Liberalism 101

Modern Liberalism is quite often confused with Socialism. Mostly by Americans. Liberals... are not socialists. There are quite a few differences there, most notably that a modern Liberal – at least in theory – doesn't care about equality.

I hate the word 'equality' (not the concept, the word), and I'm not going to explain why I hate it right now, but I do. Just know for the moment that I'm referring to equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity* can go sit in the corner for a while to let it's ugly step-sibling take up the attention. A Socialist*** wants everyone to have an outcome which is... roughly equal. Fair, at least. Some might think that effort should be exactly proportional to reward, and that everyone should thus be able to have exactly the same quality of life as anyone else, no matter what awful mistakes they might have made in the past. Some might think that all reward should be equal and thus that everyone should work for the good of the collective, rather than their own selfish ends. Some might think that effort should be based on contribution... there are a lot of Socialisms. But the point is that the outcome should be roughly equal in some way. Noone should be left behind. If anyone is, it'd be because they refuse to do any work. They're probably evil capitalist landowners who live on the sweat of the poor, downtrodden masses, and are incapable of being of benefit to society, like the salt of the earth workers are*****.

Modern Liberals don't, inherently, care about this. This might seem like a rather counter-intuitive statement, since modern liberalism seems to have sprung entirely out of concern for the poor. A large part of the point of the development of modern liberalism was that the 'freedom' of the classical liberals was all very well, but that this freedom might be, for the poorest in society, actually no more than the freedom to starve. It was modern liberalism which brought into being in the UK the beginning of the welfare state, which takes care of its citizens from cradle to grave. But the difference here is illustrated by the ideas of a classical liberal – Hayek (and no, the dates don't matter). He said that what we should have to protect people from poverty is a minimum level of provision – a line which noone would be allowed to fall below. Modern Liberalism carries on this tradition (despite predating Hayek). They care about lifting people out of poverty^††, but not necessarily about how far above 'not in poverty' the top – or even the average – member of society might be. Whilst Socialists care about the range of wealth levels, modern liberals are focused on the minimum.

Of course, the distinction is not always this clear cut. Even in the time of Smith, it was recognised that there were such things as positional goods, goods the utility of which is based upon the position of the rest of society. What is absolutely vital to a modern westerner might be not classify in the same way if you happen to be a Medieval Spaniard – a car, the internet, proper nutrition, etc. And this means that a greater objective level of wealth may be required in some places, times or societies, and for some people, to achieve the same level of utility – giving results similar to a sort-of system of relative poverty, but one with entirely different motives – one concerned about a basic level of utility (or standard of living), one concerned about equality of outcome.

The spread of liberalism also, at least arguably, has a tendency to increase the drive for equality. In a feudal society, a peasant might consider themselves 'wealthy', regardless of falling short of the poorest king, because a king is not measured on the same scale as a peasant, and so the presence or absence of positional goods in the life of a king is not to the same extent an influence on the happiness of the peasant. As social mobility (or at least the perception of it) increases, and society becomes less organised into castes, people start comparing themselves to a larger portion of society. So whilst a peasant might not compare themselves to a king, a worker will compare themselves to their boss in a modern liberal society – and moreso as class mobility increases. So someone who is objectively better off, living further up a much more liberal society, may actually feel worse off than someone who is further down a poorer society, simply because of who they're comparing themselves against.

So Modern Liberals support universalised healthcare, unemployment benefits, and all those myriad other things that prevent someone's life from becoming a hellish living drudge, from which the only escape is death. But their motivation is the extension of freedom, since 'work twelve hours a day or die of malnutrition' is not really freedom. Meanwhile Socialists tend to support far more radical wealth redistribution programmes, and their goal is equality.

So yeah. Modern liberalism is not Socialism. There's a difference – a huge difference. Liberals don't have to be modern liberals, either. And I'm focused on the Liberal side of things here. Being, y'know, a Liberal. Also, the UK isn't socialist. Neither is any of the rest of Europe, but some bits do have more of a Socialist bent than others^††††.

I have run out of things to say. I will now stop typing.

*The good kind of equality, but that's just my opinion**

**And also the correct one.

***As the term I used today in political science, or at least in the kind of political science I've studied.****

****On the USSR, I wrote an essay once on whether they were actual socialists or not. I should update it one of these days.

*****The salt of the Earth is, if I remember my Mill correctly, the kind of intellectual/revolutionary person who massively improves the world, but in small quantities – you couldn't have a society made entirely of that kind of person, in the same way that you wouldn't want to eat salt, but you add a little bit of it to something, and it improves it. I have no idea how this ended up meaning what it does now, but I'm guessing it was probably the Illuminati. It's usually the Illuminati.^†

^†OK, fine, yes, I do also know about the Sermon on the Mount. You should never trust me again. But, honestly, I prefer the version above – which makes sense in a modern context – to continuing to use it in a way which not only doesn't, but which also probably wasn't the way Jesus meant it.

