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Problems and Proposed Solutions in Defining and Defending Property Ownership

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

In my discussions with anarcho-socialists and others who question the idea of property ownership I’ve been thinking quite a bit about property, what it is, where it comes from and how to prove it. I am somewhat disappointed by the typical libertarian and even anarcho-capitalist explanations because I feel that they don’t do well enough to address certain concerns.

The typical reasoning goes like this. Ownership is defined as exclusive control and since “I control my body” proven by the fact I’m writing this I own myself. Therefore by extension I own the products of my actions or labor. Yet at the same time it seems that some libertarians, voluntaryists or anarcho-capitalists consider property to be a mere concept, something not derived from reality, but rather just a nice idea that is successful at creating harmony between people, so long as property is actually respected (unlike with the state).

So there are four problems I see here:

1. If ownership is solely defined as “exclusive control” and property as “that which is exclusively controlled” then if someone steals something he becomes the owner since at that point he’s the only one who controls it (exclusive control). This completely removes the possibility of theft occurring.

2. “I control my body” and subsequent “I own my body” and even “I own me” doesn’t satisfy anarcho-socialists because in a statement “I own me”, “I” and “me” refer to the same thing yet they tend to insist that property must be external to its owner. I think we have to do better than what we typically do (from my experience) to resolve this.

3. Why exactly does self ownership extend to ownership of things other than self? What is the logic behind that? Also, what happens if we stop being human-centric about this and look for evidence of property outside of the human sphere? This is important if such evidence exists because it provides a significant additional proof for property beyond the disputed “I own me” reasoning.

4. How can you at the same time say that self-ownership arises from a physical objective fact that you control your body and then go about speaking of property as if it doesn’t have roots in the physical and objective world and is rather just an abstract, but useful concept that we can dismiss once we have abundance and infinite resources?? Do infinite resources suddenly change the fact you control your body?

My responses to these issues, albeit they are to some extent a work in progress, follow.

PROBLEM 1. If ownership is solely defined as “exclusive control” and property as “that which is exclusively controlled” then if someone steals something he becomes the owner since at that point he’s the only one who controls it (exclusive control). This completely removes the possibility of theft occurring.

Apparently defining ownership as “exclusive control” makes violation of property, that is theft, impossible. Regardless whether you take by trade or just steal something, ownership is just transfered, as physical control over an object is transfered. I don’t think any supporter of property ownership actually means it like this so this definition fails to communicate the actual meaning properly.

The most simple alternative definition would be “the right to exclusive control”. However, I’m becoming quite vary of references to rights, something I’ve realized in a discussion I had yesterday with another anarchist (socialist type). To illustrate consider the moral of non-coercion which basically says that “to coerce is wrong”. On this basis we typically describe “not coercing” as right, yet it isn’t right, but rather just the absence of “wrong”, an unmodified natural state. In that sense “right” doesn’t even exist. Whenever it is thus invoked it actually involves a positive entitlement or a positive obligation. If we’re speaking of negative moral statements (“you should not coerce” or “coercion is wrong”), rights don’t exist.

Thus defining ownership as “right to exclusive control” seems faulty because it implies a positive obligation where none exists. All we’re then left with is a negative moral statement, but we don’t quite know what it is yet because we haven’t yet defined ownership. We have a scaffolding of a statement, which is basically “do not act as if you own what you do not own”, but we haven’t yet defined what “own” is.

So I would take another approach. Let’s define ownership by including every condition necessary for it to be in effect. We will then know exactly which conditions need to be met before we can proclaim someone an owner and before we can classify any particular action as a violation of someone’s ownership, or theft.

The definition I thus propose is the following:

“Ownership is exclusive control of object B by object A where object A caused the object B’s current form and position or existence in time and space”.

This definition of ownership rests not only on exclusive control, but on causality and a principle of priority which I will explain below. Therefore exclusive control is no longer the only thing necessary for something to be owned, but rather we also need there to be the closest causal relationship between an owner and the object’s current form and position or existence in time and space. In other words, you only own what you caused into existence as such by your own actions (or labor).

Problems with this definition?

There is one thing about this definition which may seem problematic at first. It’s the fact that action and reaction is a continuous process to which we know of no beginning (except the big bang perhaps) and no end. It could thus be said that a thief who moves a thing from your garage to his own garage now owns this thing by virtue of causing it to exist at a different point in time and space and if he modified it, in a different form as well.

Principle of Priority

The antidote to this problem however is implicit in the very definition of ownership put forward above and it is what I might call a “principle of priority”. In simplistic terms it is about asking the question: who owned it first? If someone already owns something then it is only that someone who can cease that ownership before another can take over. Overriding that would be theft as I explain below.

This isn’t any more silly than the fact that action causes a reaction. The fact that a thief moved a thing from my garage to his own and modified it doesn’t change the fact that for him to be able to do that I had to be the one to acquire it and put it in my own garage first. Thus his subsequent possession is completely dependent upon and predicated by my prior actions which is precisely what makes me into an owner.

