Ayn Rand, Aleister Crowley and Anarchism

First, it is best with these three in the title to explain some common misunderstandings:

Ayn Rand was not an advocate for selfishness in the way that term is normally used. Selfishness normally implies self-obsession and a disregard for other people. Diametrically opposed, Ayn Rand's conception is that of self love as a means to aid them.

Aleister Crowley was not a Satanist. Never once was he involved in anything relating to it. He was denounced "the wickedest man in the world" for being an individualist social critic. As I and many others are that as well, it is essentially impossible for me to sympathize with the claim.

Anarchists do not universally ascribe to the belief that:
A) Government should be stopped by force
B) No law should exist
I ascribe to neither of these. There are also many varieties of anarchism insofar as it is conceived, and mine is significantly different from most.

One way to interpret the blend of these three is as a suggestion that we should do anything, absolutely anything, and think only about ourselves as we tear apart society. Another is as a suggestion that we should be self-actualized beings in a free world. So you see, judging a book by its cover is for the very shallow-minded.

Interesting, on that note, to ask: why do people judge books by their covers? One suggestion is that people are irrational and impulsive. Another is that they are drawn in by the consumerist dogma of the West. Another still is that all people are brainwashed by advertisement. Perhaps we should consider the fourth: some people are shallow-minded.

These terms need very adequate descriptions: 'irrational' means that man is not out to serve his own interests, which is demonstrably false. 'Drawn in' suggests that an active force is weighing on people to do things, and we'll discuss this possibility momentarily. 'Brainwashed' entails a complete overhaul of logic by way of repeat suggestion, and this is silly. People wouldn't need the assurances of low prices if their heads weren't programmed to respond in that logical manner.

'Drawn in' is an interesting concept. What does it mean? On some level it is akin to brainwashing in this context: displacing logic with repeated suggestions. In this case, it would be the repeated suggestion to consume opposing the logical response of not consuming as much. One reason we don't have to suspect this is that there is already great incentive to collect wealth in human beings, wherever they live and whatever they do. People need food to survive and want comforts to thrive. Everything in the market is geared exactly towards these wants. Whatever it is that people decided they wanted out of life, insofar as that relates to anything that can be sold, the market will produce it under the right conditions. So, to say that people wouldn't consume as much as they do is only to suggest that there isn't so much that can actually be sold that people should actually want. Given what a wide range there is of sellable products, everything from ideas to books to music to food to drugs to housing and so on, not to mention pets and children and influence over other people's actions, that's a hard one to swallow. Consider that what you're reading right now is information being transferred to you - a process that could only take place with a computer you own. If you wanted to take all the other information out there and condense it into just the right sorts that you need, you'd have to pay for the services of people who teach you. If you still wanted to know more, you could talk over ideas with individuals in person, meetings which take place more frequently with the use of a car. To transmit those ideas to others, you may need to pay a publishing company to send a book out into the world, and an editor to make those ideas as succinct as can be. You'd need the services of a movie production company or a radio host if you wanted to distribute the information in other ways, or perhaps the permission of a popular magazine or newspaper owner. To read the words of those in other languages, one will have to pay for the services of a translator. The list goes on, with the point that even sending ideas to each other is a service that can be sold, and insofar as you consider that valuable, as judged by the fact that you are reading my words right now, the market can sell things for people to consume on a very wide scale and to very large degrees absent entirely from the influence of others' dogma.

Keep in mind that to suggest that there are better things that cannot be sold has no influence on this suggestion. Whatever it is that people can buy, they will buy, insofar as that betters themselves, whether or not there also happen to be other things they can't.

This does not suggest that there is no possibility that "consumerist dogma" has an effect on people, but given that the silent world already tells us to consume in more ways than it could ever be said, we have no reason to suspect as much.

If we can safely eliminate other possibilities, I propose that which forms the center of my message today: shallow-mindedness.

First, let's distinguish this from irrationality.

Irrational thinking is hard to define, probably because it doesn't exist. It can be surmised with the theoretical idea that perhaps thoughts form in people's heads and don't actually string together coherently, but that's not something anyone with a brain can easily fathom. Obviously some people are stupid, but that's very different from suggesting they are irrational. The thoughts they do think have the explicit purpose of bettering themselves and their circumstances, or at least those of others, and anything else can't easily be defined as "thinking."

An irrational person might be a child, as far as one is concerned, as a child does not heed the parents' warnings to buckle their seat belts, brush their teeth or go to bed on time. In actuality, that is explained much better by the concept that they do not see the need for these things, and form their own conclusions, rationally, on the basis of what they do know. They know that the seatbelt is constricting, the toothpaste is gross, and that playing games with friends is a lot more fun than going to bed early. So, they're thinking. They just don't have all the information at hand.

People are always making judgements on the basis of certain facts and uncertain possibilities. To say that this is irrational isn't saying much, as it isn't 'ir'-anything. But to point out that the conclusions people draw for the purpose of increasing welfare use reason and are often adequate is something worth giving a name, and we call that rationality.

Shallow-mindedness is something altogether different. It is looking at the mind as having another dimension aside from intelligence, allowing for deepness - a term people already use for describing thoughts that examine the nature of the universe in some form as opposed to thoughts that do not. It is another dimension as it relates to everyone directly, unlike chemistry or physics or even economics. You can know not those sciences and still be fine with the aid of specialists who examine their contents, but philosophical reasoning is something only you can determine for yourself. No one can give you its results. You must take the whole thing or else leave it all behind. This is because, as Socrates put it, knowledge is distinct from right opinion in the sense that it is 'tied down.' One can only have a fleeting truth if they hold it to be true by opinion, but something lasting and meaningful when they draw the conclusion for themselves. Deep people don't have to be good at putting their conclusions into words, because these realizations often come through insight rather than intellect. But three stoners sitting around a fire will awe at the "deep" words produced when they know that someone has blended his insight with the ability to phrase it.