^††Absolute poverty, by the way – not the whole stupid 'relative poverty' thing, where you can lift people out of poverty by causing the right kind of recession, and where people can fall into poverty for no other reason than that even though their lives are actually improving in economic terms, there are some other people hundreds of miles away, whose lives are improving faster.

^†††France. I'm talking about France. In case that wasn't clear.

The Word of... meh.

One thing that I find… difficult about writing this blog is not giving completely the wrong impression of my actual viewpoint. Let me give feminism as an example. If I’m just going to talk about what I would naturally talk about, I’d probably end up being a lot more likely to be speaking against feminism than for it. Not because I am, but because most of what feminism says is entirely reasonable, and talking about it seems somewhat pointless. Let’s say someone is raped. This does not seem like something I can spend that much time on. Rape is terrible. Right to ownership of one’s own body is the second most important right, if you agree with the concept of rights. Or rape is treating someone as a means, rather than an end, if you’re a Kantian. If you’re a utilitarian, it’s a little lower pleasure at the cost of a lot of higher pain. What… what else am I going to say about that? Is there disagreement on this one? There is really nothing much to say. Say someone is found guilty of rape and is given a shorter jail term than if they’d been caught jaywalking? Well, I can tell you that that’s awful, and that that is a really skewed sense of priorities. But, again, I don’t have much else to say about it. There are no complex issues involved, it’s just wrong. I also don’t feel the need to mention that I disagree with the Chinese treatment of Tibet, or that I am broadly in favour of women getting the vote. I’m a lot more likely to mention it if I disagree with the feminist movement on something, since that’s actually a lot more interesting to talk about, and likely to require more explaining. Dog bites man is not news* – man bites dog is. That I don’t like rape is not something that’s worth your time to read about, or that I feel the need to explain – that I hate freedom and apple pie is. That’s one reason I try and avoid current events, since if I’m not talking about one particular issue I don’t end up expounding only those of my views that make me look even more like an evil bastard than I actually am***. Also for other reasons, but that’s one of them.

Now, in a normal blog, one written by someone with skills such as ‘planning’ and ‘vague coherence’, this would be when I’d come to the ‘but’ part of the post. But, sadly, you are not reading a blog by a member of that exalted company (and if anyone is still reading this blog under that false impression, I would direct them to the ‘next blog’ button at the top of the page, which random chance dictates shall lead you to greener pastures****). Thus, the preceding paragraphs have little or nothing to do with… anything, really, but are merely the insane product of my deranged imaginings. As, I suppose, will be the succeeding ones, so maybe they’re more connected than I thought.

Anyway, I’m a Christian. As you can of course tell from my unfailing love and kindness, my dedication to humanity, and my habit of burning at the stake those with whom I have minor theological disagreements. But I am also what is known as an apatheist. That rather rare word means that I don’t think it matters whether or not God exists. Now, many people would say that it’s quite important if an omnipotent being rules over the entire universe. Some would say that the existence of Heaven and Hell is a question that might concern people somewhat. I, however, disagree.

Let me start with the idea of the idea of the Irenaean theodicy. Which you’ve probably heard in a more basic form – but I’m going to explain it again in order to give myself a false sense of self-worth, and to try and justify to myself all the time I’ve spent studying the bloody thing. Also, my conception of it is mixed up with Hicks, meaning that it’s not quite the same as the traditional theodicy (not that that actually matters too much in this case). So, here’s the basic version: Ought implies can, you can’t say someone is wrong for doing something if they couldn’t have done anything else. I cannot really be blamed for the crusades, because even if that might be the kind of thing I would do, Christian that I am, there remains the minor fact that I hadn’t been born back then, which would make blaming me pretty unreasonable.

The extension of ‘ought implies can’ is that ‘ought implies can not’. If you can’t say someone is wrong for not doing something unless they could have done it, then you can’t say someone is right for not doing something unless they could have done otherwise. And if you can’t say that someone was right for not doing other than as they did, it follows that you can’t say that they were right for doing as they did. So morality implies freedom of choice – cliché as it is, a gun cannot be good or evil.

Which means that people without the opportunity to be evil cannot be good.  So, the argument goes, there is no point in God creating a world in which we do not have free will. The only way people can be good, is if they have the chance to be evil. Furthermore, one is only truly good if one is tempted to do evil – if one simply does the right thing because one might as well, that’s not really good.  Only a truly evil person does evil when it provides no advantage to them over doing good. By which I mean that I don’t think anyone does that, actually.

So you need natural evil, to provide temptation towards evil. And you need the ability to commit moral evil. Furthermore, you need not to know whether or not God exists. Because if you did know that there was an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient being judging your every action, who would reward or punish you depending on if you’d been good or bad, if His presence were inescapable… you wouldn’t really be doing good. You’d be doing literally the only thing that was the least bit sane to be entirely altruistic the whole time. What’s more, it would be almost impossible to do good even if you wanted to – even if you would do something based entirely on the fact that it is good, the fact that you will be rewarded for it is pretty much impossible to forget. So without some kind of epistemic distance***** good becomes impossible, and freewill non-existent.

