the basic building block of morality. Once you’ve figured it out, assuming you’re still sane, you really have only one course because it’s the one that gives you (and everyone else) the most utility.

The clinch comes when we try to distinguish utility from utility, for example by saying that it’s more moral to help others than to help yourself- which is of course nonsense. If you have a job, you are under no moral obligation to give away all your money to the unemployed. In fact, such an action could (and I would) be construed as evil because you are incentivizing unemployment for those most vulnerable to it. Now there is nothing wrong with giving them money, but do not attempt to argue that there is a moral compunction to do so. Reasoning such as “the greatest good to the greatest number” sounds very appealing on the surface because it is the heuristic that most people use to maximize utility. As a heuristic, it is dazzlingly effective. However, applying that principle without having a firm grasp on what morality actually is, treating the heuristic as the primary model, produces some absolutely stunningly delusional behavior.

Let’s take an example. You have a month’s supply of food, and you go to Africa where there are millions of starving children. Your month’s supply of food is meant to feed 1 person for 30 days, or about 90 meals. That could easily be stretched out to feed 90 starving African children for 1 meal, or maybe even 180 kids for half a meal. But then of course you have no food for a month and nearly starve yourself. Not to mention that all those kids you fed are still in the same position: plus one meal, looking for the next one. What exactly have you accomplished? The greatest good to the greatest number is quite authoritative: um, yeah, 180 starving people versus 1 well-fed person? Hey, you should even volunteer to be killed and eaten (sarcastically speaking- a real utilitarian places an extremely high negative consequence on death so they wouldn’t argue that). I would instead argue that you have, at best, accomplished nothing. At worst, you are actually helping to create more starving African children, making it impossible for African agriculture to get off the ground, etc. etc. etc. resulting in a net negative utility for both parties. I’m not saying you shouldn’t help, I’m just saying you picked a damn stupid way to help out. How about this instead: employ 180 starving African children in such a way that you can pay them and make money at the same time. That way you feed them indefinitely, and turn a profit at the same time. Sound like a smarter plan? Just maybe? Perhaps big companies find it unprofitable to purchase African labor for one reason or another, perhaps Chinese labor is cheaper, or it’s riskier, or something. Well, that’s a perfect situation for charity to step in. Sure, we’ll accept paying slightly more for labor, or suffer some extra risk, because we want to employ starving African kids. We can charge just enough extra to cover it and slap a label on the front with a truly pitiful, heart-wrenching picture of African poverty to make up the difference. People are nice- if they think you’re doing something worthwhile they might pay slightly more to help you out as a kind of donation. Here’s the magic behind this tactic: the more money you get in donations the more resistance you’re going to get to getting more (of course you also have more resources so it may even out, but that’s more complicated). It’s harder to get a $100 donation than a $50 donation, basically. However, as you sell more African-labor products, you can expand and employ even more starving African children to make even more product, which even more people will buy, and so on. And on top of that, you have more money in profits which you can turn around and do what conventional charities do as well.

Wow that went off topic hardcore like a sky plunge. Before we return from the wilderness, I want to address utilitarianism again. Utilitarianism is a technique, a mental tool, that we all instinctively use to maximize value for ourselves, and presumably others as well. However, holding it up as the foundational moral rule is an error because it doesn’t actually maximize individual value- it’s a systemic attempt to justify social equilibrium and equal distribution. Consider: if everyone followed the principle of “the greatest good to the greatest number” then what would result? Well, for starters, it’s pretty obvious that poor people get more value out of money, so if you’re rich you would give them money until you were equal, after which giving them further money is a net subtraction because you would have less, and thus be losing more “value” than they would be getting. What about relationships? Clearly people with fewer friends would get more value from having an additional friends than people who have lots of friends, so you have to identify how many friends each person has, and attempt to address that inequality to the extent of your ability (I’m not even going to go into romantic relationships). Regarding ability, clearly anybody with a skill is deriving more value from it than those who don’t. However skill is difficult to transmit, so while it would be your moral duty to teach everyone your skill, during that process (continuous due to new people being born) you would have to surrender all products of your specialized skills to the community as a whole, etc. etc. etc. We’re going to call this here. Utilitarianism basically says that because you are one, and the world is legion, you deserve to have nothing that everyone else doesn’t already have. You’re powerless and worthless, and must sacrifice to others. Of course, this thinking is then applied to everyone- so who exactly is gaining from all this sacrificing?

Now we arrive back at stoicism. Your life and freedom are preconditions unto themselves- the fact that you are alive justifies your life, and while you have a natural right to it, you most certainly do not have my guarantee of it. In order for me or anyone else (read: government) to make that guarantee I would have to be prepared to defy legality, morality, perhaps even reality. Would I kill that guy over there to save this guy over here because this guy has my guarantee that he will live? No. The same holds true for your liberty. You’re free, but I have no responsibility to uphold that freedom. Even you have no responsibility to uphold your own freedom. Hey, maybe you enjoy being locked in a cell while prison guards deprive you of sleep and torture you with batons. Maybe you would pay good money to have that happen to you. And you’re thinking “uh uh, only if they’re strippers!” As you may have gathered, these aren’t fundamental tenets of stoicism: there is only one. These are corollaries that I have arrived at. Your mileage may vary, and that’s great. Marcus Aurelius is the same way- he’s got his answers, I have mine. Mine are the later draft, and I think I am more right than Aurelius was in his day, but in the future there will be other philosophers who have teased even more truth out of reality. However there is a constant: the power to pursue that truth. Previous thinkers always help- if those future thinkers were born into today’s world they probably wouldn’t do any better than I can. I have the unbridled arrogance to say that my own musings into this blog are as valid as the most famous thinker you can name: who do you want- Socrates? Rand? Newton? Nietzsche? Anything you happen to write falls under the same heading. While there exists some absolute truth, the simple fact is that we aren’t omni entities that can discern reality in such different ways from one another that one of us can say the other’s line of thinking is bunk to the extent that I can denounce a squirrel. True, if you say something that is just hogwash then I’ll call you on it. But this is just one squirrel talking to another. Albert Einstein is a squirrel. I’d love to see that sentence end up quoted on some other blog. “Today on the Zen Stoic: “Albert Einstein is a squirrel.” What do you think?”

I’ve gone from Ancient Wisdom and starving children, to dominatrices and “Albert Einstein is a squirrel.” I think I’m done here.

Organic Personal Economics

Economic behavior is perhaps best described as the most natural form of interpersonal behavior.  Remember, I’m referring to personal economics not just stock indices, so any exchange of value works.  Status being the most traded commodity in social interactions.  My intent is to convince you that human economics “just works” without any need to control or use coercive force.  It is an automatic balancing feedback loop which corrects itself against objective reality all the time.  One person, or even a large group of people, is unable to compete with such a swarm intelligence.

Consider the law of supply and demand.  While hailed as the fundamental principle of monetary economics, if it’s taught as such then the students will fail to see that the same principle applies in countless other situations.  Supply and demand is simply one instance of a self-correcting system to maximize the gain of the seller by maximizing the value given out to buyers.  The guy who wants the last iPhone the most can prove that quite simply by being prepared to pay the most for it.  If prices are too high, competition drives them down because supply is too high, if they’re too low then supply diminishes, increasing price until an equilibrium is reached.  This same type of system applies to everything from evolution to the water level in a toilet.

I’m going to make an extravagant claim.  I don’t have any problem with vote-buying as a concept.  This is a perfect example of a self-correcting (and therefore adaptive) system- i.e. the market, working within an artificial environment created and manipulated by a government.  The government has created a commodity that did not before exist- votes.  They clearly have personal economics implications on everyone, including within that the fiscal economics effects of voting.  So votes clearly have value.  Everybody has one, and indeed gets another one in each election.  Just as a thought experiment, what would actually happen if vote-buying was completely legit?  Well, you say, the rich people get all the power because they can just pay anyone they like and they’ll vote however their buyers want.  Me: Yeah.  So?  It’s a completely voluntary exchange, obviously the person with the vote in question was only invested in their first choice to the extent they are prepared to be bought.  Proper forms of value for both parties will be created, even if a little creativity is required.  For example, I imagine a third type of commodity would appear- the purchase of a non-vote, cheaper than a positive vote in the opposite direction, but gives voters the feeling of not having helped the enemy.  What about maybe a futures vote market, trading on the value of a vote.  I’m not going to even guess what price the market would find for the average Presidential vote- there’s an absolutely impossible Fermi problem if I’ve ever seen one.  But let’s just say that the going rate is $1,000.  Clearly, buying other peoples’ votes is therefore an expensive proposition, because you need to win or else you pretty much wasted $1k for each ineffective vote.  If you’re part of the ultra-wealthy class, and you stand to gain a ton of money by electing some uber-corrupt politician, I say by all means pay people like me to make that a reality for you.  It’s not going to be cheap, and the more corrupt that politician is, the more you’re going to have to pay me, but I can be bought.  Let’s look at the 2000 election.  I hate Bush with a burning passion, but if he offered to pay me $80,000 to vote for him I’d be on the fence.  If he made it $100,000 then I’m his.  I don’t like him, never agreed to support his Presidency, but unless Gore was prepared to give me some competitive compensation I’d have to go with the $100k.  Of course, at that price the man is completely unelectable.  You can’t pay off, say, ten percent of the country at $100k apiece- that’s 30 million Americans, totaling $3 TRILLION.  Not to mention the fact that every opposing party is going to be using the same tactics, both driving up the price of the otherwise neutral votes and decreasing the number of those votes available.

