Government

So on my last post on the subject of politics, I didn’t really get much into actual politics, so much as explain why democracy doesn’t work.  So this one will be more about my actual stance on the subject.  When it comes to actual political philosophy, I am hesitant to define mine in a word, as each word in politics carries with it so many different connotations, and there are several variations of each political philosophy.  If I had to describe my view in one word, however, I’d call myself a libertarian.  But as I said, definitions in politics carry many different connotations.

So now let me attempt to explain my position.  I believe in freedom, and I already established that pure democracy is not freedom.  If you have read my posts on morality, you’ll know that I believe rstrictions upon freedom to be, in most cases, immoral.  But that’s just what a democratically elected government does; places restrictions upon the actions of citizens who did not agree to being governed.  Our only choice, as a collective people, is on what kind of restrictions are imposed against our will.  Both traditionally-defined government types, left-wing and right-wing are guilty of this.  So presented here are my criticisms on both the left and right wings.

First the right wing, as it’s easiest to criticise.  Concervatism is in favour of lower taxes, which I support, as no government has the right to take my money from me.  Okay, granted there are some things that make tax a nessisary evil, which I will discuss later, but tax should still be as little as possible.  This is where the similarities I have with concervatism end, however.

Concervatism wishes to uphold traditional values through law, in a society where values are constantly changing.  Who is the government to decide which values are right, and which are wrong?  They have no right to decide people’s rights on controversial issues such as abortion and marriage.  People should be allowed to decide for themselves what is right, as long as they don’t hurt anyone.  Granted, abortion may be said to hurt people, depending on your definition of person.  I’ll give my views on the subject later, however.  The bottom line is, the religiously values of most of mainstream concervatism do not apply to everyone, and the government has no right to force them upon anyone.

On the other end of the political spectrum, socialism has none of the same problems as conservatism.  It mostly upholds the basic human right to freedom.  I agree with socialism there.  What I don’t agree with, however, is social services.  They cost money, which comes from taxes that citizens didn’t agree to pay.  Granted the things they do are usually good, but shouldn’t people have the right to choose which, if any, services they wish to pay for?  The government has no place in such things, and is extremely inefficient at it, due to beuraucracy.  People would be better helped by more private charities than the government.  The left wing government also interferes with the economy, compromising the freedom of the free market.  I shall explain why this is a bad thing in a later post.

The bottom line is, both concervatism and socialism don’t work.  I am a libertarian because it combines the things that work from both views.  It takes the low taxes and lack of economic intervention of the right wing, and combines it with the freedom and lack of interference in personal lives of the left wing.  It is a philosophy derived from freedom.  In my next post, I shall explain more about my interpretation of libertarianism.

Hell

Now, as I mentioned in my Death post, I did not consider religious possibilities.  I will do so now.  Now, suppose that there is at least one god, and this god cares about what people do in life, rewarding or punishing them in death in accordance with their actions.  Am I in the least bit afraid of this possibility, and that I might go to a hell?  No.  And this is why:

If there is a god, and it is good, it would not let good people suffer in a hell.  I refer to hypothetical gods with the pronoun it, by the way, because a being as powerful as what is tradionally described as a god would be above such things as masculinity or femininity.  If there is a god who is good, it would by definition not let good people suffer in hell.  I consider myself to be a fairly good person, or at least I try my best.  Ergo, if a god would send me to hell, it is not good.

There are some religions that state that if you do not believe in a god, and specifically the god they describe, you are punished in the afterlife.  But to me, this idea is simply inconsistant with the idea of a good god.  If the god is good, it will not care if you believed in it or not so long as you have lead a good life.  And if there is a god who punishes those who do not believe something for which there is insufficient evidence, well, I am forced to conclude that such a god would be evil.  And if there’s an evil god, we’re all pretty much screwed anyway.

So although I believe it to be very unlikely that it exists, if there is a hell, and I went to it, I wouldn’t mind.  Because I would not like the kind of god who would send me to one anyway.  Hell is a very silly idea, really.  In my opinion, is seems only created to scare people into belief.  Which is useful if you happen to be running a theocracy.  I, however, refuse to be scared by such things.  Especially when, as I said, the whole idea seems artificial and unlikely to me.  Frankly, the worst hell of all to me would be that of nonexistance.  Because even the bleakest existance is better than no existance at all.  But the good thing about that is, if I don’t exist, I won’t know it.

Hm, well I still have time, I think I’ll consider another religious afterlife I left out.  The concept of nirvana, that is, escaping the cycle of reincarnation, assuming there indeed such a thing.  To me, this doesn’t sound like such a great idea.  I quite enjoy the cycle of reincarnation.  If nirvana means becoming one with everything, I really don’t want to do that.  Maybe I’m missing something here, but if I’m one with everything, and everything’s one, then everything is me, correct?  So does that mean there is no me, or there is no anything else?  I don’t really like either possibility.  If everyone is one, then everyone is the same person, so there is no one else.  Does anyone else find that extremely lonely and depressing?