And that’s the important bit. Because if that’s true, it means that looking for proof of God is pointless. And it means that a Universe with a God should look exactly like a Universe without God – at least as far as we can ever tell^††. So it’s not important in that way. And if you did know, how would it affect your behaviour? Well we’ve already established that doing good just because of Heaven isn’t really good at all^{†††††} – if you’re really going to do good, it has to be altruistic, it has to be done because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s in your own self-interest^‡.

So there you are then. There is no good reason why the existence of God should either be possible to determine, or should affect what you do. And I’ve mentioned before that any God who cares more about worship than about good and evil isn’t worth believing in.

That leaves only one thing: If a particular holy book is the source of morality. That would make God’s existence important, at least as far as it meant that the morality of a particular religion was right. Fortunately, I’m a Christian, and used to interpreting the word of God according to my whim. IT’s kinda how we do stuff – the bible is the word of God as written by man, so it’s not inerrant. People interpret it according to their conscience... And the point is, you can do that. The Bible is the word of God written by the hand of man, and written for the mind of man… but, actually, that’s not the point. Because even I don’t know what I’m talking about most of the time. The point is that a good person can do nothing but evil deeds, and still be a good person – because being a good person is, by any reasonable definition, based on the person rather than the thing^‡‡‡. Which means that a person who works as hard as they can to do the right thing, even if they happen to be wrong about it, is a good person, regardless that they ended up with the death of millions. The point is the goodness of the person that matters. The other point is that if a holy book happens to be right in accordance with goodness, there is no way of knowing, so it affects little, and if it is true, it doesn’t matter if God wrote it – it matters what it says.

So… God doesn’t matter. His existence or non-existence doesn’t affect anything, nor does it affect anything in my behaviour. I am an apatheist. Not much else to say, really. Even though I’m sure I forgot something. So let me finish with a sonnet I wrote in Terza Rima. Because I’ve never done it before, and I heard it was really hard.

Lo! I can see, though ‘twas hid so well

Gleaming in darkness but hid from view,

Deep in the night time and lost in hell,

Devils and demons it’s wealth accrue.

Lo! I can see, that it’s holy still,

Rising from fire, and all made anew.

Should from its depths I now drink my fill?

Should I be careful of legends so old

Endlessly ancient, but perhaps, still,

Out of the ages, something of gold?

Beautiful flowers from knowledge grow,

Oh, How much more, from this thing extolled?

Just for few small pennies I’d know,

All of the things which can from it flow.

People were right. That is actually really hard… my congratulations to anyone who can figure out what I’m talking about. And yes, that actually is a sonnet. So there.

*Because those evil creatures will attack you the moment you let your guard down**.

**I am not a dog person.

***Heaven knows, I really don’t need help with that.

****I’d also direct you to Hitherby Dragons, because it’s been far too long since I blatantly plugged it.

*****Philosophers like feeling important, so they give things like ‘God not letting people know He exists’ fancy and complicated names like ‘epistemic distance’, hoping it will fill the emptiness inside^†

^†My love to any philosophers reading… though I would like them to explain why they’re reading this… just… why?

^††Although if you were to somehow compare the two , they would probably look completely different^†††.

^†††Although only as long as it’s impossible to do so – if they are possible to compare, they have to be the same^††††

^††††I’m pretty sure there is a clearer way of putting this.

^{†††††}If your name is Ayn Rand, you may want to ignore this entire post, by the way. Should probably have mentioned that earlier. Sorry Ayn.

^‡Unless, again your name is Ayn Rand^‡‡.

^‡‡You may think this doesn’t apply to you either, as a follower of Ayn Rand. But, unfortunately, the special treatment is just for people with that exact name. Come back when you’re on a stamp. And are called Ayn Rand.

^‡‡‡Virtue ethics away!... I make a distinction between ‘good person’ and ‘good deed’, and I make no claim here of which is more important, or of anything but the distinction between them. I simply ask that it be recognised that George Washington was a good person because of who he was, not simply because of what he did^‡‡‡‡. And that even though he was still a good person, his acceptance of slavery was kinda wrong, regardless of the perpetrator – and that he didn’t really do it because of a flaw in his character, as such^{‡‡‡‡‡}. Or if a man goes into a neighbour’s house, and lights a fire, so it will be warm when he comes home. But he accidentally lights the house, instead. The person is clearly a good person who tried to do something nice, even if they are unutterably stupid. The action (setting someone’s house on fire) is kinda an evil one.

^‡‡‡‡Which was, of course, to lead a totally unjustified terrorist revolt against the legitimate government of his people.