Going back to the self-correcting system.  If we have the problem of an ultra-rich upper class taking advantage of all the poor people, then the way I see it, allowing those rich people to get value from their money by buying votes seems like a damn good way to even out the class divide.  Think about it.  The poorer you are, smaller amounts of money have a greater amount of proportional value.  That’s why poor people are prepared to work more cheaply.  The same principle applies to the starving man being prepared to pay more for food.  So we have the ultra-rich, interested in a commodity which the poor people will have a large quantity of, in direct proportion to the class inequality currently present.  If we have an extremely unbalanced society where 1% are billionaires and everyone else is broke, we have lots of people prepared to sell their votes to a small number of people with all the resources and motivation to buy lots of votes.  If it’s more equal, we have fewer people with mass-vote-buying capability but at the same time we have fewer people whose votes can be bought cheaply.  Self-correcting.  You can never arrive at a more equal, fair, and free society through centralized control as a Communist would have you believe, because they are ignoring the stark reality of personal economics.  If prices are fixed to be affordable, they’ll disappear and then the good in question will be unavailable- and obviously if they’re too high nobody can afford it.  Centralized control creates self-reinforcing loops increasing the inequality in society.  Letting go of control creates self-correcting loops, decreasing the inequality in society.  This entire mechanic is a product of free choice, in bold because it is damn important.  If you have choice, you will pick the option you prefer.  If you can’t, you don’t.  It truly is that simple.

OK, let’s look at another one.  Crime.  If there is a problem of any kind, then you should have the free choice to respond to that problem in any way that your heart desires, be it retarded or brilliant.  This is really just a specific case of the above example that you should be able to do whatever you want anyway.  In the case of crime, maybe you want to hire a security guard, maybe get an alarm system.  Maybe you think that all the options available are too expensive to be justified for a small risk in your area, I don’t know.  However, what I will tell you, is that there exists a solution which you, yes you, will pick in response to your environment, even if that solution is to do nothing.  If there are no solutions available then the incentive is there for you to go out and make one to sell to other people.  Even if it sucks, there are no other options, so you’ll make an absolute killing.  And then someone else has the fantastic idea of doing the same thing a little cheaper, and random guy #3 says no, I have a better idea, etc. etc. ad infinitum.  If crime is a problem, you will take steps to address that problem while taking into account the exact nature of the issue, the circumstances, and all other factors which might contribute to your own personal utility.  To touch on a current issue, perhaps that means acquiring a weapon of some sort.  If lots of people make that choice then the burglar’s personal economics obviously changes, like it does for all changes in their environment.  If X% of the houses they burglarize contain angry and armed homeowners then Y% of burglars will stop being burglars, or never become burglars in the first place.  The same clearly applies to muggings, bank robberies, and all other types of crime, or even any other problem at all.  The institution in question will simply take steps to safeguard themselves relative to the risk.  If the risk is high because security everywhere else is low then it pays to have lots of security relative to elsewhere.  After that, the institution really doesn’t care, whether everyone else increases their security as well.  However if they do then crime becomes a crazy strategy and falls to negligible levels, and then security can be relaxed.  If you’re guarding priceless artifacts then obviously you need more because the potential payoff is greater.  If it’s just your house you can have less, but if you choose to outfit your house with proximity activated popup autofire machine gun turrets, that’s fine, whatever floats your boat.  However, it may turn out that your popup turrets themselves represent a problem which I need to solve.  So I decide to ask you to not use machine guns to defend your property in case my dog should run into your yard.  Perhaps my gratitude is insufficient payment, and it may be worth my while to give you outright compensation in exchange for depriving you of your gun turrets.  Maybe I go door to door in the neighborhood asking for donations to end the tyranny of the machine gun turret maniac down the street.  Perhaps I just buy a mortar and blow up whatever gun turrets you may happen to purchase.  Not a realistic choice, especially for me, but a possible choice, so why not?  Then you decide that that is just too much and you pay some organization with an economic interest in being arbitrary (DRO perhaps) to mediate our argument, and get you some compensation for the blown up gun turrets.  Hey, maybe you even pay them off.  Then I tell the world that this or that DRO is getting paid off, here’s my proof, their entire enterprise is shot and they are out of business.  Or, you pay all the legal fees and whatnot and I am charged with blowing up your stuff.  I hire someone to represent me, and so on and so forth.  We can do whatever we want, and we aren’t harming anyone but ourselves.  However, the moment you implicate some huge centralized control agent such as the government, our little dispute involves everyone in the entire country to some degree in the form of courts, consistent laws, and taxpayer money.  Get rid of it all- back to a state of nature, baby!

In a state of nature, personal economics rules.  The problem with “state of nature” is some arbitrary connotative association that in order for us to live in a state of nature, we have to be savages who just barely invented the wheel.  There was absolutely nothing wrong with the economy when we were, in fact, savages who just invented the wheel.  Absolutely nothing- it worked perfectly.  There wasn’t a hell of a lot to trade, there was no useful medical technology, and a whole myriad of other problems.  But the personal economics of the day were absolutely without parallel in the modern world.  You could do anything you wanted.  It just so happened that the environment made severe demands upon you which led you to choose certain courses over others due to the risk of death, which nowadays we find barbaric.  You don’t decide if you want to eat pizza or a sandwich and worry about risk of death in either choice.  We are living with the products of thousands of years of personal economics, and the further we go the more we distort those personal economics with coercion.  This is why all countries and empires must fall.  Very simply, an agency of centralized control has, by definition, sufficient power to increase its own control.  If the controlling agency lacks the ability to actually do anything in either direction then it’s not much of a controlling agency, is it?  And, anyone given a choice will pick the one they prefer.  Therefore any group given controlling power must therefore use it maximize their own value.  Depending on everyone involved with coercive power to consistently choose to act against their own interests, indefinitely, is a losing bet.

Allow me to reframe this in a different context.  Consider your average corporation, I often use McDonald’s as a corporate empire example (I never eat their food, but they’re an interesting empire).  Is there corruption in McDonald’s?  More importantly, do you care?  Your choice is very simple: they offer you food products and you offer them money.  Nobody is forcing you to buy their stuff.  After you’ve made your deal, your business is concluded.  What they do with the money is no longer your concern.  They could burn it for all you care, in the same way that you could just burn your Big Mac- they don’t care.  If it should turn out that a couple McDonald’s executives stole $100 million from their company, why should you care?  If the corruption ever gets so bad that their products increase in price, or their employees quit, or whatever else should happen, then that’s just a few more of those factors that go into your decision to buy or not buy.  Even if you work at McDonald’s, you are offered a certain pay in exchange for specific services.  As long as those executives don’t cut into your paycheck one cent, or make your job one whit more difficult, why do you care?  Now compare this situation to the government.  If a couple government officials ran off with $100 million there would be an uproar.  This type of thing actually happens all the time, they just don’t ‘run off with it’ because they have more creative, subtle, and above all effective ways to profit.  But if they out-and-out stole it there would be a storm.  This is because the government applies an interesting abstraction to taxation which decrees that, while you must give them the money or be thrown in jail, you also have some claim over it even after you have given it to them.  This makes it that much easier to take, and also leads you to believe that you aren’t actually being coerced.  A bunch of other people voted to say that your money should be taken and used to do X, but the spin is that you have the power to vote as well so it all evens out.

Of course, if they actually were providing you with value for value then the government would be completely optional in the same way McDonald’s is.  I hate McDonald’s food, but they aren’t going to throw me in jail for not using their services.  The government, however, will.  And they will go so far as to use the money they stole from me to pay for the cops to go get me, the cell they would keep me in, and to line the pockets of the legislators who mandated that I should be jailed.  If the government actually did provide useful services such as law and order, a just court system, health care, and whatever else, then let them make participation completely optional.  Let’s have multiple available citizenship plans.  Liberty service has no taxes, but you agree to abide by the laws and regulations and in return you will be defended by the police and military, and given fire services, hospital service, and a number of other vitals, including 1 vote.  Bronze service costs 10% of your income, you get 2 votes, and several other services such as school services, libraries, etc. plus everything on the liberty plan.  Silver service is 25% of your income, you get 5 votes, free health care, whatever, you get the point.  Gold service is 50% of your income, you get 10 votes and a number of other services to compensate for the increased.  Then there’s Patriot service, for 75% of your income plus optional donation-based bonuses, you get 30 votes plus direct contact rights to your representatives, the option for low-level leadership positions within the government, guaranteed employment, whatever you like.  You don’t have to buy any of them, of course.  But if you want, you can.

Convincing People

When you have conceptualized and reaffirmed what you believe to the a profound “truth”, there is a definite tendency to want to share that understanding with others. You want to convince them that you know something that they want to know, too. This ranges from religious zealots seeking converts to Mac fanboys decrying the supremacy of all Apple products, to philosophers such as myself seeking to share a system of understanding with anyone who wants to listen. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to spread the good stuff around, but there are a number of interesting aspects to the pursuit that I’m going to elaborate on.

