Children, Animals, Property, and NAP

The libertarian philosophy (essentially the non-aggression principle) has been regarded as having weak arguments against (ironically) aggression against one's own child or one's own pet.

After all, if property rights are everything then certainly I have the right to torture my cow just as soon as eat it, right?

Here I feel we must take a more holistic view of the topic. Lets consider the non-aggression principle, Property rights in the light of the principle of Contracts.

When one has birthed a child or bought a kitten one has literally assumed responsibilities not to let that living entity to come to harm. If it were not a living entity (or should we be more specific; a conscious entity capable of feeling pain and fearing death), if it were a hammer for instance it's owner could melt it down, burn the handle and spread the ashes over the sea. The fact that it is capable of experience means it falls under the purview of the non-aggression principle.

This assumed responsibility to care for this entity is essentially an informal contract with the entity not to let it come to harm (that is not to say, "not to let it feel pain," for some pain may be highly useful to its continued existence and happiness).

Therefore if one abuses their child one has not only violated the non-aggression principle by definition, but one has also violated an informal contract he has with the child (and anyone who cares about the child).

Besides that one cannot "own" a child, one can only be responsible for a child. Children do not come with property rights, you freely choose to create them and therefore are automatically endowed with the responsibility to care for them.

Let us lastly consider again my cow. Cows only exist to serve humans. They've been domesticated and bred that way. That is to say if we didn't exist neither would the modern cow. This is not an argument to say this is why cows can be property and babies cannot, it is a note on our relationship between the two species. The cow obviously has a lower intelligence, but maybe not a lower ability to feel pain. Therefore is its commensurate to raise, feed, care for, and butcher cows, (we all must work for a living), but it is not fair to torture them. That is a violation of the non-aggression principle.

What politics is all about

Why do people love politics? Why do they go to political rallies and get swept up in political speeches? I mean what is it all about? Could it be because politics represents the best in us? Isn't that what moves people to radical fanaticism - to support what they think is right? That's what political speeches are always about: elect me because together we well feed the poor, shelter the homeless and save the world. We can fix what is broken.

And what is broken? Why, other people of course! My intentions are right; I'm the one listening to this speech. Its the other people, the ones who aren't here, who don't want to be here, the ones who oppose all of these ideas about truth and right and goodness that need to be fixed, they are the ones holding back society. If only we could make it the law of the land to do all of these great things, then they'd see, they'd have to support progress rather than hold it back. If only we could get them to do what we want, if only we could control them; then we could live in paradise.

One might as well ask; if its so great to do these things, why not just do them rather than talking about making every one else do the right thing? Is it because we are lazy? Oh certainly not, lets just reject that out of hand. Is it because we can't? Well, no I can give to charity, and actually, I do, a little. It would just make so much more of a difference if everyone else would do it too, and people with more means or in different positions of influence could make much more of a difference than me. The problem isn't with me; its with the others, their behavior is what must change!

Implicit in every political speech, in every rally, in every campaign slogan is the very simple statement, "We cannot be happy until other people make us happy. So we must make them make us happy."

It is a wonderful display of self deception and the human desire for power over the lives and choices of others. For the desire for power is either a result of self deception (believing that controlling others is the only way to bring about peace), or the implicit helplessness of the individual to affect positive change in the world is an excuse to seize power. Desire for power is always naively misguided or maliciously shrouded in a pitiful excuse, or both.

This is why I hate politics, this is why I don't get swept up in political rallies and why I roll my eyes when I hear politicians speak; because to me politics represents the worst in us, our potential for self deception, our greed for power, our lack of moral scruples when flippantly assuming we have the right to control the lives of others.

This is what politics is all about.

An Open Letter to Stefan Molyneux Concerning his Theory of Mind

An Open Letter

to

Stefan Molyneux

Concerning

his

Theory of Mind

Chapter 1: Discovery

You brought this on yourself. 

Had you refrained from broadcasting logical frameworks and philosophical arguments I never would have learned how to think. I’d still be stuck in the arrogant quandary of religiosity; the sleepless slumber of mind. 

It was you that pulled me out, I employed your methods of thinking and by the light of skepticism discerned my way out of the labyrinth I had once explored and loved so dearly.

For I had loved my religion, my supposed super reality that sat atop all that I could see as something my mind, but not my eyes could comprehend.

My mind, my imaginative faculties combined with what I knew of logic were put to the task of writing a book; an essay, and a second; a novel, both to this end: to extol the virtues of and explicate the internal logical coherence of the Mormon model of reality.  

Internal coherence is one thing, if it exists at all. But it is not enough as I grew to learn. You taught me that.

And so after having put my logical and imaginative faculties to work exploring one un-worldview, having explored it to its fundamental assertions and having found it lacking I turned their attention to the most evidenced-based, coherent and connected understanding of the world I could find. I started thinking for myself. 

Your words were powerful. They taught me so much; indeed without them I would be unable to produce the caliber of criticism forthcoming.

Putting only the tools of thought and examination - which I have in part or in full acquired at your expense - to work on your own prodigious arguments and assertions concerning just one topic I now present to you a flaw in your thinking.

Chapter 2: The Heavens are Circle

This flaw is fundamental, reaching up from the assumption upon which your theory of mind rests to corrupt all that is built atop the fundamental assumption. And in mainly two ways.

The fundamental incorrect assumption produces two fallacies:

Free will is fundamental. You believe that the human conscious mind is endowed, by its very nature, to something you call but scarcely define “free will.” It seems to mean to your mind that the actions performed by the individual are freely chosen independent of the causes that produced it.

Ethics are dependent on this notion of free will, and only this free will in order to be worthy of the their name.