^{‡‡‡‡‡}Arguments about how flawed Washington was sound like things to avoid with a ten foot pole and a suit of armour. But ‘allowed slavery’ isn’t really one of them, I would say – in that time, and in that place, it was an absence of greatness, not a flaw. Incidentally, I have now surpassed my own record for number of footnotes, I think. Addiction to the things is one of my flaws.

A Bright Christmas Diet of Eclectic Fun

Yay for Christmas! Christmas, Christmas, Christmas! The birth of Christ, presents, and an old man who makes Big Brother look like Jim Hacker*. Christmas!

Yeah, Christmas is kinda boring to talk about. What else is there? I was interviewed by a reporter a few days ago, and that’s interesting (at least to me). But I would like to talk about something a bit lighter, since it’s Christmas, and since I suspect that my last post may have been a little hard to get through… I was going to sacrifice ‘light’ to have an argument on gun control, but on consideration, no. Not only am I not going to, I’m not even explaining why I’m not going to.

So, what else is going on? Fiscal cliff? My prediction has been ‘they’ll make a deal some time just after the absolute last moment, but before too much damage is done’ for several months. I currently see no reason to change that prediction. Seriously, people complain about the Eurozone, but…

Gay marriage? That’s a top issue in the UK at the moment. Except that I tried having one of the dialogues between the two philosophers I have locked in my basement about it, and ended up with this:

Ben James: I’m in favour of gay marriage.

Finn Carter: Yup. Me too.

Unfortunately, that one’s a little short. I wish there were some actual arguments against the bloody idea.

Well, I’m getting through topics fast. What’s next?

Oh yes, one of my favourite ones – absolutely idiotic things that come out of coherent logical ethical systems. People being happy is great, yeah? And a hundred happy people must be better than just one, yes? Which means that there must be a theoretical number of less happy people who are just as good as one happier person. And so, if you can increase the population enough, it doesn’t matter that the lives of the entire population are unending slogs of misery and despair, as long their lives are better than death, as long as it wouldn’t have been better for them if they’d never been born, this population is better than what we have. So what does this mean? Well… Rape! Rape is bad – I’m not going to try and justify that statement. If you disagree... Just… just go with it for the moment, OK? The question is, is rape really a fate worse than death. I have it as something of a base assumption that it isn’t. The justice system agrees with me, and… well, with a knife to their throat, everything I know about suggests that most people won’t choose the knife. OK, I now feel somewhat dirty, so onto the point – if we accept that rape is better than death, we have a situation where consent is irrelevant. Seriously. The increase in population will, if mankind survives long enough, cancel out the massive drop in quality of life. Which reminds me that we really need to have camera on every street corner – or we would, if letting people out wasn’t far too dangerous. The capitalist system is rubbish, since some people have more than what they need, which is sub-optimal, so have anything necessary to survive distributed by quota for maximum efficiency. Non-essential luxury goods can be used for incentivising, and unhealthy goods banned. It sounds like I’m describing dystopia, but it’s a far better society than we have now. The main issue is keeping the human population as high as possible for as long as possible, and the higher the population now, the more breeding population we have to increase the population for later. Eventually, everything will be better. Also, contraception is morally wrong.

So how can we avoid this? We could deny that rape was better than death, but that only deals with one problem. There are still a lot of unpleasant things we can do to make sure that there are as many people around as possible. So what if we say that some things are wrong regardless of the end result, so we can’t do all those horrible things, even that would be better. But lying is wrong. And so so is lying to the nice man with the six foot steel axe and a particular hatred for that guy who told you to ‘hide him’ not five minutes ago, and who is currently in the house behind you.

What about saying that it’s not better to have more happier people – what’s good is average happiness. So killing off half the population for the benefit of the other half? Great! Gladiatorial combat for all! Slavery’s a pretty sweet idea, too. Yeah, sure, a few people suffer unimaginable horror, but on average everyone’s better off! Yay! And if all that fails, there’s always involuntary euthanasia for the least well off members of society.

Actually, you don’t even need the crowd. Two people torturing a random person to death is a good thing, as long as they enjoy it enough to cancel out their victim’s suffering.

Now I feel dirty again. The point isn’t ‘this form of ethics is bad’. And yeah, all these problems I’ve mentioned have solutions. And the solutions all create problems of their own! In ethics, you’re limited to either stubbornly defending ideas that may or may not constitute grounds for getting locked up, or limiting yourself to things which are pretty much redundant (‘don’t stab people for no reason). Put simply, there’s a reason so many philosophers re in favour of free speech. It works the other way around, too – a lot of things which are perfectly sensible (and which it would be utterly stupid to reject) turn out to be seriously logically flawed. Not just in ethics, either. Try looking up Curry’s paradox, which I am incapable of explaining coherently, but which twists traditional logic into a pleasing pretzel shape. Hell, even ‘this statement is a lie’ is impossible to resolve without abandoning the kind of basic logic most people use every day.

Looking at why logic is usually completely at odds with all that is good and sensible in the world is fun! Yay for Christmas!

