Kicking people out

Recently in Scotland this video became quite famous and a follow-up is available here. Now I do not belong to the type of people who want to beat up every idiot that I see on my way, though I truly believe that, I would be physically capable of doing that in most cases, purely because in many cases those people were never shown an other way of behaviour and it would be a much better act to show them other options - anyway for the sake of argument this does not matter.

What matters here is that we had someone using a service for which he did not have the required proof of pay. Now the fact that maybe when he was buying the ticket in the first instances it was sold to him wrongly, but most sensible people check that they get what they pay for. Neither can his medical state be used as excuse for this, as a adult he is probably well aware of it and should take adequate measures to control it - it is sad, but this is not much of a different case of people abusing e.g. alcohol and behaving like idiots.

Now I heard opinions that the boy was treated harshly and that if other people were asked to move by someone who is not a police officer, they would also try to punch them. In the first instance the boy was offered several times to move freely out of the train - he did not. He was lifted-up by someone who had permission of a employee responsible for eliminating fare-dodgers (I have no idea how much less force could you use - tap him on the shoulder???) and told to move - he did not. He tried to swing a punch, but was moved out, not even put in a arm lock. He then tried to run back into a train (private property), to which he did not have the right to enter.

Now with regards to police and security. Police are nothing more than security employed by the government, I have seen them many times doing a great job and I heard stories from my friends experience about the contrary. By no means should police though be put over other people, it is the sad case that in many instances they seem to have extra privileges, often not completely even related to the acute actions that they might have to take in their job (this makes me thing of politicians...). There is no reason why a owner or a person designated by him should not be allowed to kick someone out of their property as long as they do not break any contract. Trains should not be regarded any different than pubs and clubs, where even the law states under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005, that when asked people should leave the private premises and reasonable force might be used to enforce this.

If we are not allowed to protect our property, if we are not allowed to freely use our lives, what are we allowed then?

The problem with the greater good

I was (kind of) challenged by someone who claimed that taxes are a necessary evil and at the same time a fairer way of paying for some stuff e.g. ambulances... I think that one of the problems that those people have is that they praise the idea of the so called greater good. The idea that society can choose to ‘use’/abuse/torture certain individuals who have committed no offence against anyone because doing so will ‘benefit many people and only cost a couple’. Well so now we know that we live in a age of quantity and not a one of quality. Sad it is. But it is even more sad that those same arguments would have been used by all sort of socialist derived regimes like natzis (sacrificing certain individuals, of Jewish descent, disabled etc.) or commies (who justified sacrificing the rich..., well for the government I guess, since the so called poor did not seem to benefit so much). If we do not stop this, we might find ourselves living in a world where it will legal to make experiments on individuals against their will - ‘for the greater good’; strip rich people (who I have no idea why people hate so much) of all their possessions - ‘for the greater good’; kill your elderly relatives - ‘for the greater good’.

Without freedom, there will be no justice...

Means ends and moral dilemmas

People often like to challenge each other with so called moral dilemmas. An example of it one is the following:

‘If by killing 1 person (the person is not sacrificing her/his life voluntarily), you could save the lives of millions, would you do it?’

Now let me explain why do I believe that the answer to that question is NO. I am not arguing by any means against human charity, but we do not have any obligation to help anyone (unless we have some kind of contract), so helping someone is a good dead (something more than we would normally expect), not helping them is neutral, there is no fundamental reason why we should. By not helping them we are not harming them, we are just not helping them. If we on the other hand push them to harm, then we are doing them something evil.

Lets look at a example if someone is hanging on from a cliff we can either do nothing (stay neutral), help them get up (do something good) or stamp on their fingers and make them fall (do something evil).

Further on, there is no ‘objective’ way of compensating someone who we have done something evil, by doing good to other people. I.e. stealing from someone rich and giving it to the poor does not compensate the rich person for the harm that was done to him.

So by not harming the 1 person and not helping the million we stay neutral. Our means our just and hence the ends are moral.

By harming the first person and helping the million we have still done something evil and immoral, that is not compensated by the fact that we helped the other million. By doing harm to someone pour means can not be just and hence their outcome can not be moral.

If we do not follow the above algorithm, then situations like this can be deemed moral:

1. A gangster stealing all your money  and killing, you and your family would be deemed just if he donated some of that money and saved a 1000 lives in a poor country.
2. Governments would be justified by exploiting minorities (look at the Nazi and Soviet regimes) to help their majorities.

Referencing my dear old friend The Young Monarchist, our means justify our ends. So consider wether harming some people (e.g. by taxes) to ‘help’ other people by ‘social services’ really is just (even if you think that the social services actually help).

