Cantharis

There is nothing unprincipled about fighting with whatever means you have against the almost inevitable fall of western civilization by the hands of barbarians, looters and a ruthless political class, the same way it is not unprincipled to lie or use force when a gun is held against your head. This is what many libertarians fail to understand, and they apply not the non-aggression principle which obviously allows enforcing property rights through violence but the non-violence principle, which decrees that a libertarian may not use the tool of institutionalized violence to decrese the aggression towards himself and his property. Furthermore, pride and culture does not exclude the constant application of property rights, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe has demonstrated this many times. As an example: In short, libertarianism has been plagued with an anti-nationalistic sentiment, deeming any in-group preference as throughoutly irrational. This sentiment however is completely false for that in-group preferences are essential for the survival of any K selected species and for the development of civilization as a whole. It is even funnier if you just simply think about how extremely nationalistic an anarcho-capitalist society would be, with everyone being extremely proud of their culture that is able to apply property rights in the most consistent way ever.

Oh yea, I live in a terrible place. You can drive for hours and all you see is plain fields with nowhere to run in the case of an emergency. I terribly miss my old home, the safety I felt by looking at the mountains and the forests around the small town for that I knew I could always find safety there. Here, it is only the concrete and the empty horizon I can see and it makes me feel even more anxious. I guess I should get to know people. I was thinking about creating some group exactly for the purpose of helping each other in case of emergency (maybe it would even make a good business model) or looking up survivalists or preppers nearby. But then again, these are most likely a bunch of statist child abusers or insane conspiracy theorists and I lived by the principle of not having crazy or evil people in my life anymore, and cutting contact with all who is harmful. So hard, so hard to survive... maybe I should just sell my anal virginity on the internetz and move to acapulco with the price.

I'm in Hungary, which is an eastern-european country that successfully dodged the bullet of the mass migration. However jobs are extremely hard to get, especially in my area, and you need papers of qualification for the most trivial of jobs; people oppose very strongly any kind of free market and the corruption of the state is extremely, extremely high. We have gypsies everywhere, who has been living off of welfare for three generations, and generally, everyone is massively hostile and violent towards one another. And the mob is steering towards socialism once more. Not a nice place to be.

I did not say the laws of logic are derived from observation, I said the laws of logic are the same laws that guide the behavior of matter and energy.

Logic is not merely the law of identity. It is a method of creating a non-contradictory argument. It is not empirical and it has nothing to do with the outside world in a sense that you do not need to know whether a Gazillio exists to be able to say: P1: All mammals look cute P2: A Gazillio is a mammal C: A Gazillio looks cute This is a valid argument, meaning that the conclusion follows from the premises, it is not sound, meaning, it does not confirm to the empirical reality. But formal logic does not care whether parts of the argument are empirically true or not, you could say P1: All humans are three-headed P2: Socrates is a human C: Socrates is three-headed and it would still be valid, and formal logic stops there. What Stef means when he says is what Ayn Rand, inspired by Aristotle put it this way: "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong." That is to say the laws of logic, the law of non-contradiction, identity (and excluded middle) are aligned with the behavior of all matter and energy of the universe, the principles of aristotelian logic apply to the world around us.

Right, I must learn new skills, I don't know what though. I should do some research on similar phases of history to see what skills had high demand. I'm also trying to do some damage control in my country, started a new blog about free market, I think mine is the third of this kind in the whole place, wanna start podcasting aswell. I'm not hoping to turn the tides but maybe I can reach out for some who want to survive using reason and not violence. I also want to liquidate most of my assets, have hundreds of books I could hopefully sell. Thank you guys, I actually started to see hope.

I will refer to it as The Collapse. We are facing two historical events crashing into one apocalyptic crescendo, one is the migrant crisis and the other is the deduction for which Hayek was awarded a Nobel price, the end of a business cycle, misallocation of resources as a result of central banking, jobs and projects without real market demand that must be wiped out. It should be obvious that these two will affect the societies of the whole world from west to east, some more and some less. In the quasi-socialist states of western-europe the boost button on government spending shall be pushed to "save" the economy, while the migrants will start looting and wreaking havoc until the whole landscape descends into a bloody civil war. The far east will be lucky this time. The US... well, who knows. I'm from eastern europe, we don't really have migrants. But to be completely honest with you, this is not how I planned my life. What I wanted to be is a professional science-fiction writer and I started studying philosophy in the university half a year ago. Naturally, I have very few skills for which there is market demand. Even though I speak two languages, I have translated several books (from Stef and Rothbard) and made them into audioformat, have almost finished my first novel, I am still far away from being able to survive in the marketplace. I wanted to devote my uni years to writing and producing different contents, and therefore I have not developed any social relations in my new city and know basically only my girlfriend. My plan was that by the time I end my education I would have landed my first - or maybe second publication - even though I am now starting to realize that I would never be able to live off selling anarcho-capitalist science fiction novels. To add even more, I have no connection with my abusive mother apart from her supporting me financially - meaning 150$/mo which includes bills - because she gets vast tax breaks if I study. Now, I almost certainly feel that I will not make it through The Collapse. I could create rationalizations but the fact is that I am dancing in a razor's edge existentially and I feel - and fundamentally it is but a paralyzing dread and not a fact-based knowledge - that I will not survive. I know what will come. I have studied enough praxeology and disciplines regarding how societies and groups behave especially in and before crises to know what is coming and it is called the grand reaper of souls. And in the last days I've been grieving my own. Maybe I should not, maybe I am completely wrong and maybe nobody else feels like that - which would be the greatest relief of my life. But I really want to know whether I'm alone in this or not, and how do others deal with this dread that should come only in nightmares, and that makes me think of the much less painful and daunting path of suicide.