So there you have it, my opinions on hell, and nirvana thrown in just for fun.  I think my next post will be in the politics vein again, I’m tired of this religion stuff.

Death

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Well a lot has been happening in my life recently.  Unfortunately, you won’t get to hear about it, as this isn’t a personal blog.  In any case, I’ve decided my next topic is death.  What happens after it?  Of course no one knows, unless you care to try religious answers.  But if you’ve been reading up to this point, you’ll know this blog is religiously neutral.  So I will be considering possibilities.

I must admit from the outset that death scares me.  Mainly because there is a definate possiblity that death is just that.  The end.  If there’s nothing beyond death and we just stop existing.  It is for this reason I do not like to talk of death very often.  But this being a philosophy blog, I figure it needs to be discussed sooner or later.  So what happens if there’s just nothing in death?  And there’s no you, no anything.  Well I suppose you wouldn’t know, so it doesn’t much matter, but still, it is a disconcerting thing to think about to say the least.  Perhaps that’s why we contemplate other things happening in death instead.  Well in any case, there are still possibilities, so let’s move on to less depressing ones.

One thing I consider, is death being an endless dream, one from which you don’t wake up.  The dream is clearer, sharper, and more coherent than even the most lucid of living dreams.  I don’t know why this would happen, but it’s something that I like to think about.  If a dream is what happens when your are disconnected from your body, as you seem to be during sleep, this would make sense.

Of course, nothing could happen after death if not for the existance of a soul of some sort, so I suppose I shoud set aside space here to discuss such a concept.  The real question here, is what makes a person a person at the fundamental level.  Some would argue the brain.  But can such a small organ be the basis of all self-awareness?  I find it hard to believe that the brian is the sole cause of such a complicated and unexplainable process as consciousness, which is what keeps up my hope that there is a soul that could possibly survive death.

And if it could survive death, why not rebirth.  Reincarnation is another idea I like to entertain.  Perhaps we are reborn in a new body, memories all but erased.  This, I think if I got to vote, would be my favourite afterlife option.  To start life anew.  Wouldn’t that be amazing?  It’s interesting though, it leaves open a lot of questions.  How soon after death would one be reincarnated?  Instantly, or after an amount of time is past?  Maybe they spend time in a dreamlike state in between lives.  Could someone be reincarnated as any life-form, or just a sentient creature?  What about extraterrestrial life?  Is it possible to be reincarnated as a creature from another planet?  These are the kinds of things I think about.

And all this leaves open the quesion of where spirits and ghosts fit in.  Being the agnostic that I am, their existance is a definate possibility.  And I’ve known people who claim to have experienced it, people I am not quick to discredit.  But that seems a topic for another day, as this post is going on fairly long.

Life, I believe, is such an amazing gift.  We must all try never to lose sight of that.  Just being here, just existing is such a wonderful thing.  I think I’ve already said this, but it merits reiterating.  The fact that we’re alive, and can feel and experiance everthing life has to offer; it’s just unbelievable.  Death will come for all of us, but it will come when it comes, and it’s best to not think of it.  For now we are alive.  Shakespeare’s Hamlet asked, “To be or not to be…,” but for me it is no question.  And as he concluded later in that same monologue, it is better to live, and suffer anything life has to throw at you, then face the uncertianty of death.

By the way, I realize I have not even considered some of the other religious possibilities of death, and to be fair, I should.  They will be in the next post.

Politics

To begin with I must apologise for any atrocious spelling errors in this or the previous post, as my spellchecker is broken.  That out of the way, I welcome you to politics, in other words, how to run a country while messing it up the least.  As you might imagine if you’ve followed this blog up until this point, my beliefs in politics stem, ultimately, from the foundation of freedom.  You might think, then, that I am an undying supporter of total democracy.

You’d be wrong on that count.  Democracy, unlike the popular misconception, does not equal freedom.  Democracy is simply the replacement of tyranny by one with the tyranny of the majority.  The problem with democracy, and the reason it is so praised, is that the majority of people, by definition, are in the majority.  But do the people in the minority have any say?  No, none whatsoever.

To illustrate my point, here is the story of the day I became completely disillusioned from democracy.  In the Ontario elections last October, a referendum was also held to decide whether to keep Ontario’s current electoral system or replace it with a new one.  The current system was first-past-the-post, in which the candidate with the most votes in an electoral district won that district’s seat in provincial parlament, and the leader of the party with the most seats became premier of Ontario.

