On Self Defense

If rights exist only by virtue of their recognition by others, then presumably only those liberties which concern others would require that a right to enjoy them be granted.

For example: a right to privacy. Since I can hardly prevent the rest of my community from barging into my home all at once and rummaging through my personal effects, then my right to privacy can only come from a mutual agreement that we will not do that to one another. Moreover, in the absence of a community of potential snoops, I do not need a right to privacy — it becomes meaningless.

But what about a right to life? What does that phrase mean? (Note that I am not talking about the abortion issue here.) Presumably a right to life carries with it a right to self defense. To say that I have a right to life, but not to self defense, implies that there exists some other means of guaranteeing the first if I am assaulted while no third party is around. Without round-the-clock protection, there can be no such guarantee; and besides, who would protect my protectors? It is not enough simply to extrapolate that thought, and suggest that we are all each other’s protectors; clearly, the risk of being attacked exists, even in a large community (especially there!). So unless we engage a protection force capable of watching over each one of us at all times, and we grant them the right to self defense (since we are compelled to fold our arms in the face of danger), then we must ultimately rely on ourselves for protection.

But do I even need such a right? Does the terminology of rights even apply? Whom does it concern, besides myself and my attacker? Presumably he will not agree to my right to defend myself against him, so we will have reached a stalemate. If anything, my attacker would need a right to attack me (since murder has a negative impact on society); presumably that right would never be granted.

No, I submit that it is of no concern to the rest of society whether I defend myself or not. It’s not as though I can choose to “go around defending myself,” so as to become a menace to society; the choice is foisted upon me, and it is mine to make. I need no “right” to self defense. I must prove that my attacker presented an imminent threat to my life, but I need not justify or even explain my response to that threat.

If there is no need for a right to self defense, then is a right to life still necessary? Yes: since the individual cannot adequately defend itself against the collective, then a mutual agreement is in order, as with the right to privacy. Unfortunately, this does result in a “fox guarding the henhouse” scenario, which is how capital punishment (and privacy violations) can be tolerated in an otherwise civilized society. But, that is another post for another time.

Does the Planet Belong to Us, or Do We Belong to the Planet?

“One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.”
–attributed to Thasuka Witko, A.K.A. “Crazy Horse“

John Locke, who was a theist, believed that since God created humans, we are his property. I do not believe in God, but I do still find value in much of Locke’s philosophy. Just because he begins from a theistic starting point doesn’t mean I have to dismiss everything he said, so long as I limit myself to those parts that do not depend on God, or I replace God with some other causal agent that fits reasonably well: evolution, for example. Of course, when I do that, I may be forced to tweak the philosophy a bit in order to make sense of it without God…

According to Locke, the creator owns his creation, which for humans means that we own that which we create or make useful by our labor. However, unlike God, we are bound by the restriction of sufficiency: it would be unjust to accumulate so much property that we deprive others of the ability to fulfill their needs. If I hoard all the berries, I’ve not only taken more than I can eat before they spoil, but I’ve taken that which I could have left for you. When it comes to land, this philosophy dictates that I am only justified in owning that which I am capable of working and turning to utility. (Presumably our right to own land at all comes from the belief that God has gifted the planet to us.)

But what happens when we replace God with evolution as our “creator”? It should be obvious: the relationship between humans and the planet gets flipped, and we become the “property,” or, more appropriately, the children, of “Mother Earth.” The natural process of evolution arose from the conditions of the planet, so its offspring is the planet’s offspring. If the planet is our creator, then how can we own pieces of it? The created cannot own the creator. The very concept of land ownership requires a supernatural creator, because the supernatural cannot be ensnared by this neat little trap.

In short: supernatural origins allow for land ownership; natural origins preclude it.

It was not long ago that I would have bristled at a post like this, yet here I am writing it. My position then was that I should not be allowed to use land unfairly — for example, to buy up all the land surrounding an important resource and prevent you from gaining access to it — but the concept of land ownership was perfectly acceptable to me (although I’ve never owned any). Yet, once again, reason has forced me to reconsider my position in order to remain consistent.

This poses a potential problem for me, regarding my position on “One World” government, since it becomes difficult to justify our borders if we cannot justify our claims to the land. But that reality doesn’t erase the one I described in the other post, and that one represents a more serious and immediate concern, in my judgment. The issue of political empowerment, and the fear of losing it under a global authority, is very real, whereas this topic is largely philosophical (although it does have real-world repercussions).

At any rate, it would seem that if Locke was right about ownership, then Crazy Horse was right about the land.

The Parental Paradox

It is a precept of American governance that parents shall be afforded the right to raise their children according to their own values. It is also a precept of American governance that society as a whole has a vested interest in preventing parents from raising their children in a manner contrary to the consensus view of what is proper. These two precepts can be contradictory.

In practice, the consensus view takes precedence, at least in cases where the violation of consensus is considered extreme. In those cases, parents whose values do not conform to the consensus view often find their right to raise their children according to their own values infringed. In order to reclaim that right, they must conform to the consensus view, in which case they become, in effect, unpaid surrogate parents of society’s children.

Indeed, all parents who conform to the consensus view, willingly or not, are providing a free service to society by raising society’s children in accordance with society’s values. Most parents are only too happy to raise the children they’ve produced, but should society be taking free advantage of that eagerness? Should parents be paid a stipend for the service they provide? If so, then it would follow that they should be licensed and monitored to ensure that they continue to conform to consensus opinion on child rearing, or else forfeit their stipend and their parenting privileges.

This is not a personally-held belief for me, it just popped into my head suddenly. My inclination is to find it extreme and even repugnant, but it’s not exactly trivial to get around, logically, so I may be forced to accept the idea. I’ll have to think on it some more….