*No, not going with the paedophile joke. Far too unorigrinal. And I made it earlier on Facebook.**

**It just occurred to me that the batman myth seems to have a particular political bent – not only is there the obvious ‘handouts’ angle, but there’s also the idea that invasion of privacy and constant surveillance are acceptable if this power is given to a good person, and the idea that an educated ‘elite’ individual is in the best position to judge. So, welfare state, CCTV and an end to trial by jury. The guy even wears red***.

***Yes, for anyone who’s not sure, I’m joking.

No Place

Oh yeah, I still have one of these things, don’t I? The annoying thing about it is that it really doesn’t take long to write something. I mean, I just write the first rubbish that pops into my head, it’s not like I actually think about this stuff. And I actually enjoy writing things like this. Every time I do a post, I think I should do them way more often. Then... I don’t. Not really sure why. Just one of those things, I suppose, like how I occasionally get distracted by tinsel*.

Well, actually, there does exist a non-negligible subset of what I write that I simply get rid of because I’m not satisfied with it**. A big thing is that I generally disagree entirely with about 90% of what I write. Make of that what you will.

Well, that had nothing to do with anything, what other complete irrelevancies can I put in? Ooh, ooh, fox news on asexuals. I’d put in a link but I don’t think I really need to. It was about a month ago, but I really do think it’s worth mentioning.

Actually, it wasn’t too bad. Considering. If you are going to find and watch it, try a fun little game I’ve suggested before – imagine they’re talking about gay people. Remember, you translate no matter what tone someone’s talking in. So if someone makes a joke about how asexuals could be cured by their divine lovemaking, translate it into how they could bang the queer right out of that lesbian bitch. But said as a joke. Because that makes it better.

In fact, here’s a nice conversion chart for the things that don’t convert perfectly. It’s not perfect, but it’s a first attempt (I haven’t included things that can be translated with what I regard as no effort. So ‘we’ve had to invent this asexuality’*** comes out as ‘we’ve had to invent this homosexuality’)

What people say about asexuals	What they might say if they were talking about homosexuals.
All women are asexual	Well, you know how straight women love to experiment with each other. They’re not really lesbians, it’s just a way to lure in guys.
Asexual men are just a miscategorisation. They aren’t as hypersexed and objectifying as the social stereotype, so everyone (including themselves) ends up thinking they’re asexual.	Homosexual men are just a miscategorisation. They find it easier to make friends with guys, and they’re more comfortable around guys, so everyone (including themselves) assumes it’s a sexual thing.
Asexuals are represented. They had a slot on SNL/brasseye.	This is a straight translation, I’d just like you to imagine that level of representation for gay people  being defined as OK. I could probably find a hundred mainstream works with an open homosexual. I challenge you to find ten works not originally published on AVEN in which there’s an open ace.
There’s no interesting way of representing asexuals in the media. You’d just have to take out all the sexual content and it would be boring because there is no advertising technique that marketers could use that doesn’t involve offensively objectifying women****.	There’s no interesting way of representing gay people in the media. After all, there’s no way you could possibly have a gay character on television. That’s just ludicrous. The only thing that you could possibly do is have people selling things using attractive men instead of attractive women in advertising.
Asexuality must be great, you have so much more time to focus on other things.	Lesbianism must be great, because female-female relationships are so much purer, and they don’t have any power imbalances.
You’re just a late bloomer/you’re afraid to get close to other people/have you had your hormones checked/You won’t be happy as an asexual person/ you should try Viagra/you have issues with your parents/anything else which indicates that asexual people are really just repressed, neurotic, impotent, etc.	The Freudian view on homosexuality is the best parallel I can think of.
You must want to have sex with something/so you’re into trees.	There’s no such thing as homosexuality.
How do you know if you’ve never tried it?	Have you ever had sex with a guy/girl?
You’re just a closeted gay.	You’re straight really
You’re still going to get married and have children.	Sure you can be gay. Just do anything silly about it, like getting married and having children.

OK, that’s all I can think of right now. And/or all I can be bothered to do. So let’s talk about something more interesting. World government. Where the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were ful’d in the parliament of man, the federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, and the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

That didn’t actually have any relevance whatsoever to... anything, actually. But I really like Tennyson. The argument for World government is pretty simple, but it requires an understanding of social contract theory. I’ve done social contract theory before, but I feel like giving my explanation of Hobbes’ theory on it, because I can. I’ll put it all in one paragraph, so if you don’t want it, just skip the next paragraph. OK?

