Meta
[Welcome to MoreLife Yahoo, Roy - we're a few days later than planned
since we our phone here in rural Ontario was not operating per
scheduled seasonal arrangements when we returned (in the wee hours of
Monday 5/4 after leaving AZ early Friday evening 5/2) and therefore we
were without Internet connection until this morning.

First off, I want to publicly thank and commend you for taking me up
on the invitation to continue our discussion at MoreLife Yahoo. While
I have offered this invitation on numerous occasions at OpEdNews.com
and other blogs and forums in the past, you are the first person to
directly come forward and do so.

Since much of a reply to your message is fundamental to the Social
Meta-Needs theory, of which Paul is the discoverer/formulator, he is
responding directly to much of it. As is our practice and we've
described in the past, although we always edit each other's writings,
each individually takes "authorship" for any writing that s/he
initiates and organizes, which is typically any that falls into a
specific area of interest/expertise for that person.

Recently and in response to this message we have decided that we will
more often construct separate responses before then blending them
since in that manner neither of us will have hir thinking/creativity
blunted by reading the other's response first. In this manner better
overall responses should be forthcoming from our collaborative
efforts. **Kitty]
/Meta

Meta
I am going to split this response into several parts because each one
needs a lengthy explanation to be anywhere near complete and persuasive.
/Meta

On 04/29/2009 01:37 PM, r.roylutz wrote:
> Kitty,
> I wanted to respond more specifically to several points you made at
> OEN. I'll focus primarily on one paragraph of yours first, where you
> talk about libertarian concepts. I apologize in advance, if I'm not
> fully up to speed with the "in-line" thing.
>
> [You have done great. --Paul]
>
>
> It may be helpful to tell you that I consider myself to be a
> libertarian, but I am NOT a member of the Libertarian Party.

Even though I always had some differences in thinking with other
libertarians (which differences were eventually crystallized in my
Social Meta-Needs theory), for want of a better description and
because my political/social philosophy was closer to that of
"libertarian" than any other currently used name, I also called myself
a libertarian from about 1975 until about 2000 when I met Kitty and
began to develop the foundation for social order that I now call
Social Meta-Needs theory. Although from about mid 80's I also used the
more explicit, but less known term, "Voluntaryist" (google it).

Before 1975, since 1962, I was an Objectivist (in philosophical
agreement with Ayn Rand's philosophy), but even then also in
disagreement with some notions (which again were related to what
eventually became Social Meta-Needs theory). And before 1962 I was
essentially a utilitarian humanist without using those words, but
again those unformed thoughts of best social actions were later a
major driver for the development of Social Meta-Needs theory.

During the late 70s (before I knew better :) I was very active in the
Libertarian Party in both the Province of Ontario and the Canadian
federal political area, into which I also put a great deal of money.
However, by about 1981 my continuing reading and thinking (spurred on
by my being expelled from the Libertarian Party of Canada - long story
not worth the time) had already transformed me away from any possible
connection with a political party into a market anarchist. The
political/social structure implied by Social Meta-Needs theory is a
form of market anarchist society, but importantly one which is
effectively guided by a social contract voluntarily executed by all
members of the society (anyone who has not executed it is not a member
of that society and has none of the privileges granted to each other
by the members). I think of the social philosophy and operation of the
society so formed as being a synthesis of libertarianism, objectivism
and humanist utilitarianism.

> I feel that, as a rule, party politics creates compromises that
> dilute or contradict founding principles. The Libertarian Party is
> no exception to this rule. I have a couple of serious philosophical
> differences with their party platform.

It is quite true that the nature of adhering to the format and methods
of a political party creates conflicts among those working within that
format. The reason for this is because the goal of any political party
and the methods of reaching that goal are not consistent with reality,
since the voting democratic process of majority rule by force is not
consistent with the reality of human requirements for optimum life.
Anything not consistent with reality is essentially invalid; and it is
a well known point of logic that assuming anything invalid to be true
necessarily implies results that are in conflict with one another.
However, the major reason why I disassociated myself from any
political party was because I became convinced that voting is a
fundamentally wrong method for a group of people to make any decision
affecting them all, mainly because of its implied notion of majority
rule. And rule necessarily implies that some individuals force others
to act as they decide and contrary to the wishes of those others. In
addition any centralized democratically organized arrangement attracts
those who want to wield power, if only over a few others (those within
the organization), but often do very little work of any use to anyone.

