A few weeks ago, I said that I would no longer be having discussions about my political and social philosophy online. Unfortunatly I have a mental disease which makes me desire to be understood. So I strive to explain myself, as best as text on the net will allow me. This was written in responce to jason he was kind enough to read my ramblings so I am going to be kind enough to furnish him with an explination. ~E.

He wrote the following in responce to my "We Only Have Each Other" Post:

Respect everyone's life and how they want to live it! Oh, and if you believe in God, I am going to do exactly the opposite of what I just proclaimed in statement one.

By what authority do you speak, sir? Is the Government our God?

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Jason,

The argument that you attribute to me in your response is not the argument I set forward in the two paragraphs of my post. I will explain where perhaps my clumsy use of language might has lead you astray. First, your second sentence because it corresponds with what I said first.

You wrote: "Oh, and if you believe in God, I am going to do exactly the opposite of what I just proclaimed in statement one."

My first point is that we only have each other. That is to say that all that there is, at this point, is we humans on planet earth. My second point is that we often use creations like God, Groups, and Government to justify our infringements on each other's right to life. That is, we say things like, "They do not believe in The God, Our God, A God, so we are justified in killing them." "We are in the majority so we can take away the rights of the minority." Things like God, Groups, and Government, have become tools for attacking and justifying the attacks on individual rights. This is usually because there is an inherent belief that individuals are the property of these things. That is, that you belong to God, the group, or the government, and that you should therefore do as they wish. You do not belong to any of those three, individuals belong to themselves. You own you, and only you. My last point in the first paragraph is that taking into account that you own yourself, and realizing that we only have each other here on earth to trade with, and so on, is the foundation of any real social order. That is to say that we need to work from the basic building block of a society to create order, which is the individual, not god, the group, or the government.

Secondly, your first sentence, in which you wrote: "Respect everyone's life and how they want to live it!"

I would like to point out that I did not say what you said above. I said that we should respect each other's right to live our lives. You added on the "and how they want to live it!" The difference between what I said and what you said is vast.

What I said is that we should respect the idea that "you own yourself, and only yourself" as the basis of the social order. What I said is that you cannot justify making slaves of others through God, Groups, or Government, because to do so would presume that the lives of those people belong to something other than themselves.

What you said is that we should respect everyone's life and how they want to live it. This would mean that if someone chose to live their life by making slaves of others, that we would have to say "Oh, but how unfortunate they are a tyrant, we must respect their choice to enslave though." That is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that if you do not respect the idea that a person belongs to themselves, and only themselves. You cannot truly expect others to do the same for you. That is, if you choose to become a tyrant, or a murderer, you should not expect people to extend you the respect of the social order. Why? Because your actions are not in line with the basis of the social order.


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Now I would like to address what I believe you see as the implication of my writing. As I am an atheist you might think that I believe that if you believe in God that you should be refused the respect of the social order, or killed. That is not what I am putting forward in my two paragraphs.

If you choose to believe in God, Goblins, or Green Men of Mars, I would not care. I would not agree with you. I would argue that you were absurd. But I would never argue that you should be killed, because that would not respect the basis of the social order, the idea that you own yourself. If you used your belief in God to enslave or otherwise infringe upon others right to the same thing... then, as I said above, you cannot expect the same respect.


Best Regards,

~E.

In truth, we only have each other. To think otherwise would undoubtedly lead to the creation of some other fictitious being to justify the infringements we decide to visit on each other's lives. There is no such thing as God, no being known as group, and the only metaphysical justice that is ever delivered is that justice visited upon any fool who so short sighted as to allow his belief in fictitious ideas to supercede his reason and perceptual faculties. If we, believing that there is ground ahead, close our eyes, and walk off a cliff – Have we not judiciously received the punishment fitting the crime? Ignore reality at your own peril. So, I say again: In truth, we only have each other; a collection of individuals, and respecting each other's right to live our lives is the first step in any really meaningful social order.

Ignoring other individual's right to live their life, by believing that they are a slave for you, God, or Society; is believing that there is ground where there is only air. It is most likely that you will hit the ground one day soon, and as you lay dying by the hands of your former slaves, you will open your willfully ignorant eyes to find that you have actually been falling for some many years. You might ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" The answer is that you have forgotten the simple truth, that we only have each other, and that we only have that much so long as we prudently respect each others lives.