Month: April 2019

Does it ever make sense to use the word “Nigger”?

This video  was of interest to me. It is about a video-blogger in England, who I occasionally enjoy listening to, “Sargon of Akkad”. The video is by another video-blogger whose videos I almost always enjoy, “Atheism Is Unstoppable”. AIU’s “routine” sort of reminds me of an “Atheist Rush Limbaugh”, and I cannot count the number of times his stuff has made me laugh out loud while I was watching it on the stair-master at the gym. His commentary on race and race issues is also thoughtful and properly nuanced, in my opinion. Is AIU’s stuff always “deep philosophical commentary”? No, he’s primarily a satirist and humorist, but there is a place for that. Do I agree with everything he says? No. He’s a gun control advocate, and a Democrat, but that’s not his focus.

In the video, AIU comments on the controversy surrounding what Sargon said. Apparently, the later told some white people that they were behaving like “white niggers”, and that got him banned from Patreon. (I don’t know all the details, and I’m not sufficiently interested to research it.)

Using race-based or sex-based denunciations will draw a lot of criticism. Why focus on the race or gender of the person rather than the bad behavior? Additionally, any “curse word” tends to have the problem of being “canned denunciation” that doesn’t really explain what is wrong with someone. Calling a person an “asshole” doesn’t specify what you find wrong with them. Usually, when you call someone an “asshole” it’s because they are boorish, socially uncouth, impolite, or being unnecessarily hostile. If you really want to morally judge someone, then it makes sense to say what is actually wrong with them, using more precise language. This will help you to identify what it is that they are doing that has drawn your ire. However, in casual conversation, most of us will use some form of curse words to describe someone. I have certainly done that. I would not use these words in a formal denunciation or critique of some person, but, assuming the context of casual conversation, lets ask this question: Does it ever make sense to call a black person a “nigger”?

First, lets look at the dictionary definitions of three words: “bastard”, “bitch” and “nigger”:

BASTARD

1 : an illegitimate child
2 : something that is spurious (see spurious sense 3a), irregular, inferior, or of questionable origin The … residence is a bastard of the architectural era which followed the building of the Imperial Hotel …— Hugh Byas
3a : an offensive or disagreeable person —used as a generalized term of abuse Then they made him an officer and right away he became the biggest bastard you ever saw.— Thomas Heggen
b : man, fellow … the nicest thing an Aussie can call you is a bloody fine bastard.— Wilson Hicks

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bastard

1.    a person born of unmarried parents; an illegitimate child.
Slang.
2.    a vicious, despicable, or thoroughly disliked person: Some bastard slashed the tires on my car
3.    a person, especially a man: The poor bastard broke his leg.
something irregular, inferior, spurious, or unusual.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bastard

BITCH

1.    a female dog: The bitch won first place in the sporting dogs category.
2.    a female of canines generally.
3.    Slang
a.    a malicious, unpleasant, selfish person, especially a woman
b.    a lewd woman.
c.    Disparaging and Offensive . any woman
4.Slang . a person who is submissive or subservient to someone, usually in a humiliating way: Tom is so her bitch—he never questions what she decides.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bitch

1: the female of the dog or some other carnivorous mammals The behavioral endocrinology of both male dogs and bitches is quite unique and differs from that of most other mammals …— Ian Dunbar — compare dog entry 1 sense 1b
2 a informal, often offensive : a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman
b informal, offensive — used as a generalized term of abuse and disparagement for a woman
3 informal : something that is extremely difficult, objectionable, or unpleasant Aspirin overdoses are a bitch to treat.— Pamela Grim July and August were always a bitch in the subway.— Harold Robbins
4 informal : complaint “My biggest bitch with all of CBS’ golf is there’s no personalization.”— Chuck Howard

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bitch

NIGGER

offensive; see usage paragraph below —used as an insulting and contemptuous term for a black person
offensive; see usage paragraph below —used as an insulting and contemptuous term for a member of any dark-skinned race
now often offensive; see usage paragraph below : a member of a class or group of people who are systematically subjected to discrimination and unfair treatment it’s time for somebody to lead all of America’s niggers … all the people who feel left out of the political process— Ron Dellums

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nigger

Slang : Extremely Disparaging and Offensive .
a contemptuous term used to refer to a black person.
a contemptuous term used to refer to a member of any dark-skinned people.
Slang : Extremely Disparaging and Offensive . a contemptuous term used to refer to a person of any racial orethnic origin regarded as contemptible, inferior, ignorant, etc.
a victim of prejudice similar to that suffered by black people; a person who is economically, politically, orsocially disenfranchised.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/nigger

I have used all of these three terms before in casual conversation. Would I use it in writing a philosophical or scientific treatise? No. Mainly because they are all slang, and their meaning is not sufficiently precise in that context.