The big mistake of all political parties and of the social philosophy
behind them is to be convinced that for there to be societal order it
is necessary to have institutions making rules, and rulers enforcing
those rules uniformly on all. Even though it is the norm of systems in
reality, the notion that a society of human beings can be totally
self-ordered appears to be impossible for most people to conceive of -
ie to initially think of at all.

> That said, I do agree with the core libertarian principle that,
> "...all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over
> their own lives, [bodies, and property] and have the right to live
> in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly
> interfere with the equal right of others..."

[Before Paul responds in detail, I am inserting the response that I
created separately while we were (unplanned) offline before reading
his at all. I knew that he would reply in detail, but I wanted to
express the thoughts that initially came to my mind when I read this
excerpt from the Libertarian Party platform.

This excerpt, like libertarianism as a philosophy, is incomplete and
ambiguous. While the word "right(s)" is used as though everyone
supposedly understands what is meant by that word, it is a "concept"
itself without clarity, and therefore fraught with problems with its
use. The word "force" (or its derivative "forcibly") is ambiguous in
that it is not clear whether this is strictly physical and if so,
whether physical force is never to be applied. And what is meant by
"interfere"? Beyond this there is the concept of "property" - how is
it defined? These are just some of the weaknesses in this small
excerpt, but they are indicative of many major statements supposedly
defining libertarianism (including big "L", the political party.) **Kitty]


I will start off by analyzing your quote above, that you say you
"agree with", to show you that and how it is ill defined, ambiguous,
totally hazy and yet still inconsistent with many actions that any
reasonable person, libertarian or not, would accept as being rational
and the correct thing to do.

First, I will analyze the possible meanings of the words/phrases in
your quote above:
"all individuals" - although "individual" has other meanings I will
assume from the context that a human being separate in mind and body
from any other human is what is meant by this phrase. If that is the
case it would be better phrased as "all human beings". However, human
beings (human individuals) come in many varieties. First, there are
the various stages of development and maturity. Second there are all
manner of individual levels and types of intelligence, capabilities
and characteristics. This enormous variety implies right off that any
specific characteristic that all of them have is going to be something
fundamentally biological such as the ability to interbreed, which is
normally the defining aspect of a given species and often all that its
members have totally in common.

"have the right" - used in this manner, as something that one "has",
the word "right" appears to be a common characteristic or possession
of "all individuals", (better phrased as "each human being" and then
singularized thereafter). But then I must ask exactly where is this
characteristic or possession in relationship to the body/mind of a
human being. Any putative attribute of a human or existing possession
of a human being must be capable of being ascertained (effectively
measured) by some form of sensory input. Therefore if a right is an
existing attribute, characteristic or possession of a human being then
it must be capable of being sensed/measured for that human being and
if it is a common attribute or possession, then for all human beings.
Therefore anyone proposing that human beings have something called a
"right" must either describe how I might sense it, if it is a physical
characteristic or possession (such as fingers, running speed, the
approximate age of puberty, etc) or describe just how I might
indirectly ascertain it as a mental characteristic (such as
consciousness, intelligence, honesty, etc). I have looked and looked
for any human characteristic or possession to which many people refer
by the term "right" and I have never yet found any such. Because such
a characteristic or possession as a "right" also appears to be
self-inconsistent with respect to any description of it that I have
ever read, I have therefore decided that any such notion as a "right"
is mythical or illusory, and therefore, will be the source of great
confusion and harm in human thought. See my treatise "Social
Meta-Needs: A New Basis for Optimal Interaction at:
http://selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.html

"to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, [bodies, and property]"
- This appears to be an attempted description of, not what a "right"
is in general, but of one kind of right (which of course is contrary
to the logic of definitions, which requires that the general category
be first understood before any element can be differentiated from
other members of that category). The phrase appears to maintain that
certain actions (a human being doing whatever s/he wishes to hir body
or property) is somehow forbidden to other human beings (the meaning
of "sole dominion") for that particular human and hir property.
However all such forbidding requires either the capability of person A
(the one who has "sole dominion over [hir own life]") to prevent any
such actions by others (or the hiring of an agent to do such
prevention) or the existence of an agreement between person A and all
other human beings to not take or prevent from being taken any of
those actions that are the "sole dominion" of person A, neither of
which possibilities appear to me to be any kind of intrinsic
characteristic or possession of person A. Certainly many human beings
would not have the capability to prevent such usurping actions of
others (or to hire an agent to do so) that are purported to be hir
"sole dominion", which leaves the only recourse for attaining such
"sole dominion" to be an explicit voluntarily agreed contract with
each other human being with whom one is concerned about hir potential
usurping of these actions of "sole dominion".
Another possible interpretation is that all human beings can or
*ought* to be able to "exercise sole dominion over their own lives,
[bodies, and property]". However, once again any such "can or ought to
be able to" depends on the actions of others and will, in general,
only be possible if those others agree. But why should they? - as I
will show below, there are many important situations where any
reasonable person will act against such "sole dominion".

