The ideology of altruism (sometimes presented under the guise of ‘solidarity’) entails the most extreme form of oppression: that your self-interest does not matter, that your only legitimate worth is as a tool and resource for others. Its motivational strategy is that of vilifying self-interest and thus creating conditions under which people can avoid moral stigma only by serving the interest of the ruling power. Altruism is a tool of motivating compliance. In essence, altruism is a lie that appeals to a coercively limited scope of self-interest.

Moral philosophy and Self-interest
It is logically impossible to even conceive of a reason to be moral unless morality appeals to our self interest, since reasons are already expressions of self-interest. In everything that we intend to do we fulfil our preference for acting in a particular way; we always do just what we prefer to do out of the available possibilities, or else we would not intend do it. In the moral sense, when we prefer to help other people, we are motivated by our interest/desire/preference for helping them. As such, pure altruism (and, by the same toke, pure hatred) is logically impossible, but this is precisely what makes moral philosophy consequential. By appealing to the self interest of oppressive institutions we give them the only possible motivation to change their ways, or else our assertions about rights have zero appeal to them, and they continue to oppress and exploit because they can, and we never get what we claim is ‘right’.
We are not persuasive unless we appeal to their self interest, and we do not appeal to their self interest unless our argument appeals to the self interest of others and acknowledges the motivational primacy of self interest. The challenge for moral philosophy is to find an interest that all people have in common, and which is ultimately more useful to us than the desire to exploit and control others.

It is conceivable that democracy is only nominally about the majority rule but is essentially a moral test: those who are willing to impose their preferences on others by the arbitrary standard of being in the majority are implicitly denying that preferences can be objectively right or wrong in their own right, thus negating the rationality of their choices and the authority of their own preferences. It then follows that this collective self-negation has representative priority over the negated preferences. If this is right then the abusive, humiliating, deceitful and exploitative governments are not a failure of democracy but express its proper function, provided it is applied only to those who vote.

Letters from Victorian Pioneers: A series of papers on the early occupation of the colony, the Aborigines, etc.

A possible explanation is that banks want scams to hurt a lot of people so that the majority will accept biometric authentication, which ironically can also be faked.

Some people enjoy being eaten alive, others do not, hence ‘enjoyment’ is not a measure of anything but only a confession of what you are.

Humans never had meaning in life apart from their subjective preferences, but for the most part of history they were unconscious even of that, so it didn’t matter. They acted deterministically and there were no other options. The fact that modern humans experience depression, aggression, and addiction is precisely because we are more conscious than the ancients, that we are aware enough to ask ourselves why we are acting deterministically, aware enough to question ‘what it is all about’. Consciousness is what we value above all else, but more consciousness is also more dangerous: as we become aware of our contradictions we must also develop the capacity to resolve them, or else we go mad.

The surest way of destroying a community is to satisfy all human needs, free of effort, cost or strife. Only a few individuals of any culture could endure this kind of challenge without destroying themselves; they must be internally driven by a meaningful, constructive purpose that creates its own need for effort, cost and strife. Consequently, every vision of effortless utopia is nihilistic.

What the hell is “Festive Season”? Does it include Diwali, Eid and Lunar New Year?

Clearly, it is not a supply driven crisis.

The laws that normalise the concept of self-determined gender-identity facilitate and protect sexual perversion, sexual exploitation, and indirectly discriminate against intersex individuals. This occurs by creating a legal loophole for sexual perverts and predators, including cross-dressers, exhibitionists and voyeurs to claim the same protected status as genuine intersex individuals in order to gain access to protected female spaces.

The only logically consistent basis of private property, apart from self-ownership, is our own creative effort; we own the things we ourselves create. Socialism does not respect the entitlements and responsibilities inherent in our individual creative efforts, which implies that it denies our ownership of intentional actions, which makes it inherently irrational and immoral. Capitalism extrapolates the claim of intrinsic property rights to include the efforts of others, and therefore also does not respect the entitlements and responsibilities inherent in our individual creative efforts, and thus denies our ownership of intentional actions, which makes it inherently irrational and immoral. Both systems are irrational and wrong.

To merely believe that a given explanation or interpretation is true, implies the lack of curiosity and seriousness about the subject.

People who believe in selfless ‘altruism’ should ask themselves whether they feel better, happier, more fulfilled when they help the needy, and whether they feel worse, unhappy, frustrated and sad when they are unable to help. All humanitarian activists, charitable groups and conscientious protesters just want to be happier, more fulfilled, less frustrated, less sad, and all in all more effective agents and enforcers of their own values and preferences, and there is nothing wrong with defending values and preferences, as long we are aware that whenever we act we are motivated by self-interest (which may even be rational and aligned with the interests of all others).

On the illusion of altruism
Whenever we do things for others and expect nothing in return, our primary motivation is still to serve our values and preferences. If our actions are aligned with what is objectively right, relating to others reflexively, as beings of the same kind, then our agency is consolidated with the structure of being, we become more conscious and integrated as agents. Conversely, for those who receive the practical benefits of our right actions, those benefits are merely contingent and temporary, and do not of themselves improve the integrity of their agency or the degree of their consciousness. As such, the benefits to Self of doing what is right are more fundamental and valuable than any benefits of our actions for others. Another way, doing what is right changes and improves who we are, our degree of existence, which cannot be erased by new circumstances, whereas the same actions change and improve only the conditions of existence for others, which may be erased by new circumstances, while the beneficiaries stay as they are.

We are entitled to no reward from others for doing what is right; the effect of the rightness of action on who we are is already the ultimate reward, with no outstanding debt to be settled. For the same reason, wrong actions do not require punishment beyond how the action degrades the wrongdoer.

Our preferences and the underlying values are coextensive with what makes us feel good about ourselves. Our preferences and values change only when they no longer make us feel good about ourselves. This motivational calculus can be contextually inconsistent when our conscious agency is not integrated or is inconsistent with the world as we know it, which is precisely the effect of bad moral choices. The more fragmented we are the harder it is to discern what makes us better.

Irrespective of whether a person is torturing animals for fun or risking their own life to save a drowning child, each is motivated by the satisfaction of their own preferences, which are expressions of their perceived self-interest. The normative difference between the two cases is the rationality of our preferences. Irrational preferences are inconsistent with the necessary conditions of conscious agency and ultimately contrary to self-interest, damaging the agent. Rational preferences are consistency with the conditions of conscious agency and thus sustain or enhance the agent. The integrity of our conscious agency is conditional on relating to other beings of the same kind in the right way.

One of my favourite Leunig cartoons.

I just found out today about the Racheal Gunn (Raygun) controversy. I watched her “dance” at the olympics and the first thing that struck me is how similar her “style” is to Dr William Bay and Moniker Smit, as if they were part of the same production. This is only my subjective impression;)