The heavens don’t require perfect circles to exist, and believing they do creates quite the difficult situation. Innumerable questions and infinite complexity is required to make the data fit the paradigm. The assumption needs to be changed, the belief forsaken.

In your case the fundamental assumption that must be challenged is not that the heavens are circle, it is not even that free will is real. The assumption upon which your theory of mind rests and is the source of its corruption is the assertion that human consciousness is outside the comprehension of the human mind, that is to say that it is beyond mechanical, beyond the realm of cause and effect. 

Now, undoubtedly you’ll deny this as you should. But you’ll deny it in word only. Its dastardly effects in your theory of are still present as evidence that the belief is not forsaken. Must I provide evidence to this end? I will regardless. 

Chapter 3: Evidence  

Someone once asked you where consciousness comes from. I remember this because I too found this question quite compelling at the time. You replied that consciousness, that is to say subjective experience arises from the brain. You may have even said it is an emergent property of its connectivity. 

This was to me a surprise. I had naturally assumed because of your resolved determination to defend free will that you must not believe the conscious phenomenon to arise from matter or be a mechanical process. 

I listened on and realized how you came to resolve this issue and dispel the ensuing cognitive dissonance: simply make human thought sacred, untouchable, beyond the realm of understanding. 

You may have done this subconsciously; I intimate no direct effort for self or other-directed deception. Let me show you some examples and you can judge for yourself.  

In our latest discussion I equated the term ‘ought to’ to ‘will,’ a mistake...somehow.

Jordan: “So um, what ought to be is an expression of will, right?”

Stefan: “Oh I don’t know I think will is a bit too dilute, you’ve always got to say to yourself, can an ocelot do it?...now the ocelot wills things right? I mean tries to catch the mice the mouse tries to escape and so you gotta be careful with things that can go to non-humans because ethics only applies to people right? So will is foundational to just about all living creatures I believe.” (Getting Trolled by Socrates, 55:30)

It seems that somehow in your estimation ought to goes beyond the expression of will though you fall short of explaining how or why.

I put it to your mind, which is more likely: that the aforementioned animal mind exhibits a difference in degree or in kind? I find a difference in kind to be highly unlikely, though it seems to be your assumption. The human mind is a unique little snowflake so magical that it can create a universal ought without the use of a will or preference.

Ethics does not in your mind scale up with the level of intelligence an organism has. To you it is not a continuum. Why? It seems to me that for it not to be a continuum in any way you must assert the human mind is fundamentally a different kind of intelligence than the animal mind, rather than a difference in degree as it most obviously is.

If ought to be is not an expression of will perhaps you can enlighten me as to what the term actually means. This is precisely the kind of flaws that an over respect for the uniqueness of the human mind would produce on the surface of one’s worldview. 

Speaking of artificial intelligence you said, “But that’s not thinking, right? That’s simply data matching. That’s just pattern recognition, now I’m not saying it’s easy or anything like that but that’s not the same as thinking.” (Will Artificial Intelligence Kill Us All? 16:30) 

Pray tell, what could thinking be other than pattern recognition and data processing? This podcast shows your bias towards the human mind as inexplicable from another angle. You seemed to hold the position that computers can’t think and probably never will. Either way you seemed uneasy entertaining the notion, possibly, I would posit, because it has some forceful challenges to your thoughts on the uniqueness of human thought.

Taken together, these and many other pieces of evidence combine to produce a view of the human mind that is unreproducible in machines, and fundamentally different than the mind of animals. 

You suffer from the same habit of thinking or rather, unthinknig as those that asserted the Ptolemaic system, namely that something is in your estimation special, unseen and sacred. 

Their heaven was perfect and required perfect circles. In your estimation the mind is either perfectly situated between all perfectly balanced opposing forces, allowing for free will or it is simply beyond those forces, inhabiting a higher plane of existence. How else could the mind be exempt from the crude and earthly rule of cause and effect?

In short your view of the mind is, without admitting it to be so, entirely superstitious - a kind of sanctity surrounds it. Nothing can approach it in kind; the only body in the universe that does not precess.

And all to what end? To preserve the sanctity of free will.

Chapter 4: Inexorably

At this point the author is considering the possibility that you have not yet fully comprehended the progression of these ideas.

Perhaps you see an assertion for free will to be entirely unrelated to your conception of the form and function of conscious, subjective experience.

Indeed one must be built upon the other. A theory of how the mind arises from matter must of necessity inform one’s belief in free will and define its meaning. Unfortunately for you any theory of mind arising from matter must of necessity negate your supposed free will for matter’s behavior is entirely determined. 

You may believe that because consciousness is an emergent property of the brain that it can break the bands of cause and effect and fly free of the bonds of determinism as though it was made of some ethereal substance. However, a moment's contemplation will undoubtedly prove to the reader that though emergent systems can produce unanticipated results, breaking the laws of physics is not yet known to be one of them.

I may very well use this observation as further evidence that you have either never contemplated the boundaries of emergent systems or subconsciously assume the contradiction away. 

Let us turn our attention from free will, ‘the result’ to free will, ‘the source’. You have already shown your hand on the topic free will and how it relates to ethics.

Your words were, “If neuroscience disproves free will… then ethics as a discipline would be dead. There would be no conceivable thing as ethics if free will is disproven.” (Getting Trolled By Socrates 1:03:40)

As I have above stated, your definition of free will must be assumed as you have never defined it in scientific terms, merely in circular ones.

Your statement can mean only one of two things, were we to look at what underlying assumptions may have produced it: 

Either the human mind isn’t able to be understood causally, (which may be the case, however ridiculous) or we may deduce that your foundational beliefs about the human mind are incompatible with a scientific worldview. Which case do you find more rational; a magic brain or a belief in magic?