Really, this is the other dimension we're talking about: insight. It's a dimension of the mind because it is in the nature of the mind, just as intelligence. When one proposes an idea, his ability to relate it to what he considers reality can be described as his intelligence, whilst the accuracy of his perception as to what reality is can be regarded as his insight.

A person can be both rational and shallow. A claim I make here is that all people are rational (except for infants and the mentally handicapped). A person can be both intelligent and shallow, though not really deep and stupid, as insight usually reveals that which allows one to increase their mental capacity. An example of this would be the realization that worries are baseless and acceptance is key, allowing one to refocus their energies on schoolwork and study whilst clearing their mind of wasteful thinking and by so doing become smarter in some way.

Intelligence and smartness differ in some ways, according to how they are defined. Including information held in smartness, while intelligence usually refers to something like processing power and analytical reasoning, makes a stark difference. Either way, it's baseless to call deep people stupid, whoever they are, as insights allow one to restructure their mind in a way that allows it to process more quickly as well as store and acquire more information by means of proper action.

It is key to become deep. Judging a book by its cover will be used here as a prime example. Simply put, when a man is concerned only with entertainment, he will successfully accomplish his goal by confirming that a book has warriors and cyclopses. But if he acknowledges other factors that contribute to his happiness, such as lessons learned and characters with which he sympathizes, the book takes on new meaning and he sets new standards for his books, which go beyond that which he can test by but a glimpse at the cover. These new benefits are usually stronger than the entertainment factor, on top of being more lasting, and are held by everyone in some form, but usually disregarded as irrelevant by-products that cannot be chosen or determined beforehand. Becoming deep means acknowledging these benefits as real, and more real than mindless entertainment, as well as being things that can be willed into one's life.

Castle in the Sky is a movie by Hayao Miyazaki, creator of Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro and many others. His movie influenced me in profound ways, and I was pretty sure it would because so many of his others have done the same. In it, general Muoro is a stalwart, stout man whose goal is to direct an Army and push his forces to victory against impossible odds. He relies on his machine - the airship Goliath - to defeat even the most terrible of robotic enemies. His courage marked me. He lost, and still won. He was angry and fierce, and yet his actions were purposed. Much of the way a character marks you can't be described, or requires incredible detail and a mastery of words. I can tell you one thing: it is the man who fights in the end like he fought at the start that has a part of my heart.

A couple scenes in particular of Muoro stand out to me in a memory that functions as easily as a shattered vase. Memorizing is ineffective for me because it is rare for me to remember things, but useful in the sense that I keep the gold and leave the rest behind, sifting through it. When the general shoots at an advanced hologram of his enemy - a rival who betrayed him and took control of the most powerful city in the sky - Muoro represents courage against the unknown. When all that is around him crumbles into a sea of mysterious magic, he fights as though nothing had changed. He intimidates the enemy who outperforms him on a transcendental level, as only the bravest in life can do.

In the scene where he meets the enemy for the first time, a robot with lasers and wings and metal unmatched, the general holds his ground. He utilizes every last defense with the awareness that his technology is capable under his guidance of destroying the unknown. Muoro represents the knowledge that all the mysteriousness of the world is measurable. That even the most fierce of enemies in the most strange of scenarios is conquerable. That the unknown is known.

Something critical to the understanding of the universe is that any truly unknowns negate all knowledge. If one thing had properties that were entirely unknown to a mind, the mind would know nothing, as these properties could always contradict others. Thus, by knowing anything, we establish certain truths about everything, even if limited only to the fact that everything co-exists and so is not contradictory to the things we know. This can be expanded, however, to something much larger. If a thing is unknown, there are no knowns, and, thus, we know everything if we know anything.

This is contrary to basic intuition and the process of reasoning, as one will see a circle and know only, about all other things, that they do not occupy the same space. However, if there remained properties of those other things that were unknown, those would be things themselves, which cannot be truly unknown lest the circle is not known either. The argument can be presented simply: known is defined as 'that which cannot be contradicted,' unknown is defined as 'that about which nothing is known;' thus, an unknown may contradict anything, meaning that when one has an unknown, he cannot know. Where this argument leads is too deep and involved for this post, but it is meant to illustrate a simple point: our knowledge is something special. Special in the sense that it cannot be understood by us, nor can it be explained using the language we possess. However, it implies something grand about our capabilities and information. This is most easily explained - as the information is seemingly utilized in a functional manner - as that which we attain from a source of all knowledge, of which we are a part. Courage stems from this understanding, and as unintellectual as it by definition is, it is that which one attains through that other dimension of the mind entirely, that insight that allows us to grow in more ways than the mind has the capability to fathom. Quixotic as that is, it is the truth.

How do we become deep?

The surest way to attain deepness is to believe it exists. One of the shallowest conclusions a shallow person can draw is that they cannot go any deeper or that there is nowhere deeper to go. An easy examination of the power of our minds and the mysteriousness of the universe when examined even at rudimentary levels dispels this, but many are not even willing to do as much. Philosophy holds an important place in the mind of every man, and few are willing to take the call.

