Fatal Errors of today’s prevalent Philosophies 2

Selfishness is immoral and unethical. Today, this is preached virtually everywhere. You hear it at Church, you are taught about it by your parents, you see it in the movies, spoken directly by its heroes or embedded deeply into their lines, you read about it in books, and you are told so by the radio commentators. It is so deeply rooted into our culture that it is not even brought into question – it is automatically assumed that everyone agrees with it. Even the world’s most selfish people – and here I expect to hear a near unanimous approval when I say that it’s the businessmen (except from the businessmen themselves, and I salute the exceptions) – will preach against selfishness out of passionate conviction that selflessness and sacrifice is the way to go. It is, however, imperative to change this deeply rooted conviction by speaking the words that need to be spoken. Selfishness is moral. Selfishness is ethical.

Let’s see what we are taught about selfishness. I was raised as Christian and so I had my share of religious education back when I was a kid. What do preachers who give religious education tell kids? Kid’s stories. One of the stories went thus: A kid buys himself a bag of candies. He is then approached by his friends and is asked to share some of the candies. However, the kid is then called selfish because he decides not to share and keep all the candies for himself. His friends abandon him for his “selfishness” and he is left all alone with his candies. He eats them all and then decides to play with his friends. However, his former friends don’t want him any more, because he would not share the candy with them. And so the kid is all alone. This is a story carefully crafted for the ears of the children. It is an attack at something that’s called “selfishness” in the story. It doesn’t really matter what selfishness really is; what matters is that it has been denounced. But, a clever ruse has been played against the children who listen to the story – much too clever to be noticed by young children, and is rarely, if ever, questioned by adults. From the above story, what do children learn about selfishness? They learn that selfishness means keeping everything for oneself. They learn that it is the opposite of sharing. However, this is incorrect. While the word – selfishness – remained the same, it’s meaning has been twisted. A selfish man is not the man who claims everything as his own and keeps them for himself. A selfish man is the man who claims as his own the things he’s earned and these things he keeps for his own sake. I’m not sure whether you understand the subtle difference between “keeps [...] for himself” and “keeps for his own sake”, so I shall clarify. The former means what you probably already know – to keep for the sole purpose of consuming on one’s own, without sharing with others. But the latter means to keep in order to improve one’s life, by means of any action that was done with the use of the thing that was kept.

There are many ways in which one man can improve his life, and also many ways do make it worse. One may wish to improve his social life. This he could do by meeting new people, doing someone he already knows small favors, taking them out for a drink, merely talking to them in a friendly manner, etc. All of these actions can have profoundly selfish motives, as great pleasure in life can be derived from having close friends. Take the kid from the story – it is the perfect example of this. The kid is left without friends in the end, and has nobody to play with. He is sad because of that, because he is denied the pleasure of playing a game with his friends. To this kid, and undoubtedly to most of the children in the world, a game with their friends is a high value. However, kids aren’t always clear about what they want more, but as adults we can tell that a little candy is by far a lesser value.

What is selfishness in regard to values? Selfishness is a a pursuit of a higher value. Given a choice, a selfish person would choose that which is more valuable to him, and remember, values are that which one acts to gain and/or keep. A higher value is the one which one desires or needs more than some other. A selfish person will, thus, take into account if keeping a value would mean the loss of another value, because this affects his “balance” in the end. If keeping a lesser value (such as candy) means the loss of a greater value (friends), then a selfish person chooses friends, and shares the candy. Therefore, the kid from the story was in fact selfless, because his actions resulted in a loss of value (whereas a selfish one acts so as to gain value). Of course, children cannot understand these kinds of implications, so if a kid from the story was truly selfish, then he woud eventually learn his mistake and apologize to his friends, and perhaps get some candy to share with them next time. That’s in fact, how I would end the story if I was to explain “selfishness” to anyone.

Note that I’m not here inverting our moral code. I’m just being consistent. If selfishness means pursuing a higher value, then a selfish person is the one I described and that’s so by mere implication. But you might say, that we don’t need to change terms now, that we’re used to saying that the person I described here is selfless, and that it’s all just how we decide to call the concept. In fact, that’s not true, because this inversion in terms is today not just a mistake. It is a mistake which is abused by many to scare people into not being consistently selfish, because resurrecting selfishness from the darker pages of our philosophies implies resurrecting pride, individualism, integrity, productivity, etc. as well as redefining courage and other virtues. Certain institutions today are so inherently collectivist that they cannot handle individualism, or even personal freedoms in their true form. For these institutions to work you need to preserve your double standard of living for your sake when you’re left alone, but paying your due to the collective as well. I’m not talking only by Church here; luckily, Church now survives by voluntary donations. This is also about taxes which you pay to the state/country, and that includes people you mainly don’t even know, don’t care about, or even hate. Naturally, with the compromised philosophical background, most people feel like paying their taxes is what makes them citizens of a country. I won’t get into the discussion why that view is incorrect. What I’m appealing to, however, is how far they are willing to go. Today, for an average businessman in Croatia, nearly 80% of the money he’s earned ends up as tax, as paid health care, pensions, etc. Now a new tax has been proposed, and many don’t seem to mind. Slowly the state is taking more and more money from its citizens claiming it’s their duty to give it to them. To bring back selfishness means to undermine that system; it means to say – no, my “duty” is to myself and my own, and therefore, you need to find other ways to finance yourself; it means to at the very least start criticizing the way the governments invest our money, and ultimately to decide to withdraw that money. The governments can’t have that. They’d rather go with the ethics of duty and selflessness.

