Morality101.net

This Morality webpage should have been the very first, but it was long delayed by secondary considerations which I have allowed to distract me.  Even today, expect that I shall continue to enhance and fine-tune this page.

To myself, morality is very simple, but the objective of helping others to grasp, contemplate, accept and adopt as the principles by which one may have and build a life with happiness and prosperity — that requires example and elaboration.

“Morality” and “Philosophy” seem hugely daunting and intimidating words, but true morality is neither intricate nor complex, despite that the subject has inspired the penning of countless books, billions of words, has consumed the entire lifetimes of some and the never-ending diatribe of many, seeming to demand far more time and effort than most humans care to endure.

From our USA Declaration of Independence, which states … “All men [have] certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These few words contain the essence of true Morality. Your rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are absolutes — they are not negotiable.  For You to compromise even any small part of those rights is immoral unto yourself, and unto your world.

Contrary to common belief, the above words are NOT contained within our Constitution. The Constitutional Amendments serve to partially correct that amazing oversight, but the sum of those Amendments fails to encompass the full meaning, and some contradict the meaning of that original phrase within the Declaration of Independence. Anyway, while the essence of morality is contained within that simple phrase, it seems that far too many do not bother to consider those words and thus cannot relate those to lives of true freedom.

Your RIGHT TO LIFE is an entirely personal and individual right, which cannot exist except that each person OWNS their life and all, which is necessary and thus proper, to sustain and enhance Life.  “Life” necessarily encompasses the entire spectrum of the components of Humanity.

Far beyond the basics of merely continuing to breathe, of having a beating heart, Human Life means not only the instincts necessary for survival, which are merely characteristics of all animals. Only Human life necessarily includes the the Mind and the ability to apply the human capability to Reason based upon all that is observable by one’s Senses, and to use one’s Reason to abstract and conceive of things beyond — innovation, improvement, expansion, and creation.

The only valid Morality is necessarily based upon our knowledge of that which Exists — those things which are known and knowable — which therefore can be perceived by our senses of vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Our senses proved our means of perceiving that which exists, and our mind can consider, expand upon and organize those perceptions, and by use of Reason can draw conclusions which necessarily conform to the knowable Existence, and/or provable by logical and scientific process.  Animals cannot Reason.  Reasoning is the unique, special and most precious characteristic of Humanity.

• Your life belongs only to YOU, which means… it does NOT belong to anyone else.
• Who has the right to your life? Only YOU!
• Who has the right to control or manipulate your Life? Only YOU!
• Who determines the level of quality of your Life? Only YOU!
• Who then is Responsible for your Life?  Hmmm, would that be YOU?
• Further, you are also responsible for the family which you have chosen, but no others.
• And in return your family is equally responsible for you.You may Choose to assume responsibility for others whom you value, but…
• The extent and longevity of responsibility for those others is strictly your Personal Choice.

Right to Life: Of course you have the right to life and therefore that life belongs to You.  If anyone else were to take your life, You would not exist, having neither Life nor any need or even desire for Life.  It sounds so elementary, doesn’t it?  Therefore, each of us must have our personal right to life.  To sustain and enhance that life is our primary duty to ourselves, for without life we are nothing.  Did I say something wrong here?  I think not,

which brings us to Your…
Right to Liberty: Most of us seldom think deeply about Liberty or Freedom – it’s just a word, something we’re supposed to have, and if “They” tell us we have Liberty, we tend to take “Them” at their word.  We truly do need to think about Liberty, each and every time we make choices affecting our Lives,  We need th consider whether we are truly Free to make those choices, or whether “They” have already made or limited those choices without your consent.

How is your Life sustained and enhanced?  With Your…
Property: — which is everything you own, hopefully because you earned it!  Property  includes your money, your income, your home, your earned assets, , your investments, even your wristwatch, your food and clothing.  But most importantly, Life includes Your Mind,  all Your Mind creates and does to enable your continuing survival and gain happiness and comfort for yourselves and your personal Circle.  Would you allow others to steal your property?  Of course not, for earning and accumulating and using your property is necessary to sustain and enhance your Life!  If you cannot and do not sustain your life, and if you fail to insist up your Right to do so, you die.  Being dead, you are unable to help your family, your friends, or your freely chosen charitable choices.  Once dead, how do you accumulate property to sustain and enhance the life of yourself and your loved ones?