Temptation

In life we desire many things, often we say that we are tempted by something. We can then decide whether we subdue to it or not, it might be a hard or easier to make that decision, but ultimately it is ours. Sometimes those desires hint us to do something ‘good’ e.g. when we are tempted by food, because we are hungry and subdue to the crave we do not die from starvation. Sometimes they are not so good e.g. sexual temptations. It is very interesting as if two people make a agreement to have sex, nothing immoral happens (unless they previously agreed with someone else that they will not do that). The problem occurs that temptations are often self-reinforcing, a good example being smoking, which mainly shows itself in how difficult it is to quit. So though one does not commit anything immoral, one might become obsessed with something. This means that it becomes harder for him to reject the temptation. If we look across history, especially religion, we notice that some of the greatest individual e.g. Jesus (and the saints that followed his teachings), Buddha, Tao masters, were famous not only for their gentleness, but also for a high moral code and restraint.
This hints to me that if one tries to restrain himself in everyday life, it is easier to make clear decisions in times of stress and gives him a higher degree of freedom/independence.  This can make one think about neijia martial arts, which are based on intent and preserving ones balance, doing things that benefit one and do not create a weakness.

Hence when we are deciding on something we might not only think whether it is just, but also if it is beneficial in perspective.

Priorities

I have decided to skip a couple of topics (but actually also write something). There is a reason for this - every time I discus politics with my not-so-like-minded friends there is a issue that we regularly encounter, mainly that what I propose in not nice/fair...

We would probably all agree that it would be pleasant to live in a nice happy-fluffy world, but those of us who have some realism in our guts know that this will not happen. For the start we are tainted by (whatever you want to blame) the first sin, evolutionary background or what not. Thats why such a world could not happen at the moment.

Secondly (and much more importantly) there are things more important than niceness in the world like e.g. JUSTICE and FREEDOM. Everyone who has some respect for any other person will agree that stealing is not good and immoral. Neither enslavement of individuals, just because they live in a particular place is just.

This is why I oppose taxes, money should not be taken of people to be given to others against their will. Some of my quite intelligent friends come out then with one of the most ridiculous arguments: but this is a free country and no one is stopping them from moving away. This I would call either enslavement or direct aggression towards others properties.

If people were given freedom and justice, many conflicts would have been prevented, and yes charity is great and I sincerely do support it, a free and just world would in my opinion support such a attitude in the ‘society’, but let it be from ones free will!

Justice

Justice is something that most people would find desirable, at least when its them that would be the beneficiaries; everyone can imagine that a thief would want justice on the murderer of his wife. But how do we decide what is just? Do we measure it by the laws of the state that we live in? To what extend do we follow it, wouldn't it be fine if people were just nice? Should we be only just to righteous people? Who and how should deal it out?

The main principle on which the justice system should be build is private property rights. Freedom was discussed in my previous posts and for anyone to be blamed for anything, he should have done it from his free will (at this point it has to clarified how heroic the martyrdom is of many people who opposed to follow the commands of their oppressors). I shall refer to what our Lord said to Pilate (John, Chapter 19) "You haven't a shred of authority over me except what has been given you from heaven. That's why the one who betrayed me to you has committed a far greater fault." Many people complain about people doing what they do at their job, forgetting that they have a contract with their employer. This means that if a commander of a unit tells his soldiers to bomb that place, they do it and if anyone is to be blamed it is the one with authority. So freedom already gives us a wide basis for defining what is just, but what about state law?

What if the state law tells us to e.g. discriminate the rich or abuse Christians? Obviously this goes against freedom, and those are people often at their land, for which they probably pay the state taxes. I hope most people would argue that just being rich or Christian is not a crime. But what about the state punishing people for littering? If they want to litter on their own property, then that is their business? Justice should be measured by how free we are about ourselves, as there is nothing else that can really be but as a reference.

Challenge for you - because communism ever worked...

Can someone give a example of a communist government that worked efficiently, for the good of people and not breaking any commie rules to a major degree? And I mean on a national level, not some minor communities.

Is change good?

I’ll leave this question open, but many people to whom I speak seem quite keen on it. I think that change is good in the sense of us learning more everyday, in bringing some new opportunities and challenges. On the other hand there is the nice old saying that one should not fix, what is not broken; but the question is whether it can be improved? Are there any large changes that occurred rapidly that were good (coming of the Lord)? Where there any that were bad (commies)?