To be continued…

Fatal Errors of today’s prevalent Philosophies

There are many things people take for granted when it comes to philosophy. Most, and perhaps even many of my readers, would agree that philosophy is not a subject in which things can be taken as absolutes. Indeed, many philosophers attempt to make philosophy seem like an unfathomable subject (whether they do it on purpose and what that purpose is I don’t know). Take Kant for example. He suggested the existence of two worlds: one which we perceive, which seems logical and can be subjected to man’s will to some extent; the other is the real world, the one a man cannot perceive (and then goes on to explain what that world is like… so go figure).

A vast majority of these philosophies agrees on several points which are essentially incorrect. I probably can’t cover them all in one post, but I eventually will, as I will most likely be adding some more on the list. I won’t go in any particular order either and the reason is that each of my rebuttals can be understood without the rest. For this reason, as well as the fact that this is a mere rebuttal, I’m urging my readers to refer to some other literature for a consistent philosophy, mainly the books written by Ayn Rand. As I’m not trying to build a consistent philosophy, but rather dismiss something that is widely accepted, I don’t expect everyone will understand what I mean, so I repeat that for a structured argument for (as opposed to against) the ideas I hold as I’m writing this post, these readers will have to read something else for clarification.

The way I’m going to do this is that, at the beginning of each rebuttal, I will write the sentence in bold, which is widely accepted, and in the following paragraphs I will try to explain why this is wrong, trying at the same time that my rebuttal is as common sense as I can. This may not always be true, which is why I refer my readers to the abovementioned literature. Now follow the rebuttals.

Morality is relative. There are reasons why something like this has even become widely accepted. First of all, it is important to ask “What is morality?” Many people I know mix into the definition the belief in god with no mistake; then there’s some who mention something about being nice to people, about loving thy neighbor, then they say “do unto others as you would have others do unto you”, etc. End result: the definition is everything, except consistent. The essential, discriminating characteristic of morality is missing from their definition. When a person doesn’t know what something is, yet he knows it exists somewhere, he is more likely to accept anything he is told about it. Thus, when one hears that morality is relative, he accepts it and even embraces it because formulated thus, it gives him the impression that he is absolved of the responsibility of ever attempting to find out what it in fact is – it’s relative, so it can’t really be defined, right? Wrong!

Morality is a very down-to-earth thing. It is a kind of your personal realization that you are a rational and volitional living being and that as such, you need to live by certain principles. I’m aware that I’ve mentioned several things which aren’t widely accepted today, such as volition. Many argue it doesn’t exist because it seems to violate laws of nature. At this point it is enough to say that for all our practical purposes, volition is very real. For a full rebuttal of that, read one of my further installments, or some of the suggested literature. Putting this aside for now, if you look at the above definition, you will see that the principles which you need to live by are not defined very clearly. So, one might say that morality is indeed relative, because it depends on what kind of principles you choose. However, principles are fundamental truths about life and its requirements, about man, etc. and not some arbitrary guidelines. In general, one cannot consistently practice an arbitrary guideline for a prolonged period of time; something will eventually come in the way. However, adhering to something fundamental, such as productivity, is always possible.

There are no absolutes.  This is somewhat of a corollary of the above. The quickest way to prove this is wrong is by simply writing it out. The sentence says “There are no absolutes”, yet it is an absolute itself. It is some kind of a paradox when you think about it; let’s assume that everything else is indeed relative, as the sentence suggests. In this case, the sentence is incorrect because in that case there is exactly one absolute, and that is the sentence itself. But if it is true that the sentence is incorrect, then there indeed aren’t any absolutes, so the sentence is true. This is a contradiction, and the sentence is a paradox.

There are absolutes indeed and I’ll give three very simple examples: First of all, reality exists. That is one absolute. Another is that all things that exist have identity; they are something and they behave in a certain way. The last of the three I’ll give is that consciousness is able to perceive things as they are, i.e. figure out their identity. Many corollaries spring out from these basic absolute truths. These are, in fact, axioms of Objectivist metaphysics. Axioms are very small basic truths which can be used to get to other fundamental truths; they cannot be proven, and every attempt to deny them begins by first (unconsciously)accepting them.