Lots of people are working all the time to create content that spreads the message of liberty. People open up newer and newer blogs to talk aboout their ideas about freedom and non-aggression, myself included. So it is pretty rude to just simply dismiss many many people's hard work available for free and say that nobody is doing anything except wisdomwanking.

Oh I see, and it is a completely fair and valid point, cause by universalized I simply meant to imagine that both people in the room can perform it, but it does indeed carries the connotation if I look at it that way that it should be made universal, and therefore I'm changing it right away, thank you for helping me

Nope, the definition of it in the book UPB is: "It is aesthetically positive (universally preferable but not enforceable through violence, such as “politeness” and “being on time”)." ^See page 64. "An APA is a non-coercive rule that can be rationally applied to both parties simultaneously." Page 68.

In the context of UPB, if you would want to test the possibility of universalizing your taste for flan, you'd need to get rid of the arbitrary distinctions such as "taste" and "flan" anc take it to its most abstract form, which is "for." No, just kiddind. But for real, its abstraction would mean '(personal) preferences are enforcable,' which you cannot universalize, and would certainly be considered immoral if implemented.

P1 is invalid. There is no problem with giving consent while you are drunk, you are responsible for any action you do while under the influence because you are in that state of consciousness by your own choice.

Hey guys, here is my take on the issue of where is virtue in UPB. If you like it feel free to pay me a visit to my blog where I originally published the writing and my ancap-peaceful parenting-sf novel at. Virtue, Transcendence and UPB The history of ethics from Aristotle to the present day has been a history of failures, of grand holes within incomplete theories that the State used for his own ends, a history of serving evil. The acolyte of Aristotle conquered the known world; the Christian ethics was – and still is - but a means to maintain obedience both to the light-wielding masters and the fellow slaves; Kant is, well… let’s just quote Leonard Peikoff here, who wrote “[t]hose who accept any part of Kant’s philosophy—metaphysical, epistemological or moral—deserve it;” utilitarianism slumbers deep within the heart of statism, and so on. Therefore I would let the endless quarrel on the works of madmen such as Descartes and Plato to those academics whose aim is not to help the world, but to bar its progress. Progress can be found within the ethical framework of Stefan Molyneux, the Universally Preferable Behavior, which will be the foundation of our current efforts to discover and define virtue. In short, he argues that any ethical theory (that we present as ‘it is universally preferable to do X’ or it is ‘ethical to do X’) must be universal, applicable to all human in any given time. Ethical theories must be consistent. He also proposes two thought experiments as the methods of testing a theory, the first is what he calls ‘coma test,’ which says that since the logical opposite of a moral theory is immoral behavior, if we put forth a positive moral proposition such as ‘it is moral to give to the charity,’ a man in coma, or in a situation in which he cannot give to the charity becomes immoral, therefore no positive moral proposition can be universalized. The second thought experiment is what is called, its name derived from ancient Greek, ‘two guys in the room,’ in which we are trying to establish whether the given moral proposition (such as murder, rape is universally preferable, or altruism is moral) can be achieved simultaneously by both parties. Going further into the realm of virtue, we will need the second thought experiment, the ‘two guys in the room.’ Propositions such as ‘eating is UPB’ would pass it, but ones such as ‘theft is UPB’ would not. For the detailed explanation of this see Universally Preferable Behavior: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, written by Stefan Molyneux, pages 75-81. Let us examine what we mean by virtue in our everyday language. First off, apart from those interested in philosophy, the word ‘virtue’ is not too often used. But I believe all men and women whose minds are reasonably healthy and refrain from violent behavior would recognize some form of virtuous behavior if they see it. The concept of a superhero evokes this feeling of admiration, of respect that one feels when he encounters with virtue. Or upon seeing the lone “Tank Man” of Tiananmen Square one feels a certain kind of awe and respect, and the smallness of his own self. But virtue, I would argue can manifest itself devoid of life-threatening adversity. A man who fights and wins against his addiction of drugs to regain his health and his family would almost universally be considered virtuous, yet he fights only against his own soul. An entrepreneur who believes that his product can change the human landscape, and works for endless, midnight hours until he can sell it would be considered virtuous. Even if he does it for his own ends, not because he desires to help mankind, but because he finds joy in doing so, seeing the determination and strength would evoke the same respect. Now, let us note that trying to define what virtue is from an emotionalist standpoint