When one takes the call, certain things become apparent. The nature of knowledge becomes a question, and what knowledge one holds an equally important one. Fundamental knowledge becomes a curious matter. Action and whether or not one is free to do as he likes become topics of inquiry. One's purpose is revealed. And, above all, one accepts a mind as something that is to some degree confusing.

Purpose amounts to doing what you will. "Do what thou wilt," as Aleister Crowley wrote, he claiming to have interpreted it from an angel, much as any religion creator. Though that he claims merely to have heard this voice from inside and written it down as something divine is not unusual to many, and makes perfect sense with the acknowledgement that the divine is connected to us and influences our thoughts. Our understanding of the statement that this being was named "Aiwass" and was a "being" can be explained more acutely by negative theology, which is to say, an acceptance of the divine as being beyond our description, and Crowley's explanation as a sort of 'imperfect reconstruction.'

The next way to become deeper is to realize your own potential. One of the best ways to do start this is to love yourself. People who hate themselves are guaranteed stunted progress in favor of getting by with an appeal to those things which stimulate them in the most basic way possible. In short, inward reflection is one's only tool to examine the mind in all its splendor, and self-haters wish not to think about themselves, which is clearly required.

Becoming deep allows us to find the role God has in store for each of us. Then, by will, you do that. All of the benefits are aligned exactly with the oughts, and all of the oughts are aligned exactly with one's actions. Because God wants you to be free, the only way you can fail is by imprisoning yourself: ethical statements will remain aligned with your actions, but your heart will sink in your chest. You will feel somehow unfit for the actions you make, even though you are, and even though what you do is what you're supposed to be doing. This is all the case until your mind comes to the realization, through understanding reality, that your actions are good, allowing the blanket of faith to lay over those actions whose purpose you cannot glean; a faith held by the continual finding of goodness in your actions when you examine them on deeper levels, and by the very fact that by finding goodness, hidden, in many actions you can conclude that goodness lies somewhere in all of them - in the same way that scientists conclude that gravity is everywhere as a result of many experiments that successfully demonstrate its existence in many regions and over many times - despite the break from logic, as defined by some, that is required to make those conclusions.

Ayn Rand points out something rather extraordinary about insight: that men utilize it individually. Undertakings in business, philosophy and art are solely inspired by the mind of an individual. Theoretical worlds in which the collective of man decides what is art, what is good and what is bad become subject to the lowest common denominator: the intellect of the unspecialized majority. If art is not based on individual appeal, but that which the government, democratically elected, purchases for its shoddy museums, we get: "abstract" - that which offends no one, God forbid someone sues, because it is not actually art (a milder position being that, at least, other art forms are underproduced). If the laws of a country are determined in this way, we get "clean air act," because no one wants "dirty air" - that the individual is willing to pay for an optimal level of pollution is out of the question. More importantly, laws become subject to the general opinion. I differ from Ayn Rand here, but hold resolutely to the claim that law should be a competitive product, sold on the marketplace, such that every man could suit his own needs, rather than have the "needs" of others - anything they can get away with as they aren't paying the cost - forced upon him.

What this amounts to is the claim that people who are insightful and intelligent are more inclined to certain preferences differing from those had by those who are shallow and/or stupid. In combination with differences in preference had for totally unrelated reasons concerning products (flavor preference, color preference, means of entertainment preference (in part), style preference, house preference, location preference, legal preference, etc.) of various sorts, individual desire differs starkly from one human being to the next, and declarations of needs by the collective of man will always be insufficient.

Let's cut to the chase with Anarchism.

Anarcho-Capitalism is:
A) One prediction of Anarchism
B) Entirely unrelated to which laws are beneficial and which laws are not

The second is usually misunderstood. Libertarianism correlates with Anarcho-Capitalism, but is an entirely different animal. As Anarcho-Capitalist economist (son of Milton Friedman) David Friedman describes: whether or not Anarcho-Capitalism leads to a libertarian society "remains to be proven." It is libertarian in the sense that government is abolished, but not necessarily so in the sense that laws produced by the market would be any less restricting than those produced by the government. We can predict as much given our circumstances, but by no means is Anarcho-Capitalism defined this way.

Anarcho-Capitalism is the suggestion that law - a product - be produced by the market. The advantage is that the costs and benefits of law would be directly tied to the material loss or gain of the territorial owner who instates them. This is a fundamental economic principle: that when benefits and costs are tied to an individual, he will produce the optimal result as he produces the optimal result for himself.

Again, this is not libertarian necessarily. If some laws are good, those laws will be produced. If other laws are bad, they will not be produced. As David Friedman puts it: "if the value of a law to its supporters is less than its cost to its victims, that law...will not survive in an anarcho-capitalist society."

A government run by politicians is subject to their individual desires. Whether that be to make their mark in history, obtain good press, be loved by the people, be as famous as possible, or make money by bribes (which come in a thousand different flavors), they will act in a way that is disconnected entirely from the interests of the people they rule. The economy goes down, they place the blame elsewhere. The economy goes up, the praise themselves. The war ends, they praise themselves. The war begins, they justify its necessity. The money supply heavily increases without a corresponding rise in wealth, resulting in detrimental inflation - don't worry about that. The government has its reasons.

Never once do they put their money where their mouth is.

The market is just the opposite. When a business goes sour, its owner pays the price. Bad luck is tough luck - and there's nothing to hide behind when they're to blame. Price is too high? Business is shoddy? Welcome to a life with no customers. What they want - the people - is what you must provide, or you will fail. That means if Joe wants 'x' and Jonny wants 'y', there will be multiple businesses producing both - well. This is because there's money to be had, that the business owner makes himself, for providing what others want.