Though you say the mind arises from the brain I have provided thorough evidence that you must not actually believe that which you pronounce. Given the abundance of beliefs you hold that counter the statement I am left no free choice but to go with the evidence. 

Any theory of mind has no choice but to have some effect on the definition of “free will” and any matter based theory of mind must negate it or redefine it as simply the subjective experience of desire.

Building an ethical theory entirely on the elusive free will must inexorably fade to black.

Chapter 5: Paradigm Shift

The self-evident fact is that we are indeed conscious. The logical fact is that our actions can arise from no other place than the brain and must be subject to the law of cause and effect.

What then is subjective experience? I put it to you: What does it mean to be conscious in a fully mechanical world? Does it mean that pain and pleasure are mere illusions? Certainly it does not, for what is more real than what one can feel? Does it mean nihilism is inevitable? Does it mean producing a philosophy, nay; a science of ethics is doomed to failure? 

If your answers to those questions align with the affirmative then you can know one thing for certain - your paradigm is incompatible with a scientific worldview and is therefore superstitious.

The paradigm needs to change.

Your definition of mind needs to change. Let’s look at what the world might look like were this to happen. 

Firstly conscious experience, must be produced wholly by the brain and though seemingly artificial when compared to an immortal sole as the center of consciousness this model takes nothing away from the very real experience of pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow and every emotion in between.

Taken in this light our conception of free will must change. Free will, if it means anything at all must refer to one’s subjective experience of their desire being uninhibited by processes that their conscious mind is not directly aware of and does not identify with. It must be a subjective experience of freedom of will nothing more. Far from requiring the receding self to be a paradoxical first cause of our free will this definition actually rejects the possibility.

Ethics stops being about making the “right” choices from a unknowable sea of free will. The science of ethics instead might determine the best course of action based on two things: what diminishes pain in the experience of all conscious entities, self and others included, and the minimal set of universal rules that provide the most sustainable and pleasurable outcome. 

There is no such thing as universally preferable behavior unless and until all conscious entities - that is to say entities that can by definition have a preference - are consulted as to all their preferred behaviors in every situation: an impossible task indeed.

Allow me to elaborate on the ethics front. 

By changing the definition of ethics from relying on free will to a logical framework you drop the superstition about the sanctity and uniqueness of the human mind while keeping a universal framework (possibly upb) as valid and functional.

For example consider the following definition of ethics: the minimalist set of universal rules or restrictions to allow a system of conscious, willful individuals to create a healthy system. Sound familiar? Bitcoin has a minimalist set of rules that all participants must comply with in order to produce a healthy system of bitcoin miners and users. 

A healthy system by definition must produce a sustainable environment for all individual actors in it to thrive so long as they fit into the environment.

These thoughts on alternative ethics are not fully formed ethical frameworks. These thoughts are presented merely to dissuade you against the nihilism of a dying paradigm.

Chapter 6: Exhortation

Neuroscience will find a causal link between occurrences in the brain and subjective experience. Pain and pleasure will be and in part have been decoded. The mechanisms by which we attribute behaviors to have occurred as a result of desire and attention, (whether or not they actually have) will be delineated. 

Already one of the neuroanatomical algorithms of the neocortex has been derived allowing us to begin to build artificially intelligent machines able to detect patterns and make sense of data in the same way our own neocortex does (see numenta). This is happening already.

Eventually the conscious phenomenon itself will be decrypted and with it our subjective experiences will be reinterpreted with the added light and benefit of a causal view. So long as science progresses this must be the case that our minds will be understood unless our conscious experience is due to an immaterial substance as you seem to and as the religious expressly suppose.

What we now call “free will” will have nowhere to hide in an entirely caused world; its mystical origins will vanish along with all the philosophies and theories that free will implied.

My dear friend you said it better than I ever could, “If science advances to the point where every operation of human consciousness is known and predicted in advance then ethics will be revealed as a superstition very much akin to a religion that relied upon a lack of knowledge and a projection of a desired state on that very ignorance.” (Getting Trolled by Socrates 1:04:50)

You’re right if you narrowly define ethics as such only if it is dependent on a superstitious interpretation of the term, “free will.” When free will is disproven ethics, itself, will not be dead; your ethics will be dead.

If you don’t build your ethical theory on a surer foundation than free will derived from an anti-empirical mind it won’t stand the test of time or the test of knowledge.

This is not a fate you or your work deserves.

Asserting that ethical philosophy must be built solely or fundamentally on the supposed reality of free will in order to be worthy of the name is to assert nihilism when free will is ultimately proved as no more than an illusion. All is lost and nothing is to be done about it, right? One would hope not. 

By asserting that free will is the foundation or perhaps just the keystone to any valid ethical framework is to ignore the very real experience of emotions. Rocks cannot be blamed for rolling down a hill, but rocks also show no evidence of having subjective experience. Besides all that, is blame such a valuable thing that it must be included in our ethical philosophy?

Planting ethics purely on a notion of free will seems to me to be disregarding the subjective experience side of the equation as if it’s an irrelevant illusion. To me my subjective experience is indeed the only thing in the universe I know exists for certain, it is in my estimation the most real thing there is.

Should emotions of happiness or sorrow play no part in the question of what is to be done with or around other people, the question of what is ethical?

You yourself have spent years introducing a level of causal understanding of the human psyche to your listeners. You’ve been fighting for people to understand cause and effect as it relates to their relationships.

For example you’ve often helped people understand that their natural responses to tough questions are actually a second nature - responses bread into them by perhaps their parents reactions to such tough questions in their past. You’ve helped them recognize when they’re projecting other people into the conversation, sometimes other people that are long dead. 