Firstly, the way in which we become convinced of things. In my experience, anyone can be convinced to believe anything very rapidly provided it doesn’t contradict something they already believe. If they’re neutral, then whatever they hear first gets a decisive advantage. There are generally three stages of being “convinced”- with a sort of “stage zero” of neutrality. The first contact with whatever thought process will put it into your memory, short or long term. Then, at some point, that thought process is confirmed on an emotional level, and this can be by extraordinarily unlikely or irrational circumstance but has lasting effect nonetheless. Finally the person is faced with a situation that tests that belief to some degree, however flimsy or improbable a straw man argument we may be talking about here, and they lock in their new belief by opposing its opposite. This establishes their own behavior, sets a precedent for maintaining consistency, entrenches the belief by cognitive dissonance, represents a “social ecology check,” and locks in that behavior pattern because others have observed it. After that, the person’s belief will be very difficult to dislodge, even if it is patently unreasonable. Now this little model is all well and good, but we need an example we can sink our teeth into. As a simple example, consider advertising. The advertiser’s ideal goal is to establish a behavior in the viewer of consistently buying their product. Stage 1: Mere exposure effect, they see an ad that claims product A is excellent and inexpensive, and only later do they learn about product B serves the same function. A already has an advantage. Stage 2: A different ad targeted to their audience connects with them, such as being humorous or they empathize with someone in the ad, or whatever. Fairly self-explanatory, but the devils are in the details of this stage. More on this later. Stage 3: When given a choice between A and B, right next to one another on store shelves, they purchase A.

Now, that’s a fairly theoretical example and doesn’t really elucidate exactly what I’m talking about. The reason why I bring this topic up in the first place is that becoming convinced that something is true, or being conditioned into a specific behavior depends a great deal on sheer luck unless you’re careful. The first effect is mostly subconscious, and there isn’t a lot you can do about it other than be aware of it and check you’re not doing irrational things. However, the second stage is the source of huge error. Have you ever been talking with someone, and let’s just say they randomly bring up something very specific from a book you’re reading that they could not have divined from you? Or, a more common case, someone else expresses a fairly uncommon thought or preference that you share. You get that instantaneous hit like a shot of familieroin. That exact type of random occurrence not only establishes a connection between you and the other person, but also reacts and reaffirms whatever thought or preference in question. Both of these release tension- social tension, and at the same time internal tension of having to hold non-certain processes in limbo. Of course, there are many others ways this can happen, too. Perhaps you’re reading an article which just reads like the author has a direct line into your brain, and then brings up an opinion you’ve heard of but not yet accepted. You just go, “OK, that’s correct, I don’t have to worry about it anymore” and accept it as valid. True, there is no rational basis for this type of conceptual validation, but it happens very quickly.

I do have a purpose, however. I want to get to my main point. When someone has been emotionally convinced, and has integrated their own emotional self, thought systems, or any other aspect of their identity into a belief, you will be unable to convince them otherwise. If someone believes they are happy, there is absolutely nothing you can do to convince them that they are unhappy. By the same token, if someone believes that believing in God makes them happy, there is absolutely nothing you can do to convince them otherwise. And, because that statement carries the very clever and subtle assumption of existence, because of the implied postulate that believing in things that don’t exist doesn’t make you happy, the believer concludes that God exists. And there is nothing you can do to convince them otherwise once they are invested in it. I don’t want to attack religion in this post- I do that from time to time, but not this one. What I do want to say is that being convinced necessarily includes the possibility of tolerating a contradiction to maintain that belief. We have the miraculous power to hold conflicting mental models and systems in our heads, but the vast, vast majority of people don’t recognize that it is even possible. It’s a capacity that invariably does little more than give you enough rope to thoroughly hang yourself. The thoughtful selection and application in appropriate situations of conflicting models is either automatic or completely absent, never in the purview of the conscious mind.
For someone who has been convinced, they will actively seek to defend that thought or belief. Investing yourself all over the place is a very unhealthy habit. When you suggest a movie to someone and they tell you it sucked, do you try to defend yourself? You invested a piece of yourself in the movie, so when the other person so callously attacked it it appeared to you they were attacking a) something you liked, questioning your taste, b) something you recommended to them, questioning your social judgment, and perhaps c) something you incorporated into your own identity to some extent. I’ll use religion again because it’s something everyone is familiar with. When you tell a religious person that their religion is stupid, you’re not just objectively saying that assertions x, y, and z… are false. This person has probably involved themselves in religious activities, bonded with people who share that religion, done some things that would look pretty damn embarrassing if what you say is true (by design, of course). Stepping on other people’s identity is the easiest way to provoke some serious aggression. However, their identity is also probably in all sorts of places where it shouldn’t be and if they were smart they would rectify that situation, starting by reading this post.

Look at it another way: in our society, we talk about two people “getting along well” as if there are somehow intrinsic properties of different people that for some reason just make them fit together well. This is a result of the randomness of our identity configurations (the geeiker counter just fuzzed out a bit there). If we put value in similar stuff, we get along well, and if we step on one another’s toes all the time then we dislike each other. It’s random because our identity is scrambled all over the place by randomly created emotional convincers in everything from advertisements to sheer randomness in conversations. And there’s no reason for this. If we could each maintain control over our own identity then this sort of situation would be fixed. So you can see the bleeding-through of philosophical or political, or whatever you want to call it, awareness into insensitive redneck behavior.  This, in turn, spurs up defenses, the false self, conformity, violence, and stifles freedom and thought.  So in a not-so-roundabout way, our blindness to our own and others’ identities is the primary instigator, the first cause, of all our modern woes.  In a self-reinforcing cycle, of course.

As a sidenote, the reason why I point out self-reinforcing cycles everywhere is because they are extremely difficult to pick out without extensive searching.  And the reason why there are so many of them is because, well, they’re self-reinforcing.  Barring something dramatic, once begun they’re going to stick around until something dramatic does take them out.  Almost always that involves a restructuring of the environment around them.

Responsibility and Reactions

Are we responsible for our reactions to things? Using weather as an example since we can’t control it (yet), if you dislike rain, and it’s raining outside, are you responsible for the fact that you won’t be as happy as you would be if it were sunny? Put more generally, are you responsible for your own status at any given time? Even though you might agree in a certain sense, following the adage “take responsibility!” I am going to put forward that, in order to be morally consistent, you’re going to have to take that concept further than you might like.

A relativist would tell you that you aren’t responsible for your status in certain vaguely defined ways, perhaps you’re depressed because you suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) over which you have no control. They might say a murderer had a terrible childhood, or that a student with poor grades had poor parents who never taught them what they needed to know to learn well. This variety of thinking is popular these days since it seems somehow nicer than assaulting the ego of the guilty. Of course, it seems callous to say that in all cases the individual is responsible for their own status or nature. What about genetics or early childhood environment? Are people with learning disabilities responsible for their shortcomings in the workplace?

The key difference here is that I am not saying you are responsible for properties of your existence.  I am not responsible for the fact that I am white because that stems from genetics and the randomness of birth.  I did not choose to be born and I am therefore not responsible for anything stemming from that event, in the same way that I am not responsible if someone else rams into my car.  However, I am responsible for every last choice and action and I must take into account the objective reality that surrounds me, including any properties and aspects that I do not control.  If it’s raining outside, I can’t go outside and become angry when I get wet.  I made the choice to go outside and, due to certain aspects of the environment, an undesirable outcome resulted and I am responsible for it.  Broadening this line of thinking, I’m male, and therefore can’t go into the womens’ restroom.  True, I didn’t choose to be male, and neither did I choose the social norms that deign “here, men, thou shalt not tread” but nonetheless those are aspects of objective reality that I can either accommodate, or get slapped.  Unfortunately most people don’t respect objective reality as much as they should, and make exactly this type of choice in all sorts of areas.  For example, the student that knows they need to study if they want to get good grades, but nonetheless spends all their time playing video games and smoking pot.  Or the stock market investor who buys a stock, and when it falls they keep on telling themselves “it’s going to go up” while it continues to fall, until they’re broke.  You’re free to make any choice you like, but objective reality will reward or punish (relative to your subjective perspective) different choices.  And if you make choices that are synonymous with someone else whose happiness-set includes poverty, sickness, dissatisfaction, or whatever, then that’s your prerogative.  It is possible that there could be a person who wants those things and will make choices to actively seek them, so those choices aren’t more or less valid than any other.  More people will want the opposite, but that changes nothing.  You need to actively seek what you want.  And the big secret to that is that, at all times, you are present with a choice that can either take you closer to something (or everything) you want, or farther away.  Your call.

However, this post is about your responsibility for your reactions.  Now that we’ve established your responsibility for you choices, a much easier task, we can move on to the more intriguing aspects of  emotions and subjective perspective.  Are you responsible for the fact that you prefer apples to oranges?  We have already established the fact that if you choose an apple over an orange, then you’re accountable for that action.  But are you similarly responsible for the generalized, nonspecific preference for apples over oranges?  Apples and oranges is something of a fool’s example, this conclusion will apply to all our emotional reactions in all circumstances, and all our preferences and desires.  Once again, a relativist would say that no, you aren’t.  Your parents, your genes, and a host of other factors have summed together and created you and you’re just living out your conflict of internal and external variables into a form of destiny.