Economists today debate about all kinds of things from minimum wage laws to tariffs to rent control (On the latter two there is widespread agreement in favor of their abolishment, while the former is something for which there are mixed opinions). As a libertarian, I'd say odds are good that all three are detrimental. Minimum wage laws prevent mutually-beneficial exchanges for jobs of a lower value, eliminating potential workers from those jobs and the products they would produce (which is why minimum wage is strongly linked to unemployment); tariffs reduce competition from overseas producers and allow prices to remain artificially high in nations that produce certain products more expensively, causing a misallocation of labor away from its most profitable uses (think grapes grown in land A, where people more easily grow bananas, and bananas grown in land B, where people more easily grow grapes - because buying grapes in land A from those who produce it cheaply in land B comes with a tax that makes it more expensive still than buying those grapes from land A grape growers, and the same with bananas); rent control creates a shortage of rented housing as the demand for the product rises with a lower price whilst the supply shrinks for the same reason, meaning that people are left homeless. But none of that has to do with anarcho-capitalism. Some rules will make a region a more desirable place in which to live, meaning the owner can raise his prices whilst the masses are pleased, and other rules will have the opposite effect - a team of specialists, with the incentive to figure out which rules are which, will decide properly.

Let's sketch out a possible Anarcho-Capitalist society to make sense of this:

Simply put, imagine smaller regions than nations owned by corporations. The corporation in each region establishes a price for purchasing a home in its region, and establishes a contract for living there, amounting to "abide by these rules, or we will do this."

It's that simple. And imagining that inter-regional law wouldn't be any easier than international law is useless. Nations have to make deals without any conception of the cost, in a way that appeals to the public and in a way that makes history. Those are their incentives. If they don't pan out, it's war. Regions would deal peacefully - any two fighting being extremely detrimental to both in the face of competitors - and agree easily on a cost, a single cost, money, no dick-measuring required, for any legal necessity.

If a 20-year-old can conceive a version of anarchism that functions better than government, whether or not you hop on board, have the foresight to imagine the value of the version made by hundreds of thousands of incentivized professionals when push comes to shove.

The government can be likened to a giant beast that grows larger to a point of being unstoppable. As it is still growing to that point, it must cloud the minds of those who may take action against it and make them docile. Control the media, feed the intellectuals with subsidies, make big speeches, pretend to be enlightened, claim that God Himself is your sanctioning force. People could pledge allegiance to your flag before they know what it represents, for example. As it amounts to, simply, people don't care to learn about politics or the alternative to government because they aren't personally incentivized to do so. The anarcho-capitalist holds maybe one spot on the ballot and you've never heard of him, and even if he does and you did, he won't win. Anyone you vote for, big or small, isn't going to win by one vote, anyway, so your political misunderstanding makes no difference to you. Welcome to the life of the imprisoned - both in mind and body.

If education wasn't public and was allowed to operate in the marketplace, if information transfer expanded as a result of technological progress through economic increase and if products all over the world became cheaper as people became richer, we'd have peace on top of easier deepness.

The Philosophy of the Philosophy of God - A Paper by Skyler Graber

The paper below is by a good friend of mine, and is one that I'll be critiquing soon. Please enjoy!

The Philosophy of the Philosophy of God

Skyler Graber

Obligatory Introduction

            Introductions have always been very interesting for me, there are so many kinds, yet, only a select few are deemed adequate enough to warrant any sort of merit. Yes, I could always add a cute story or anecdote about my life and how I've stumbled to this point in life that allows me to argue the things that I do. Furthermore, a collection of facts could be included that build to a grand but non-thought provoking and lackluster thesis such as “God is important to study because we must know things”. If someone wanted to make an introduction really compelling they could connect with the reader personally and try to build a dialogue followed inevitably by a relationship, however the author would just disappoint said reader leading to a complete divorce from the idea being attempted to convey.

            I think all of these methods are idiotic in a philosophy paper. Why? None of them matter. Honestly, no reader is going to care if you got stung by a bee in the 5th grade or that when your father was 60 he had a heart attack. No one cares if dolphins can swim at a certain speed, or that there isn't enough space in an ark made out of wood to fit two members of each species of animal not even considering the amount of food for 40 days. Nope, people don't care about actual causes, or reasons, or facts really unless they prove themselves right.

            This is the problem, the biggest problem; Humanity largely just doesn't care: to explore the universe, to find the secrets to life, to invent medicine diagnosing birth defects. 'Someone with a PhD will go do all those things for me, now leave me along to eat my pizza and watch the cubs get their asses kicked.' People don't care because they have their answer, their answer is a magician who lives in the clouds, someone who loves them very much and saves them after they die from their strokes and sports injuries. This fairy god mother, who've I been told is a man, has the potential to save people from diseases, plagues, fires, floods, asteroids, and just about everything else. So, at this point, why would humanity care to discover, uncover, or explain when everything is so neatly arranged in front of them.

            How can one fix this problem? How can one get humanity to take the blindfold off and show them that a world without the magician isn't absolute chaos? First one has to disprove God, and then humanity will begin to question things. I understand that this is backwards compared to most non-theists, who believe that you must first teach people to question things, and then God will go away; However no one can truly question everything when one thing can exist without evidence. Why would someone ask for evidence on something when they know that God exists without it? They wouldn't, hence the necessity to take God out of the equation by dethroning mentality that God as undeniable. This is why the study of God, the study of logic, and the study of thought is important.