You have not diminished the conversation by pointing out the psychology involved in this interaction, on the contrary; you’ve improved it. By pointing out the causal link between trauma and internal feelings and external responses you’ve improved your listeners’ ability to relate to themselves and others. You may see it as giving your listeners more ability to have free will but that doesn’t make any sense. What you’ve done is effected their brain and improved their subjective experience. By having an effect, you improve lives. Free will didn’t do shit. 

Why must you assume that the sky would fall if people stopped believing in free will?

I myself have written a book defending free will - when I was religious. And it certainly makes for an internally coherent view of the world. But internal coherence is not enough. You taught me that.

My I exhort you, sincerely and honestly to take a wholly scientific view of the mind and build an ethical framework on top of that.    

If this letter has discovered to you the fallacious underlying assumption upon which your theory of mind and therefore your philosophy of ethics sits, if it has produced within you even an inkling of curiosity as to your own emotional attachment to the poorly defined idea of “free will,” or if this letter just - perhaps at a time far hence after your emotional responses have run their course - serves to impress upon your mind a sense of urgency to reconsider these matters or to consider them for the first time, it will have accomplished its goal aimed at by 

your servant; most humble, obedient, and correct,

Jordan Miller

What is the Nature and Source of Evil?

Introduction

A friend of mine posed this question to me some time ago, so I thought I'd run it through the current framework of how I see the world and see what comes out.

The question of evil is traditionally a religious one, for religions have the reputation of being the bastions of moral truth. So we'll first look at the source of evil to set us up for understanding what evil is, then we'll relate it all back to the religious approach to evil.

The Source of Evil

Free to Choose

Even if the devil existed he would not be the source of evil. In all the major theologies the devil can't ultimately make you do it. He is seen as a tempter, he can only entice. Therefore in the religious understanding evil is a choice. 

What about in the non-religious understanding? Here more questions seem to arise to fog the issue. There are, after all, psychopaths, brain abnormalities, tumors, sociopaths and politicians (but I repeat myself). However none of these disorders change the fact that evil is a choice. 

Evil must be a choice to be evil. A car cannot be evil, even it if its breaks fail and it kills someone. The car didn't have intent or knowledge, it didn't make that choice, it was physics. 

Morality and Evil

Ok, so evil is a choice; a specific kind of choice. Some decisions we make such as what kind of music to listen to are simply personal preference and cannot be evil. Other choices are either evil or not evil - these are moral decisions.

So to understand evil in its entirety, to define it correctly we must understand firstly that evil is one category of "moral" activity. Morality wouldn't exist without the concept of free will. So from the highest view, the source of evil is free will, but not all freely chosen options can be classified as evil or good. Sometimes our choices are neutral or they just fall outside of the moral dichotomy. 

The Source of Morality

The most basic morality is the golden rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. We have the cognitive ability to realize that feelings, sensations and experience (pain and pleasure) can be felt by others as well. I don't want to feel pain, so others probably wouldn't like that either.

In other words morality is derived from our ability as cognizant beings to feel pain or pleasure and to recognize that others do too. 

The Source of Evil

To sum up, only choices can be classified as evil which is a type of moral classification. Evil is not a thing in and of itself, it only 'exists' in relation to how we classify choices. 

The internet isn't a thing, its just a set of interactions between computers on a network. Just as the internet doesn't exist without computers interacting, so does morality not exist without people interacting.

The Nature of Evil

The Nature of Morality

Since evil is a moral classification perhaps we ought to define morality for a minute.

With our understanding of how others must feel (empathy) we try to make moral rules to live by, a protocol. A good example of this is the Golden Rule. Any moral rule must be universal to be a valid moral rule.

Lets prove this by taking an example of a moral code that isn't universal: lets say I believe it is "good" for me to kill anyone I wish, But it is "evil" for every other person to kill me. 

This moral code "isn't fair," as the children say. I'm a human, everyone I wish to kill are humans, we're not so different that their desires are to die and mine are to live. We have a universal experience; pain for me is pain for most people. Such an asymmetric rule doesn't make any logical sense.

So for a moral rule to be valid it must be universal since we're mostly the same.

What is Evil? 

As stated above moral laws are built upon our ability to 1. make conscious decisions (free will) 2. feel pain and pleasure (feelings and knowledge) 3. have the sense to desire pleasure and avoid pain (desires) 4. understand the implications of those decisions on others (empathy).

If morality is built atop all of that then a category of moral decisions (evil) must also be built on top of all that. Evil must be a choice, evil must understand what causes pain and pleasure and evil must desire pain for others. In other words; evil requires a knowledge of virtue. 

Evil as Perverted Virtue

Lets take a quick example; Sadism.

sa·dism

ˈsāˌdizəm/

noun

1. the tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others.

   • (in general use) deliberate cruelty.

To have sadistic tendencies you must first understand that others can suffer like you and you must desire their suffering. To actually be a sadist you must act on your desires and actually inflict pain, suffering or humiliation on others. 

Here we see that sadism requires empathy. If you didn't actually believe others could feel pain or pleasure you would be indifferent to them. You would torture them as much as you torture any inanimate object.

In order to hate someone you must grant them the dignity of being conscious, indifference requires no such knowledge or concern. 

Evil as Dysfunction

In healthy individuals empathy tends towards sympathy. Understanding how others feel makes the healthy person less likely to harm others. It engenders a sense of union, a shared humanity, even love; not sadism. Sadism is dysfunctional, a sign of mental or emotional illness.

It is accurate to say that evil people are unhealthy or have not developed emotionally or mentally in a healthy way. Sadism is an example of how the helpful knowledge of empathy is perverted to cause suffering instead of increase unity in a community. Its a disease, however we cannot put all the blame on a lack of health. 

