Date sent: Mon, 24 May 1999 00:35:13 -0400 From: "Michael S. Lorrey" <mike@lorrey.com> Organization: http://www.lorrey.com http://www.artlocate.com To: extropians@extropy.com Subject: Re: Property Rights Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> "Joe E. Dees" wrote:
> > You are fallaciously mixing hard science and soft (human) science,
> > as well as throwing history in (which is no kind of science
> > whatsoever), and being defensive about it because even you know
> > that you are doing it. I am a believer in private property rights;
> > however I am intellectually honest enough with myself and others
> > to admit that it is a belief of mine rather than an item of scientific
> > knowledge. Please strive to be this honest yourself. You believe
> > in the abolition of government, but by your own historical argument
> > (which you use to justify property rights), government is an
> > evolution of Natural Law, having been with us for countless
> > millennia. Consistency counts; please try to demonstrate some of
> > it.
>
> On the contrary, my anti-government stance is also supported by my
> argument, since it is demonstrated that "that government governs best
> which governs least". The least possible government is none at all. I
> cannot get any more consistent than that.
>
But nowhere do you find no government, just like nowhere do you
find a complete lack of private property. "That government governs
best which governs least" is no less of a mantric slogan that "From
each according to his ability; to each according to his need". Just
because someone once said it does not entail its necessity.
>
> Failure to insist upon the Natural source of individual human rights is
> the loophole through which all totalitarians are able to cloud the minds
> and hearts of humanity so that the people conduct the evils crimes of
> history for their opressors.
>
The very same tactic the Inquisitionists, Nazis and antiabortionists
use: First demonize those who disagree with you, call them villains
and consciousless subhumans; then you can feel righteous pride
when you kill them, rather than guilt or shame.
>
> If we do not insist upon our rights'
> Natural origins, then they are in fact merely fictions which rely purely
> upon the unjustified force we wish to bring to bear to force others to
> accept our version of reality.
>
This is a category mistake. You cannot use a moral argument to
decide upon the existence or nonexistence of a physical law.
Period.
>
> I need force no one when I stand upon my
> own two feet and insist upon my natural rights.
>
Nature grants no rights; People grant them to each other or take
them for themselves, or a combination of the two. A hurricane,
lightning bolt, earthquake, tornado, tsunami or any other act of
nature cares not one whit about your assertion of "natural rights".
The two words juxtaposed form a contradiction in terms. What is
natural is what obtains prior to any country, society, civilization, or
culture; the Darwinian Law of Survival of the Fittest For Their Niche
and the rest be damned by the scythe of Natural selection. The
"State of Nature" preceding mutually agreed upon norms of
acceptable conduct was nasty, brutish and short.
>
> They may kill me, but
> they will not enslave me.
>
You must be the kind of 2nd amendment gun nut who would dearly
love to kill all those "different' people whom you suspect of looking
at you sideways, and who fervently believes that those two
Colorado kids were a sinister Bradyite plant.
>
> You must love your freedom more than your
> life.
>
That, according to Hegel, was what originally separated the slave
from the master, although a fat lot of good it did the masters to
become weak incapable parasites ripe for revolution (to pursue
Hegel's master-slave dialectic further). One who is willing to die for
his own freedom has historically also been more than willing to kill
to maintain control of of others.
>
>Evil prospers upon the acquiescent surrender of the courage of the
> individual.
>
It takes courage to kill other people, whether your motives are
tainted or pure, or whether your cause is just or unjust, or whether
good or evil results (three different things). It would be nice if we
could equate evil and cowardice, but this we cannot do, for there
have always been the courageous evil and the cowardly good
among us.
>
> Moreover, your separation of hard and soft sciences is another
> rhetorical wedge used to divide the houses of knowledge to serve the
> purposes of the ignorant.
>
No, nimrod, it's a matter of fucking fact. You may not like the fact,
but facts do not change to massage your personal emotional
needs.
>
> The difference between hard and soft sciences
> is far more a matter of a spectrum of increasing abstraction from the
> root laws of the universe.
>
Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology study matter and energy;
hard sciences. Sociology, cultural anthropology, economics,
political science study the aggregate habits of interacting people;
soft science.
>
> This view of science is the sort of benefit
> that the trend toward consilience aids in.
>
There may indeed be isomorphisms of pattern, but they are not
comprehensive, circumscribing or complete by a long shot. You
cannot legitimately collapse a vast, complex and multifaceted
spectrum chocked full of various and sundry sustained human
endeavors studying diverse subjects (and in fact, studying
everything we can think of to study, from quarks to corporations)
into a simplistic and reductionistic little knot. It just doesn't work
that way no matter how much you may fundamentally wish it were
so, any more than all the Southern Baptist and Assembly of God
prayers and beseechings combined will generate one atom of a
regenerated Jesus.
>
> My own disdain for many in
> the soft sciences has to do with how easily many of their practitioners
> are swayed to the 'dark side', and not with the sciences themselves.
>
Science is a matter of fact and is value neutral, Darth (duh!); the
purposes to which we put what we discover and the intent which
motivates us is where ethics come in. Physical science and
axiology are not equivalent or even equivocable disciplines; one
may be applied to the use of the products of the other, but they DO
NOT either CROSS-DERIVE or MUTUALLY GROUND. End of
story.
> Mike Lorrey
>
>