All in the definitions

            It's surprisingly sad how many arguments condense down to the definitions, the most basic of things.  In a world where we can push a button and move something on mars, engineer plants to withstand poor climates, and monitor the economic trends of vinegared rice in japan within a few seconds are something like definitions still such a problem? Unfortunately yes, and not simply to a selective few either, the problem is universal.

            What is love? How about glory? Life? Even to the most literate group of people, these words mean completely different things. Even the most literate group of people can't unanimously define something such as love. Understand that these words do, in fact, have definitions. Merriam-Webster defines love as a 'strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties', so can't arguments on love take place with this definition of love in mind? Well sure, but these arguments would hold as much ground as another set of people using a different definition from the same dictionary, which in Merriam-Webster's case has about 7.

            Basically, words suck; They are objective containers of subjective ideas, one crucial way to transfers thoughts and emotions between minds. For example, if I want to convey what I think is a rock, I would say “Rock!” and point to one, the objective, in order to bridge my mind and someone else's. Without that important objective chain, ideas and emotions could not easily be perceived. However, everyone has a unique subjective outlook and this leads to different thoughts being correlated with the same exact word. Words are labels, most of the time they do their job to add ideas to an argument, however they often can lead to said idea being misconstrued.

            Alas, we are forced to use words; at least until we figure out telepathy. The solution to this is isolated definitions, definitions that are formed and used in an argument. When the word god is mentioned, the definition will often accompany it. This way I can reset social language differences and start my cases from scratch.

Who is on first?

            Regardless of the extensiveness of the label, one can't truly equate two separate things to be equal. However, this is seen constantly. An elm and a pine tree are classified as trees, even though one is coniferous and one deciduous. Enough though an elm and an oak are both deciduous, during fall one has bright red leaves while the other a darker shade. Even two elm trees planted adjacent to each other grow to different heights, all while still being labeled the same. Labels simplify things, acting as a bookmark of thought, and attempt to convey an intelligible distance towards truth. They fulfill their purpose on multiple iterations of depth: from tree, to deciduous, to elm is a much clearer path than straight to understanding elm. Although, labels can provide a disservice for a true understanding of the subject. Suppose a man is having eye surgery and can chose any person in the hospital to perform it, by simply taking first step iterations and asking for a 'doctor' a complication arises and he dies during surgery. Why? The 'doctor' that he chose was a cardiologist who, despite reading about the procedure, had no practice in the field. If the man had chosen to ask for people labeled 'doctors' then add another label iteration by asking for 'ophthalmologists', he would have most likely survived the surgery and been correctly treated. This is an error, not in the design of labels, but in their usage.

The difference between one philosophy

            The word philosophy is a label in itself, there are so many different kinds of philosophical types of thinking. Three major types are subjective to objective, objective to objective, and objective to subjective. Some of these are really useful, some are a little more than brain candy. Although they may be branches of the same tree they are not interchangeable, you can't prove something with one branch and say it is correct in the other. The first problem is that not all philosophies are logical, logic is actually only one of these three.

           Objective and subjective are one of those fun words that really need definitions. Some would say that everything is subjective, that the very idea of perception nullifies the objective world; Claiming that equipped with simply our senses, perceivers could simply be deluded into thinking what they see is actually real. This is called bullshit, but is modernly known as extended solipsism, which I don't dare go into yet, yet being the key word. Barring this objective and subjective are not to difficult to define.

           The objective is a reproducible, universally, and measurable shared face or attribute to the natural world. Grass has a certain wavelength it gives out, the sun contains reactions that give off heat and light, chalk is CaCo3, stoplights have three settings, and the Earth tilts on an axis of 23.5 degrees. Things that any person could do and would experience the same result. It doesn't matter if two isolated people drop something, they both fall with a downward acceleration of g. Granted, these two people can have different opinions as to why the different objects fell, but they fall nonetheless.

           The subjective is quite different. It is emotion, it is thought, anything that cannot be reproduced by another with the same result. While everyone gets angry, no two people react the same way. While two people believe in a god, their experiences and emotions lead them to believe in a slightly different one. If a man walked up to another man in a flustered rage, the only objective bases the other man has is the anger. He can't know why he is mad, who caused it, or how he copes without some objective display. This could be through words or actions.

           However, I'm not demeaning the subjective, it is completely necessary. The subjective is responsible for thought, and that just so happens to be a pretty useful tool. Without interpretation of the objective, sentient beings would not be able to, well, be sentient. Think of a rock, and then think of you without thought, they look pretty similar. Ergo, subjective reasoning and deduction are useful.
Mathematics, logic, and philosophy are all subjective, and all are positive tools. Ok, definitions done.

            Subjective to objective is the most common, and it is derived from a standpoint of bias and falsehood. Oddly enough it is also the major foundation for religions, the subjective feeling and perception of their thoughts on the world around them without any base conformation leading to an objective truth. The largest problem with this is the reliance on the individual, simply because you can only begin with the subjective through the mind of a single person. The moment you introduce a larger set of subjectives, the conformation of the objective can be achieved. A common example of this is preference, someone doesn't like a certain color so they objectively think that color is worse.

            Objective to subjective is math, it is logic, and it is the basis for philosophy. To allude to the example earlier with the two things being dropped, the objective truth is that they both dropped, however the reasoning for this is subjective. One person can argue that all objects want to move to the center of the universe and the Earth is simply the center. Another could argue that a giant invisible wail hovers over everything and pushes them down as it sees fit. Both are subjectively true, however neither  are reproducible to the rational of the cause, nor are either measurable. (The falling is measurable, the whale is not)

            Finally, the objective to objective is a summation of the previous two, using the objective to deduce subjective reasoning to further deduce the objective. You could use logic to conclude that grass does in fact have a wavelength that looks green, this is the subjective to objective. Furthermore you could conclude that wavelengths are created with such a method and adopt a theory, which for yourself is subjective. The cycle then repeats, which is the basis for the scientific method.