would never work, for that it is completely subjective. An objectivist would feel tremendous respect by looking at the last example, while a Kantian altruist would find no ethical value in his works, or Marxist would call our hero an oppressive capitalist, and would want to sacrifice him to the good of the collective. There is however a more objective effect of a virtuous behavior, a notion that I propose in my novel, Rebirth of a Theocracy. I call it Transcendence, and I define it as an event of historical explosion triggered by the accumulated life experience of an individual gained through virtuous behavior, which results in significant personal alterations and has major, objectively measurable interpersonal or cultural impact. What it means is that virtues such as the Four Cardinal Virtues, or determination, or fortitude have consequences in a society. And those consequences act as an explosion, spreading a meme, a thought, an idea, a role model, an emotion through the interconnected web of the human world. The end product of virtue, the data that is sent through this system, whether it is a product that greatly enhances the human experience, a poem that resonates with countless hearts in pain, a new way of thinking about life, about existence and the physical domain or a great feat of architecture that looms over men in the crowded metropolis is the objective way of detecting virtue. No great work was done between two hedonistic orgies; they were born by the dedicated hard work of an inspired soul. An infinite idea that would have changed the face of human landscape was lost for that it was not followed by virtue, and in the end Transcendence. And we can also see the value of the consequence of virtue if we imagine a man who invents the scientific method and the basic principles and discoveries of physics, chemistry or any other sciences in the year 2015. He would not be celebrated as a great thinker; he would be mocked, laughed at, or at best, he’d be given a prize of participation from true heroes of the world. Let us finally connect all these with UPB. In such cases as fighting back a bully, truly defending a homeworld or saving a victim from a robbing we can clearly see the nature of the actions; they fight back the darkness. Such actions defend basic rights upon which any thriving society is built, the right to life, liberty and property. They fight the entropy that wants to devour the data of the human soul. However the nature of those virtues that would be propagated by Ayn Rand, such as the independent and creative work of a human mind differs. It creates value instead of protecting it, though the protection itself is a kind of creation since the protector is the cause of the value’s further existence, but let us drive through this corpse for now on and pretend that the Randian virtues are the only that create value just for the sake of easy understanding. The creation of a technological, scientific, artistic and entrepreneur achievement furthers the existence of the community. It helps the individuals within it survive in an environment of plenty instead of predation. Devoid of those there are no products to consume and services to use; society falls back into the primordial primitivism and darkness, giving way to the initiation of force as a highly rewarding means of survival. Without the labor and adversity thinkers, artist and philosophers face there is no morality to guide men’s actions. Without science there can be no understanding of the world around us, and the void will be filled by myths and superstitions. Without technology and without the work of a ‘capitalist,’ there are no means to reach the masses with the knowledge of the thinkers. And so without the Prime Movers, the world falls back into a state in which violence is more profitable than production. So what is the nature of the second kind of virtuous behavior? It fights back the darkness the same way as the first does, by offering an alternative path to the wielder of the dark: the path of prosperity, of health and joy within a cooperative world that bows in obedience to any consumer demand. Let us go back to Stefan Molyneux’s UPB. He argues that there are certain behaviors, such as those that violate the non-aggression principle that cannot be universal, those that we deem evil. And in the spirit of UPB, my conclusion about virtue is that virtuous action is that which actively and either directly or indirectly opposes behavior that cannot be universal.

In this picture A is my girlfriend's student hostel and B is a camp just as the one in the video above. She is moving in tomorrow. You can't imagine how stressful a thought it is.

You know, I practiced english through listening to excessive amount of audiobooks, sometimes - as was the case with the book called Quantum Thief - I failed to grasp half of the chapter's words (but then it turned out that they were words the writer made up without explanation in the beginning). Then I translated Moly's book On Truth to both practice and sharing it with other less bilingual countrymates of mine, and now I'm writing my own book in english, while also translating his other books. The only key in my experience is practice and being constantly exposed to the language. For example when I wanted to study Italian I changed the World of Warcraft's language to italian, since I got most of my basic english from the game. Reading poetry also helps a lot.