Tag: Radical Individualism

Welcome to 2018. America seems to be starting off the year the same as it starts off most years. Law enforcers continue to act without accountability, the endless wars in the Middle East continue to be waged, and the dollar continues to fall in purchasing power. However, you can’t control any of those things. What you can control is yourself so why not dedicate this year to personal greatness?

Have you always told yourself that you’re going to start working out? Start working out today. Have you been thinking about reading a particular book? Start reading it today. Have you been thinking about learning that new skill so you can make more money? Start learning it today.

While you can’t control the actions of others, you can control your own so why not make yourself superior to everybody else?

As a radical individuals I don’t subscribe to the idea of objective morality. If such a thing as objective morality existed, the human race would have had no choice by to agree with each on the matter. But if you ask 10 individuals to describe their beliefs of what is moral and what is immoral, you’ll likely hear 10 different systems of morality.

When I express my disbelief in objective morality, especially to libertarians, I’m usually met with a lengthy explanation of how a world without objective morality would devolved into a world of murder, rape, and pillage. It’s the same argument Christians often make against atheists. Without a belief in God, they believe people will just murder, rape, and pillage. However, people who make these arguments make two mistakes. First, they assume that all morality must be established by an outside force. Second, they believe morality and consequences are interchangeable.

My disbelief in objective morality doesn’t mean I don’t have a system of morals. As I noted above, if you ask 10 individuals to describe their moral beliefs, you’re likely to get 10 different answers. Each of those individuals will express a system of morality to you, indicating that they do have an established system of morality, but disagree on the definitions of moral and immoral. They will disagree on the definitions precisely because they have established their own system. While their system may be heavily influenced by outside forces, such as philosophy, it is a system unique to them. I, for example, have a self-defined system of morality. While I think that it’s a pretty good system and the world would be a better place if everybody lived by it, I have no way to prove objectively that it is a good system and the world would be a better place if everybody lived by it.

The second failure objective moralists often fall into is treating morality and consequences as interchangeable concepts. While an absence of a moral system may give an individual the excuse to murder, rape, and pillage, they very well might avoid performing those actions because they realize doing so could lead to severe consequences. If you try to murder or rape somebody, they might kill you in self-defense. If you try to pillage a neighborhood, the people living there might kill you in self-defense. Even if you managed to get away with such actions, somebody is likely to search for you or hire somebody to search for you so that their idea of justice can be exacted. Even sociopaths tend to understand that actions have consequences and that can often regulate their behavior.

Socialists and libertarians strongly disagree on what constitutes morality. Even though they disagree on morality they can often live together in relative peace. Why? Because they both recognize that their actions have consequences. If a socialist tries to appropriate a libertarian’s means of production, the libertarian might use violence to dissuade the socialist. Likewise, if a libertarian decides that a group of socialists is a threat to their private property and attempts to use violence against them, the socialists may respond with violence of their own.

Just because somebody doesn’t believe in objective morality, or morality of any kind, doesn’t mean they’re going to murder, rape, and pillage.

According to gun control advocates we have a gun problem. Gun rights advocates have been rebutting their opponent’s claim by claiming that we have a mental health problem. Who the hell is this “we” they’re both talking about? I have neither a gun nor a mental health problem.

The biggest problem with political debates is that they rely on collectivism. Collectivism is a concept that exists solely in our heads, it doesn’t exist in the real world. Each individual is a unique entity. Just because they share some common traits with other individuals doesn’t mean they are like those individuals. If membership in a group controlled an individual’s actions, we would never have any schisms.

The political means fails to solve problems because it doesn’t operate in the framework of reality. Using politics to solve a problem is no different than using astrology to solve a physics problem. When the very premise of your strategy is make believe, you can’t expect to develop a real solution.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard a communist claim that real communism hasn’t been tried, I’d be sitting on a mega yacht in the middle of the ocean drinking scotch that is older than I am instead of sitting in front of my computer. But there is a lesson to be learned from communist countries and, really, everybody successful movement in history. Those who advocate for something generally have an idealistic view of it. Communists, for example, probably see a future where nobody is hungry, everybody has a home, and inequality is a thing of the past. It’s actually a pretty wonderful fantasy. Unfortunately, nobody can control things outside of themselves.

If you read the writings of many of the United States’ founders, you’ll realize that there was significant disagreement on many points. One faction, the smarter faction in my opinion, wanted a federal government that couldn’t even collect taxes whereas the other faction wanted a powerful federal government. While each founder had their view of an ideal country, none of them got everything they wanted.