I don't care about Venn Diagrams, philosophy is not science

            Modern philosophy is the study of 'what ifs' and not 'whats'. It seeks to comprehend ideology and the subject of meaning. Science does not, science seeks understanding of the world around it through accumulation of evidence and the elimination of personal bias. To make the argument that they are one in the same is ludicrous; However many arguments are made philosophically and then interpreted scientifically, this is an incorrect manner of thinking. Philosophy is not specifically bound to any objective base assumption in its entirety, only certain branches of it.

God without the sugar

            The God talked about in the next few paragraphs is a non interventionist one, one who created the universe and does not act in it. The God that can't be proven to exist or not exist, the deist God. God in this sense is used heavily in philosophical arguments to make a point that a God could, in fact, exist. The deist God is an interesting one because it leads to a large portion of agnosticism around the world, while you can't disprove him, you can't that one does exist, and furthermore will never able to. This is not the God I will be talking about heavily.

Too much frosting, not enough cake

            The God that will merit my attention is the common one, the interventionist, the one depicted most notable in the the bible. Unlike the deist God, which had no doctrine and therefore no stance for or against it, the Bible God has many qualities that he must achieve to exist. Many theists actually draw and create God from depictions of the Bible, ergo, their God must have many similar attributes. The problem at this point is that God can be picked apart and falsified, and must fall back to deist one.

            If an argument relies on the use of evidence, then it can be analyzed, and ultimately disproved. Was the red sea really parted? If so how, by what method, at what time, and by whom was it parted? When the Bible builds the basis for God, God becomes just another theory that can be tested. If one were to come upon the realization that a large body of water cannot physically be parted with the technology of the time, then criticism of the Bible could follow, and ultimately the foundation for God.

            At the beginning of this essay I stated that people rely on God, not only to prove their existence and give meaning to it, but also to prove their morality and dictate how they should live. Once you accept that God can intervene and affect what you do, your actions are in the hands of someone else. The all powerful God is an attempt to control and diminish the masses into a dogmatic and enslaved system. Put frankly, people should not rely on Christianity or any other religion.

Baby shoes for sale; never worn

            In an attempt to convey the invalidity and absolute disregard towards logic presented by the notion of the western God I will break his attributes into 3 well received claims. That he is all powerful, all knowing, and all loving. These in themselves hold true and cannot be disagreed within a world of utopia and benevolence. Unfortunately, the last time I checked, we didn't live in such a peaceful great place. Murder, genocide, disease, natural disasters, pain, suffering, loss, and enslavement are all characteristics of the world we live in, some of which are awkwardly caused by the belief in God.

            So how could a being with these three attributes allow such a horrible, sinful, and evil place to form and operate? This is the problem of evil, no matter which way you slice it, you can only have a maximum of two of these attributes while the other falls by the wayside. In a world where God has the ability to intervene, create, and destroy, the constant reminder of his lack of power, knowledge, and love are readily displayed. Now to play the definitions game, for power, knowledge, and love are hard to define.

            All powerful simply means infinite power, nothing is greater than it, nor will ever be. God could achieve things without even thinking to do so. He could stop tornadoes, make cancer disappear, and stop the devil in his tracks if he so chose. All knowing is the knowledge of everything, past and future. The knowledge of who is going to win the playoffs this year, what Christine is going to get on her spelling test, and who Jack the Ripper was going to kill and where. Finally, all loving means a deep love of all things; See the above definition of love if needed.

                        If you can't tell already, some problems begin to form when God is all three in a world of evil. Why doesn't he stop the devil if he can? Why does he allow those he loves to die? Why didn't he strike Jack the Ripper down before any harm could be done? All of these things are a deducible using just two of the three, however there is a paradox when using all of the them. Alas, dear reader, do not despair for there are other solutions to the problem of evil that allow God to still exist! What joy that we have fixed this problem and cannot consider it evidence against God! Well, we could if the solutions, in themselves, were not problems.

            The major solution is free will, God wants humanity to grow and begin to not rely on him, but rather develop their own world. This is pretty nifty at face value, God loves us so much that he is giving us the freedom to act as we chose. However, if God is all knowing then he knows what we will do, all the pain we shall cause to one another, the suffering of the world. Eh, God can know all of that and still be an all loving God, right? Wrong, an all loving God could not stand to see a single person suffer; But what if God knows that some suffering needs to occur in order to achieve the maximum amount of happiness and love in the world? Doesn't really seem like an all powerful God, and this is the problem. A God that gives us free will can't be all of the above, because A, B, and C contradict one another.

Atheists can be idiots

            I often bash on Christianity not simply for being believers in God, but for admitting that nothing could ever proving them wrong, 100% believing in God, blind belief. The statement that I could never convince some theists that there God is not correct even with evidence is not a false one. One of the largest problems of theism is that you are stuck in jail without bail and never roll doubles, people can find that they build so much of their life in devotion and study of God and without him, they couldn't function or find meaning. I half-understand this, one part of me sympathizes with the notion, but urges them to better themselves and their knowledge of the world around them. The other part remembers how each person used to believe in Santa Claus, but could cope with the news that he was not real.