If we could assign ill-health the full causation then we would strip away an evil doer's humanity and turn him or her into an automaton, a robot who is programmed, an animal acting on instinct. The moment we assign cause wholly to their lack of emotional health we strip them of all freewill and therefore all capacity to act morally. 

Freewill and Evil

Now, perhaps someone is literally insane, totally disconnected from reality, automatically acting out the whims of a broken mind. There is no freewill in this situation and his or her actions cannot be classified as evil. Perhaps they've killed someone in broad daylight and showed no remorse. Animals do that. He might be harmful and dangerous, but not evil.

As long as there is control there is free will and people are morally responsible for their actions.

For instance there are abusive parents in this world. These parents usually somehow find it within their souls to refrain from abusing their children when a cop is around or when child services stop by or probably even around friends.

In other words they can refrain from being immoral, unethical or abusive when it's convenient for them. In the same way that a hitman hides a body to avoid being caught. An animal or insane person doesn't have that control.

I've heard grown people say that their mother or father was abusive to some degree or another but that it was only because they were bipolar or had some other disorder and "couldn't control it." However, if the parent could avoid the abuse in public then we have evidence that they could indeed control it. They may very well have been bipolar but that is no excuse to strip their freewill, moral agency and human dignity away.

The act of avoiding being caught in evil is proof that someone has enough freewill to be responsible for evil choices.

Candidate Sources of Evil

With all that we've discussed so far we can turn our attention to what is commonly said about the source of evil. 

Some people say "the love of money is the root of all evil."

Can the love of money entice someone to do immoral things? Absolutely. Can it do more than entice? Can someone's love of money actually be the whole cause of someone's evil actions? No, as we've just discussed if evil isn't a choice it isn't evil. If greed could overtake all of one's control of mind and body then that mind and body would no longer have free will. Any actions undertaken by such an individual consumed by greed (were that even possible) would not have been chosen and therefore cannot be evil. Harmful, perhaps, but not evil. 

Additionally, love of money can cause people to do great things - create great businesses, produce awesome products or even just go to work and contribute to society. 

One need only to find one person making an evil decision who is not motivated by his love of money to disprove this claim.

Furthermore there are many other candidate sources of evil if that is our definition for the 'source of evil'; something that entices you to behave immorally. 

One such candidate is religion itself; suicide bombers, crusades and witch hunts are all great examples of evils done in the name of religion. However religion certainly is not the source of all evil. 

Its been said that religion is the cause of all wars in history. This is provably false and holds about as much water as the claim that money is the root of all evil.

A few mental health professionals or neurologists probably believe that evil is nothing more than unhealthy dysfunction but as we've discussed previously that can't fully account for evil choices because evil choices are choices.

Certainly people choose to act abusively or even cruelly because of psychological problems but those psychological problems can't account for all evil. Though perhaps emotional issues is the best candidate for a source of evil; perhaps this is the biggest enticement to the largest number of people to commit evil acts. 

Keep in mind, though, if someone is so far gone that he's lost all control you can't even call his actions evil because he isn't making any choices. Calling a legitimate lunatic's killing act "murder" is like calling terminally ill cancer patient's death "suicide." It may cause suffering, but its not moral.

Without choice there is not morality, and therefore no evil. 

The Nature of Evil

Okay, so lets take a step back and define the nature of evil in greater detail. We've learned that one form of evil, sadism is a perversion of empathy towards suffering rather than empathy's most healthy conclusion: a sense of union and shared humanity.

Lets take another example of this: a mugger.  

The mugger, like the sadist knows that you prefer to live to the alternative so he says, "your money or your life." He uses your healthy desires against you just as the villain will use the hero's desires against him by taking the hero's love interest hostage and force the far more powerful hero to do his bidding. 

Not only does he use your desires against you, he uses your peaceful nature to his benefit. Muggers take money from people that seem peaceful not from people that seem violent.

By his actions and words he's communicating a moral code he lives by, "My desires should be satisfied and yours should not. My property rights should be respected but your property rights should not be respected. I get to use force against you but you do not get to use force against me." 

In this example it is perfectly obvious that evil is hypocritical. The mugger asserts 2 opposing, asymmetrical moral rules for people who feel the same pains, pleasures and largely have the same desires for property and life. Evil is always hypocritical, requiring directly opposite moral laws for both similar individuals.

Evil is an acceptance of a general moral rule (property rights for example) followed by an direct violation of that moral rule. 

Evil is an acceptance of the general virtue of people followed by an exploitation of that virtue.

The Religious take on Evil

God Creates Good?

Growing up extremely religious I was taught certain things about morality that I feel need to be addressed.

I haven't given this an extensive amount of dedicated thought so this is in no way an exhaustive analysis.

All that is Good comes from God

As a religious person I was taught to thank God for all good things and I still try to be grateful but not to a deity, just in general.

I learned a lot about my church before I learned about others. In college I took a philosophy of religions class and I noticed that the Catholics and Protestants believe some pretty strange stuff. For instance in The Book of Mormon it says that if God was false or behaved immorally he would cease to be God. To the classical theist view this is heresy because God defines what is good, he does not conform to what is good. 

Having as I did, the natural inclination to the belief that God conforms to what is right, I also had the natural inclination to believe that I knew or could know through logic and deduction what was right or wrong.  

So when I got older it started to confuse me when I thought about how God did things that seemed to violate that morality. It really confused me when God murdered whole nations in the old testament, when he commands certain leaders in the church to practice polygamy, and on a more personal note, why doesn't God answer my prayers when he seems to talk to others? These were just a few of the moral exemptions God seemed to allow himself that bothered me.