The proposal was to change it to a system that was mostly first-past-the-post, but also added candidates from the parties in order to better reflect their actual percentage of the popular vote.  For example, in all of Ontario, the Green Party could recieve 5% of the popular vote, and yet not gain a single one of Ontario’s hundred-and-someodd seats due to the fact that their support is spread out.  This proposal would make the parlament of Ontario better reflect the actual wishes of the people.

The proposal failed.  Perhaps partially because the proposal wasn’t clear, and so many people didn’t understand it, and perhaps partially because it would make an already bloated government even bigger, but my point remains.  Democracy failed to make itself more democratic, and the voices of the minorities fail to be heard.  Democracy doesn’t work.

We are always being told that every vote makes a difference.  This is bullshit.  My votes did not make a difference.  My choice to agree with the refferendum proposal did not help the referendum get passed, and my normal vote, for a candidate, did not elect the candidate I wanted.  I am thus unrepresented in Ontario’s parlament.  I could not even vote for the party that most closely matched my beliefs, because they weren’t running a candidate in my riding.

If you are part of a minority, that rare group that thinks differently from everybody else, you can accomplish fuck-all in a democracy.  Your votes make no difference if it does not help someone get elected to represent you.  And if you happen to be in the majority, there’s no point voting either, because everyone else is just going to vote that way anyway.  The only point in voting would be if you’re not sure which way the majority is headed, and you think a few votes could swing it either way.

In short, there is no freedom in democracy.  That is just an empty lie.  It is nothing more than tyranny of the majority.  And not even that, because the majority of the time, the majority doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about, and so they just go along with the party that they happen to support, no matter what they do.  I personally can not affect the government that makes decisions concerning my life.  That is not freedom.

Alright, I realize what started as a general post on politics turned into a rant on the flaws of democracy.  I shall write about my actual stance on how the country should be run next time in politics.  In case you haven’t guessed by now, I’m a libertarian.  I shall explain why then.

Crime

And now back to morality.  I said that I would clarify some of the things I said in my first post on the topic, and now seems like the time for that.  Now, as I mentioned, there are some unresolved issues in my hastily-derived system of morality.  I shall delve deeper into those today.  One thing that needs a bit of work is defining the times when it’s alright to break the one rule I made.

It seems nessisary that if another person is already breaking the rule of morality that I defined earlier, they have forfieted at least some of their rights by doing so.  The moral rule was, for reference, one cannot hurt another, or possibly it was one cannot take away another’s freedom.  They amount to the same thing for my purposes.  One is hurt by having their freedom taken away, and restricting one’s freedom hurts them.  In any case, in my fledgeling moral code, the consequences for breaking the rule must be defined.

This is where things get tricky, which is why I conveniently ignored it in my first morality post.  What does one have the right to do with these, for lack of a better term, crimenals?  Obviously they can not be allowed to run free and harm others.  But imprisoning them would break the moral rule.  So it must be ammended.  Some would argue that different crimes would nessesitate different punishment.  For example, something minor would nesessitate a fine, something more severe would require jail time, and some would advocate the death peanalty for murder or something equally severe.

I would say, that for the sake of a pure moral code it be ammended as little as possible while still being practical.  My version one draft of it would work provided everyone follow it, however, that would not happen.  So instead I shall try to keep it as close to the spirit of the origional as possible.  I would say that our criminals should have to do only what’s nessisary to ensure that the crime does not happen again.

For example, A thief would be required to return the item, and if that’s not possible pay the victem its value.  They would also have to serve jail time, as it is required as a deterrent.  Someone who injured another would be required to pay damages and hospital bills, as well as serve jail time.  All criminals would also be required to pay the cost of their jail time, as it should not come out of taxpayer’s money.

Oh, and I realize this is starting to get into politics.  I shall talk more of politics, I believe, in my next post.  In short though, all criminals should be requires to pay damage and serve jail time as a deterrent.  On murder, the most severe crime of all, I do not advocate the death penealty, as such a thing would make us no better than the murderers.  It should though, carry a lengthy jail sentance, if not life than a good long while.

So my origional post here was morality, and I would redifine my rule.  So it will be thus:

One cannot take away the freedom of another, unless that person has already hurt someone else; in that case, their freedom can be restricted only enough to prevent it from happening again.

That rule still needs some work, both in effectiveness and elegance of wording, but it is at least updated now.  I shall speak more on morality on a later date.

Religion

Religion.  I suppose this is the next logical thing to discuss, seeing as I have been talking about beliefs.  As I never once mentioned anything about any god in my section on morality, it would be pretty obvious that I am not a religious person.  So here, for the first time on this blog, is a semi-personal story about me that explains why.