Might you use your…
Mind? Would you use your mind to weigh the pros and cons of your every move, to make the best decisions toward your better Life?  Or would you cede your Mind for such  decisions over to someone else?  Who knows better than you what will be the best choices for your personal Life?  Would you turn your choices over to your neighbor, or to the criminal on another street, or to your mayor and council, or your governor, or your congressman, or your president?  Who can know better than you what is best for your personal life?  Who knows best of your circumstances, your desires, and your abilities?  Whose mind is really superior to Yours?

Which leads right into the necessity of having…
Personal Choice: Our choices are ours alone to make.  We can make good choices and reap the rewards, or we can make poor choices for which we will pay the price of decreased prosperity and happiness, or even cause loss of  Your Life.  If You turn your personal choices over to someone else, will that someone somehow care less about their own life, or will they be too busy making their own personal choices?  Can you really trust them to somehow make better choices for You than you can make for yourself?  This is not a rhetorical question!  If You will cede your Mind to another, then are you Human, or are you merely an animal, an entity without the unique  human ability to Reason?

Pursuit of Happiness. So long as you are alive and able, your property is yours with which to pursue the happiness you have earned, for yourself, your family and your chosen friends.  Happiness is not given, it is earned by your effort and your virtue.  It is to be treasured, and is not to be diminished by being stolen from you by neighbors, or governments or other criminals.  Happiness may be enhanced by sharing with those you treasure.  Even your charity via gift or effort may increase your happiness.

In furthering your Morality, realize that You are entirely responsible for your own Life.  You are also equally responsible allowing all others the same equal Right to Life.

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The complete ignorance of collectivists who constantly promote Force and Sacrifice on Digg has finally gotten my goat.  I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna TAKE IT anymore!

powerlineblog.com — The Democrats aretrying to rush their health care “reform” bill through Congress before anyone understands what is in it. The bill is intended to be the precursor of socialized medicine, the “single payer,” national health system that Great Britain, Canada and many other countries have tried, with uniformly awful results.  [entire Digg thread}

Extracted from 53 Comments, the communists/collectivists are in pinko:

tasine

…the issue for many of us truly isn’t solely about “health care” though we do defend the fine system we have in the states. What I believe is a bigger issue is that we want smaller, less intrusive government. Our government has grown FAR too large, dealing with things not in their realm of responsibility, things that belong to the private sector or state. The more it grows, the less efficient it is, and the less control we as a free people have. Many of us believe that is true in all countries that usurp private enterprise, including Canada. Many of us in the states resent creeping socialism, communism, marxism, and all other isms that eventually lead to tyranny. Why keep adding to that when there is no need whatsoever?

@tasine

“we do defend the fine system we have in the states.”

You mean the fine system that left my mother with no way to buy health insurance after she had cancer because my family had lost our health insurance plan due to a life threatening latex allergy that forced my father to stop practicing dentistry? The fine system that will allow a child to die if his parents make too much money to qualify for assistance (which I’m guessing you don’t want tax dollars to pay for anyway), but not enough money to pay for life saving treatment? The system that causes my grandparents endless worry about being a burden to the family when they can’t afford necessary medications?

If it’s worked well for you, that’s great. Despite my family’s problems, it has worked well for me, too, though I’ve only had one hospitalization and surgery. There are plenty of people who are doing everything right, but who get thrown off a cliff. Not that I’d expect you to show much compassion for them. You know, you can be a ridiculously partisan republican who will hate any health plan that comes out of a democratic administration, and yet still admit that we’ve got a problem with health care in this country.

tasine

EIR, I’m sorry for your family’s difficulties. Yes, people do fall through the cracks with our system and with all systems and I’m sure all of us regret that. I would never make light of your family’s problems. I’m not trying to be nasty, but what makes you believe that had we had universal health care the same things wouldn’t have happened – or worse?

“You know, you can be a ridiculously partisan republican who will hate any health plan that comes out of a democratic administration, and yet still admit that we’ve got a problem with health care in this country.”

