From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Jan 15 2003 - 02:21:44 MST
Ron wrote (in the thread "What is the meaning of this?")
> > Then why doesn't everything we do---since we are
> > biological organisms---fall under this rubric?
> > E.g., Adolph Hitler had a natural right to feed
> > upon all his countless victims. We are, after all,
> > speaking scientifically here.
> Lee,
> Why don't you try this test: does this natural right help me to
> survive as a man? Now, I will argue that if you attempt to feed on other
> people as Hitler did that effort will be counter to your survival.
But that brings time, progress, and culture into it again.
I'm sure that you will admit that under some common historical
situations feeding on other people as Hitler did was very
*conducive* to survival, e.g., Montezuma or Stalin.
gts writes
> >> "Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into
> >> the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty
> >> of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called
> >> personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because
> >> necessary for his own sustenance."
> >> --Thomas Jefferson: Legal Argument, 1770. FE 1:376
>
> > Thanks for that! It perfectly illustrates the error unmistakably.
>
> You're quite welcome, Lee.
>
> I think however that the passage above illustrates your error rather
> than Thomas Jefferson's.
>
> Excuse me for standing up for one of our most famous presidents in
> history, but I think your assertion in opposition to Jefferson's is
> only more evidence of your intellectual hubris.
Thanks for that too! What a friendly fellow you've turned out
to be after all. As you've no doubt noticed, extropians can
exude intellectual hubris. Listen, I don't want to take anything
away from a genuine genius like Thomas Jefferson, but he *was*
writing in the eighteenth century, you know. He and his friends
had accumulated vast practical experience in self-government in
the American colonies, and intuitively knew what would and would
not work. (Sadly, modern nations are so big that these lessons,
applicable to any Western, modern nation, tend to be lost.)
Had he known about Darwin, Dawkins, Popper, Wilder Penfield, etc.,
and the most *recent* anthropological research, he wouldn't have
made such egregious generalizations.
Want to analyze? Or is this being hubristic? Here is what
he wrote again:
"This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by
the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance."
1. "because necessary for his own sustenance". Now Jefferson
knew well the Romans and the Greeks, and saw himself what
was working and not working in Europe and the colonies.
But what did he know of three thousand years of Egyptian
history, or almost that much of Chinese history? He would
have refrained from using such a phrase had he known!
2. The "Author" of nature? Are you indeed a Believer? Few
indeed have survived the hammer blows of Marx, Darwin, and
Freud. Now materialism reigns supreme, and even theists
avoid such language today.
"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one
comes into the world with a right to his own person, which
includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will."
It is patently false that humans are born free or with a
right to his or her own person. They are entirely helpless
and in almost all cases are totally under the control of
their parents. Indeed, even as they age, in most cultures
they observe that the liberties of moving or using their
own persons are severely curtailed; why, even in our own
they find they cannot ride motorcycles without taking care
to place the government's head in a safety helmet. And
we're among the best, historically speaking.
Lee
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