Quantity and Quality

People seem to like ‘much/many’ nowadays. Everyone is running, to earn much money, have much sex (and there is always the fact of so many divorces... and other issues) or drink loads of alcohol (to be fair in most cases it is all of them). People eat loads of cheap, disgusting food and do not take proper care of themselves. It is their choice and thats fine, but I think they are loosing something from it and I think that we could all gain something if the situation would change. To reference back to the previous post, look at change that could occur if people did their jobs properly (quality), which would obviously result in less of them. There is probably a nice quality to quantity ration, which is most efficient (and most strategies tend to be about making things most efficient, not maximising a certain parameter), but with the wide range of skills different people would occupy different niches in the market. But if people want to do what they are already doing, let them, its their choice.

Alcohol is a other interesting example. Working in different venues across Scotland I noticed that people like to get pissed (apparently I do not get the wonders of not remembering the previous night, hang-overs - though I’m Polish, so I do not have much chance of experiencing them anyway; and vomiting). I prefer fine mead or vodka, enjoying the quality, the pureness, the taste, not even to mention the discussions in fine company (putting good lads aside, fine women are much more of a interesting company than as one of my friends said ‘sluts’). And the same holds true for food (joys of little things in life) and exercise (all those boys in the gym doing semi-pull-ups). The list goes on. And in the end, it will count how you lived your life, not how many days it lasted.

On pride, patience and calmness

A interesting conversation happened just over a week ago, on the topic of pride and I think I can share some of my thoughts. Firstly it seems, as if people lack pride in what they are doing, but on the other hand many have a whole supply of personal pride i.e. a large ego. So you might get the worlds worst carpenter, who will want to start a fight with you if you accidentally bump into him on the pavement.

The ego part, seems to be the case for a long time in history, but the media ‘macho’ vision is possibly aiding its development. The lack of pride in ones art is more of a interesting case, as it manifests itself in the low quality of many products and services (I will also discuss this in my next post). It seems like part of the problem lays in the lack of respect that people people have for their professions, everyone wants to be a manager but no one wants to start from the position of the manual worker (this is widely observed in the population of Non-Educated Deliquents who seem to despise of many jobs, even when un-employed, as they are either ‘jobs for emigrants’ or they want something better - but if you have 0 jobs on your CV it is logical to try to get something on it for a start, isn’t it???). Managers, doctors and lawyers seem to be the only REAL jobs for many people. But society needs good carpenters, as not everyone wants to buy cheap IKEA stuff, but wants the real deal! And how can people do their job efficiently if they do not have any motivation and people who take pride in their jobs, are more likely to pay attention to the details and be motivated to do their best. And as my friend said, a good garbage cleaner is of higher value to society than a rubbish doctor.

Part of the issue might lie in the general notion of lack of patience in modern times. People are in a hurry, as they want more (once more, this will be discussed in the next post); this results in the lack of quality - as there is no time for it. Being in such a rush, we are also unable to see the beauty of the world around us. We can’t appreciate neither the light breeze, nor the sound of the wind in the leaves and the movement of brunches in it. This takes away those small pleasures of our lives, the ones that can fill everyday, but people seem to want big stuff. Big stuff neither does happen often, neither it usually lasts long. Also in this race, people tend to stress, which has negative effects on our health and makes us more prone to mistakes.

The old sages new that patience and calmness are gold. Great knowledge takes time to be gained, great peaces of art take long to be made, they all require patience and calmness and pride in once creation. Such approach improves our everyday experience of life and our skill in it. So go and make yourself a cup of fine tea and bless the Lord for the beauty of the day.

Freedom the flip site of the coin of democracy?

While having a discussion regarding freedom my flatmates friend replied to my praise of freedom and critique of democracy with a question of whether democracy isn't the flip site of the coin of freedom. Now lets do not forget that democracy is just a voting system, it implies nothing about the views of the elected government, neither about the governmental structures... a voting system that got Hitler into power. Even commies had quasi-democratic elections! More interestingly democracy does not predict who will win the elections. What do I mean by that? Well, dependently on the exact voting system and division of constituencies, it does not have to be the majority of the population who ‘wins’. If we take into the account that not everybody is voting, the results of the votes show a even more skewed vision of the nations will, and it is the individuals who will bear the biggest benefits or losses that have the most motivation to go and vote. This rises a point that policies that are massively discriminatory against minorities e.g. extremely rich people have a high chance of being passed. At least for the moment we will put aside the issue of who and why should be voting, if at all anyone should. Democracy has the ability of subduing people in a legitimate way to the the wills of the government. To justify this I will have to at some point write on the relation between freedom, social policy and other abstract ideas like the common good. And one more point: the government elected may not be one that supports freedom, whether economic or social. I hope that I presented a general notion of why democracy does not necessarily imply freedom.

