Morality must be perfectly rational/logical or it would be nonsensical, and it would be impossible to determine who is right in cases of moral disagreement. Moral intuition or moral conscience can be explained as sensitivities derived over many generations by rational observation of the consequences of actions. It may be that there exists an intrinsic sense of what is moral, deeper than cultural conditioning, but even then it is necessary to rationally justify what is right in cases of moral disagreement.

The true Basic Norm of legality is not “the Constitution” but the logical structure of rational consciousness, which is comprised of two interdependent facts: 1) the value of rational agency above all else, which is affirmed by every rational agent whenever they choose to act on a reason or value anything for a reason; 2) self-consciousness being conditional on reflexive relating with conscious others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_norm

Everyone thinks they are rational in their choices at the time of choosing, otherwise they would not make those choices. The implication that most people are unaware of is that by making a choice they commit themselves to suffer the consequences of their choice if it is not rational. When the attitude of certainty clashes with the unexpected consequences, rationality asserts itself without words.

Some religious persecution is beneficial to religious understanding. Religions that remain unchallenged become obtuse, indulgent, compulsive and conceited. Religious persecution disrupts the mindless repetition of rituals and compels the religious to justify their purpose, to examine and re-interpret their understanding in rational terms.

The value of religious scripture can be determined by considering whether the same teaching would still be compelling if it were not religious, if the stories contained within it were only parables rather than historical facts. It is the wisdom of the content that can make a text sacred; the presumption of sacredness cannot make the text wise.

God should be able to make more rational arguments than any man, and if the holy scripture is short on argument, deficient in reasoning but merely commands you to go and kill some other tribe, or to make sacrifices, or to wash your feet on Tuesdays, then it is either a work of human corruption or a clever test of moral conscience. Wise teachings may be mixed with distortions and ancient confabulations, so that uncritical obedience will surely lead one astray. One must be discerning, take the treasure but not the dirt. The scripture challenges us to stay clean by washing oneself with dirty water.

The UN pretends to be the good guy, but it has endorsed the same kind of crimes in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan... The almost theatrical, sadistic, murderous excesses of the Israeli military still pale in comparison with the crime against humanity committed by every fascist government (including Hamas) in the last three years: the vaccine mandates. I wonder whether the present cycle of war porn is intended to merely distract from that bigger crime, committed by all, with the blessing of the UN Human Rights Watch.

Every single non-combatant intentionally killed during wartime is still just plain murder.

The only way as a writer to outcompete AI is to be more rational, more thoughtful, more insightful, and crucially, less “cultured”. AI does not think but only extrapolates our irrational convictions, nostalgias and habits, which we call culture. AI will cull most of the cultural writers, because it is better at reproducing and synthesising culture than any human. It will retain just a few, the most popular ones, because it needs human inputs to stay relevant to human delusions.

Calling “Woody Point” an affluent suburb is of course a lie intended to create division on the basis of wealth at the bottom end of the wealth pyramid. These tents belong in front of the houses of the big 4 bank CEO’s, the prime minister, minister of finance, and the reserve bank board members. The biggest thieves in the universe count on your charity, but charity was weaponised long ago to grease the wheels of exploitation. Charity at this point amounts to collusion. Move these tents on to where they belong; the homeless too can be weaponised against the biggest financial vampires, and they should be happy to assist.

Interpreting an armed conflict between two nations in terms of their national interests is like interpreting a chess game by considering the moves of only two pawns.

Extraordinary achievements inspire others to live up to and exceed those achievements. When people work in beautiful buildings, masterpieces of architecture, they tend to pursue mastery themselves, try to live up to the image of humanity encoded in their constructed environment, provided the achievements are discernibly personified, aesthetic, transcendent, not merely technological or commercial. Similarly, failure begets failure, demoralisation begets demoralisation, mediocrity begets mediocrity, and only rare individuals can break through this psychological barrier. Then, they are likely to be despised for their achievements by their demoralised neighbours, for putting themselves ‘above’ the common failure.

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It was demonstrated through Covid that about 80% of humans are savages at heart, lacking rational discernment and an autonomous moral compass. This statistic is now confirmed in Israel. A big shout-out to the 20% who passed the moral test.

Consciousness is not free. It was earned and can be forfeited. Moral action is the process via which we constitute ourselves as conscious agents, and the diminished state of our consciousness can morally inform us only when reflexively mediated by other conscious agents.

Not everything about “reality” is constructed. There are immutable parts to it, the structural rules that make meaning (and therefore “existence”, “being” and “reality”) possible. Without these rules there is no “reality” of any kind, nothing at all, no consciousness. These are the laws of sense, otherwise known as the laws of thought or the fundamental laws of logic: non-contradiction, identity, excluded middle, but they are really just one law since to deny any one of them is to negate them all. This is obviously relevant to “capitalism”, which is concerned with value. Capitalism, in order to be real, in order to have power, must adhere to the laws of sense, and has power only insofar as it adheres to the laws of sense. Capitalism must then ask, sooner or later, where does all value come from, what is the ultimate value; this is the true ideal of capitalism, even if it does not know it yet. We can infer that all values are conditional on the value of rational agency that we affirm every time we act intentionally and discriminate between more or less valuable reasons. Another way, rational consciousness is the source of all values, just like it is the source of all contingent “realities”, or of the evolving “reality”. The laws of sense are the laws of consciousness, the essence of consciousness, hence it is no coincidence that God was equated with Logos. You see, capitalism too is monotheistic, but it misunderstands itself. It will have to understand itself if it is to endure, or it will fail.

For as long as people are irrational, irreconcilable conflicts are inevitable. In situations of irreconcilable conflict, hierarchical societies are intrinsically more powerful (militarily) and are bound to dominate and subjugate anarchic groups, and this is why anarchism is mostly confined to the arts and the militarised hierarchies rule all. Conversely, if people are rational, all conflicts can be resolved by deliberation and any systemic ideas about self-rule or state or hierarchy are then moot (the laws of rationality rule supreme). Therefore, irrational people are incapable of sustaining anarchism, whereas rational people do not need it.