I think this imprecision comes through with the above dictionary definitions of “nigger”. They focus on the word being a term of disparagement applied to all black people. But, I don’t use it in that sense. If I refer to a black person as a “nigger”, it’s because they are behaving in some manner that is socially impolite, or criminal, or violent. OJ Simpson is a nigger for murdering his wife, Ron Goldman, and then committing armed robbery. Neil deGrasse Tyson isn’t a nigger because he hasn’t done any of those things.

I guess the criticism of my position could be that I should pick a word that focuses on the fact that a black person is a criminal, and that is “race-neutral”. I could refer to OJ Simpson as a “bastard” or a “thug”. But, this ignores an essential aspect of our society today. That is the disproportionate amount of crime being committed by black people. Do I think black people have some sort of “crime gene” that makes them commit crimes? There is no evidence of that -and it seems to fly in the face of human consciousness being volitional. So, I cannot accept that explanation for the disproportionate amount of black crime. However, I do think it is cultural. Given the historical background of most black people and their familial lineage, violent criminality is more acceptable in the minds of a sizable portion of the black population, than in the minds of the same proportion of white people. Cultures can certainly change over time. The Nordic people are no longer violent brigands going around raping, pillaging and murdering like they did 500 years ago. (Back then, they were called “vikings”.) But, given the current culture of a sizable proportion of black people today, any rational person will recognize that violent criminality is a problem for that racial group that needs to be addressed. Use of the word “nigger” in casual conversation, as in: “That guy is acting like a nigger.” or “He’s a nigger, so I don’t want to hang around him.” can be understood to mean: “That black person is behaving like a disproportionate number of black people behave, and is being criminal.” It is a recognition of a fact of reality: black crime rates that are disproportionate to their size of the population.

Also note that I’m not particularly “wedded” to referring to boorish or criminal black people as “niggers”. I don’t have the level of certainty about this that I have about being an atheist, or that the concept of “morality” only makes sense for those who want to live. I am open to the possibility that I might be wrong on the subject, and would listen to a cogent argument against my position -as long as it doesn’t consist of: “you’re mean”, “you’re racist”, “people won’t like you”, or some other vapid denunciation that has no meaningful content.

In practice, should you call black people niggers at work, or on the street? Generally, that’s probably not in your own rational self-interest.  At work, you will likely get fired. On the street, it will likely be considered a provocation justifying violence against you in the eyes of most people, including the police. We live in a society where the fact that somebody’s ancestors were slaves seems to justify their violent and boorish behavior. But, if, in the privacy of your own car, you call the black person laying into his horn like a lunatic in the car behind you, at the stop light that just turned green half a second ago, a “nigger”- I certainly won’t hold it against you.

The Objectivist Concepts of “Individual Rights” and “Initiation of Physical Force”

“A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” (“Man’s Rights”, _The Virtue of Selfishness_, Ayn Rand)

Important concepts in this definition include:

  • “Moral principle”
  • “Defining and sanctioning”
  • “Freedom of action”
  • “Social Context”

(1) What is “a moral principle”? – For Rand it is a system of principles to guide your choices in the furtherance and pursuit of your ultimate value -which is your own life. The purpose of morality is to maintain your life. For instance, you need to cultivate patterns and methods of thinking that will correspond the contents of your mind to the nature of reality. This is necessary because reality is what it is, which means you must learn how things work in order to control them, if you want to live. This is “rationality”. You learn what makes plants grow, and then you rearrange the material in the world to more effectively make the edible ones grow -which is farming. You learn which animals are dangerous and aggressive, and then you learn ways to avoid or kill them. You learn what types of wood or stone is strong enough to build structures out of to protect yourself from the elements, and then you arrange them into shelter.