Still here? OK, then Hobbes. Imagine that everyone is given a stick. But not everyone’s stick is the same size. So, obviously, if someone else has something you want, and their stick is smaller than yours, you can just beat them with your stick and take it from them. But then you start to get worried. What if someone with an even bigger stick comes and takes your stuff? You won’t be able to do anything about it, because when someone’s swinging a tree at you, trying to hold them off with a branch is generally pretty ineffective. And even if you have the biggest stick of all, other people might gang up on you, in order to divvy up your stuff amongst themselves, and no matter how big your stick, you can’t take them all at once. Or they could take you by surprise, making your stick useless. Something has to be done. And everyone agrees that something has to be done – all of them are at risk. So you come to an agreement, saying this is what’s mine, this is what’s yours, and that noone is going to beat up anyone else. But you don’t have a way of enforcing that agreement, there’s no reason for people to actually follow it. You want other people to follow it, but no reason to follow it yourself. Which means that the whole agreement is really rather pointless. What we need is someone to enforce it. So we set up one person (or a group) as our ruler, and we all give them a little bit of stick, and we put it all together, so that they have a big enough stick to stop anyone from breaking the agreement. They can’t take advantage themselves, because their power derives from being given bits of everyone else’s sticks, and because if everyone ganged up on them, they would still be overwhelmed. And it’s in everyone’s interests to keep them in power unless they are misusing their power. So we end up with a government which, whatever else you might say about it, is better than the anarchy which we had before.

The thing is, there’s a pretty good metaphor here for the world. You model states as individual people. The problem is, what we don’t have is any kind of agreed power that each state has given up individual bits of its power to. Which means that we’re effectively stuck in the state of nature – war of all against all. By which I don’t mean that we’re literally at war with each other, exactly. I mean that countries manoeuvre constantly in order to get themselves as much benefit as possible, regardless of the effects on other countries. Or, in other words, ‘the first duty of any government is to its citizens’. In the absence of anything central to act as an authority, some balances have sprung up.

Firstly, there’s the fact that the most major powers might try to introduce themselves as such a central authority. Which has a nasty habit of going incredibly wrong, since you don’t have the consent of the governed, and you don’t have any agreement that everyone has accepted to govern according to. There tend to be other problems too, but that alone is enough to completely destroy any chanced they might’ve had of actually making things work, since either they’re not strong enough to police all of the rest of the world, or there’s noone strong enough to be any use in policing them. You really do need some kind of agreement, or it’s just not going to work – there’s a qualitative difference between everyone agreeing to act a certain way, and one person imposing upon them that they do so.

Then there’s the actual international governing bodies that are set up. Like the ICHR and the UN. They have, in some ways the opposite problem, in that they quite simply don’t have enough power. Everyone’s willing to agree that war is, in fact, quite probably A Bad Thing, people will agree on what the UN should do (broadly speaking, not specifics), but noone’s willing to actually give them any significant part of their sticks in order to allow them to do so.

Thirdly, you have a sort of balance of power thing. Noone really wants anyone to beat up too many other people, for the simple reason that if they do, they’ll get stronger, and then they might be able to beat us up (or just give us a bloody nose, make our lives a bit harder). This is probably the closest thing we do have to a working social contract thing, but it’s not really a good parallel. The problem is, it’s not the enforcement of a set of principles, it’s an expression of self interest. And it’s messy. You can slip through the cracks pretty easily. It tones down the level of the constant war, but there is no doubt at all that people are still at war.

Unfortunately, that leaves us with the enforcement of ethics by populations of countries. Now, to some extent, this is something that happens. People do to some extent enforce some kind of ethics on people. The problem here is perspective. You can distort things a lot with how you present the information – for example, the whole ‘Israel vs. Palestine’ issue. And even if there’s no spin, with the best will in the world people do not seem to care as much about the people who’re half a world away as those who’re next door. Or the ones who’re related to them. So we end up with things like the death of a single American soldier in Afghanistan – the death of someone who actually chose to risk their lives – is far more significant than the death of a completely innocent Afghan, who didn’t even get the choice of taking that risk. You end up with the rather weird attitude that some Americans have towards the IRA.

That was a bit of a warlike analysis. So let’s look at something a little more general. Benefits, let’s say. There are three reasons to give benefits that I can think of. Firstly, to keep the plebs happy, and the country stable. For some reason, noone seems to admit that this is the sole reason they’re  willing to waste their hard earned money helping out those layabout plebs. So next we’ve got the idea that it’s actually an investment. That social mobility is increased, and so the economy benefits enough that actually the benefits outweigh the cost of the benefits. That people are encouraged to spend more, and not be chronic savers*****. The problem is, that’s not really how the benefits system seems to be set up. I can think of a lot of arguments in favour of Universal healthcare^†.  That it would improve the economy is not, as far as I’m aware, one that has ever actually been used. The fact is that, although you do need a safety net, benefits exist which, it is generally agreed, we could probably cut a bit without damaging the economy (especially when you do things like cut taxes and encourage enterprise with the extra cash). And the fact is, our attitude towards it is completely wrong. The benefits system is quite simply not conducted on the basis of the idea that we should spend as little as possible to get the most economic benefit. Plus, the way people complain when you cut their benefits, they don’t seem to think that they were just there to help the economy. Which leaves us with one option: The idea that there is some kind of universal ‘minimum acceptable standard of living’. In which case, why on earth are we only giving benefits to people in our own country? It’s completely insane. There’s only one possible explanation – the minimum standard of living only applies to the people in this country. Those foreign bastards can just starve. Let them improve their own lot – I hear Swift had some suggestions there, actually.