Man can’t perceive reality objectively. This is incorrect. This claim comes in two variants, both attempting to destroy the same thing – man’s conviction that what he perceives is a correct representation of the real world. The first variant attempts to invalidate the senses themselves, by claiming that our senses distort reality. It is true that to some extent every lense (such as one in the eye) distorts the light that passes through it, as well as that there is a lot of approximation in turning something like warmth or cold of an object into electrical signals that travel through your nerves. However, the very fact that we are here, alive and well, dismisses this attack on our senses as faulty. You have used your senses many times in your life in order to get through hardships; you use your senses when you drive a car, which could be very dangerous if your eyes were somehow damaged and/or dysfunctional. The fact that you’re still here, despite everything, proves the validity of your senses well enough. If you also think that evolution is really how we came to be, then you might also be interested to know that our senses evolved through millenia, becoming ever finer, and presenting reality to living beings in greater detail by the generation, while the dysfunctional individuals died. We survived, therefore our senses worked.

The other variant attacks perception, claiming that even if our senses are valid, our mind interprets the data our senses send to it faultily, and often dismisses a lot of it. To counter this claim, I provide the above arguments all over again. We are still here. It is only apt to add that our mind – which is in fact us – filters out that which is irrelevant. If it ignored a speeding car that’s moving toward you on a regular basis, you wouldn’t be alive very long; in fact, it is doubtful if mankind would even have cars.

Thus, our senses work, i.e. they make a good representation of reality, and we perceive all that is relevant to us. One of my colleagues mentioned the experiment with cats, where several cats were placed in a room with vertical lines, and some were placed in a room with horizontal lines. After some time, they were each placed in opposite environments, and then cats which had been grown in a room with vertical lines couldn’t correctly interpret objects that were placed horizontally, and vice versa. This was his argument for the claim that our perception is faulty. I responded that these cats were raised in conditions which aren’t normal, and therefore, they could not have developed the necessary abilities to grasp horizontal or vertical objects. The cats have developed only the abilities they needed to survive in their environment. If that environment is not real, i.e. it is a setup, then that is the kind of environment the cat’s brain adapted to and it could correctly interpret everything within that environment. Placing it in a new environment could make some smarter cat realize that the skills it learned earlier aren’t enough, and that if it was to survive in this new environment, it must start giving significance of other kinds of objects too – be they horizontal or vertical. Same is with men – if something new manifested itself in our environment, which could greatly affect our lives, and which we couldn’t see until now or considered it irrelevant, it would be irresponsible of us not to act on it, embrace it, and study it. Consider finding out the benefits of oil; before that realization humans treated it as waste; afterwards we started looking for it.

(To be continued…)

The EU shows its true, evil face

This is it. The masks are off now. But very few remain who dare to see what was hidden behind them.

The European Union had confirmed the fine of 497 million euros to Microsoft for the alleged abuse of its monopoly. Microsoft is now forced to reveal its software secrets to the competition. The lawyers see this as a great victory and others claim that it “creates a level playing field”. Level for whom? For everyone? It doesn’t seem to be level for Microsoft.

But what is Microsoft really being punished for? Did they steal something; or have they defrauded anyone? No, the Commission is clear on this, Microsoft is being punished for asserting itself on the market. Putting it more explicitly, Microsoft is being punished for offering us free Web browsers, free media players, free updates and security fixes, etc. It is not being punished because they are evil, but because their operating systems run 90% of the world’s computers, and because with these operating systems users get truckloads of free stuff, such as what I mentioned above; it is being punished because it saves its users the trouble of downloading all those tools, or having to buy it for additional money; in other words, Microsoft is being punished because it is so good.

Microsoft is, among other things, being forced to distribute its operating system without some of these tools. Now just think about this for a minute. Let’s say you get your new computer delivered at home. So, now you want to watch a video on it. But hey, there’s no Media Player installed. You couldn’t afford it. But there are free players on-line; the Internet is virtually crawling with them. So you try to find it, but hey again – your browser’s not there! Haven’t they used to install those for free? In any case, you don’t have it, so you have to get it from your friend or buy a next issue of some software magazine which you’re probably not interested in reading, just to get your free copy.