That would be a funny comment were it not so silly. I WILL HATE ANY HEALTH PLAN THAT COMES OUT OF ANY US ADMINISTRATION BECAUSE HEALTH CARE IS NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS AND THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT. I do NOT WANT socialized medical care. I do not want anything socialized. Am I partisan? Yes, to the same degree most on Digg are. However, just so you know, I have resigned the Republican Party because they are so wimpy. I will carefully follow everything Obama does because I don’t trust him, I don’t like him, I don’t like his policies, I don’t like his philosophies – and it has nothing to do with the fact I was a Republican and he is a socialist. It has to do with my understanding what socialism is and what it will become eventually, NOT because I am smart, but because I know some history, I have a healthy skepticism, I follow no guru whatsoever, and I am a realist – NO health care system is perfect, and what we have as we speak, is the best in the world and I don’t want politicians trying to get votes by pandering mucking around with it. The primary problem we have in the health care industry is not a health care problem – it is a legal problem and for that reason will NEVER be solved. That problem is runaway lawsuits with no merit. What we NEED is NOT health care reform, but TORT REFORM. Know any lawyers or “legislators” willing to take a knife to that monster called ambulance chasing lotto? No, you don’t, and neither do I.

eir574

“I’m not trying to be nasty, but what makes you believe that had we had universal health care the same things wouldn’t have happened – or worse?”

Being entitled to health care is a big step forward for someone who couldn’t afford it at all. People complain about having the government decide what care you can and cannot receive, but this seems to be no worse, and perhaps better, than having an insurance company whose only motivation is profit decide what care you can and cannot receive. At least the government is technically responsible to the people. The insurance company is responsible to its shareholders. I have a better sense of what goes on in those companies since the only thing my father could do after losing his dental practice was to work in insurance.

“NO health care system is perfect, and what we have as we speak, is the best in the world”

It may be the best in the world for those who have access. If you don’t have much access to it, then it’s most certainly not the best in the world. Some like to paint those who don’t have access to good health care as lazy fools who aren’t motivated enough to provide for themselves. I wouldn’t call my parents lazy, though — just victims of circumstances that occur all the time in this country.

Did you know that a 2007 study showed that we rank 41st in maternal mortality among 171 nations studied (http://www.seattlepi.com/national/335391_maternal1 … )? One in 4800 women die from pregnancy complications, which ties us with Belarus and just barely edges out Serbia. Ireland came in first, with only one death in 47,6000. And that doesn’t even include other types of bad outcomes. Is that really such a fine health care system? Perhaps for the women who don’t die in childbirth.

The cost of lawsuits is a problem, of course, but you can’t get rid of them completely as some of them are quite valid. My sister once had complications after a surgical procedure to place a metal plate in her head, and the surgeon who went in to fix things up said he would support a malpractice claim. There were muscles that had been cut and hadn’t been sutured properly, there was a thumb print on the plate (??), and there were various other problems. Some claims are indeed valid. But, even if tort reform lowers the cost of health care, there will always be people who can’t afford the care they need for themselves and their families, and it will not always be the case that they’re simply lazy fools who would prefer to do nothing while someone else supports them.

Striker101

Everyone, that is, who works and can write a check, can choose to buy health care.

Those who don’t work are not entitled to have someone else pay for it. That is what our private property rights are all about. Survival of the fittest is supreme natural law.

eir574

“Everyone, that is, who works and can write a check, can choose to buy health care. ”

Patently untrue. Did you not read my post above? After my mother had cancer, insurance companies no longer wanted her business. But, you’d probably say she deserves to die after having had cancer.

_____________.

Oh, maybe I get it. You think that once my mother became virtually uninsurable at nearly any price, she should just have become a high powered CEO or something so that she could afford health care out of pocket. Does the same go for children?

i cannot believe that people can be so easily duped into thinking that they don’t want free health care…I realize a lot of money is being spent to confuse people but seriously, how feeble minded do you have to be to believe that we are better off with out the same health care system that every other civilized nation gives to their citizens? Meanwhile we have the highest mortality rate of any of the first world nations…go figure.

Hate to tell you, sweetie, but there is no such thing as free health care. Even if it is a free clinic, a free ward, a free health fair, etc. IT IS NOT FREE. SOMEONE pays for it. If you work you will pay for it with taxes. If you don’t work you probably get your health care ‘free’ anyway, courtesy of the taxpayers.