CONTRADICTION CAVEAT WARNING <IGNORE IF ALREADY CONFUSED>: I actually agree with this concept.  However, I add the very significant point that you cannot simulate X amount of data with X amount of data without actually recreating that exact data set.  This means that, while the path of the universe is actually predestined, it’s logically impossible for us to know with absolute certainty what the totality of it is.  Newtonian physics works because the universe is predestined, but in order to apply those laws to the entire universe, we’d need the entire universe’s computation capacity, necessitating metadata to understand itself, which we can’t obtain because we’re out of matter in the universe.  Therefore, Fate is broken because while it is true that whatever you’re going to do you couldn’t have done any other way, the fact that you can’t know what it is means that your actions have effect in creating it.  If you just mope about in your room because you “can’t do anything- it’s all Fate anyway” you have determined what your Fate is retroactively.  Think of it this way: in quantum physics, you can’t know both where a particle is, and how fast it’s going.  This is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and it means that we can only say probabilistically where an electron is going to be at any given time.  Your future life is a probabilistic system in similar fashion.  </IIAC>

Now, while it is true that you biologically require food and therefore you have a preference to acquiring it.  If you haven’t eaten in three days, I bet you’d be prepared to pay quite a bit of utility in exchange for food.  Did you have control over this preference?  Probably not.  However, that three days of hunger is probably as a result of at least one choice you have made so you can’t claim zero responsibility, and you already knew full well that not eating for three days would create some pretty serious hunger issues for you. Now, the big issue I see with old systems of philosophy is this style of archaic differentiation of forms from one another.  The human body is somehow logically different from an animal body, or a rock, or empty space.  The human mind is somehow logically different from the universe that creates it, metaphysics is somehow separate from objective reality, etc. etc.  There are all sorts of distinctions that do describe the world to a certain degree.  Theories of absolute morality apply to the ethics of human behavior, epistemology to describing the systems of human thought, and so on.  However, because the universe is a single contiguous and concrete entity consisting of a single set of rules, there can be only one set of rules that must be fundamentally connected to one another.  You can’t have one set of rules that applies some of the time, except here, here and here, where we use this one.  You can have a single set of rules that can produce different effects in different circumstances.  The difference is like a card game’s rules: you can have a single set of rules which allows for change (like, when someone plays a red 4, reverse the value of cards or somesuch), but you can’t play a single card game with two different sets of rules (like from two distinct sources).  Gravity is strong when close, and gets weaker by the inverse square law- distance is a circumstance.  We don’t see gravity applying some of the time, and mystical Ytivarg energy some of the time.

So if we’re going to unify everything then way more thought is necessary than just this post, but we can keep that process in mind for now and find something that exhibits interesting parallels and similarities to the system we’re trying to describe.  In this case, the responsibility of choice seems integrally connected to the motivations we use to make those choices, and those motivations also appear to be connected to choices we have made in the past.  Is it possible we’re drawing a distinction where none exists, and we can just restructure our system to accommodate the difference of circumstances?  Let’s analyze what a choice actually constitutes.  We have the actual action of choosing, the agent making the choice, the information and resources availably to that agent, the predicted consequences based on that information and resources, and then the subjective perception of those consequences.  We’re seeing an input of information and resources, and an output of simulated prediction which is then selected among to maximize resources (or information).  Due to the wide variety of choices and the potentially huge amount of time needed to make them, our emotions give us shortcuts to judging a lot of data at a glance.  Our reaction to those simulated predictions is just like our reactions to objective reality, except they haven’t happened, and factoring in inaccuracy, perhaps substantial error due to misinformation.  So our actual choice consists of a selection of utilities for a rational entity, but we are force-fed by our survival systems a rehashed version of those utilities to make our choice more efficient, like the President receiving reports that percolate up from countless petty bureaucrats.  Our emotions are basically those reports based on our survival systems’ analysis of the data and utilities of choices available.  So I guess we aren’t responsible for our emotions, in the same way that you aren’t responsible for an email in your inbox.  It’s just input, albeit from a source that is intimately connected with who you are.  As I’ve said before, your body is basically a vehicle you were locked in from birth.  That’s not a bad thing, because it’s a very sophisticated and flashy vehicle, and you have to ride around in something.  But you aren’t responsible for the fact that you need food the way your car needs gas.  That said, you live in objective reality and your body is a part of your environment.  Neglecting to deal with your environment’s objective reality has drastic consequences.  You didn’t make the rules, but you have to live by them or objective reality will slap you, hard.

Resistance

Every day we thwart our own efforts to some degree, and every day we “succeed” against our obstacles.  This up and down cycle can get us going in a big way, and can wreak havoc on your stability with stress and anxiety. We encounter situations or tasks which we *must* do, and though we dislike them, we do them anyway.  We force ourselves to.  In this post I’m going to discuss resistance, and internal conflicts which are the source of pretty much every stress or discontent not linked to a natural deficiency (i.e. hunger).

Let’s begin with bravery.  The “insanity” school of valiant action is that the ideal mode is to simply not be afraid.  Basically they take a concept-human and subtract a single characteristic: fear, and expect it to be instantiated in reality.  This is rather like taking a concept-human, adding wings and calling it an angel, and that it of course exists.  Of course if the sociopath style is the model to which others form their behavior, they’ll simply deny that they’re afraid and then exaggerate their display of non-fear.  The fiercest warriors are the most terrified ones, the guy over there in the corner shaking is at least sane enough to realize he doesn’t actually want to be there.   This is a similar process to religious fervor as well, where the most devout are often the least “believing” but they’re overcompensating.  This style of behavior is often brought about by what I will call a ‘restricted communication dilemma.’  Before I actually explain what it is, I’ll give you an example.  Get candy.  Then, get a group of school kids together, and tell them that whoever wants the candy the most gets the whole bag.  The situation will undoubtedly escalate with frightening speed, and may even turn violent.  You may have already considered the parallel; you get a bunch of religious people together and say “whoever believes X the most…”  It’s a restricted communication dilemma because A) each agent has no method to objectively communicate their utility in the context of the “game,” B) each agent has no criteria to judge the utility that others possess, and C) specific desired behaviors directly translate into real value irrespective of game-based utility.  Essentially, you have a herd of people competing under the radar for devoutness, each one fearing that they’re losing their religion, with no way to communicate positive or negative status in the competition.  The guys running the show can say “if you believe you will do X” and guess what?  The faithful will leap up and run, not walk, in a desperate attempt to prove their devoutness.  They hope for an arbitrary reward but of course can’t claim to actually be pursuing game utility.  It’s really a genius scheme.

Regarding resistance, this type of engine, applied more generally, not just to religion, produces internal conflicts.  For example, if you have work to do then you’ll resist doing it because it’s not fun.  However, there comes a time when prurient personal economic necessity demands that you overcome that resistance and just do it.  With repetition, this internal pressure system is confirmed to “work” because you produce results, but it stresses you out and you probably aren’t very happy living through it.  You know all those studies talking about people living in third world countries are about equally happy as richer nations, despite a serious economic discrepancy?  This explains why.  In order to get that economic value, you need to sacrifice equilibrium, and the exact degree that that equilibrium is disturbed is the degree to which that job is compensated.  Now, I think it’s important to note that on average the happiness of the first and third world countries is comparable, but the distribution is much wider in first world countries, resulting in climbing numbers of very satisfied people, as well as suicide rates.  Everyone copes with disturbed equilibrium differently, and differing circumstances produce different reactions in different people.  For example, someone who needs substantial sleep, can’t cope with intense time pressure and high risk, and who works as a surgeon, is going to be way, way more disturbed by their job than someone who needs little sleep, works well under pressure, and can deal with having a patient’s life in their hands.  However, the economic value of the job of surgeon only pays out to the value of the requisite medical knowledge, etc., and the average undesirability of the job in sleep lost, years of training, pressure, whatever.  So the first surgeon would be well off financially, but disproportionately stressed out by their job relative to the average.  The other would be just as well off financially, but way less stressed out than average.  The whole paradigm is a result of internal pressure escalation.

So the next model is that somehow you have to be strong enough to overcome your fear.  The next level is that you acknowledge that you’re afraid- a big step for someone back in psycholand- and proceed to try and push on anyway.  This will produce one of two types of people whom we commonly, and incorrectly, refer to as introverts and extroverts.  Introverts are the ones who have tried and failed to overcome their barriers, and as a result they languor around in stagnant mental backwaters, yet at the same time pushing hard in all directions where there aren’t any barriers.  Extroverts are different.  Extroverts are those brilliant few who have… tried and failed to overcome their barriers, and instead of persisting wherever there aren’t barriers, they go “OK, this isn’t working” and revert back to psycholand, deny the barrier exists, yet instead of leaping screaming over the wall like a trueborn delusional, they just walk back and forth bumping into it over and over again, like a fly in a window.  They like comforting social circles where not much happens, enabling them to play up small occurrences that mean nothing just to have something to talk about.  They can’t handle real discussion like philosophy, science, art, whatever, and instead enjoy digesting premasticated garbage, following one another in herds, checking for what everyone else is doing before acting, such as fashion and gossip for girls, or football and cars for boys.  It’s unfashionable to have a long attention span, to actually have integrity, to go against the grain, or do something else that makes anyone else uncomfortable.   Having value will freak them out, being of substance or class will make them react with hostility, and refusing to put up with their bullshit will make them calm down immediately and start acting (temporarily, alas) like a semi-normal person.  You thought I was going to say extroverts were good, didn’t you?  Admit it.  That’s the widely held opinion.  Most of the population are extroverts. Our society holds up niceness, political correctness, friendliness, and validation.  Self-licking ice cream cone anyone?  If you’ve read a few of my posts I’m sure you can connect the dots on this familiar persistent systemic framework.  I’m not saying that these traits are necessarily bad, but I am saying that if they’re the goal, rather than the side effect of integrity, a great deal degenerates fast.

