I had originally planned to write an apostasy, but in the time since deciding to do something special for my 10,000th post I’ve circled back around to something resembling consequentialist libertarianism. Instead, this is my rejection of deontology.
It felt like a very big deal at the time, but my main insight was just recognizing a map-territory distinction regarding the non-aggression principle---specifically, that there’s nothing inherent about sentient beings that makes initiating force against them wrong. There’s nothing about a given arrangement of quarks and leptons that makes disrupting them (or interacting with them in any other particular way) inherently wrong. From a reductionist standpoint, there is no ontological “ought”.
Now there’s plenty of reasons why the non-aggression principle has utilitarian value as a general rule. I’d imagine most of my followers (the ones whose opinions concern me, at least) can think up a few by themselves. I’m not terribly interested by that question. I’m more interested in the cases where non-aggression breaks down, which tends to be a lot more complicated.
The event which set me off down this line of inquiry was a case of high-energy ethics. When I realized my intuition clashed with my principles, I re-examined both, and discovered my beliefs were lacking. As a self-described Objectivist, I thought that my beliefs were grounded in objective reality, yet one of my ethical cornerstones turned out to be a higher-level abstraction. At the perceptual level, non-aggression is little more than wishful thinking. Only after integrating it with multiple other premises can it be a moral guidepost.
Discovering such a serious philosophical inconsistency was sufficient to end my political blogging for over a year. I spent a lot of that time rethinking my other beliefs, and realized that I don’t know nearly as much as I though I did about politics and morality---including Objectivism.
I have a considerable amount of fiction and nonfiction reading ahead of me, including several of Rand’s works. (Not that I have a ton of time for reading, I’m kind of busy these days.) Several important themes are dealing with large-scale coordination problems and addressing the fact that any given opinion is more than likely to be wrong.
This blog is going to resume operation, but on a considerably different note. I’m more interested in learning than convincing. Politics is the mindkiller and arguing about rarely gets very far. Instead, expect a lot of quotes, links, and infographics with sparse commentary in between.
Please note that old posts are not necessarily endorsed. If you’re curious about one, message me. If you have questions or comments on a new post, also message me, since I won’t be checking reblogs as often anymore. I’ll be updating my description and about page to reflect these changes soon.
Have a good Independence Day and, as always, no politics on the 4th.