(2) What is “freedom of action”? – Freedom of action means the absence of physical impediments. For instance, if you are traveling in a particular direction, and there is a mountain obstructing your forward progress, that mountain is restricting you from moving further in that direction. If you see a panther down a particular trail, that animal is restricting your freedom of action because it is a threat to your continued survival if you come into close proximity with it. In both cases, you are confronted with some sort of “physical force”. The mountain’s mere presence blocks your forward path, and the panther can maul you, causing injury or death -which is also physical force. With respect to other human beings, they can restrict your freedom of action by the same means: They can physically restrain you or they can threaten to use some sort of physical force similar to the panther.

(3) What is “a social context”? – This means interaction with other human beings, as opposed to interacting with an animal or a mountain. Human beings can use force against you to deprive you of the freedom of action that is necessary to maintain your life. A human can physically take away the crops that you’ve grown, or they can threaten to harm or kill you with a gun or a knife if you don’t give them your food. However, interacting with other human beings also provide you with many benefits. You can trade what you have made for what they have made. A farmer can trade some of the crops he has grown for a song that a musician wrote. A doctor can trade his services for the services of an auto mechanic, and so on, and so on. This allows for the division of labor, which increases every person’s overall material well-being. This social context of trade can only go on if each individual knows that he is secure to keep the values he has produced. He must know that when he parts with his values, he is doing so voluntarily and not because someone has used physical force to deprive him of his values. In other words, he has to have his freedom of action respected, in a social context.

(4) What is “defining and sanctioning”? – There are certain broad categories of values that all human beings need in order to live. There can be many variations and individual peculiarities within those categories, but everyone must satisfy these needs somehow and to some extent, by virtue of their nature as living organisms and as human beings. Everyone needs some sort of protection from the elements. Everyone needs a certain amount of food. Everyone needs to maintain their body within certain metabolic requirements. (We all need a certain amount of oxygen, warmth, atmospheric pressure, etc.) Others have to recognize and respect our desire to live. Others have to recognize and respect the actions necessary to create the material values we need in order to maintain our lives. This is what it means to “sanction” something. The dictionary defines “sanction” in the following ways:

(1) “a formal decree”

(2) “a solemn agreement”

(3) “something that makes an oath binding”

(4) “the detriment, loss of reward, or coercive intervention annexed to a violation of a law as a means of enforcing the law”

(5) “a consideration, principle, or influence (as of conscience) that impels to moral action or determines moral judgment”

(6) “a mechanism of social control for enforcing a society’s standards”

(7) “explicit or official approval, permission, or ratification”

(8) “an economic or military coercive measure adopted usually by several nations in concert for forcing a nation violating international law to desist or yield to adjudication”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sanction

Most of these definitions involve other’s recognition and agreement that something is “right” or “appropriate”. This is why Ayn Rand said:

“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.” (_Atlas Shrugged_, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

A question in my mind at this point is: Where does Ayn Rand’s concept of “the initiation of physical force” come in? Do you need a concept of “initiation of physical force” in order to come up with the concept of “individual rights”?

This question came up in my mind because someone once said to me that Ayn Rand’s concept of “individual rights” and “initiation of physical force” were somewhat “circular”. They implied that Rand was saying “individual rights” were the “absence of the initiation of physical force”, and that “initiation of physical force” was “whatever violates individual rights” -which would seem like circular reasoning.

My best thinking on this topic at this point is this: you logically derive a concept of “individual rights”, which includes a concept of “physical force used to deprive someone of a value”, but NOT necessarily an “initiation of physical force”. I think one more concept is needed to logically derive the idea of “initiation of physical force”. You must mentally subdivide the concept of “use of physical force” into at least two categories of “use of physical force”. On the one hand, there is the “use of physical force” to deprive another person of their life, to rob them, or to enslave them. This can be already understood as part of understanding the concept of individual rights. Another type of “use of physical force” is to stop someone who is using physical force to deprive another person of their life, or to rob them, or to enslave them. The distinction between these two types of physical force is that one must occur before the other can occur. There would be no need to stop someone from depriving another person of their life unless someone is already using physical force to deprive another person of their life. So, the distinction is one of “time” or “causation”. This is why Ayn Rand describes one type of force as an “initiation of physical force”, while the other is “retaliatory force”:

“The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man—or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.” (“The Objectivist Ethics”, _The Virtue of Selfishness_, Ayn Rand)

Furthermore, since people must stop the use of force by others that would deprive them of values by retaliating against anyone who is using force in that manner, that too becomes a “…a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context…”. In other words, the retaliatory use of force becomes an “individual right”. As most Americans would say: you have a “right to self-defense”. That right is “defined and sanctioned” with things like the English Common Law right of self-defense, and the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. (This includes both a right of self-defense from murder, rape and robbery by common criminals, and also a right of self-defense against enslavement by tyrannical government.)