You cannot overpower your own barriers.  I’m letting you off the hook right now.  In a way.  Any barrier you create in yourself, you will not be able to directly overcome, because the same force holding up the barrier is pushing on it.  The tension will just stress you out and reduce your performance.  In very Stoic fashion- the solution is not to overcome your barriers, but to identify them and then just stop propping them up.  Down they fall, and you can just walk over into once impassable territory.  So now I’m putting you back on the hook.  You cannot overcome your own barriers, but at the same time you are fundamentally responsible for their existence, and it’s your problem to figure out how to get rid of them.  I’m prepared to guarantee you haven’t heard anything like this before, so I’ll put forward a single thought right here at the end for your enjoyment.

Do you choose who you  are?  Why aren’t you your true self all the time?

Choosing Happiness

Freedom is a kind of death.  This is a difficult concept.  Think about it, though, it’s in this post.

Choice is a difficult issue to talk about with philosophical, psychological, or scientific rigor.  Simply put, there are way too many possible choices for generalizations to cover them all.  I am the most ardent advocate of true freedom you will find, but actually, choice is not necessarily a desirable position. I have seen, generally, there are two breeds of choice drawn from two possible life situations, matching two possible conscious processes.  Constructive or reductive.  For choices, that is to say you will face either a constructive or a reductive choice.  Reductive choices are the bad ones- these are the choices of “OK, A or B.  Go.”  You have a finite number of options and it is the addition of an option that is notable.  Your field of choice is best defined by what you can choose.  By contrast, constructive choices are best represented by what you cannot choose.  Constructive choice: “What do you want to do?”  Reductive choice: “Would you like fries with that?”  The distinction is important because we tend not to think about our constructive choices, at all, ever.  A reductive choice, however, forces you to actually conceptualize that you have in fact got to make a choice.  If you’re faced with millions of these you are given the illusion of having a great deal of freedom, when in fact you’re essentially little more than a slave.  Reductive choices are subject to only two forces: personal economics and subjective value.  That is to say, if someone offered you $10 or $100, you’ll take the larger sum, of course.  If someone offered you an equivalent amount of chocolate or brussel sprouts, you probably prefer the chocolate because you think it tastes better, and will take that.  Yet if you don’t like chocolate or you’re a health nut, then perhaps the brussel sprouts give you a greater subjective value.

Constructive choices are not subject to the same personal economics plus subjective value analysis.  If you have a completely free day to do whatever you want, you might not necessarily do whatever you can to maximize your immediate payoff, or push your subjective value to the absolute limit.  I don’t think it’s even possible to rationally predict what a conscious entity of significant complexity will do in a situation of constructive choice.  What you can predict is what they won’t do.  Let’s say you walk into a massive grocery store and there’s a sign that says “you can buy anything in here, except this thing.”  Well we don’t know what the person is going to buy, but we can be sure they’re not going to take that option.  By the way, the reason why I call these choices constructive or reductive is that in a reductive choice you have a finite number of options and an indefinite/infinite number of non-options, or prohibited options, and in a constructive choice you have a finite number of non-options and an indefinite/infinite number of options.  It’s rather like the proposition of “innocent until proven guilty” is the constructive framing of prosecution, or the “legal until expressly prohibited” mentality.  We know we would be in trouble if our government began to mandate that all activity is illegal unless the government expressly allows it.  Nonetheless this exact same type of choice crops up everywhere, and everyone begins to think they are more free, when in reality their freedom is being systematically infringed upon by people who want you to choose to their advantage.  Don’t believe me?  McDonald’s or Burger King?  Christian, Jewish, Muslim?  15” or 17” laptop?  4% or 6% levy increase?  Democrat or Republican?  You get to pick!  Aren’t you powerful?  The easiest way to get someone to do what you want is to give them a reductive choice, and then restrict any unsatisfactory options until eventually they start choosing the one you want, ideally when they still have several options left other than the one they chose so they don’t feel manipulated.

True freedom consists entirely of constructive choices.  Of course in practical reality we will always have reductive choices, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  At any particular sandwich joint there will be a definite number of possible condiments.  How do we reconcile this with true freedom?  Easy.  In a much grander sense, you’re gifted with the inalienable freedom to restrict your own choices.  By walking up to that particular sandwich joint and agreeing to buy a sandwich, you chose to restrict the possible combinations of sandwich materiél to whatever was available right there.  You signed an implicit contract saying you were totally OK with the available condiment choices.  Nobody pointed a gun at your head and said “you, yes you, are going to buy a goddamn sandwich, right here, right now.  But, you are free to put whatever condiments you like on it from our generous selection.”  Even if it was a cheap and tasty sandwich with a diverse selection of toppings, I would still be extremely annoyed, to put it mildly.  Not to mention how those sandwiches, under that business model, won’t stay cheap and tasty for long.  However that is exactly what is happening today.  The government’s primary mode of, for want of a better word,  oppression, is to bait-and-switch your constructive choices for reductive ones and claim to have given you something.  The most obvious case is voting, “would you like the puppet on the left, or maybe the puppet on the right?”  Now, not all politicians are puppets, but there’s too much money and power sloshing around for rational idealists to stay that way for long.  But the other areas are no less significant, from taxes (you’re going to pay, but you have a say in where they’re spent), to public schools (you’re going to go, but you can pick your classes), to social security (you’re going to pay for it, but you don’t necessarily have to collect).  Unfortunately, most people are so used to having reductive choices that when they get the opportunity to be free, they reduce their situation to a reductive choice so they can psychologically deal with it.  Has it ever happened to you?  “What do you want to do?”  “I don’t know.  What do you want to do?”  “I don’t know.  Maybe we could X?”  “OK, sure.”

I’m not going to go too deep into this as a concept, but there’s a lot more to it.  Rather, I want to move onto the original intended topic of this post, with this new model in hand. Do we choose to be happy? Or, do choices make us happy?  My answer is no.  Ideally, choices don’t do anything for your level of happiness, because you’re faced with constructive choices.  Your actions can make you happy, but that’s totally different from the choice itself being the source of your happiness.  You might enjoy paintball, but you don’t wake up in the morning thinking “isn’t it great that in this life I have the option of choosing to play paintball?”  In fact, if you’re of that slant of mind, then having reduced choices might increase your happiness.  I’m not, but if you are then it does not mean there’s something wrong with you.  A choice is a stressor, in the purest terms.  Or perhaps an open door is not psychologically useful to you.  The most famous example of this is that ancient Chinese general, not sure of his name, who burned his ships so his troops would fight harder since they knew they wouldn’t go home unless they won.  Some types just want to be given a fixed situation, and they want to know what they need to do so they can just do it, and do it well.

Extraneous options are only appreciated by a rational agent with useful power to act.  If you’re in that position, however, then there is no such thing as a bad option.  Now, useful power to act is almost always derived from either property or skills, broadly speaking.  Information such as from book can be either, and a rational entity would have no problem reading any “controversial” work from Huck Finn to Mein Kampf, and derive whatever truth it can from either while avoiding being influenced by irrational or delusional ideas, and dealing with difficult issues and inappropriate material in a rational, mature way.  A hypothetical truly rational entity would have absolutely no issue with learning even usually “evil” skills such as how to hotwire cars, pick pockets, make bombs, whatever.  The reason for this is that even though those skills have a very low probability of ever being used in a rationalistic moral situation, they won’t be used until and unless they’re appropriate.  The same logic applies to everything- there’s no such thing as “bad property” as long as the holder is rational.  People accuse iPods of creating antisocial behavior in adolescents, and for the most part they’re right.  However, in their delusion, they then claim that the iPods are the problem, and not the rationality of the entity which owns them.  In the same manner you can’t say that any characteristic, part of the world, or your environment, is “bad.”  Unless you lack the rationality or the capacity to deal with it in a useful way, you can’t say that any aspect is somehow detrimental.  The internet is the perfect example.  It’s now a fact of life, and ingrained in our environment.  However there are people who think that we need to control what information is writable, or accessible, over the internet.  By doing so, by restricting your options, the agent doing the controlling is assuming that you, yes you, are too irrational and stupid to act in your own interest.  They are assuming that you will be adversely affected by whatever material they are suppressing in a manner which you cannot control.  They consider you a sheep that will eat whatever grass you randomly stumble across, and they need to make absolutely certain that it’s not poisonous, or even unpleasant for you to taste.  The way they do this is to restrict your choices, by impinging upon your freedom they can make sure that they can control you if you are actually rational, and if you aren’t then they are restructuring your environment to make sure that your fantasy world isn’t breached by reality.  You are the deer being protected from the T-Rexes, stopping you from evolving to fit actual objective reality.

So, do we choose to be happy?  No.  Is our happiness conditional on our surroundings, our property, or even our emotions?  We want to be free, but what are we really asking for when we ask for freedom?  We want to be faced with objective reality, our mettle against the tests of the world, discerning truth from our surroundings and acting upon it.  Rationality is pivotal towards being truly free.  But this I will tell you, rationality will not make you happy in and of itself.  As a matter of fact, rationality puts you in the hot seat, forces you to truly take responsibility and account for your own actions and forces you to compete in an evolutionary system.  Such competition is not fun!  I believe that we humans are imprinted in a very, very deep way about the horrors of being “in the wild,” of desperately scrabbling for food, avoiding predators, of freezing in the night and sweating from days of chasing our prey.  Short lives, uncertain prospects, a constant struggle.  Now, we wear clothes and live in secure homes with water, food, and shelter all conveniently packaged.  We can satisfy our desires for contact, sensory stimulation, and  self-actualization in zero-risk ways.  We visit nature reserves, go hunting and fishing, to even further reinforce our escape from and dominion over the uncaring and unforgiving Eden of Nature.  But it made us strong, and very, very smart.  That same fortitude is what is necessary to be rational in the modern world.  It’s so easy to just submerge in comforting delusions of consumerism, premasticated thought, and social nicety, but that way leads to the fall of the Roman Empire.  Every major state has fallen because their peoples have escaped from reality to the point that they can no longer sustain themselves in true competition, bringing the whole empire down.  They fell too far beneath the evolutionary system, to the point that those competing were unable to bail out those who weren’t, and the whole lot were selected out, as simple as that.