            In short, the logic of blind belief escapes me; It can be destructive and contagious. However theists are not exclusive owners to blind belief, certain atheists hold the title as well. In order to move forward I feel as if I should separate the two major types of atheists in the world. The first is the soft atheist, who does not believe in a higher power. This is a lack of a belief and not a belief in itself. The second is the hard atheist, who does believe that there is no God. That, dear reader, is just as bad as a theist. I consider myself a soft atheist, understanding that you cannot prove the existence of a God means you must understand you cannot disprove it either. Therefore you cannot have any evidence one way or the other and ergo cannot form a belief holding one true.

            Hard atheists can be just as bad as theists, although they are often worse. Hard atheists cite science and logic to determine why no God can exist, however they can't conclusively prove that he doesn't. The game they play is the same one as theists, using their subjective ideology to dictate the physical world. It is only made worse by the fact that they mascaraed as men of reason further hurting the identity of agnostic and the label of atheist.

The first and last step is agnosticism

            Agnosticism is the belief that questions should be approached with doubt and skepticism, that we must not participate in conformation bias, but understand that a deist God cannot be defended or debunked. Agnosticism criticizes Christianity, but not the idea of a non interventionist God. It is open to possibilities that are not falsifiable, but encourages the pursuit of answers to testable questions without bias or personal objection. This is a trait that should be encourage among realms of thought and philosophy.

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The question of 'Why?'

            'Why?' questions have always bothered me, they seem rather pointless. No, I don't mean questions such as 'Why does water evaporation' in a technical sense, it evaporates due to rapid increase of heat and collisions of the polar water molecules, this can be explained. I mean questions such as 'Why are we here' as opposed to 'How did we come to be here', the meaning questions are the ones I take issue with. That being said, the question of 'Why is studying atheism important?' is half the former and half the latter. There is no profound meaning to atheism, just as there is no profound meaning to theism. There is, however, a reason to study it, and in the philosophical manner that we do.

            Arguments for God are not made using direct scientific logic, they are made using philosophical logic. In order to create a counterargument for these, we must use a philosophical stance ourselves. This is why it is important to study this subjective, to argue the stances I have in this essay, without the drive to answer questions such as the importance of atheism you could never make such conclusions and points. Basically, the tool and thinking ability while attempting to answer the question is the most important reason for asking it.

The same side of two different coins

            One of the most common stances to take when it comes to science and religious philosophy is that they answer the same thing, just in different ways, that they are different sides of the same coin. This is a cop out, an attempt to subject science as the special group that demands evidence while the rest of logic and philosophy don't. Saying that God holds you on the ground, that the world is the center of the universe, and that there is an afterlife is not akin to summarizing gravity, astronomy, or biological death; It just isn't. The ideas and methods for both explanations are completely different and void of much compatibility.

            The more logical analogy is that science and religious philosophy are the same side of two completely different coins, one of which may not exist. That they compete against one another in an attempt to reveal truth. As scientific reasoning progress, the need for a God declines.

Knowledge inside-out

            Everyone has their ideal world in mind, whether it be a giant Chucky Cheese's ball pin or a blossoming utopia forced upon its people. No matter how much we want to become unbiased and fair, we can't do it, because personally we strive towards this ideal. In some senses this is fine, in others its somewhat destructive, but ideal drive is a universal attribute. Some see happiness as the end all-be all goal, some see it as liberty; I see it as knowledge and ultimately power. This is why I strive to answer questions such as this, to understand the world I live in, and urge others to do the same. When it comes to questions such as 'Why atheism?', the easiest answer is almost always wrong, and that is why the study of it is important and necessary.

On the (Inevitable) Failures of Government

This post is a formal response to Benjamin Greschler's "Middle Ground" blog - middlegroundblog.blogspot.com. I'd encourage you to follow the link and read what he has to say, though I'll be frequently referring to the text in my critique.

Ben starts, after a quick analysis of the Reagan administration, with:

"In turn, we lost a government that worked for the people and gained a government that simply worked for profit."

Tell me, when has a government, in the history of the world, ever been truly - in anything other than rhetoric - "for the people?" Or, for that matter, "for profit?" Government actors seek to stay popular and in office, and if that means pretending to help, that's a very different thing than the altruistic motive so ascribed.

Public choice theory - applying economics to government - making the same assumptions about people in office as to people outside of it - that they're self-interested and limited, rather than all-knowing white knights - has been so immensely accurate a tool for predicting government action that it cannot be denied. We don't have tariffs on steel because some virtuous, enlightened group of people sat around a table and decided it was "for the people." We have them - to the detriment of the entire industry and market - because somebody in some very large steel company paid a very large sum of money or otherwise complained to the government. This is common knowledge. We don't have agricultural subsidies and tariffs on sugar because there's some economic externality that the government is cleverly accounting for - we have them, and for no good reason - it is perhaps the single most universally-agreeable waste among all economists, from Krugman to Rothbard - because the firms of that industry are willing to stick their boots in the hind of politicians to get what they want; and the dispersed harm inspires not one regular old soul - who pays an extra .50 for his soda to get that American corn syrup over cheaper Brazilian sugar - to stop them.

There is not one solution for this problem. It will plague us until the government is gone.

He later acknowledges:

"The lobbyists endorsed their candidates through large donations, and in turn, when they were in office, they repaid them through legislation that benefited them and continued turning in profits."

Bingo. Welcome to how the government is and has always been working. This is the vicious government process that cannot be stopped - interest groups with concentrated wealth will inevitably overrule the interests of society at large through the political arm - unless we cut it off. But there's no pretending that this is some newfound happenstance thanks to Reagan. This is always and forever, amen.

