In Plain Sight

Favor The Wise

By virtue of assertive belligerence or fierce self righteousness the loud often dominate free expression and oppress the voice of the gentle, the compassionate and the wise. In the lands where free expression is possible it is too frequently sacrificed to those who can buy, through favor or cash, privileged access.

In the so-called “free world” the ignorant parade their agendas at the expense of the wise in a frequently unchallenged appeal to convention and steam over the quiet wisdom and suffering of the hidden, the complex and the unpopular.

The “free press” cannot help but distort our perception and our thinking by mediating facts through personality, and “balanced reporting” is constrained by the availability of the articulate on each side.

Freedom of speech is not a balanced thing. There is no requirement that the playing field be leveled. The loud too have the right to be heard; as much right as the meek, the poor and the uneducated. The ignorant – or merely those without the education to appreciate their predicament - have as much right to be heard as the wise.

Today the cause of peace in the world demands that those of us with the ability to speak well must defend those less able. That those of us with the education to appreciate the predicament of others, speak on their behalf.

Yet it is the responsibility of each of us first to listen. In the vast noise there are quiet voices that need to be heard. They will uplift us. They will alert us to injustice. They will inspire and awaken us. They will warn us of the coming storm and they will lead us to discovery. They will humble us.

It is the responsibility of each of us to discern. To think for ourselves and draw our own conclusions. To dismiss the ignorant and favor the wise.

Oxymoron: Illegal Immigration

From the point of view of natural ethics, the phrase "Illegal Immigration" is an oxymoron. How can migration not simply be a process of the natural order? The very notion of its legality is elitist. It denies natural competition and open organic markets, and it continues the unnatural notion that regions should be dominated by large centralized governments around which we must assemble boundaries.

Migration is simply an inevitable behavior and if you stand in its way the few are "protected" at the expense of the many. Now, this elitist behavior too is inevitable when resources are scarce - it is necessary for species survival, perhaps.

But what scarce resource do we protect? Are they tangible resources unprotected by other laws? Or are they intangible notions, such as "competition" and "security?" Or is it simply the irrational notion of keeping foreign ideas out?

I suggest this last case is the fact of the matter. Protectionist principles develop on the basis of protecting conventions. Rather that being motivated by threats to physical security our motivations concerning immigrants come from threats to the security of our concepts.

I prefer to believe that it is not large communal gatherings that aid species survival but rather the dispersal of small groups and individuals, and their freedom of movement. The fittest of these win, that's all.

This is a variation on the Lao Tzu "the bigger thief" principle. He says that if we lock things up, bind them, so that they appear secured, we only make it easier for the bigger thief to steal them. And so it is with species survival. If you assemble everyone within a tightly secure space, you will not survive the bigger threats to our species. The current administration's attitude to global warming being a case in point.

By allowing free movement and easy human migration we allow perfect action, the action of natural principles. Allegiance is dynamically assigned and as long as no central authority imposes unnatural restriction the product must be good and productive.

I accept that this is a positive view about the nature of our species, and I am an optimist in this regard. I have heard several people offer the pessimistic view, people are natural hoarders and violent protectionists, they say. I simply cannot accept such a view of our species. It is a superficial view because its basis is the behavior of people trapped in our current environments, unbalanced by ethics that are simple inventions, and using a language that sustains them.

Democracy = The Tyranny of Majority

Does George W. Bush understand the meaning of "Freedom"? I don't think so. He keeps trying to get the world to adopt a broken system he calls "democracy" in which he promotes large centralized government. He and others are using the terms interchangeably, as though Freedom and Democracy have common cause. But they do not.

Modern notions of "democracy" have become the tyranny of majority and the enemy of liberty. We are confused if we believe that the cause of one is the cause of the other.

The cause of democracy is the just means by which societies may hear the dissent of individuals. The right of an individual to voice dissent and be justly considered is the cause of true democracy. It can provide the means to protect us from the tyranny of majority. Yet the cause of democracy is not the cause of liberty.

The cause of liberty is the sanctity of the individual, the protection of the individual's right to act without constraint or coercion. A society that maximizes the ability of its members to act in this way is a free society. Government in a free society is minimal, decentralized, and transparent - and powerless against a free individual that is doing no harm. Harm lies only in the constraint and coercion of others.

Liberty needs no committee. And true democracy is not a vote, it is the right of dissent.

— Steven

A reminder:
"Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism."
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, published 1859.

Aaron Russo's: From Freedom To Fascism

http://www.freedomtofascism.com/

Apparently the 16th Amendment, the constitutional basis of income tax, is not ratified!

Favor The Wise

Feedback on two blog entries and incidents in the BlogHER chat remind me of issues in online communication.

Looking in on the chat around the BlogHER conference I am reminded of issues that arise again and again in online interactions. Since FIDO and then Usenet, we have navigated the difficulty of online communication which is in the presence of diversity not peers.

As a Wikipedian I converse with the 16 year old author of the Wikipedia article on British Monarchy - he lives in Ohio and as far as I know has never been to England. His article (a featured article on Wikipedia) reflects his well-intentioned but naive understanding of the subject. Between us we negotiate a rewrite that is a more accurate presentation of the facts - I am advocating the removal of opinion and common perceptions, and the simple presentation of the facts as befits an encyclopedia. But I will fess up that, as an English anti-monarchist, I believe the simple presentation of the facts serves my cause.
Within a day, our delicate negotiation is usurped by the self-righteous indignation of a UK student who embodies a completely different view of the matter and believes we should dilute the facts to represent the accepted point of view that the monarchy is powerless (nothing could, in fact, be further from the truth). None of us are experts, and though I am an Englishman and perhaps more knowledgeable of the facts, I do have an agenda that is served by the simple presentation of the facts – which is why I put the effort into the British Monarchy article in the first place.

In the BlogHER chat, we are amused by a visiting father-to-be who seems obsessed about why women do not talk about sex. We politely point out that this may not be an appropriate subject in the middle of our mother-blogger discussion but he persists. He can’t understand why the conference is not called BlogEVERYONE, he flirts with the ladies, and in a comedic finale leaves us because his dinner is ready. Guess who makes dinner at his house.

By virtue of assertive belligerence or fierce self righteousness the loud often dominate free expression and oppress the voice of the gentle, the compassionate and the wise. In the lands where free expression is possible it is too frequently sacrificed to those who can buy, through favor or cash, privileged access.

In the so-called “free world” the ignorant parade their agendas at the expense of the wise in a frequently unchallenged appeal to convention and steam over the quiet wisdom and suffering of the hidden, the complex and the unpopular.

The “free press” cannot help but distort our perception and our thinking by mediating facts through personality, and “balanced reporting” is constrained by the availability of the articulate on each side.
Freedom of speech is not a balanced thing. There is no requirement that the playing field be leveled. The loud too have the right to be heard; as much right as the meek, the poor and the uneducated. The ignorant – or merely those without the education to appreciate their predicament - have as much right to be heard as the wise.

Today the cause of peace in the world demands that those of us with the ability to speak well must defend those less able. That those of us with the education to appreciate the predicament of others, speak on their behalf.

Yet it is the responsibility of each of us first to listen. In the vast noise there are quiet voices that need to be heard. They will uplift us. They will alert us to injustice. They will inspire and awaken us. They will warn us of the coming storm and they will lead us to discovery. They will humble us.
It is the responsibility of each of us to discern. To think for ourselves and draw our own conclusions. To dismiss the ignorant and favor the wise.