Choice will not make you happy.  Rationality will not make you happy.  What will make you happy, what ultimately will give you what you want, is the power to grasp what it is you want.  Free choice will let you search for it, and rationality, the struggle to keep up with the human evolutionary pressures derived from Truth, will give you the mettle to get it.  You need to seek it.  Seeking happiness is exactly what will make you happy.  And you’ll never get there.  It’s exactly like trying to keep up with the evolutionary system of objective reality and truth, only you’re trying to keep up with your own subjective reality instead.  Both are constantly changing and require constant attention.  You will never be finished.  So we arrive at the immortality of consciousness, the balance in biology of life and death extended into memetics.  Freedom is a kind of death.  Remember that.

Radical Judgment

A relativist would say that it isn’t our place to judge other cultures. However, such people are flaming hypocrites. Two seconds afterwards they’ll turn around and tell you what they think of somebody, or that a certain movie is terrible, or that one artist is better than another, and so on and so forth. Judgment, in the sense of forming impressions, is an inescapable part of being a thinking being. To dismiss a certain type of judgment as “improper” because all the possible permutations must be appreciated equally, is just nonsense. It’s an attempt to make you stop thinking, just like how religion will tell you to trust your faith. There are indeed numerous hideous cultural practices that the world would be better off without, from genocide to female genital mutilation. However, the statement that they are horrible and unnecessary does not automatically follow through into action. I do not believe that it is anyone’s place, particularly in an international sense, to use military power to force anyone to do anything. If you’re going to point a gun at someone’s head and tell them not to kill people, OK, I can see what your intent is, but you’re kind of not being morally consistent. Not to mention that use of force is going to eventually tempt one of the gun’s holders to go a little farther, maybe to see infrastructure built, and then maybe anti-corruption laws (haha, no hypocrisy there), and then taxation, at which point the ones with the guns are basically muggers. Although they are very powerful, methodical, and have lots of mindless patriots willing to back them up for no better reason than the location of their birth, but they’re still muggers. Well, not exactly. I can at least respect the honesty of a real mugger, since he isn’t going to try to convince you that you’re a bad person if you don’t hand over your money.

Now, I would like to point out the twisted chain of reasoning which leads to this suspension of a necessary mental faculty. First, bring forth the evidence in the racial inequalities of the past and in other nations. Conclude that this is a bad thing. Therefore, since judging people based on the color of their skin, or eyes, or I don’t care what, is unjust, therefore we shouldn’t judge people. This is then used as a rationalization to suspend reactions to other cultures because we have to “respect” them, to religions in the form of “you can’t judge someone by their religion, therefore saying (religion X/religious people) are crazy is religious persecution=racism=bad.” Therefore we should conclude that talking to people about their religion is something we should avoid- you’ve probably observed the sensitivity to such discussion, at least in the US.

To get at the nitty-gritty of the issue- the issue isn’t that judgment is bad. That is a fallacy of the first order perpetuated in a masterwork of propaganda and conditioning. No, the evil is in irrational judgment. You can’t damn someone for making a judgment. You can, however, damn someone for a judgment that has no basis or bearing on reality and the truth. You don’t start a flame war when someone tries a food you like and says it tastes awful. If you’re over the age of 6, at least. They’re just responding to their own sensory impression, just as you would. However, there is always a huge, often violent reaction to racial injustice such as stereotypes based on skin colors because the ones being victimized know on a very deep level that their persecutors are being completely and totally irrational, yet they have the power to make their fantasy-world take shape in reality, and that will irritate the living shit out of absolutely anyone, including you. Don’t believe me? You’ve been in this exact situation many times before. Have you ever been talking with someone, and you observed some event, and then afterwards the other person has unequivocally deluded themselves about what just occurred? A true to life example would take some explication, so I’ll make a synthetic one just to keep it compact. Let’s say you’re playing a game where you roll a die- a 6 earns you $100, and a 1 makes you lose $100. It’s your turn, and you roll 6, 4, 3, 6, 2, 2, 3. After you finish you turn to your buddy, hand him the die, and go “Hey, that was pretty lucky. You owe me $200.” Your buddy looks at you quizzically and says “No, you owe me $400. You got four ones, idiot.” Ah, yes, I can hear the ire in my readers rising already. Now imagine that this deluded fool is your boss, and if you piss him off at all he’ll simply fire your ass, so you have no choice but to concede and hand over the money. This is the exact analogue of injustice- racial, religious, whatever, but on a teeny, tiny scale. The issue isn’t that judgment is bad, it’s that irrationality is horrifyingly damaging on a very deep emotional level. Kind of ironic that that exact brand of irrationality is used to perpetuate the suspension of judgment- another form of irrationality. However it isn’t surprising because you can’t back up such a proposition with true rationality.

In the words of Ayn Rand, “Judge, and prepare to be judged.” Think about this statement, it has a lot of depth. Market capitalism works because each vendor is competing with others selling the same thing, and each buyer is competing to get the products they want. Human social interaction is meant to work in the same organic fashion, where each person is free to do what they want, including to judge others, while at the same time others have the freedom to judge them (including for their judgments). Companies selling good products get more customers in an evolutionary system meant to produce the most happiness in the most efficient manner with the resources available. In every exchange, value is created because if both parties didn’t benefit then they wouldn’t make the deal. In the same way, human judgments should function within an evolutionary system to produce the most accurate picture, because the more useful judgments are perpetuated while the inferior or irrational ones are tested and recognized as such before being discarded. Modern science is an evolutionary system matching the body of knowledge against reality, using an evolutionary system of many scientists, and theories proved false are discarded because they detract from the accurateness of the picture as a whole.

The evolutionary system is the greatest discovery in the history of mankind. With the possible exceptions of language and agriculture (the distinction between discovery and invention is purely semantic and totally unnecessary). Problems arise when you try to interfere in this system using force. For example, let’s say we have a population of deer in some forest. These deer have lived in peace for millions of years, but now, because of mankind, they are faced with a new predator: the T-Rex. Thousands of Tyrannosaurus Rex specimens have escaped from Area 51 and run all the way from Roswell to eat these tasty deer. Now, as humans, some might say we have a responsibility to intervene because we caused this problem. They may have a legitimate point ethically, but that’s not what we’re talking about at this moment: we’re talking about the equilibrium of evolutionary systems. Let’s say for a moment that we decide the wacko environmentalists, as opposed to the rational environmentalists (i.e. me), are right, and we use SCUD missiles and machine guns and whatnot to keep down the population of T-Rexes. Lots of deer still get eaten, but they aren’t going to even approach the black chasmy brink of extinction. The wacko environmentalists cheer a successful cause, and the rationalists mourn the fact that now we, humans, are mired in mediating a war we cannot win, because our very objective is to keep the war going by maintaining a supply of defenseless deer. The sane, rational perspective is that the deer is just going to get evolutionarily selected out because of the presence of T-Rexes. War over, problem solved. Every day we insulate the deer population from its environment is another day that it is evolving for our artificially created fantasy bubble reality, and another day it’s not evolving for the actual problems it needs to face in the world. So, the hard truth is that in the long run it’s better to let the deer go by the wayside. Now, in real-life terms, this might result in a cascade effect which brings down the whole ecosystem, so we might decide to do something about it in that light, but the evolutionary system being artificially disrupted and warped is still true.

Now consider applying this idea to the economy. Insulating industry from overseas competition using tariffs is more or less equivalent to giving our hypothetical deer some badass anti-T-Rex device that means a T-Rex will run screaming back to its mama when faced by a mighty doe, if so equipped. In fact, given enough time these deer might even become so bold as to exercise their newfound T-Rex herding powers to useful effect. Perhaps they choose to hang around near them so that if some other predator shows up they can just dart past the T-Rex and their predator is sitting there, shaking, thinking “nuh uh, no way, man!” This will obviously mean the deer won’t evolve the means to protect themselves from these T-Rexes. So, if at some point in the future that protective shield is removed, the resulting correction in the system will be swift and brutal. Plus, if the deer had adapted to an environment in which they had T-Rex scarer devices then they’re living in a fantasy world that leaves them even more poorly equipped to deal with reality. To use the previous example, they’d probably seek out T-Rexes to hide near, only to their surprise now the T-Rex just eats their deluded mammalian ass. Though that trend would end fairly quickly because all the deer using that strategy would be devoured pretty fast. Leaving analogy-metaphor-land, tariffs are exactly that type of interference in an evolutionary system. As are taxes, regulation, and oh so many other economic interferences. The problem is that a) the government can enforce its fantasy land on a consistent basis, and does so, and b) we’ve been in consistent fantasy land for so long now that we have become totally unable to survive “in the economic wild.” American car companies have been producing poorer vehicles at higher prices than foreign car companies for a loooong time. But nevertheless, they get government funding, legislative aid, and a whole gaggle of loonies decrying that you should “buy American! Be patriotic!” The big problem is that it’s so tempting to just help them a little bit. There’s a rough patch a long time ago and we go “Alright, it’s OK, we’ll give you a teensy little edge, but only for a little while, OK?” Of course, it doesn’t last just a little while because the car companies adapt to the new environment to maximize profit and minimize cost, often producing a poorer product that will be equally competitive, factoring in their edge. You can’t strip their new advantage because they’ll cry bloody murder at how the government is destroying them, killing jobs, etc. etc. It’s gotten to the point that, if those aids were relaxed, the American car companies would have a very, very hard time, and probably fold.

