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.