The problem with movements of any kind is that your vision will never match the result. This is because you’re a cog in a great machine and as a cog you will have limited control. Even if you manage to attain a position of power within a movement, you can’t control how others execute your orders. You may be the Dear Leader of a great communist utopia and have the best intentions in mind but your underlings may be secretly building gulags and offing everybody who looked at them wrong in high school. You could be the founder of a new country with the intention of keeping the newly formed government as small as possible but your fellow revolutionaries may be putting together the foundation for a massive, tyrannical government behind your back.

I gave up on movements quite some time ago after realizing that the result will never match my vision. Instead I’m focusing on myself. I’m working to make myself freer, stronger, smarter, wealthier, and otherwise better. Unlike my time working in movements, I’ve actually had a great deal of success in pursuing my personal goals because I am in full control of all the actors that matter: me, myself, and I.

You can’t control the actions of others but you can control your own actions. Needless to say, if you want to actually accomplish something you have to do it yourself so you might as well do something that directly benefits you instead of something that you believe will benefit others (others, I might add, who you have no right to decide what is beneficial for).

What’s the libertarian position on abortion? What’s the libertarian position on hate speech? What’s the libertarian position on corporate welfare? The question about the official libertarian position on various controversial topics is common, especially amongst anti-libertarians who are looking for something to crucify libertarians with and freshly converted libertarians. However, it’s not a good question because libertarianism doesn’t have many official positions.

The foundation of most branches of libertarianism is the non-aggression principle, which states that initiating aggression is undesirable. Other common principles include strong individualism and support for private property. The common principle of strong individualism butts heads with the question about the official libertarian position. While individual libertarians may hold a specific position on a controversial topic, there is seldom an official libertarian position because such an official position would go against individualism.

For example, there is no official libertarian position on abortion. Many libertarians see abortion as aggression against a fetus and therefore believe abortion is immoral. On the other hand, many other libertarians see forcing a mother to carry an unwanted fetus until birth as a violation of her self-ownership and therefore believe abortion is moral (or at least more moral than violating the mother’s self-ownership).

Oftentimes libertarians themselves fail to understand the strong individualism common in the philosophy they follow. When asked what the libertarian position on a topic is, they will give their position as the official libertarian position. But speaking authoritatively for others without having that authority delegated to you by the individuals you’re speaking for is collectivism, which is commonly accepted as anti-libertarian.

The question isn’t what the libertarian position is but what a libertarian’s position is. What is your position on abortion? What is your position on hate speech? What is your position on corporate welfare?

Donald Trump won the presidential election with the meaningless slogan, make America great again. I say that it’s a meaningless slogan because America isn’t an actual thing, it only exists in our head. America cannot reason, think, or act. Only individuals can. But this is America and the people composing the public schooling systems have taught several generations that fiction is fact (and in fairness to the people composing the public schooling system, the United States public schooling system isn’t the first nor will it likely be the last to do this).

Instead of following meaningless slogans, I propose following a meaningful one, make yourself great again. How do you do this? First, focus on yourself. Self-interest is often seen as a bad characteristic. A lot of people like to claim that it’s greedy. Instead they say everybody should be focused on “the greater good.”

This is probably why so many people get sucked into the fiction of collectives. They forgo self-interest because they don’t want to be seen as greedy and instead focus on “the greater good.” Of course, “the greater good” is usually defined by other people. Let’s again consider the slogan, make American great again. What did making American great again involve? Voting for Donald Trump. However, that didn’t make American great since America is a fiction. That didn’t make you great either since you’re not one of the individuals who achieved victory. Donald Trump won the election. Those directly connected to him were gifted various things by him. You didn’t gain anything. Your life remains unchanged because your efforts went to somebody else instead of yourself. If you want to make yourself great, you need to focus on yourself.

Second, define great. My definition of greatness is complex and always changing, however, I include a constant drive to improve myself physically and mentally in my definition. I workout and study almost every day. My goal when I wake up is to be stronger and smarter by the time I go to bed. Only you can define what is great for you. I do suggest setting a few goals though since goals give you something concrete to strive for and thus provide you a mechanism of judging progress.

Third, pursue your definition of great. This is the part most people have difficulty with. Pursuing your definition of great will likely require discipline so your first goal may very well be to develop discipline.