In other words, we quite clearly can’t rely on citizen’s ethics, because even though they probably do genuinely care about what the right thing to do is, and helping other people, they also have a bit of trouble with the distance between ‘small’ and ‘far away’^††. My pain is more important than your pain, and the closer pain is to me, the worse it is. If we’re actually suffering from preventing the government from beating people with a stick, the rights of others suddenly seem a lot less important.

So we get countries with no central authority to control them, and constantly jockeying for position, very nearly regardless of what damage they do to other countries in the process. And things which are utterly unthinkable on a national scale with a government are now unthinkable without one. For example, if someone murders your wife, starting a large gang war in which hundreds die is probably not an acceptable response. If Archduke Franz-Ferdinand is killed, however, starting World War I seems to be... not reasonable enough, but a lot less of a problem. Even if someone goes on a random killing spree, admits to it, and then says they’re going to do it again, in a state with a police force, a revenge killing would still probably be frowned upon.  On an international scale, though, we have, for example, the War on Terror, and Operation Cast Lead.

I’m not commenting on the morality of these actions, exactly. There is a lack of a central authority, and that does change things. I’m saying that things happen on the international stage which wouldn’t on a national one. Killing, for example, is pretty uncommon one citizen to another, where it’s called murder, and pretty common one state to another, where it’s called war. The argument is that the changes brought by a central world government that does have some authority over all states would be, on average, advantageous.

Hmmm, I seem to have run out of stuff to say. Oh well. This was actually pretty hard to write. I now remember why when I was starting ‘On Democracy’ was split into parts. Part 2 of this will be about what a world government might look like, but that nearly three thousand words is all you’re getting for now.

*To be fair, though, it’s so shiny.

**And anyone who’s read what I’ve actually been willing to show people before can guess what that must be like.

***Actual. Bloody. Quote.

****What representation of asexual could you have that might be interesting and produce conflict? Well, just to state the most blindingly obvious thing I could possibly think of, how about sexual/asexual relationships? You don’t think there’s a little conflict there? There’s a lot more stuff I could come up with, including asexuality actually existing without being a major part of the plot, but if you really want an easy, obvious plot that I’m pretty sure just bout anyone should be able to come up with and write, there it is. Have fun.

*****This is, apparently, a massive problem in China at the moment, in that absolutely everyone is saving for a rainy day, since they don’t have a safety net. So noone is spending, and, well, you can just see what a complete mess the Chinese economy is at the moment.7

^†And, to be fair, a lot of arguments against it too, but that’s not really relevant right now.

^††Yes, I just put the intelligence of the citizenship on par with that of Dougal McGuire. It’s amazing the confidence I have in people, isn’t it?

Theology and fallacy

OK then, you know how I said that it wouldn’t be so long until my next post? Well it wasn’t. Except that I kinda forgot to post the damn thing. So I updated it a little, and here’s the thing you should’ve had several weeks ago. You should get today’s thing tomorrow.

OK then. In any theological discussion, a lot of time and effort goes towards deciding whether or not God exists. Some Catholic saint came up with five ways of proving that He did. So because I want to prove that I’m smarter than any mere world famous brilliant philosopher-saint, I came up with six. Granted, mine are all horribly flawed as actual reasons for believing, so they’re closer to logic puzzles than actual proof. But hideously flawed logic is the best kind! So, in rough order from least to most logical:

1: The argument from motion.

It is, quite obviously, totally impossible to move. Because before you can move any given distance, you must first move half that distance. But before you can move half the distance, you have to move a quarter of that distance. Following this reasoning to its logical conclusion reveals two things: Firstly, for even the most infinitesimal movement an infinite chain of actions must first be performed – one must first move a half, a quarter, and eighth, and so on. So clearly, you will never actually reach a point where you’re actually moving the desired amount – no matter how small that amount. Secondly, there is no first distance – any distance you move can be divided in half, and so if not the first action that must be performed on the infinite journey over to the fridge in the next room. So there is no first action on your journey. Since it is quite clear that it’s impossible to start something without having something to start with, that means that not only can you never get to a point where  you’ve finished your movement, you can never even begin it. But quite clearly, it is indeed possible to move. The only explanation is some kind of interference that allows us to break the strict laws of logic. But any being that is capable of breaking the laws of logic must be omnipotent – and thus, we must conclude that it is God.

OK, before I move onto the second way, I thought you might have wanted a brief account of my reaction on first seeing and advertisement for the Fifty Shades of Grey books: ‘Oh hey, that looks interesting. The title sounds good, and I have a mask just like the one on that cover. I’ll look it up on Amazon whn I get home… OK then, I’m home now. So let’s see what this series is… Oh God my eyes. Why, why?’