The classical theists (Catholics and Protestants) are insulated from this cognitive dissonance because whatsoever God does is right, end of story. 

The Purpose and Virtue of Faith

The Mormons try to explain it away but when their explanations produce more and more questions they fall back on the default religious position of "you should have faith." 

Perhaps we don't understand all the intergalactic, eternal purposes of God but shouldn't an apparent hypocritical action on God's part be met with some concern? Searching? Answers? If it is just a matter of us not understanding morality like God does, that's a pretty big problem considering that we're here to be tested and prove how moral we are.

What is the point of a church that can't fully teach its members about what is right and what is wrong and why?

Perhaps I'm expecting too much. When I was younger I fully expected all my questions to be answered eventually. I expected no less of an infinite and omnipotent Deity; a Deity that claims to love me personally.

This might sound a hostile, but it is not, its logical. When I was religious death did not bother me because I truly believed there was an afterlife. I was logical. So now too it follows that a perfectly moral God would always behave perfectly morally and if he does not then one of two things is true: we do not understand what moral behavior is which should cause deep anxiety within us as a church or God is immoral. I'm still just logical.

A Word On Sin

The government uses the term 'crime' to indicate any activity it will punish. We can know what the government thinks is immoral by what it labels a crime. 

The church uses the term 'sin' to indicate any activity it deems immoral. There is however very little physical force that a church can subject a sinner to. It can only take steps to expel a member from its community which is entirely their prerogative and involves no force whatsoever.

This does not mean, however, that the church doesn't have an extremely strong mental and emotional affect on its devotees. Its truly harmful punishments come in the form of self-attack on the part of the member. This effect is magnified in children. In order for the term 'sin' to have any effect on the individual guilt or fear must be generated by the individual himself.

Children from devout families take their church very seriously. If you tell them they'll go to hell for sinning they will believe you. I, myself, confessed in the 6th grade to a friend that my biggest fear was not going to heaven.

For the teenage believers guilt is often the undertone of their development. The church demonizes the flesh and in doing so turns one's own body against them.

But as we have seen above morals have everything to do with how we treat one another and have nothing to do with anything done in isolation. Even in the simplest form of morals, (treat others as you would like to be treated) morals says nothing about things you do alone that have no effect on other people. Morals only apply to our interaction in the world. 

Because moral terms or categories only apply to interactions with others and "crimes" and "sins" encompass some actions done in isolation we can deduce something about the nature of these concepts. We can see that the concept of "sin" has very little to do with morals, whats right and wrong, or good and evil. Either the concept of "sin" has more to do with what is deemed to be healthy or beneficial behavior or some other thing but the religious term "sinning" does not necessarily mean "doing evil."

Lets take a minute to look at this concept in a little more detail.

Adultery in your Heart 

Growing up I was taught some very important truth about the power of my mind - that my thoughts can lead to action. I was also taught something else that began to bother me at one point - that thoughts can be sins. 

I read 1984 in high school and learned about totalitarian societies. I especially remember learning about thought crimes.

In 1984 its perfectly obvious that thought crimes are the epitome of control. All the major religions of the earth however assert that "bad thoughts" are a sin. Jesus made the distinction between actually committing adultery and lust then equated the two to some degree:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Matt. 5:27-28)

Lusting to commit adultery probably isn't a sign of a health in a monogamous relationship, however is the symptom of a possible problem a sin? Apparently it is, does that mean its immoral? Can having any thought whatsoever actually be immoral? My thoughts do not put guns in people's ribs, they can't rape someone, or murder, assault them or even defraud them. These are behaviors, these require action. 

If my thoughts startle me, or disturb me, if they seem abnormal, violent or perverse perhaps that's the time to get help, not suppress them.

Victimless Crimes

The church, especially the LDS church, teaches it's members that they have total free will. They do not joke around about free will, according to Mormon theology mortal man has such an abundance of free will that if he uses it correctly he can become like God. 

At the same time they regulate the inner thoughts and personal activities (in areas such as what they ingest, the words they speak and their sexual activities to name a few) of its members.

In this way the church absolutely asserts freedom of will but denies self ownership. That is a contradiction. Where does freedom of will come from other than self ownership? In the LDS theology mans' freewill is innate to his nature, specifically because he is co-eternal with God. This is outlined in the 93rd section of the D&C.

If one does not have enough self ownership to do whatever he or she likes as long as it doesn't hurt others then what does it even mean to have self ownership?

Every crime needs a victim. A thought crime is also known simply as a thought.

Abuse to Children

There is nothing wrong with an organization that broadcasts messages on how to live morally and or well. Its odd but not evil if this organization believes in a hell or a super reality such as an entire theology. 

However the trouble arises when children are involved. Children do not have the mental capacity to evaluate the claims made by their church, children do not have the emotional maturity nor the economic wherewithal to defy their parents. They are not independent. 

If this effect does not seem that harmful to you take a real world example to compare it to. If I ran a hospital for mentally handicap adults and I told them if they did something wrong that didn't even hurt anyone else, such as get out of bed in the middle of the night that they were bad that when they died they'd be sent to hell with other bad people bad people (a claim an cannot prove, by the way, which is intellectually dishonest) I'd be guilty of emotional abuse. Yet this is the norm for children and no one thinks anything of it.

God and Morality

As I have mentioned on this blog before I was not pulled away from my religion by transgression or anti-mormon material. I learned what was right and what was wrong and why - logically.

I realized then that my church, the institution that asserts its perfect authority on the topic of what is right and what is wrong is a fraud.