Don’t believe for one second that any nation “gives” free health care to their citizens. Governments do not have any money except that which they extract from people’s pockets which they can then give to others and that buys them votes in the next election.

Is there some particular reason you believe it is more fair for me to pay for your health care than it is for you to pay for your health care? Inquiring minds want to know why so many Americans feel no responsibility for themselves. Have we wimped out this far? Maybe our wimpiness is what has resulted in what you call the “highest mortality rate of any of the first world nations.”

BillE3

Considering how poorly the government has done with running its own affairs, I can not fathom how congress is going to do a better job of running healthcare. What I can fore see is how the bureaucracy will eat up a lot of the money allotted for healthcare. Government payroll will take precedent over actual medical treatment. A government run system is going to be top heavy with administrations and administrators which will be paid for before any money goes to patient care. The same amount of care and quality of care are a matter of time and the government is going to make it go so slow, it will not be good. I guess to offset the problems of providing care, congress can pass a national suicide assist law and give us all an option.

Striker101

Not to be buried in 3rd-level response where most of my effort would be lost in the fog.

@eir574 “Oh, maybe I get it. You think…” You have no clue what I think, and you cannot frame any argument based upon whatever you think that I think.

Other than that you are “A 31 year-old person who joined Digg on May 21st, 2007″, who looks like a cat in a box, and who has written 6322 comments to date but has never submitted an article. Your comments are rarely if ever on top-level, your “thing” is stalking and attacking others for your Collectivist cause — a reactionary, IOW don’t act, react.

So next you move to “oh pity me” “…my mother became virtually uninsurable…” which is to be blamed on the fact that you don’t qualify to be some “high powered CEO”? What really happened — your folks didn’t read the policy, or didn’t pay the premiums, and became “virtually uninsurable”? So that justifies shifting the blame and responsibility shifts to that “fine system”, which would mean that millions of other citizens (including myself and everyone else here on Digg) should be FORCED to SACRIFICE their property, and thus perhaps their lives, for your family, while letting their own family go without or even die? Are your parents somehow more important than mine, or your neighbor’s, or your mechanic’s?

Now I will TELL you what I think — I think that all of your whining is disgustingly immoral and evil. So before you start sticking labels on me, know that I am not Republican or Democrat, left or right, conservative nor liberal, because such labels cannot be clearly defined. I was not poured from a mold; I am ME; I insist upon individual sanctity. I think for myself and I am responsible for my own life and for the results of my own mistakes. I have no health insurance, but that’s not your problem. I refuse to be responsible for you, make that your problem.

http://morality101.net/blog/morality

Okay, that’s all for this one, you either get it or you don’t!

Uneven Playing Fields

All of us hear frequently about the race relations in our country, that we are a racist country.  That is a charge that makes my blood run cold because our country is NOT racist, no matter how often the Jesse Jacksons say it is.  There may be a racist person from time to time who will create an incident, but that is not indicative of an indictment of a nation.

It goes without saying that it is a tragedy that there was a time in our country, as in most of the world, that some people owned slaves.  Such a thing should have never happened, but it did.  But the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified  December 6,  1865. This is the amendment that officially ended slavery in the United States.  Following the ratification, racial prejudice was still openly practiced.  Eventually, following legislation and court orders to do so, actual integration began in earnest, though not all areas had been reticent to integrate.  We just don’t hear much about the successes.  When did racial integration start in the US? The Topeka middle schools had been integrated since 1941.

Recently on Digg, a young man who is black, wrote that level playing fields would have made it easier for the minorities.  I thought about what he had said, and the more I thought about it, the clearer it all became to me.

The level playing field he talked about cannot exist in real life.  I believe that is the first thing that should be addressed when talking about race relations because this “level playing field” is someone’s idea of a nice saying that holds very few truths.