When I was very young, my parents were semi-religious, in that for a while my family attended a christian church of some random denomination.  I very quickly grew incredulous of the entire bible story, however.  I had too scientific of a mind, even from that early age, to believe stories like the Garden of Eden, or Noah’s Ark.  And my parents evidentally were not very religious either, as we soon stopped going to the church.

I looked into other religions later in life, and although some of them had some interesting ideas, I couldn’t bring myself to follow any of them.  I just couldn’t take anything on faith.  Mainly because there are so many religions out there, and I see no reason why any one of them should be right.  They all seem so unlikely.  Which is why I eventually realized I’m agnostic, and stopped my search for religion.

I am fond of agnosticism because unlike everything else, it doesn’t make any claims.  Theism states that there is a god of some sort, Atheism states there definately is not.  Whereas agnosticism simply states, I don’t know.  Which really, is all that anyone can say, even if you believe one way or the other.  I see no strong evidence for a god, or for any religion, but that does not imply that there can not be anything out there.  And that is why I am agnostic, and not an athiest.

Because really, does science explain things any better than religion does?  No matter how well we may eventually understand the origin of life and the universe, we are still ultimately left with the fundamental question; where did it all come from?  Sure, you could explain it that there was a big bang which brought all matter and energy into existance, but then, what caused the big bang?  And if you figure that out, what caused that?  And so on in an infinate chain.

If you try to answer the question with a god or gods, you’re left with the same problem.  What brought them into being?  Many religions would say that the gods always existed, but then, that doesn’t really explain the existance of anything.  You still have something that exists without cause.  You may as well say that the universe, or existance in some way, always existed, and then you wouldn’t have to invoke gods at all.

The only logical conclusion is that things shouldn’t exist.  But obviously they do.  Unless you get into existentialism, which is a topic for a different post.  My point is this; the universe, fundamentally, is messed up.  And in my opinion, no religion can explain that.  So I don’t make any claims to know anything about it, because I don’t.  This is all just one giant mystery.  I suppose some people like to think they have the explanation, and that’s fine.  Me, though, I enjoy the beauty of it all, this impossible existance that is life.

Morality

Hello, this is 6d60 poasting to you live.  Today’s topic is morality, and my opinions on right and wrong and good and evil.  Now, as I mentioned last time, I believe right to be only defined by what is not wrong.  Let me clarify that.  My definition of wrong is this; an action that would hurt another.  Of course the actual definition of ‘hurting’ another needs defining as well, which is where the finer points of my personal moral code come in.

Most people would agree that physically hurting another person is generally a bad thing to do (I’ll get into exceptions later).  And of course, killing falls under the catagory of physically hurting another person.  As well as this is theft.  Theft can indirectly hurt another person, for example, taking away money from someone who is starving, and can no longer buy food.  But so far this has not been philosophic at all.  It’s just been me telling you extremely obvious things.  This is supposed to be a philosophy blog.

Well the philosophy comes from the reason why things are wrong.  Why is it that these things are obvious to anyone, regardless of upbringing or religion.  Well the reason can be brought back to the topic discussed in the previous entry; foundations.  Specifically, freedom.  Freedom is the foundation upon which all my morality is built.  And it stands to reason.  As sentient beings, we are born with the freedom to act as we so desire.  But it is not possible for everyone to have complete freedom.  For example, if everyone had total freedom, someone could imprison someone else randomly, and that prisoner would no longer have freedom.  This is where morality comes in.

Morality imposes restrictions upon people’s freedom so that they may not restrict the freedom of others.  For example, a moral rule against killing is needed to uphold others freedom to live (a very important right).  A fully functional set of moral rules can be derived from the one goal of upholding freedom.  For example, a rule against coersion.  One cannot be forced into acting against their will, for this violates their freedom to act as they choose.  Another example, one can not be imprisioned, for this violates freedom of movement.

This, as can be easily seen, is where that system breaks down.  For imprisonment can, of course be justified.  And thus, a provision must be added to this moral code, on what to do with those who break it.  This is where things become much more complicated.  For example, is the killing of a murdurer justified in order to prevent the deaths of more innocents?  I would say no, if imprisonment was an option.  Is it alright to use force against a thief in order to reclaim a stolen item?  Obviously there are many unanswered questions here.  I will see what I can do about them in a later post.

There are some more unresolved issues to consider here.  The idea of ownership, for one.  No one likes things stolen from them, and obviously this violates the freedom to use what is rightfully yours, but what determines ownership?  I defined wrong earlier in this post as an ‘action’ that would ‘hurt’ ‘another’.  I’ve defined in this post what I mean by ‘hurt’, but I still need to define ‘action’.  Does inaction count as action?  What about a person?  What exactly constitutes ‘another’?  It’s good to have these things clear, but each of those questions would constitutute their own post.  Well it’s good to have something to write about, I suppose.  I’ve already decided, however, that the next post will be on religion.