"So while it benefits the average American and world citizen to support research into alternative energies that can be sustainable and efficient, our country at least is brought down by these lobbyists who cap our knowledge for their profit. While these lobbyists remain in charge of our government, there is little doubt that our system will remain as it has, for it isn’t in the benefit of those with the lobbying power to change the system at all."

Like the words came right out of my mouth - but when is it ever not like this?

"The government (in turn, us as a nation) can’t afford to leave the market to its own devices like they have the last 40 years"

The market was left to its own devices? looks left, looks right Where?

"But what line should they draw? Where should they create legislation, and where should they let the market work its usually effective devices? Well, while just about every economist has a different perspective about that"

The government does not care what the economists think. What line they should draw, and what line they will draw are forever separate things. The former is not even worth our consideration - it will never ever manifest. The only thing the government should is be very not there.

"there are two places that I would argue require the attention of the government. I’ll start off with the need for price of a product to factor in larger amounts of costs that are currently being ignored. When a tree is chopped down and sold, the person who chops down the tree doesn’t charge for the damage to the ecosystem that the lost tree influences. In large part that is because the damage has no visible effect on our lives. . . So the market would naturally not factor this into a price, as it has no short-term impact."

Again, this is the type of scalpel-reasoning that the government is entirely unresponsive to. The options are: government, and no government - give a bunch of guys guns, badges and ultimate uncheckable authority, or don't. There is no "government that Ben directs" option. There is no "government that is kind, patient and caring for the needs of the forest" option.

Fortunately, the problem is solvable through market forces, whose adequacy betrays the shortsightedness Ben ascribes. The market doesn't fail to account for the ecosystem damage of felling trees because it has 'no short-term impact' and there is no 'visible effect on our lives' - it's just because there is barely any impact to that particular lumberjack. He doesn't care about our lives - he cares about his life. Externalities 101. You solve an externality with law, that's true - but that law can come from the private sector, and doesn't (evidently) come from the government.

Make the forest someone's property, make them care about that ecosystem, and presto - externality abolished. Now, he's not going to care specially for the critters or the tree-spirits, but he's going to care about its value (yes, long-term - when it's no longer his it's because he sold it) to human beings, which may include those things.

"it would be difficult to even quantify a price that the chopping of a tree had for the ecosystem, especially if you had to calculate the future cost to the ecosystem. It was impossible to put a number on that."

It is difficult, but it is possible. That's what makes the market so complicated, and the government such an abominable substitute.

"The second role government should play in our economy is another controversial one, but in my opinion more immediately important, being the redistribution of wealth. The rich are enjoying a period of wealth unlike what has ever been seen or conceived, and the poor and unfortunate will only continue to be worse off without policies that redistribute wealth back into their hands"

Once again, to beat a dead horse, Benjamin Greschler does not decide where the government distributes wealth. The people who do decide that are not white knights, nor can we ever count on them to be as such. The government hands tax breaks to people who lobby, subsidies people who lobby, tariffs against competitors in favor of firms that lobby, and gives really, really awful schools to poor people. If you can't afford servants to be in bed with politicians, and you're simultaneously part of an income group vastly outnumbered by middle-class voters, this system dooms you to the stick's short end.

What the poor need, who spend a much larger percentage of their money on food and gasoline, who are constantly out of work, is no more food and gas tax, and no more minimum wage. Is everyone in the room aware that excluding the possibility of a voluntary transaction between a worker of low skill and his employer makes both of them worse off?

I hope so.

Why do we have minimum wage laws? Why were they originally conceived? Because people with jobs don't like competing with people willing to work for less, so they kick the government. Plain and simple. And if all you can do is work for less on your journey up the corporate ladder - guess you're not working! Better not educate yourself among your terrible public school options either, since you need to get on the job right away to get anything at all.

But you can't live on minimum wage or less! I'm sorry, did you know that people lived 200 years ago? Like, before the hydraulic press? If America wants to build a damn wooden shack and there's someone willing to buy it, it's done. The reason you don't see them is because there's not even a market for them. The "living cost" of society is itself conceived by the richness of society - it costs that much to live here because there does not even exist a substantial market of people poorer. Why does that market not exist? Why is everyone richer than they were? Capitalism. Face it or squint your eyes at history, on pain of your intellectual integrity.

What's more, this is entirely predictable by economic theory. Why do the rich get richer and the poor get richer when the government doesn't stick a gun in the way? Because competition demands that an increased output of labor be accompanied by an increased wage, which wage is constantly itself improved by the profit-driven advances in technology that increased the labor output, vastly multiplying its value. 

All of this is digression, of course, since the government, one way or another, is not helping the poor as Ben proposes. You may stick up for that government or see it gone - there is no third route.

Let me explain that another way: suppose Ben Greschler becomes president someday. Ben only wins by signing his soul to the will of a forever uninformed public, and he only stays by confirming that signature, and he only gets anything done by acting the same as everyone else with that signature, and he only gets favorable press by scribbling that signature onto everything he writes. His predecessor will have done the same, and he will be predecessor to one who does the same. The institution excludes all other possibilities - which is why we dismantle the institution.

Why is the public forever uninformed? For the basic reason that none has incentive to become informed! They get one vote to make one say that is guaranteed to have no effect on the ultimate outcome. It is, from the cost-benefit perspective of any regular Joe, a total waste of time. If economics predicts anything, it is that Democracy is total idiocy.

"In the end, our actions and will to change as a nation will boil down to if we can represent more than the lobbyists"

And in the end, you lose.

Anarchy, please and thanks.