Pursuing goals given to you by others won’t make you great because those goals were never meant to make you great, they were meant to improve the greatness of whoever gave you those goals. Pursuing your own goals at least has the chance of making you great (while it’s always possible to fail to achieve a goal, your chances of achieving it are far greater if you’re actually pursuing it). So consider tossing off the make believe shackles of collectivism. Forget about “the greater good.” Be selfish.

How much of what you know is the product of rational thought and how much of what you know was programmed into you by others? This is a question that I have been tossing around for quite some time. There are many things that I have believed over the years that I eventually realized weren’t the product of rational thought but simply things somebody else told me.

This question is especially relevant when discussing political matters. Take the debate over government controlled healthcare for instance. Most people living in countries with state controlled healthcare believe that the only alternative is no healthcare whatsoever (unless you’re rich). Here in the United States the idea of government controlled healthcare is catching on more every day. But did most of the people arguing in favor of government controlled healthcare conclude that it was the best option after a great deal of research and thought or are they just parroting what they were programmed to parrot:

“The National Health Service is the closest thing the English have to a religion,” Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor Nigel Lawson famously once observed. However, given the swivel-eyed fanaticism with which its supporters will defend it, even from the overwhelming evidence of its shortcomings, at this point it might be more accurate to describe the NHS as Britain’s national cult.

The utterly unparalleled degree of moral outrage which greets any criticism of the NHS bespeaks the decades of propaganda — in the state’s schools, from the state’s politicians, and on the state’s news and media outlets — which have taught the British people to believe that the only alternative to a state-controlled healthcare monopoly is for the poor to die in the streets. So pervasive has this myth become that the Labour party has been able to base its entire electoral strategy, for decades, on painting themselves as the only party that truly cares about ‘our NHS’, and a recent survey found that, when asked ‘What makes you proud to be British’, the NHS was the nation’s most common answer by a considerable margin. All this has led to a situation wherein the desperately needed reforms to Britain’s healthcare system cannot even be discussed, due to the irrational overflowing of blind rage and uncomprehending contempt that greets any criticism of Britain’s ultimate sacred cow.

More often than not, when I debate the topic of government controlled healthcare with a proponent their arguments don’t run very deep. They usually involve parroting the propaganda. If I bring up an angle that isn’t covered by the propaganda, the proponent usually falters because they don’t have a foundational understand of their belief. They haven’t really thought about it. They haven’t researched it. The knowledge was programmed into them by others and they mindlessly run with it.

I should note that I’m not making a criticism. Each and every one of us has a head full of programming. However, relying primarily on programming necessarily limits you. Case in point, the government controlled healthcare debate. A lot of data exists showing that government controlled healthcare isn’t the be all, end all that many of its supports claim it to be. If they’ve actually taken some time and put some thought into their belief then they might be able to rebut that data. Most supporters though are unable to provide a meaningful rebuttal because they don’t really understand the issue since they’ve given it little or no thought.

We see the same thing with a lot of religious individuals as well. Most people inherit their religious beliefs from their parents (i.e. their parents programmed that belief into them). How many Christians do you know who seem to know next to nothing about Christianity? I know quite a few. Hell, I was raised Catholic and can say that most of the people who attended the same church as I did knew next to nothing about Catholicism (even my Sunday school teachers, all of who were volunteer parents, knew very little). These people never gave their belief the same careful thought as Thomas Aquinas.

From the standpoint of individualism this question takes a more interesting turn. If you consider yourself an individualist, wouldn’t it make more sense for you to act on the knowledge you’ve acquired over rational though rather than the information programmed into you by others? One thing that I’ve become better at and am constantly working to improve is analyzing my beliefs to determine whether or not they are beliefs that I’ve actually come to due to rational thought or were programmed into me. The best way I’ve found to determine which of the two categories a belief belongs to is to analyze the opposite position in depth. If you understand the arguments against your belief and can make counterarguments that support your belief then you have necessarily given at least some rational thought to the belief. Maybe you decided that your belief was incorrect or maybe you were able to come up with counterarguments against the criticisms of your belief. Either way, you’ve at least given your belief some rational thought and can therefore say it is, at least in part, yours by your own volition.

I believe that an important part of becoming a self-actualized individual is constantly analyzing your beliefs and trying to learn about other beliefs. I won’t claim that rational thought will inevitably lead one to my conclusions. In fact, your conclusions will almost certainly differ from mine to some degree. However, by analyzing your beliefs and other beliefs you can say that you believe what you do because of your actions, not somebody else’s.