"lives, [bodies, and property]" - Since a human being's body
(including hir brain/mind) and property are the only existents over
which s/he could compossibly (consistently by all human beings at the
same time) have "sole dominion", I will take it that those two
comprise the full meaning of "lives" (or for one human being hir
"life"). However, without a clear definition of "property" and a fully
reasoned argument about why such defined "property" is effectively an
extension of the "body" of a human being and therefore an essential
part of hir "life", it is entirely reasonable that some human beings
will not accept "property" as being in that category.

"and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose," - The
part of this after "right" (about which my previous comments again
apply) seems to be redundant since "to live in whatever manner they
choose" seems to have no essential difference from "exercising sole
dominion over their lives".

"so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of
others..." - Here is the most contentious, ill-defined and
inconsistent part of the above quote.
First no definition is given for "forcibly", which unfortunately has
many variations of meaning for many people. Are we talking about
physical force (the definition of "force" used in physics and the only
type of force that a human being is physiologically incapable of
totally ignoring), about psychological force (the force of persuasion
resulting in alternate choices that frequently happens when some
person reads, hears or sees the actions of one or more other persons)
or about economic force (the effect on the choices of one person by
the actions of another relating to the exchange of goods and/or
services between them)?
Second, the word "interfere" is extremely nebulous, particularly when
juxtaposed with "forcibly". Is asking directions from a stranger on
the street a forcible interference with hir? After all it does use
force (the voice is a phenomena of physical force) and it does
interfere with the person being accosted, since hir consciousness is
diverted to needing to make a choice that was not there before the
voice (and perhaps gestures) interrupted hir thought processes.
Third, as I stated before there are many situations where "physically
forcible interference" is clearly the correct action, where correct is
defined as increasing one's lifetime happiness. The simplest such
example is the forcible restraint of children by their responsible
parents at certain times during the training period of the children.
Yes, for a parent to be doing the best possible job of nourishing and
training hir child such use of force should be kept as minimal as
possible, but most certainly parents have both the responsibility and
the privilege to use such force as necessary. However, even for adults
the use of physical force against the body or property of another
adult is sometimes best (again with "best" ultimately meaning "will
optimally increase the lifetime happiness of the actor).
Case 1. Person A is in a burning building unconscious and person B
forcibly picks hir up and takes hir outside away from the fire and
smoke (possibly even somewhat harming that person being saved).
Case 2. The automobile of person A is beginning to roll out into a
busy street where it will clearly harm others and will likely itself
be harmed. Person B seeing this, uses force on the property of person
A (perhaps even damaging it somewhat) to stop the car rolling onto the
street.
Case 3. Person A is lost in a wilderness and has run out of food and
water. S/he is convinced that without any change in hir circumstances
death is certain. Then s/he finds a cache (in the desert or simply a
cabin in the woods) with sufficient provisions to renew hirself and be
able to carry on to find hir way back to civilization and eventually
to hir good life. Clearly the correct thing to do is to break into the
cache and use the food and water there, rather than to simply say
"since doing so is against libertarian principle, I must leave the
cache alone and proceed on to what I am convinced is certain death".

In each case above the actions involving the *initiation of physical
force* could result in possibly grave damage to the other person or
hir property (in the last case it could be much more than merely
property, since the owner of the cache may be on hir way to use the
cache and might even die as a result of its not being there). Still,
the correct action in all of these cases (and many, many more like
them) is not to obey the libertarian principle, but rather to take the
life/harm saving action, to be responsible for any harm done by one's
actions and to, as quickly as possible, reverse (restitute) any harm
that is done by one's actions.

There are very obviously a myriad of other examples of the above kind,
but I can also reverse the situation and produce a vast number of
practical examples of actions that clearly cause harm, yet do not
involve any direct physical force by the actor on the person or
property harmed, but for which it is totally reasonable to hold the
person who is the effective cause of the harm to be responsible for
restitution of it. I invite readers to supply examples of this latter
type.

In conclusion, the core libertarian principle quoted above is simply
not fully enough defined and does not have an ethical basis that will
specify the correct actions for a vast number of human interactive
situations.

--Paul