Quantity, Autonomy, Duty, Humanity

While reading the Oxford Philosophical Dictionary, as if it was easy reading magazine, I came across G.E. Moore's profile, of whose book I recently read, Principia Ethica. The Oxford dictionary made the claim that he did not sufficiently show how he came up with ideas like The Naturalistic Fallacy, and I realized that I actually do know how I came up with my Universal Humanism, so I will try to throw some quick light on that here. As autonomous agents, none of us chose to come into existence in the sense that our physical beings were conceived. It also has to do with the idea that each individual can be conceived, in a physical sense, as 1 (one). Finally, mixed with the two previous ideas, the third has to do with the idea that while we are separate we all emerge with the same needs at a necessary level, creating in some sense a paradox, and in another sense a moral obligation. Let us look closer.........

In a contingent sense, no one alive, or that has ever lived has chosen to be born, has chosen who they will be born to, or where they will be born geographically, though all these factors have major implications on the success of the individual. This idea that no human who is alive today created the system in which we are all a part of beyond our choice leads to the inescapable conclusion that destroying that self-creating essence by choice has qualitative consequences. In a sense you are exhibiting a behavior that bestows upon itself what it believes to be the necessary significance to make decisions against an order that is far larger than one's self. Men who make such decisions against the larger order in which they are a part of, and have only limited control over are rightly seen as arrogant. This first idea that no human alive has created the self-creating system, leads to the idea that no man has the right to destroy it, if moral justice is to have any significance. This is where we gain the idea of no killing except in self-defense. Every man has the right to protect himself, and those under his care, but has no right to make speculations about qualitative worth as if he was of the same power and significance of the system itself. A man is a part of the whole, and a man cannot exist without the whole. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, and is fundamentally different than the part. Men that identify themselves as having the power of the whole, see the whole as only the sum of its parts, and fail to realize the larger essence of the whole.

Now we know we did not chose to be born, at least as far as we are capable of understanding. We also know, mathematically that we can be conceived as one. Now, it is true that while every human can be conceived as one, there are qualitative endowments that point toward the idea that all one's are not created equal. Nevertheless, in the most basic sense, in the most necessary sense, in the sense that all one's need food, water, air, and sleep, endowment is meaningless. Life, at it's most logical mathematical level demands egalitarianism because in the most necessary sense all men have the same needs, and all men had no choice of their existence. One may make the argument that one that is intellectually impaired does not equal one, but is less than one, and this view is based on consequencialism, ironically usually put forward by those who claim to act by principle. Men do not get to decide about the necessity of other men based on endowment. The very birth of an individual thrusts upon all men the duty to take care of that individual, if that individual cannot provide for themselves. To make divisions at the level of the individual, or the level of family, or the level of religious group is a failure to realize what the whole is. If you do not understand the whole, then you definitely cannot understand the larger essence within the whole. Not understanding does not free one of the obligations, and we see the terrible consequences of arrogant myopic self serving men draining the very substance out of the system making necessities harder to obtain for a larger number, while obtaining frivolous objects for themselves. Every bit of substance privatized by one man, is another bit of substance another individual cannot use. Any idea that necessary substance can be privatized at all is a failure to understand the ontological status of that substance in the first place, and it is ideology gone awry in self-interest. Every dollar one earns is a dollar taken from the system for somebody else to use. If that dollar is used for necessary means, then no moral injustice can be held against you, as every person has the right to that dollar, but beyond that, amorality becomes very attractive to these men because they know, if they follow the necessary path, that they are crooks. There is a large argument to be made for controlling birthrates. I am not blind to this.

There seems to be a bit of a paradox because if one is more endowed intellectually than another, and one is conceived as one and separate, in the most necessary sense divided by space and essence how can there be any proof of obligation? The answer to that lies in implication. We are autonomous, but our steadily evolving essences carry all the changes of past life, and so do all the people around us. While we are separate and autonomous, we are also in a relative sense the same necessarily. This is the paradox. We conceive of ourselves logically as separate, because of our everyday
a-historical space-time perspective. In this sense, we are barbarians, animals, and in Hobbes' state of war, but we cannot deny history. History says physically, and necessarily we all come from common ancestors. Scientific observation (thanks Darwin) says we all share similar bones and bodily systems, and are ridiculously similar when you look at the complexities of the body, and how little deviation there really is person to person. While there is something to be said for the present, basic quantifying, and daily perception alone, if you limit yourself to that small cross section of life you have not only failed to see where you physically come from in the necessary sense, but you fail to realize your own humanity. You fail to be human, and exist as a quantified automaton sucking the necessary life out of others in an amoral abstraction, with no conscience and no nature. You become the part that denies the whole, and you become empty, and worse than non-existent. To have no choice is better than to have a choice and make the wrong decision when the lives of others are at stake.