I don’t have anything against the books, but it would be nice if they were a bit more obvious about the subject.

2: The argument from infinity.

There are three possible explanations for the universe. Either it was created, or it is part of in infinit chain of events, or it has always exited. If it was created, this is generally considered sufficient to establish the existence of a God, thanks to Occam’s razor. If either of the other explanations are true, then the universe is infinite in four dimensions. Since it is not a complete impossibility that a being should come to exist with enough of the characteristics of God to be referred to as such, it is a logical certainty that such a being should have, at some point in the past, come to exist. Thus, whatever explanation for the Universe is chose, we end up with God.

Have you ever wondered why I write this blog. One reason is so I can randomly talk about stuff that I’m sure noone else would be interested in in speech, without forcing other people to listen to me.  So I write it all down and publish it somewhere out of the way…

That was a little depressing. Onto number 3:

3: The argument from knowledge.

Omniscience is not an impossibility – by which I mean that there is nothing that it is totally impossible to know. But if nothing is impossible to know, then were there anything that it were possible to know which was not known, then it would be possible to know that the thing which was not known was true but not known. But it is impossible to know that something is true but not known without knowing that it is true – in which case it is known. So it is a logical impossibility to know that something is true but not known, so if everything is knowable, then everything must be known. Occam’s razor says that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity, so it is clear that the simplest way of fulfilling this knowledge is by a single omniscient entity, which we may call God.

OK then, I’m kinda running out of things to say in the breaks between incredibly fallacious arguments so I’m going to have to give you number four whilst I think about what else to say.

4: The argument from omnipotence

God is defined as an omnipotent being. That means that He should be able to do anything. Which means that He should be able to create Himself from nothing. So… yeah. Not sure what more I can say.

Blast, that one wasn’t nearly long enough. I swear, these just keep getting shorter. There must be something interesting I can talk about. Hmmm… I can’t remember if I’ve ever told you about my memory problems. Seriously, I once forgot to breathe.

5: The argument from contradiction.

Schrödinger’s cat is both dead and alive at the same time. As everyone knows. So we can say that either God exists, or Schrodinger’s cat is alive. That’s perfectly true, since Schrodinger’s cat is alive, so the statement is true regardless of God’s existence. But Schrodinger’s cat is dead. So we now have two completely true statements – Schrodinger’s cat is dead, and either Schrodinger’s cat is alive, or God exists. From those two statements, the conclusion is clear – God must logically exist.

Now, it would be perfectly possible to object to the use of Schrodinger’s cat in that argument. Since I wouldn’t want to make things too easy for you, you can replace ‘Schrodinger’s cat is dead and alive,’ with ‘light is a wave and a particle’, or even the lesser known cousin of ‘this statement is a lie’, ‘this statement is true’ – which is clearly both true and false simultaneously.

Back to my memory problems. I’ve actually done the ‘forgetting to breathe thing’ more than once. Though I’ve never actually quite managed to actually pass out. So the point is, you should totally forgive me for forgetting to post this. And now let’s do number six. This one gets long, and is a bit tricky to explain.

6: The argument from logic.

Let us take, ‘if, then’ statements – statements like ‘If it rains, then I’m going to wear a coat’. Clearly, if the statement is true or not is totally dependent on the ‘if’ part – if the if part isn’t true, then you can’t say anything about the statement as a whole, regardless of the truth of the ‘then’ part of the statement. For example, the statement ‘if it is green then it is a lizard’ cannot be disproved by finding something red, regardless of whether or not the red thing is a lizard. Similarly, the statement ‘if the sky is green, then the sky is green’ is absolutely true, regardless of the actual colour of the sky. Thus, the way to determine whether or not an ‘if, then’ statement is deductively true is to say ‘if the ‘if’ part is true, does the ‘then’ part necessarily follow from it?’ If it does, then the statement is necessarily true, regardless of whether or not the ‘if’ part of the statement is actually true. So let us take the statement ‘if this statement is true, then God exists.’ Following the steps outlined above, regardless of the actual truth value of the ‘if’ part of the statement, we can determine the truth value of the entire statement by saying, ‘if the ‘if’ part is true, does the ‘then’ part follow from it?’ So if the statement ‘if this statement is true then God exists’ is true (which is what is stated in the ‘if’ part of the statement), does it follow that God exists? Clearly, it does. Which means that the entire statement is true. But then it follows that the statement that the statement is true is true. Which means that the ‘if’ part of the statement (if this statement is true) is true, and that if the if part is true, then the then part follows from it. Thus, by saying ‘if this statement is true then God exists’, we can logically show that God must exist. So did I explain that one OK?

Right then. Six ways of proving that God exists. Or that logic doesn’t work. Whichever. And because I don’t like the idea of posting two things today, I’ll post the thing I was going to post today tomorrow. Or I’ll forget. It’s about 50/50 really.