I am not equal to you – I’m no good at writing.  Maybe you are not equal to me – I play piano and sing.  I do pretty good stand-up comedy.  Perhaps you aren’t designed for such.  I am tall.  Maybe you are short.  Maybe I am ugly.  Maybe you are handsome.  You are black and I am white.Maybe you love rap music whereas I cannot stand listening to it.  Perhaps you like motorcycles, but I don’t.  I may have a wealthy family, but yours may be poor.  You may get a scholarship – I get none.  You are young, I am elderly.  You are healthy.  I am in poor health.   Would you say that you and I are on a level playing field?

Level playing fields are a myth.  In a society, they do not exist and that is the lie that liberal politicians keep selling the poor, minorities, uneducated, and any others they can suck a vote from.  NO ONE is on a level playing field and to cry for one is naive, and the sooner minorities recognize that fact, the quicker race relations will improve.

April 2, 2009

From the Academy to Atlas Shrugged: An Appreciation

By noreply@blogger.com (Edward Cline) from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Were you alive in Aristotle‘s time, had attended his lectures at the Academy, and had read his works, as well, would you have grasped the importance of those works to your existence? Would you have evaluated his contribution to the lives of other men and gasped in unbounded gratitude? Would you have understood the scope and breadth of his bequest to posterity? Could you have projected how his philosophy would influence the actions of men yet unborn, and what effect his ideas would have on their lives? Could you have projected the consequences of his work, such as skyscrapers, or robots exploring Mars, or microscopic cameras and lasers eradicating cancer, or genetically perfected crops, or communications through radio waves?

Could you have imagined a tableau like Raphael’s “The School of Athens,” in the hall of philosophers, with Aristotle and Plato, deep in conversation, striding from beneath the arch, one pointing upward to the heavens, the other gesturing to the earth? Would you have rejected Plato, and venerated Aristotle?

After the eclipse of ancient Greece, and following the interim of ancient Rome before the heavy, impenetrable curtain of the Dark Ages fell to hide the Greco-Roman millennium from the knowledge and sight of men, it took another millennium for them to rediscover Aristotle. The ruins and artifacts of his and Rome’s civilizations lay buried or weed-grown and crumbling in the chaotic, terrifying landscape of the Dark Ages, presenting a paradox and mystery to men who did not understand the source and significance of those ruins and artifacts. His works were salvaged and preserved by a culture, Islam, which ultimately, logically, had to reject them. Aristotle’s rediscovery in the Middle Ages made possible the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution — and America.

In a dramatically telescoped way, Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, is experiencing the same rediscovery in the 21st century. It was the most important book of the 20th century, published in New York City in 1957. Although its sales success has been steady and almost without precedent since its publication, until now the novel was ignored, relegated to the cultural sidelines, and deprecated by the cultural establishment. As far as modern philosophers and intellectuals were concerned, it did not exist as a work worthy of serious attention, or exist at all in their minds. It was, and still is, invariably dismissed by critics, leftists, collectivists of every stripe, and most academics as a badly written, unfeeling, hateful, overlong screed posing as a work of literature. Or, it was studiously ignored.

It has taken little over half a century for men to rediscover it and the significance of Rand’s mind and work. Men are gasping, if not in grateful appreciation, then in simple astonishment in the knowledge that she was right. The parallels between the events in the novel and those in the real world have become too obvious for even the novel’s detractors to ignore. They still hurry to denigrate it, but their protests sound peevishly feeble. Hardly a week goes by without Atlas Shrugged being discussed in newspapers, magazines, on the air, or on the Internet. (The latest mention, in the Drudge Report, can be seen here.) The instances are too numerous to cite here. The catalyst for the rediscovery is the current moral and economic crisis for which government actions are only the symptom. What men will do about it remains to be seen.

In an intellectual and philosophic sense, the works of Aristotle acted as a “prime mover” of human culture and civilization. Without them, no Renaissance and Enlightenment would have been possible. Their rediscovery and advocacy by the men of those periods accelerated human progress in terms of a mastery of the physical world, which manifested itself in the Industrial Revolution. But, as Rand herself so succinctly and eloquently observed in her numerous articles and speeches, the Aristotelian influence went only so far, because the skeleton hands of the philosophy of altruism and unreason remained clutched firmly to men’s notion of morality and men did not bother to throw them off. They believed that microwave ovens and cars could coexist with a morality that condemned the ovens and cars, as well as themselves.