Libya - a long, vague list of ideas

Firstly I want to make a disclaimer, that I by no means want to defend colonel Gaddafi, he is a lefty and one with loads of personal problems (just look at his unit of virgin bodyguards). All that I want to do is to rise questions about the ‘Wests’ intervention in Libya.

For the last couple of weeks there is loads of noise in the media about Libya. There was loads of mess in Northern Africa and even beyond, but the Chinese government seemed efficient at handling it (whether that is good, that is a separate issue). Now we are dealing with a intranational conflict with a lot of international attention. People (i.e. mainly the media) are shouting all sorts of abuse on Gaddafi being a dictator, at the West for either not intervening or for doing the wrong thing. People seem to trow all sorts of arguments for who is the good guys and who is the bad guys, including some bizarre arguments about bringing democracy to the Libyan people which I do not get as in general countries seem to have greater problems than their voting systems. As most conflicts of this scale, they are quite complex and I think that the comparison with a domestic (husband - wife) conflict is quite appropriate.

Colonel Gaddafi, who officially does not possess a title of a ruler, gained power over the country 42 years ago, by overthrowing the monarchy established after the end of the Italian occupation. He conveyed his rule as a dictator with leftish tendencies, included th usual murder and persecutions. Recently he started to put some reforms, that hinted on a will of change, on a longer range possibly in a Chinese style, but we will probably never get to know that, as if he wins, he will likely be not to co-operative with the West (possibly not even with the Arab states as there is some support from them towards the Rebels). His regime, like most, was/is full of murder and rape. 

The Rebels are not very quantifiable, though there exists some sort of opposition/alternative government, it seems like a significant proportion of those people do not have a clue about who their leaders are. They seem to be also performing some vigilante stunts in the towns that are in their possession by performing some brutal searches, interrogations and killings of people who they suspect on being on the colonels site (not really surprising in such a stressful environment). As much as Gaddafi is fighting to stay in control of the country, except some notions of freedom I have no clue what the Rebels are fighting for, but freedom does the job for me for the moment.

Now the UN for some reason seems to be the ubergovernment of the world and whether for the better or worse it decides to interfere in the works of sovereign governments (though if they signed up to it in the first place, its kind-of their fault). We might agree with the Rebels or Gaddafi or with non of them, but what is the authority by which other countries intervene into sovereign states? Governments are paid by taxpayers money to deal with their problems, not with those of other states, and most of governments have enough problems doing that and understanding the inner workings of their countries, not to mention their knowledge of those in other regions of the world. Thats the business of the people of the country and it seems that in this case some of them took it seriously. And who decided that the Rebels are right? I am personally not supporting Gaddafi, but those are important questions to be asked. Are Rebels the majority and is the majority always right? What are their arguments? On what basis did the UN decide on this type of intervention? And what are the plans for the Libyan oil? I do not know the answers to those specific questions, but they had to be asked at some point by someone and as I wrote on the issue of truth, it would have been helpful to know them.

You can look at the conflict from the eyes of Gaddafi, the rebels or the other countries (which we could further divide). In judging what is the best solution we should be looking at what solution seems to be just/fair, I do not think we should be judging it e.g. by what is best for the West e.g. which solution is best in reducing the influence of fundamentalistic Muslims on Europe. I think that personal freedom is very important. That is my main problem with most political regimes, they take away this fundamental element from human lives, though I might be a little bit sentimental as half of Polish history seems to be a struggle for freedom. As much as stoping bloodshed is a nice romantic idea, current interventions do not seem to be stoping that from happening, but I guess people tend to care less about soldiers dying than about civilians, probably since the first group is payed to live with that risk. Supporting negotiations is definitively a good thing, that is for sure, the problem is whether the provisional Libyan government is a true representation of the Rebel leaders. Efforts of getting humanitarian aid back to Libya are also definitively good, there will be tons of people requiring medical aid or shelter and a substantial amount of that aid will be delivered in a neutral way, due to the way how organisations like the Red Cross function. As I mentioned above, I do not thing foreign states have a moral obligation to aid those people in the boundaries of Libya, what happens with them outside its borders, that is a separate issue. There is sadly no way that Gaddafi will suddenly decide to put through libertarian reforms and neither do I believe that people should be forced to seek freedom outside their home land, since it is their land. The whole thing would be much easier to judge if it was a private military organisation that was asked by the Rebels to intervene, but since this is not the case and most likely will not be, we may discard the idea (so far the only mercenaries involved, of which I am aware, are on the side of Gaddafi and it is due to them that part of the Libyan army decided to join the Rebels). Supporting the rebels with weapons is once more taking sites and rises the question of who and on what grounds should be doing it (and who would be paying for it)? So far it seems like the only solution that does not seem to breach any rights of any of the sites is to allow the Rebel side to disperse into neighbouring countries and allow to organise some underground opposition (but on who's expense). To be honest I do not know what the best and fairest solution is, but I hope that this posts will help you, dear reader ask yourself some important questions about this and other international issues. (For the interested, you can read a short stance of the Catholic Church on war in points 483-486 of the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church)

Wisdom, love and general life management...