Judgment falls into the same category. The ideal system is a free field because evolutionary systems will just appear wherever necessary to maximize utility. Don’t believe me? Get a group of 100 third grade students, lock them in a gym somewhere, give them 10 chips each, and give them a list of prizes- like 1 chip for a piece of candy, 5 for a toy, etc. etc., up to 1000 for a bike. Any prize list, any number of chips, it doesn’t matter. Watch what happens. You will see deals, contracts, breaches of faith, economic retribution, and in the end, on the whole, each kid will be relatively satisfied, having transformed their 10 chips into 10 chips of value for them, which will be subjectively different than 10 chips of value for each other kid. The ones who prefer candy have no qualms about getting 10 candies, although they will probably lent their 10 chips out to the kid who wants the video game for 40 chips, in return for an 11th candy. These kids have no training, and precious little reasoning ability, but nevertheless they can create a myriad of evolutionary systems to select for maximizing happiness.   The same methodology should apply to human truth, to history, opinions, to elections.  I have no problem with the idea of elections at all- they’re very representative.  What I have a problem with is the idea that the will of the majority can be enforced on everyone else by men with guns and blue uniforms.  Anyone who agrees to abide by the majority’s decision, fine, that’s great.  Otherwise you’re saying that if five men want to ambush and rape one woman, they’re the majority in that particular subset of humanity, and so therefore the woman is morally obligated to obey and if she doesn’t then the brutes have the moral authority to use violence.  Or, if you’re of the beauraucratic persuasion, you could argue that they have to be wearing blue uniforms.  It’s not the vote I have the problem with- it’s the idea that violent enforcement must, well of course somehow follow.  That’s my judgment, you’re free to make yours.  Just don’t tell me I shouldn’t judge just because it’s convenient for someone else if I don’t think.

The Persistence of Magic

The idea of magic is interesting because it appears that humans have always had some idea of “impossible powers” and some group of people who believed that they had them, despite all evidence to the contrary.  Even today, there are those who still ascribe to psychic phenomenon, UFO’s, magic, or (let’s be blunt) God.  I would like to specify that I’m talking about people who claim to have powers, and claim that all humanity has such powers.  Sometimes they’ll even go so far as to claim that “you can learn how right now, for the low, low, price of $1,500.”  I am not referring to trick shop magicians, illusionists, or the like, even if their routines involve claims like “I can read your mind.”  I have done, and do routines like this from time to time because they are quite entertaining.

The root of the problem is the superstition effect, as I call it.  The superstition effect is a combination of a basic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and human gullibility.  The human brain is wired to make associations, and it does so very quickly.  This is a good thing, because the process will catch most all patterns that really exist, however the same advantage causes our pattern perception to also jump at shadows, and produce patterns where none exist.  On that throw that you randomly blew on the dice, you won.  Your mind goes- connection?  Let’s try that again…  We’ve all been there, though perhaps in more subtle ways.  That day you played some sport well, you happened to wear red underwear.  That time your date went well you had an Altoid beforehand.  Whatever.  The common element in all these situations is that there is a certain fundamental element of randomness, of unpredictability.  Your mind doesn’t like things it cannot predict, and the wired-up assumption of cause and effect causes it to start looking for patterns to help understand that situation to do better next time.  This is, incidentally, one of the reasons why gambling is addictive.  Any rational entity can see that in the long run, at slots or roulette, there is absolutely no way for you to win.  None.  However, that logical analysis is actually overridden by several factors, such as the emotional rollercoaster of win-lose-lose-win, and the flawed assumption that there must be *something* you can do to increase your odds over the next guy.  You can win because you are smarter/luckier/cooler/insert-adjective-here-er, and you can find the pattern.  The casino obviously likes this perspective and spreads it around- lotteries run ads on this principle, though they frequently add the semantic obfuscation of “it could be you” or “why not you?”  This is simply because it seems extremely improbable to Joe that he’ll win because of all the other people playing, despite his ideal of fuzzy specialness- why not him, he’s just like everyone else.  Note the fascinating contradiction in people to want to be both normal, and special, at the same time.  It’s like shouting quietly or whispering loudly.  Do you want to be heard, or not?

Back to magic, yes this is related.  The people selling magic are catering to a specific subsection of the people who feel “special.”  They’re interested in the people who feel special, and are conscious of it, but don’t really know why.  More specifically, they’re interested in people looking for a rationalization for their own specialness.  This manifests itself as being attracted to “arcane powers.”  True, they aren’t the only ones, but the others aren’t being marketed to because the ones drawn to impossible power are impossible to advertise to.  It would be like attempting to sell chocolate to a bear.  Those selling magic, or psychic powers, instead want to weaken your certainty in the fact that they’re full of hot air. Attention: you are probably vulnerable to to exactly this type of attack.  For them, it’s a victory if you are no longer 100% sure.  If you slip even .01% then they’ve won.  According to that doctrine, it doesn’t matter if they prove their argument, only that they attack yours.  This is the guiding principle of modern religious apologists who obviously can’t prove anything from their end.  Instead they say “there are holes in the fossil record” and assume therefore God must have created the world 6,000 years ago.  It doesn’t matter that it’s insane and illogical, or even self-contradictory at times.  All they need to do is introduce a seed of doubt.  In the short run, it allows them to claim that their delusion should be respected.  In the long run, some fraction of those so affected will probably become religious themselves.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  Conversion is an intricate process, and religions themselves are the single most fascinating example of an evolved process designed to obtain and retain as many believers (read: hosts) as possible.  The line between superstition and religion is minimal.  Religion is to superstition as a squirrel is to a hermit crab: one is more highly evolved than the other, but they each have their niche.  And, unlike squirrels and hermit crabs, they have a symbiotic relationship.  The existence of superstition, and the superstition effect, makes religion possible, while religion justifies and maintains the mindset needed to keep the superstition flowing.  Prayer, anyone?  You pray, and they get better.  It must be God!  Therefore, prayer is valid, and therefore we should continue to pray so people will get better.  Self-licking ice cream cone.

Religion and superstition are so ingrained in our society that very little thought has been put into the methods behind our thinking.  Now you’re going wait, wait, now he’s just cooking up random stuff.  Religion kills philosophy the same way that God kills morality.  If God was really omnipotent, then no matter what you do, it’s God’s fault, his responsibility, and you’re clean.  Or let’s try a different tack- if God is omniscient and perfectly just, then no matter what you do, your punishment will be in exact justice to your crime, and therefore you can do whatever you want because the punishment will be perfectly fair.  Even you, the convicted, will go “yeah, I can see how I deserve that, bring it on.”  Let’s not even go into the problem of evil.  Religion kills philosophy in the same manner- don’t think, just read this book!  The answers are all in here!  Praise the Lord!  In the Dark Ages, if you were a philosopher you had better support God or not only are you going to be suppressed, you’re going to get tortured.  Why?  Because you’re making a lot of people uncomfortable, you’re causing them to sin, you’re serving the Devil.  Because they react violently to having their delusions questioned because on some level they know they’re full of shit, but unwilling to admit it because otherwise that same engine they’re part of will turn on them instead- to the degree they believe they are rewarded, to the degree they don’t they are disproportionately punished.  Because God is good.

And now, the part that you’ve been waiting for.  The part where I obliterate Harry Potter.  Let’s start slow- like a demonic sadist barbecuer.  HAHAHA!!  J.K. Rowling is a poor writer.  Harry Potter is a dumbass with a protagonist complex living in a world that makes no sense, riddled with a worse deus ex machina than the Bible, that could never develop if magic weren’t randomly interjected at the start of the first book, and the magic itself is arbitrary, nonfunctional, and nonsensical.  I won’t go into the myriad of reasons behind those assertions- like the evolutionary fitness of wizards vs. muggles, or how the spells are crappy, mangled Latin, and how the power just comes from nowhere, and what would actually happen if wizards could kill one another with a wand and a word, or how they can possibly control one another in the sort of regime they have…  Alright.  I’m vented.  On to serious issues.  Harry Potter is one element of a genre that is incredibly enabling to superstition hucksters and religious groups.  I’m not suggesting that Rowling or her compatriots are at fault- they are providing fodder for a niche in the human psyche that exists anyway.  To expect the market to ignore a niche because you think it’s “wrong” is just stupid, and enforcing a ban or such would be stark raving mad.   Still, the magic culture stunts the preventive vaccine of skepticism with the subtle leading edge of imagination.