So yo do that, and now you’re connected. You type the search terms into whatever search engine you use and it spews out hundreds of thousands results. And you click the link, you download the software, you install it. Suddenly, your computer seems to behave oddly. Curiously enough, the program you downloaded doesn’t seem to play videos, and there’s an odd looking porno ad rotating on it constantly. You think it might be a virus – but you can’t know, because you don’t have any anti-virus protection. At some point, you remember, Windows had a firewall of its own. Now it doesn’t. So you go and download your brand new anti-virus and a firewall. These too can be found free, but you think to yourself that you might just end up with another virus, so you buy yourself something just to make sure. Besides, it’s a known brand, say Norton.

Norton finds your virus, isolates it, but recommends also that you download Microsoft’s security patches. But when you go and do that, you realize you can’t. And then it hits you that Microsoft was once forbidden to further distribute free patches for its operating system, because they make their software more competitive on the market than when it was first launched; thus, Microsoft has to charge their users for these fixes, so as to make people more “motivated” to buy lesser software from other companies.

Well, the story may go on and on. What does this mean for the end user? More and more trouble. The story may be a bit exaggerated – that’s clearly not the situation that will arise directly from this verdict, but it is a precedent that opens the doors to such a future. But what is at the root of such a verdict? They claim it creates “level playing field” and that it “restores conditions for fair competition”. The question is again – for whom? Whoever it is, this decision, being a precedent, will most certainly level the field – into market statism.

Consider this idea of competition as a flat panel. You have certain areas on that panel, each representing a company. The size of an area represents how much of the market each company holds. It seems that the idea of leveling the playing field means that each of these areas is of the same size. Let it be so. Now, consider that one of these companies has hired a genius in its field, who invents a completely new kind of product or service that the company he works for can sell, and which can also have great success on the market. Normally, this genius will want to receive additional payment for such an invention, but in this game called the “level playing field” he simply can’t do that. By laws he must give his secret for free to all the companies on the board – otherwise his own company, or the company he works for, will start taking up more and more space on the panel as more and more users will want this new, brilliant product.

What do the laws of this so-called fair play do to this man? They say “No, you can’t have the fruits of your labor; you must selflessly share with others because the ‘playing field’ must be ‘level’.” In other words, the genius of this man is stifled; he is being told to conform to the majority.

Precedents such as this, as is clear, enslave man and that which is best within him – his rational thought, his creativity, his desire to improve his life and to live it to the best of his ability.

The lawyers are overjoyed by the verdict; they are overjoyed by the fact that they can attack the good of man in this perverted way. This is what I mean when I say that the masks are off. The goal of the looters who brought this about isn’t to help anyone. By the above scenario, which is bound to happen if such terrible trend of punishing the good continues, their goal is to destroy the achievers, in this case Microsoft, and by consequence, whether they are aware of it or not, make the lives more difficult for everyone. They have won the precedent which allows them to regroup, organize and make further, even viler attacks on that which is best in man.

Let’s take another look at what this decision really means. They say that stopping Microsoft from distributing its own free software with its own operating systems will create more choices on the market. What exactly does this mean? It means absolutely nothing. There already is a wide variety of software on the Internet which does exactly the same thing that Microsoft’s products do, so the users have plenty options to begin with. Oh, but, the story continues, it’s not just about having a choice, it’s also about making one. Microsoft is actually being punished for allegedly making that choice for many people by offering them their product for free.

Pardon me if I’m wrong, but are the majority of people mindless drones who make do with whatever is shoved into their lives? That’s what the above suggests – that people are unable to make their own choice about what software they are going to use for whatever purpose; that they are unable to see the drawbacks and the benefits of one piece of software and the other; that they are not able to judge for themselves which of these two programs are better for what they will use the software; and ultimately that they are not able to make choices in order to improve their lives. Instead, it suggests, they take what they get and keep quiet about it, so the courts must step in to speak on their behalf.

It is true – Windows Media Player covers the needs of video and music playing for most people, and it even has some neat other tools. And it is true that people, once they have this particular player, will not seek anything else – because they are satisfied. But is this what Microsoft is being punished – for making its customers satisfied? If that’s it, then we’re back at punishing the good for being the good. Is Microsoft being punished for going to great lengths to satisfy its customers? Then it’s the story of punishing the good for wanting to be better. Or is it being punished for offering a bundle of products, all virtually for free, which seem to be good enough for a vast majority of people? Then the verdict is a punishment of the good for trying to be the best.

Whatever it is, there is no escaping the fact that with this decision, the Commission, and the European Union has shown its true face; the face mingled with the raging hatred of man and the best within him; the face of the looter and that of the destroyer of values. This is a small victory for them, but it is also a foothold. They’ve come this far today; but who knows how far they will dare to go tomorrow.

For all these reasons, I am denouncing this decision and I am calling upon everyone with the slightest light of love for man and life, to do the same. Not because of Microsoft, or because you feel like it, but because you know that the verdict is all wrong – that it is an attack on the best within man; an attack on the achievers, not the looters; and because it is an attack staged by the looters.