As it is written in the Bible: “wisdom is better than silver and gold” (yes Bob Marley was singing about that) and “and now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

What is the importance of those in relation to truth and freedom? Wisdom for me, in its purest sense, is the use of truth in a God pleasing manner. That is acting with justice and compassion. Love is (besides the fact that it is probably many things) the act of applied wisdom towards a other person from our own free will (i.e. a choice), with the highest manifestation of compassion being self-sacrifice. Acting with wisdom allows us to get the best for not only our selves, but also for others. It allows for a good relation with other people and builds a positive atmosphere. It is not the same as allowing the other party to do anything without critique, but it is helping other people to improve their own lives. It supports the best solutions, a humble life and encourages peace, but also remains ready for a rapid response to developing conflicts if necessary. Both require the freedom to express them; one must be able to express himself, so that he can freely make those decisions and put them into practise. That is one of the reasons why I believe that truth and freedom are so important and why we should incorporate wisdom and love into our everyday lives.

Why bother with truth??? Why bother with freedom...???

I think as my first post I have to clarify some general themes that I will explore here, even if not everything that I will be writing about will be related to that. This should help clarify why I argue for certain things and why I believe they should be argued for.

Truth, I shall not bother defining it, there are many philosophical models trying to define it, each with its advantages and disadvantages and I think most of us have a idea of what it is. But why is it important? Well, I think that it helps us in decision-making. If someone wants to invest funds, it is helpful if he knows the facts about the current economical situation and, even better, if he knows how other investors and companies will act. Or similarly if a physician is making decisions regarding a patients management, it is good if he knows the current state of the patient, trends of the development of his condition and all the available procedures that he can use to treat him. It is even more obvious why knowing the truth is important for judges who make decisions in court and one hopes that the police and other agencies involved in the cases are trying to uncover the truth, to allow the judge to make the right decision. And lets not forget that a massive part of work, that people engaged in scientific research are doing, is figuring out the truth of how the world works. Our everyday decisions are based upon us knowing what the current state of affairs is, knowing if e.g. our spouse is faithful or whether our favourite TV show is being screened on the same time as always. I think that this gives a nice outline for why truth is important, although unless you were a compulsive-obsessive lier or hardcore relativist, that was probably clear from the start.

But what about freedom? Why should we care about it at all? Couldn't we just live in the security of a state controlled society, that seems to be doing everything for us; kind-of like hamsters living in cages and relying on their owners to provide them food for just being ‘cute’ (and you wonder why they ever try escaping from their cages), and then dying if the owners forget to feed them or put them for a prolonged time by a hot radiator... Well to keep it short, but this theme will be explored later on - what do we have if we do not have freedom? I appreciate the fact that even when you have freedom, stuff can be taken away from you by force (but that requires someone wanting to do that and succeeding in doing it), but if you do not have freedom, you do not posses that stuff in the first place (I know that we could start arguing, about how much freedom there is and go into arguments about specific issues, but for the moment lets keep it general). Now if you are not free to make your own judgements and decisions, how can you be ‘fairly’ (I know this is a bit vague) judged? How can you be deemed responsible for a variety of things if you do not have any influence on them? Can you express yourself or develop as you wish if you do not have the freedom to do that? Can you do your best work on helping others, if you are not allowed to share your knowledge, skills and possessions with them?

Now what has truth to do with freedom. Once more I’ll try to keep it simple-stupid. You need to know the actual state of your surroundings to make appropriate judgements and decisions e.g. you need to know how long was the cake in the oven and at what temperature to make a good estimate on whether it is ready or not. Since we base our decisions on the information we obtain, controlling the information controls influences our decisions and, quite likely, restricts them, affecting their outcome and individuals dependent upon the information presented to them.

I am aware that this is not a detail analysis of the concepts, but, God willing, that might come later. I hope though that you dear reader, gained a general idea, about what I mean when talking about those concepts and why I think that they are important.