Magic is a recurring element of our minds and culture, in more ways than just blatant magic.  Stories about how the impossible underdog comes back to beat the juggernaut champion, for example.  Doesn’t happen in real life in a statistically significant way (they wouldn’t be the underdog if they were), but it does happen.  Focusing on “based on a true story” blends a certain infusion of magical realism with truth, creating a quite compelling work.  It sometimes appears like the movie- usually it is a movie, these days- knows what it’s about more than you do.  I suspect the reason for this is that it provides a nearly full suite of sensory data which has been fabricated, in whole or in part.  So it appears like you’re judging between your own “normal” senses, and the quite similar ones depicted in the movie.  The movie’s, however, are lent strength by the fact that a large number of people have a massive amount of money invested in making it as compelling as possible, and that other people have perceived exactly the same sensory sequence, and implicitly accepted it.  This graduated blending of truth and imagination into a kind of magical reality necessitates some new thinking and perceiving tools to deal with it, but we don’t because we’re too busy getting sucked into it.  Just like how religion suppresses your inquiry, and also all sources creating tension.  Look at it this way: how often does the stereotypical chick-flick story play out in real life?  Yep.  And how many times has it been depicted?  It could feasibly happen in real life- there’s nothing materially or logically impossible about The Chick Flick Story.  It’s just that… life doesn’t work like that.  Yet we have tons of people walking around with this model in their head that that is The Way The World Works.  In more ways than just chick flicks, of course, but that’s a particularly virulent strain.  Most of the victims aren’t even aware of the degree to which they have been affected.  Hell, I’m sure I have at least several hundred misperceptions of the world due to input I have received that I implicitly trust more than my own senses because it seems authoritative, or because I’d like to believe it.  Or because I’m afraid to.  I just don’t know what they are- if I did, they’d be gone, I’d see to that.

Sex, the True Self, & Social Interaction

Sex is the primary motivator of biological life. Stop giggling you immature high school girls- get over it. Now the obvious issue with sex is that if you’re a biological organism, you can’t have any if you’re dead. So sex and death drive human motivations. It’s really not that hard to draw a direct line from any and all choices back to either sex or death. Eat a big mac or a ham sandwich? One of them will make you fat and slow- easier for a predator to catch, as well as making you less attractive. However, it also provides a high amount of energy in the short term, despite its notable lack of nutritional content. The other is cheap, freeing up resources to finance more materiel to attract the opposite sex, or to avoid death.

Now this is especially critical when applied to interpersonal relations. This is a widely understood argument, but I will reiterate it. Essentially, social ostracism is death because some predator will come along and eat you. However, more importantly (in the short term anyway), social ostracism is extreme negative progress in the sex direction because not only does it lower your value, if you’re alone in the wilds then there’s not a lot of opportunity anyway. So the need to “fit in” as it’s called, is hardwired into us as a sort of sex-and-death issue. If we were dumb sacks of meat that would work pretty well in maintaining social cohesion. However, humans are a dual entity. We are a genetic and therefore programmatically biological entity, and those genes also create for us a brain and a prototypical mental organism which then develops. The layers of abstraction up from raw chemical reactions to higher-level consciousness is evident in the brain. At the lowest level is basic chemical interaction like we witness in microbes. Once life becomes macroscopic, it needs an organizing brain and we see small organizing-only brains- think jellyfish. More complex lifeforms need motor functions, as well as organizing and processing ability and we see the first reptilian brains. This is used to process visual input usefully, for example. Then we see mammalian brains which use emotions as genetically programmed situational motivators so the genes can create archetypes of situations which the brain can use to react as the case warrants.

This is the point at which humans would function well in a puristic sex and death motivation scheme. However, humans go one more. We have developed a cerebral cortex capable of higher-level thinking such as logic, art, and constructive or reductive thought. As a result, humans often have conflicting drives between the three “thinking” brains. Our reason may tell us to do one thing, our mammalian emotions something else, and our reptilian brain physical body may want something else. Now, a conflict between just the mammalian and reptilian brain is pretty easy to resolve- you can just define one as always overmastering the other and you can’t go too far wrong. If the reptilian brain always wins then we’d have immense sex drives, be prone to territorial aggression, and react intensely to danger, hunger, and other stressors. If the mammalian brain always wins then- maybe you didn’t guess this- we’d have immense sex drives, be prone to aggression (not necessarily territorial), and react intensely to danger, hunger, or anything else that provoked a powerful emotional response.  Put a squirrel in an oven and observe the reaction.  Not a great deal of difference.  However, if it’s our cerebral cortex in charge, all bets are off.  The reason for this is that the cerebral cortex uses association as its primary mode of information transmission.  This allows us to construct systems of thinking such as logic and reason, or just random collections of emotional, psychosomatic, and abstract bullshit- for example, religion.  Now, it would be inaccurate to say that “lower mammals” use only their mammalian brains.  Rats, for example, can learn to navigate mazes, and that’s not an emotional function.  So there’s some associative processing going on, but it would be a stretch to say that a rat could understand logic or mathematics or other higher order thinking.  Similarly, a rat couldn’t understand religion because its associative circuitry is not voluminous enough.  Please note that “associations” are the only operation that a brain is actually capable of, in the same way that 0 and 1 are the only things a computer is capable of.  However, by associative thinking I am referring to connecting at least two thought-entities together by association, not associating hunger with getting food or a bell with salivating.

Returning to sex and death- the human brain is actually capable of anything, from being more reasoned than knee-jerk associations, to jetting off on a blind, insane, random romp through fantasy land.  So when presented with the opportunity to steal food, in a puristic sex-and-death scenario it would be obvious: scarf away!  However, we can decide not to due to some abstract, random concept called “morality.”  This is functionally identical to, say, giving a significant fraction of your income away to some entity claiming you’ll be in paradise after you die.  It is different, however, in its salient reasoning.  The reason why morality is a useful concept is because it gives you a clear functional benefit- if everyone obeys morality, then you can be confident that nobody will steal your stuff and you can concentrate on producing more instead of safeguarding what you have.  The degree to which everyone is immoral is the degree to which corruption reduces the efficiency of all human endeavors.  Unfortunately, there is a situation I will call ‘pragmatic immorality’ where you are well aware that, in the strictest sense, your actions are technically immoral.  However, the absolute payoff is high enough to justify that immoral action to yourself without rationalization.  My favorite example is with the button that you press, with a 1 in a million shot of killing someone, but in return you get $1 million.  While you could feasibly argue that pressing the button was categorically immoral using equivalence arguments like “that’s like killing someone for $1 trillion,” I am not ashamed to say I would press the button, meh, as many as 100 times.  I get $100 million, and am 99% sure that nobody was harmed.  The issue with this approach to morality is that each person’s position of pragmatic immorality is different.  So, while categorical morality is quite clear, we are willing to deviate from it for personal benefit provided the gain is large enough.

So now we arrive at the true self.  I am aware that it appears like all the topics raised so far have no connection whatsoever, but I’ll get there.  My thoughts on the true self/false self issue is that a human being is far more complicated than the common perception would lead you to believe.  This actually causes us to dramatically simplify ourselves to conform to others’ expectations.  I believe that this phenomenon is what causes us to get to know people better over time- at some point in our interaction with them, maybe over months or years, we’ll see a large variety of different sides of that person because they’ll gently push the boundaries on what they permit themselves to be like around you, or maybe circumstances will reveal them.  This is why we’re more comfortable around people we’ve spent more time with- because we feel less “rules” pressing in on our behavior that we subtly fear breaking.  The fact that this happens on both sides causes a generalized de-escalation of tension, which you translate as liking that person more because you feel better in their presence.  Now, I propose that our common model of social interaction is basically fundamentally broken, broken because it evolved randomly based on the whim of whoever wanted to jockey it.  Some symptoms are conformity and cronyism, anxiety and tension, as well as just plain meanness.  For myself, and people like me, the common method to avoid this is to simply restrict who you interact with to filter out the problem cases, who seem to relish “social structures.”

What do I really mean, you ask?  This post has become so cluttered with related but tertiary ideas that I’ll need to do another later.  Basically, our current mode of society is for everyone to feel unworthy.  Everyone is looking for something to be, desperately begging for a way to prove that they are somehow valid, silently begging to be led.  Predominantly, people are unhappy and told that material prosperity will solve their problems- if only they had X, you should go buy that.  Your true self is perpetually repressed- just for now- in the name of pragmatism, for that job, for sex, for acceptance, for whatever.  In fact, the trend is continuously shifting to younger people.  I feel that the last naturally occurring true-self to true-self interaction I ever experienced was in preschool.  As early as first grade I was harried for grades, for friends, told to draw “the right way” and so on.  Many of the people I meet nowadays have probably never experienced anything other than their current drab style.

You don’t believe me?  I’ll talk more about this, but for now I’ll give you a test and you can see for yourself.  Right now, get a piece of paper and something to write with.  Alright, in the words of Epictetus “First, decide who you would be.  Then, do what you must do.”  As an exercise this is a little hypocritical because I’m telling you what to do, but hopefully you’ll get the gist.  What you need to do is write down 5 characteristics that you think the ideal person, in your conception of them, has.  Of course don’t do anything that is logically, physically, or materially impossible like turn the moon into cheese.  But make them tough ones- here are three examples: 1) being unflappably honest all the time, or 2) being socially free to do whatever they want- talk to anyone, have a good time, not tolerate second-grade behavior, to cut out people who present too much of a problem, be congruent, be positive, be real. And 3) Be confident, powerful, unashamed of what you want, determined to get it, and you could care less what anyone else thinks.

Get your five.  And then, here’s the tough bit. Do them.  That’s all.

But! But! But!  What’s the problem, crybabies?  You’re telling me that the 5 things you thought of are what your ideal person does, and now you’re turning around and saying that for some reason you can’t do them?  Is your nature fixed by some agent that you can’t control?  If it is you might want to figure out what that agent is and either get rid of it or get the hell over it.  You are responsible for yourself, and you have now realized that there is no reason why you can’t be that person, save your own weakness to do so.

Sorry for the tough love.  You’ll get over it.