Also in an intellectual and philosophic sense, Atlas Shrugged is acting as a “prime mover,” reemerging from behind its curtain of unrecognized existence as something to fear or to reexamine. Men are learning now that the philosophy which made possible their earthly well-being is irreconcilable with its antipode, which makes possible their recurring moral crises. Atlas Shrugged demonstrates that. They are beginning to see that contentment with their pragmatic, unstated “rapprochement” between the opposites can only lead to tyranny, destruction and death, to a condition of existence, as Rand once put it, worse than that of the Dark Ages, for if a partial application to reason fueled the rapid material progress of man, its total absence will cause an even more rapid collapse into anarchic savagery. And reason is what the world’s intellectuals and political leaders are asking men to abandon.

That is what we are beginning to witness now, here in America and abroad.

Atlas Shrugged is about the necessity of a full, unreserved commitment to reason, capitalism and freedom versus a careless, unthinking defaulting to mysticism, “duty,“ slavery and misery. Its theme is the role of the mind in man’s existence. It dramatizes what happens when the rational mind withdraws its power from a society that wishes to both enslave it and kill it. When statist laws and physical force become the “moral” norm in any society, rational minds, which do not take orders or obey edicts, begin to hide, vanish, and go on strike. Just as they did in the Dark Ages. Just as the heroes do in the novel.

In the broadest historic and philosophic sense, the American Revolution was a form of such a strike. As an historic event, it was unprecedented. Its “No, thank you!” was flung in the face of Crown tyranny. Unlike the heroes of Atlas Shrugged, however, the American revolutionaries had to fight a war to win their freedom from that tyranny. Someone has remarked that the novel was America’s second declaration of independence, a completion of the principles present in the first Declaration. That document contains the beginnings of a philosophy which ought to have been explicated, but which was merely implied. Given the enormity of their accomplishment, however, there is neither profit nor point in gainsaying its authors for what they did not do.

For the Founders, because of their circumstances and the means at their disposal, it was necessary to risk the fortunes of a violent separation, which could have ended with defeat and execution in their attempt to dissolve the political bonds which they realized were ensuring their enslavement. In our time, it will become necessary to repudiate and dissolve the bonds of a philosophy which is ensuring our own incremental enslavement. It will require the ratification of a consistent philosophy of reason, one which corrects even Aristotle’s errors. Once that is done, the execrable politics based on a morality of selflessness and sacrifice now robbing us of our own lives, fortunes and sacred honor, will dissolve, as well.

In 1782, replying to James Monroe about calls for Jefferson to abandon plans to retire from public service and return to his personal life, Jefferson wrote:

“In this country…since the present government has been established the point has been settled by uniform, pointed and multiplied precedents, offices of every kind, and given by every power, have been daily and hourly declined and resigned from the Declaration of Independence to this moment….If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less right in himself than one of his neighbors or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery and not that liberty which the Bill of Rights has made inviolable and for the preservation of which our government has been charged. Nothing could so completely divest us of that liberty as the establishment of the opinion that the state has a perpetual right to the services of all its members. This to men of certain ways of thinking would be to annihilate the blessing of existence; to contradict the giver of life who gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness, and certainly to such it were better that they had never been born….”

Had he pursued the thought further, Jefferson might have concluded that neither the state nor society nor “others” had any right or claim to the services of any of its members. Had he done that, and in deference to his incomparable stature as a political thinker and child of the Enlightenment, Jefferson would have attained the heights of Aristotle and his philosophical heir.

One hundred and seventy-five years later, Rand, in Atlas Shrugged, completed that thought:

digg story

“I…value life…above all other things. The right and good is that which contributes to my life and the wrong and evil is that which destroys it. Every action I take must pass through the gates of identification before being pursued as a value which I understand will contribute to my life. Happiness is my ultimate goal.”

Striker: Soft Touch Philosophy with reason.

read more | digg story

It is an affront and an abomination to have anyone, but especially a bunch of stupid people, presume the authority to run your life. Not to withdraw your consent is an act of gratuitous self-contempt. Creating liberty is just the opposite. Liberty in your lifetime is not just possible, it’s the ultimate do-it-yourself project.

Striker:  I thought this was a great viewpoint, but it didn’t get far on Digg.  Go help it along!

read more | digg story