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This came to me by email:

I read your book last night. I got the impression that you believe you can liberate the bulk of the population by helping them to free their minds. I think you are doing electoral politics, and trying to get people to check “none of the above”. I don’t think that will work. Only perhaps 1% of the population want freedom; these people are called “freethinkers”. The rest want a kind master. If a master isn’t already present they will invent a master in the form of god, government, or gaia. Early American history had perhaps the largest percentage of freethinkers in history, who had concentrated themselves by emigration. Still, are you recognize, it very quickly went bad.

If freedom is going to happen, I think it will be because someone invents new ways for the permanent 1% minority of freethinkers to keep the permanent supermajority 99% of statists at bay.

This is a fairly common sentiment. The writer is clearly a serious libertarian, but people from every walk of life have this view of their fellow men. There is a hint of the Fallacy of Special Pleading in the claim, in this case maligning the norm with the exception: “I have what it takes to live a free life, but no one else does.”

My reply:

So, in summary, your plan is to bet against humanity?

I think you’re wrong. I think everyone wants to live the life I live, they just don’t know how. We won’t know for a while which one of us right — and we can only run the test because I wrote Man Alive!

Meanwhile: Will you love your self more tomorrow and enduringly by betting against humankind?

I think I’m the only game in town, and you have nothing whatever to lose by betting with me instead. If I’m right, you win big, and if you’re right, you lose nothing you have not already lost. I’m a free roll of the dice, but I’m also your best shot at making a difference in the world. Are you going to (more…)

Chapter 2. The nature of your nature.

Everything I have to say about anything starts with carrying the claim back to the object. The essence of philosophical error, deliberate or not, is creative solipsism: “The nature of the thing under discussion is what I need it to be to make my argument work out.” This is useless, of course, since no amount of creative map-making will turn a mountain into a valley. The map is not the territory. If we want to make useful, cogent arguments about what humanity is, we must look to actual human beings, not to incomprehensible maunderings about what humanity “must” be – regardless of the facts.

This is ontology, the study of the nature of real things, irrespective of what anyone thinks about them. And as we will see repeatedly, as we go along, ontology really matters only when we are talking about human beings. There is no one who claims that there is anything controversial about the nature of rocks or trees or reptiles. Only human nature is deployed in one bogus argument after the next, each one devised to induce you to try to violate your own inviolable ontological nature.

There is another big word we need to deal with, so we might as well get it out of the way. Teleology is the branch of philosophy concerned with oughts – what real things should do. Again, it only matters with respect to human beings. A rock should sit around doing nothing until something else acts on it. A tree should grow toward the sun until it is felled by disease or collapses from its own weight. A reptile should eat, mate and moult until it is devoured by a starving bird. These are all non-controversial statements, ultimately of interest only to lab-coated academics.

But ontology and teleology matter a great deal as soon as the conversation turns to human beings. Recall that the most important question in philosophy is, “What (ontology) should (teleology) I (ontology) do (teleology)?” Accordingly, the sole topic of philosophical and theological writing, for all of human history, has been teleology: What should you (more…)

That headline is my favorite advertising joke, a send-up of all those hokey old matchbook covers. I don’t know if anyone still advertises on matchbook covers. I don’t even know if anyone still makes matchbooks. Presumably, by now, smokers can light their cigarettes with the fire of indignation in other peoples’ eyes.

But I have always believed that ordinary people should be able to save the world from going to hell on a hand-truck. Our problem is not the tyrant-of-the-moment. The only real problem humanity has ever had is thoughtlessness — the mindless acquiescence to the absurd demands of demagogues.

That’s the subject of this little book: The high cost of thoughtlessness — and how to stop paying it. It weighs in at around 75 pages. I’m nobody’s matchbook copywriter, and I would have made it even shorter if I could have. But it covers everything I know about the nature of human life on Earth — what we’ve gotten wrong, until now, and how we can do better going forward.

Why did I bother? Because the world we grew up in is crashing down around our ears. Nothing has collapsed yet, and there is no blood in the streets — so far. But as the economists say, “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.” My bet is that you have been watching the news and wondering what you will do, if things get ugly.

Doesn’t that seem like a fate worth avoiding? And yet: What can one person do? My answer: Read — and propagate — these ideas. The book itself is offered at no cost — and it always will be. Even so, the price I ask is very high: You have to pay attention.

If you find that you like this book, I encourage you to share it freely, far and wide, in any form, with anyone you choose. Print it, photo-copy it, email it — shout it from the rooftops if you like. You can read it here at SelfAdoration.com, or you can download an easy-to-share PDF version (back-up server) or Kindle Reader or iBooks versions. If you post to public (more…)