At this point, someone might say: “Okay, I understand why I need to have my right to life respected in order to live, which means I need others to keep from initiating physical force against me, but why should I recognize the rights of others?”

I think, to a large extent, social ostracism would prevent someone from violating individual rights. If other people view you as a rights-violator, they are going to do what they can to avoid you, which means you will have no friends, no lovers, and no business partners. This means you loose the benefits of most trade and social interaction with other human beings. Additionally, others aren’t going to sit by and quietly let you violate their rights. They are going to defend themselves, which means you’re in a state of perpetual armed conflict with the rest of mankind.

Most criminals do not use physical force to this extent, however. They want to live by reason and persuasion with some people, at least some of the time, and they want to keep their rights-violations hidden from the majority of mankind. Essentially, they want the benefits of living in a rights-respecting society most of the time, and they want to be seen by others as rights-respectors. A criminal just wants to “cheat”, sometimes, when they think they can get away with it. This is where I think government comes in. An essential role of government is to prevent the temptation to “cheat” by systematically exposing anyone who does so. (I don’t think this is the only role of government, but it is a role.) We all agree to establish this institution that will help to prevent any temptation to violate rights in any given situation by establishing a known “price” for anyone who gets caught.

The Fundamental Flaw of Environmentalism

People will tell me that the “science” of “Climate Change” is settled.

First, what they mean by “climate change” isn’t clear. Do they mean we’ve had ice ages and sustained warming periods where average global temperatures have gone up?

If that’s what they mean, the geological evidence for past ice ages seems pretty strong to me.

On the other hand, if they mean human beings are generating more CO2, and this is causing average global temperatures to go up more than they would without this activity, then I want to know how they know this. Ultimately, they’re going to say that this knowledge is based on observations and measurements, such as measuring the temperature of sea water on a daily basis. This knowledge is combined with what we know about the nature of CO2, which is that more of it seems to trap more sunlight than if there is less of it.

However, even if this is true, when you suggest any sort of solution that involves the use of technology and voluntary human cooperation, they will say that will not work. For instance, if sea levels are rising due to increasing average global temperatures, maybe the best solution is to just build dikes and reclaim land like the Dutch have done in the past. We could also put giant mirrors in orbit around the Earth to reduce the amount of sunlight entering the Earth’s atmosphere, thereby reducing average global temperatures. (https://www.livescience.com/22202-space-mirrors-global-warming.html )
An even simpler, and presently available, solution is nuclear power, which seems to have a very small “carbon footprint”. (https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/co2-emissions1.jpg)

If you start suggesting any of these solutions to an Environmentalist, however, they will always say that these scientific and engineering solutions will fail. For instance, they will say the dikes will break, the giant orbiting mirrors will trigger another ice age, and nuclear power plants will melt down. Why do they always see failure in every technological and engineering solution?

Because they believe human beings are so limited in their mental capacity that they are incapable of producing a viable technological solution, much less in engaging in voluntary, non-coercive and non-governmental projects to solve any actual problem.

This points to a fundamental aspect of the Environmentalist ideology. They believe human beings are not capable of the production of the values we need to survive. And, why do they believe we cannot produce the values we need to survive? Because they believe the human mind is impotent, which means they believe that the human mind is not able to understand or comprehend reality. Human reason is impotent to the environmentalist.

But, if the human mind is not able to understand or comprehend reality, then how can they be sure that “climate change” is real? That involves the use of human reasoning, which they’ve said is impotent to solve any actual problem.  (Or, they simply think human reason is inherently bad, and that we should live at stone-age levels of technology, which is functionally the same: anti-reason and anti-science.)

It’s one or the other. Either science and the human mind are capable of recognizing and solving problems, or it is not, in which case they should stop making proclamations about how “the science is settled” on man-made climate change.

This is the fundamental flaw of the ideology Environmentalism: They want to have their cake of science and reason at the same time they’re eating it.