This was a terrible pill to swallow. I didn't want to believe it, I wanted to stay on my current trajectory and keep the God of my youth. It took several months of fear and unanswered prayer to actually accept what I had learned and it took several more months of confusion to reorient myself to a life without God. I would wish such a journey for everyone who desires to take it but I would not wish to inflict it upon any happy and content or otherwise unwilling soul. 

The nature and source of evil isn't a mystical or elusive thing. It isn't a deity or supernatural being. It's not enough to explain it away with greed or lust, bad habits or superstition. Evil is one part choice and one part some enticement to behave immorally. Such enticements might come from a dysfunctional childhood or the opportunity to acquire power or the belief of getting forty virgins in heaven or anything else.

Conclusion

The important thing is not to know where evil comes from for its enticements are legion and we ultimately have the choice to behave that way or not. What's far more valuable to understand is the nature of evil; its nothing more than immoral actions. Morality is nothing more than a protocol we use when interacting with each other to avoid unnecessary harm. Therefore for anything to be classified as evil there must be at least two parties involve.

This question, "What is the Nature and Source of Evil?" cannot be answered without defining a consistent moral theory. I personally feel the definition of morality I've given here meets that requirement. Furthermore I've compared this moral theory to the other moral theories I've been taught in my life and found it to be the only logically consistent moral theory there is. I compared the theory of morality I accept to the one religion has given (obey and have faith) and found mine more logically consistent. I also compared it to the morality of the state (violence is power) and found mine to be more logically consistent.

If I'm Wrong

I could be mistaken about the logic of morality. I might not have it right. But regardless, the concerns that the church has no rational answer behind their moral assertions are legitimate. The issue of "just have faith" still stands. If my moral thinking isn't correct, the reader is charged with finding or determining what shall suit his own moral requirements.

But what if I'm wrong about all my concerns here? If I am wrong about everything, God will doubtless be gentle with me in the hereafter if he is a fair, empathetic and moral heavenly parent. But If I'm wrong about that too (his moral nature) then I'll be cast out of his presence which would be my preference in that case; I don't keep company with immoral people.

The Purpose of Life

Thinkers, philosophers, theologians even scientists have struggled with this question for tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of years. 

Having been religious I thought I had it all figured out. If I may quote the intro to The Used's song, 'take it away':

"Life's greatest questions have always been: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? You are about to see and hear one of the most significant messages given to us from God."

Those are the questions that religions promise to answer. And I believed mine had the answers until I questioned my religion and found it lacking. It wasn't until after that experience that I found myself reborn, a wanderer in a strange land, again in my infant state, knowing nothing of my existence. It was then that I realized, "My God! I'm going to have to think for myself."

I realized after I left my religion that there was no one purpose to life. There were infinite purposes to life. "The Purpose of Life" is an incomplete sentence, it should be "The Purpose of Life for Me." This is because everyone is different, everyone has different desires.

That middle question, "Why am I here?" is the most important of the bunch. "Who am I?" and "Where did I come from?" helped to answer that question for me. But here I don't want to talk much about the journey; I just want to talk about the conclusion that I've come to so far. 

Instead of living this life for the next I ought to start living this life for this life.

I think children know this. When children are asked, "If you could give adults one piece of advice what would it be?" They respond most often with something along these lines, "have more fun." 

I remember growing up and the need to have fun everyday was very important. During our family prayer at night the kids would usually say something like this, "and help us have a good day tomorrow and to have fun."

A few weeks ago I went through a Stanford course online in philosophy. The topic was the purpose of life. In the course the professor discussed the hedonistic viewpoint in particular to his other musings: that the point of life is to just have the most pleasure possible.

I think this point of view might superficially resemble the child's point of view because at their maturity level they most often express desires to have fun and they express the most delight at pleasures such as candy. But I believe even children have other budding desires that go beyond the hedonistic point of view. 

Even as a 3rd or 4th grader I remember being disappointed in my schooling and it wasn't just because I wasn't having enough fun. I wished they taught more science, I wished I was doing useful stuff there. It felt like a waste of time. In other words I had a desire to learn and be fulfilled in my school work. 

So the hedonistic point of view is not really my point of view, but much like the child's point of view on this topic I think it has a superficial resemblance.

The most efficient way to happiness for children is having fun. And I think that is the purpose to life - to be happy. To me that means to be fulfilled, content, peaceful, at times excited, curious, and the whole range of emotions that constitute lifelong happiness. I know that's partly tautological but we'll start exploring it now. 

Nothing has meaning except the meaning you give it.

Contrary to the religious belief everything only has the meaning you give it. If life has any meaning at all for you it is you that has given life that meaning. You are the one that has assigned the value to life. Money means nothing to swine. Spectator sports mean nothing to me. Even the words on this screen are just symbols and only have meaning in your mind. Your whole world is in your mind.

So, exploring the meaning of life either consciously or subconsciously is very important. Children do this naturally (subconsciously) and often come to the conclusion that having fun everyday is the most successful way to be happy. Ultimately we all do what we want. Therefore you could define the meaning of life simply as what you want, then start defining that. 

I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm rambling, these are all the important thoughts I've had on the matter and I really just want to get them recorded. 

What are the different aspects to being happy? Or in other words, what are the different things I want in my life?  The answer to that question is the answer to the purpose of life for me.

I definitely want the aspect of fun.

I want to have fun with friends and to have play in my world. This can take the form of sports, video games, even (I am tempted to say) spirited debates for these all include cooperation and/or competition and entertainment.

Fun is an interesting thing because it has some ineffable quality about it. (Ineffable because I don't understand why its fun but I know when I'm having it). I suppose this "fun aspect of life" is a more general thing than just play. You can enjoy yourself and "have fun" in my different activities in life. I mean being cheerful, making jokes, being entertained, experiencing pleasure, being joyful, having a good time. I'm gonna lump all these into one word for now: fun. 

I think like the children do, I want to be sustained on a steady diet of fun every day. 

I also want to feel fulfilled in my work.

This has been a hard one for me to figure out. I used to believe that I couldn't be happy in my work as long as I was working for someone else, or perhaps even as long as I was indeed working at all. I equated working to drudgery and I still do to a much lesser extent. This is of course because it was all I had experienced.

However, my study of economics, management and entrepreneurship has lead me to a partial paradigm shift. Without going into details here I now can and do see value in belonging to a group and doing something with and for the larger society.

I realized that employment vs entrepreneurship is really a false dichotomy in many minds. Every employee is in business for himself and his business is to provide his labor or specialized services to his employer. Every employer is nothing more than an employee of sorts to his customers and a consumer of his employee's goods. In many ways (not all) its a distinction without a difference.

This understanding has caused me to take more pride in my work because it allows me to view myself as an acting agent, a dignified individual on par in the free will department with my bosses, managers, supervisors and employers. Danial Pink got it right in my case when he deduced that many employees want more autonomy, purpose and mastery over their work. I would also add progression.

I was going to make a different heading to talk about success in life but I think I can fit it in here. I've set for myself certain career goals that constitute what looks like long-term financial and entrepreneurial success for me. So setting myself goals that will progress my life and lead to future happiness, then achieving those goals is success to me. And as far as my work is concerned I have a few goals set:

I want to move up and out of my current position at work into a different type of labor as a programmer. I would like to make as much or more money on my own entrepreneurial projects as I do at my career.

Besides those two goals I have a more long-term goal of doing or being a part of something that makes a difference in the world. What I mean by that is breaking the status quo; doing it better or asking if it needs to be done at all. Instead of working for a company that does something the same way its always done it I want to (at some point) head into the fray and do something new, be on the cutting edge, create a new innovation that will ripple it's influence throughout time and improve the future of not only my life but many others as well.


I want to be fulfilled in my intimate relationships.

This is also something that I feel I've consciously known for a short time, but subconsciously understood forever: what an intimate relationship is. 

I think a lot of people including myself at times are most comfortable with a "working relationship" with most of the people in their lives. But an intimate relationship with someone requires that you understand each other from the ground up and love what you see.

Take any evil person as an example, any person without morals, a sense of right and wrong without empathy for others, take any sadist. Lets take the most iconic of all.

Hitler was an evil man, and if I knew him, or even now if I study him I could know him from the ground up. By that I mean I could understand him and his values, the reasons he behaves the way he does. But I couldn't love him. I really don't think I could because our values are so different. Christians have this idea that you should love everyone even if they're evil. but I think that's rewarding sadism.

Love is not empathy. I could have empathy for Hitler I could explore his past and feel some of his pain perhaps but that does not mean I could love him. I'm still working all this out but I think love is something more innate. The real question is could Hitler love me? I don't think that is possible. Anything he would call love is not my definition of love. I think if we used the same word to mean different things, that would be an insult to the people I claim to love.

That's why I agree with Stefan Molyneux when he said that "Love is our involuntary response to virtue." More specifically I think that definition only applies to virtuous people: love is a virtuous person's involuntary or emotional response to virtue in others. I don't think a Hitler has the capacity to love.

So to have a loving and emotionally intimate relationship I think you need two people that are both virtuous that can take delight and joy out of knowing and experiencing the other person. I'm striving for excellence in this area and I want more of these kinds of people in my life.


I've always wanted to know the truth about every goddamn thing. 

I'm very curious and I take a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of learning about the world I live in. My favorite is when I learn something that changes the way I see every other thing - a paradigm shift. Those moments are awesome. I'm not going to say anything more about this, but if you're more curious about how I feel go watch "the Joy of Discovery" on youtube by melodysheep. It is sufficient to say that the quest for truth is a massive part of my purpose of life.

I want to know myself.

The above answer to my purpose of life is not a finished product. It's a beta version, maybe an alpha version. But it rests upon a foundation of something that I don't see changing for a long time: using my emotions as a guide in this quest for happiness.

Its good to feel anger when you know why you feel anger and you're comfortable with the reason. Same goes for sadness, I think its generally unhealthy to feel happy at a funeral. And I think its generally unhealthy if you don't feel anger in an abusive environment. 

So one tool we have to understand ourselves as humans is our emotional state. I'm in the process of making a new habit: if I find myself feeling an emotion that is unpleasant or that I feel is inappropriate I try to question why I'm feeling that way. And I don't try to artificially control those feelings. My limbic system doesn't care if these emotions are inconvenient or "wrong" it only tells me the truth about how I feel. 

So far I've learned about myself using this method. I've also learned about myself by studying science. A very broad understanding of artificial intelligence, neurology, sociology, psychology, genetics, evolution, and most recently child development all help me understand who, or rather, what I am.

In my quest for happiness I think its of paramount importance to know myself.

To me the purpose of life is to be happy.

The Buddhist (and other eastern philosophies) do this by giving up their personal desires for this life in preference for an indifferent and apathetic existence. 

The Theist (Muslims, Christians, and in my previous case Mormons) do this by giving up their personal desires in this life in preference for the hope of a happy, fulfilling paradise hereafter. 

I've rejected these ideas. To me the purpose of this life is to be happy and that can't be done by denying your personal desires. Tempering them, negotiating with them surely will lead to sustained happiness but denying them, being a dictator over your own self fragments the self and isn't fun.

Having realized that there is no one purpose to life, that there is no meaning in anything except the meaning I give it, I now believe that my purpose in life is to be happy because this is the only life I get.