What makes him into a thief, however, isn’t just the fact that his possession depended on my prior actions, but the fact that my action wasn’t the one that caused him to come to possession of it, such as the act of trade or giveaway. My exclusive control of an object ends where my stream of actions is terminated by the final act of disposal yet he terminated that control before me, taking advantage of the fruits of my actions or my control without acknowledging those actions and this control.

To take an example from fundamental process of the universe, the process of causality or action-reaction, it is as if a reaction happens without absorbing the energy of an effect of a prior action that caused it. It is like removing an “effect” from a domino effect while still observing the dominoes falling. Obviously, this is impossible as causality cannot function without both cause and effect.  Every action essentially “pays” for the effects of prior actions the costs imposed by a prior actor in the same sense as a force that pushes in one direction pushes equally in another.

Thieves try to override that on a macro scale of human interaction by absorbing the effect without absorbing the energy costs of it. When this happens a natural imbalance occurs. The non-paid actor is diminished (which humans express as a sense of loss and injustice and frustration that comes with it) whereas the thief is enriched. But just like everything else in the universe seeks a state of equilibrium, so will the violated person seek reparations or even revenge, causing violence in a society.

Another issue that might be raised against this way of defining ownership is that it seemingly makes parents into owners of their kids because parents caused their kids into existence at some point in time and space. However to stop at that conclusion would be to fail to acknowledge the nature of an “object” that is a human being. Namely, it cannot be externally controlled exclusively and if you somehow created beings who could by some technological means (The Borg drones bred in an incubator?) they wouldn’t really be humans anymore. The nature that makes them into humans would not be developed.

Since this is obviously not the case with pretty much all babies born it is safe to assume that to the extent to which a child exercises self control it cannot be owned by its parent. Instead it is self-owned. It directs itself to its own form and position in time and space. This ties to the established ideas about sentience, sapience and self awareness as differentiators necessary to discern between external ownership of animals and external ownership of humans whereas former becomes acceptable and latter not.

More could be said about the innards of animal ownership however which would reveal more about these extents or degrees of ownership which is oppositely proportional to the objects capacity to exclusively self-control. I will just say that every object does possess some extent of self-control which factors into its nature as itself. A rock for instance exhibits enough self-control to merely sit in place and keep itself together until outside forces break it down or move it. Given the huge gap between control that humans can exercise over a rock and control that rock can exercise over itself it is clear why humans have no qualms about owning rocks and other inanimate matter yet have huge qualms about owning other humans and some qualms about owning animals. :)

PROBLEM 2. Statments like “I control my body” and subsequent “I own my body” and even “I own me” don’t satisfy anarcho-socialists because in a statement “I own me”, “I” and “me” refer to the same thing yet they tend to insist that property must be external to its owner. I think a defender of property ownership has to do better than what we typically do (from my experience) to resolve this.

The basic issue here is the assumption that if I AM me then I cannot own me that comes from the assumption that what is owned must be separate or external from the owner itself. From my experience defenders of property ownership don’t do a very good job at tackling this issue because most of the time they don’t even try. They generally take self-ownership as an axiom and then call everyone who denies it as crazy because they evidently use ownership of their bodies to deny it.

I do largely agree with this, however, but I don’t think stating this is enough if you really want to have an anti-property person understand property. Sometimes even seemingly self-evident “axioms” need explaining. What use is an axiom if a person fails to see it due to his pre-conceived notions. If many religions prove anything it’s that preconceived notions can make people utterly blind even to the most obvious self-evident realities.

That said, there are two questions to be asked here.

1. Does the definition of ownership require the owner to be separate from what is owned?

Let’s take a look at the definition stated previously.

“Ownership is exclusive control of object B by object A where object A caused the object B’s current form and position or existence in time and space”.

Identifiers A and B imply a separation between objects, but it is not explicitly stated. So if we would favor the explicit over implicit we could say that the requirement for separation doesn’t exist in this definition. Otherwise it would.

But there is another thing that is more explicit in this definition and that is the statement of a causal relationship. It could be worth asking if causality itself requires two objects in a causal relationship to be separate? Can an object have a causal relationship with itself? Can an action of an object cause a reaction of that same object? To answer that question we have to define the object itself. In other words, we have to answer the second question, since the object in reference here is the “self”:

2. What is “self” or what is “me”?

There can be varying ways to define the “self”. In psychological terms the focus may be solely on the brain and its chemistry, the headquarters of who you are as a person, mentally speaking. Physically however we may need to refer to an entire body as this is the vessel which you travel in and by which you are to a large extent identified and discerned from other selves. We cannot however refer to anything that is outside of a body, that is, which refers neither to the brain nor any other part of the body nor the entire body since we simply do not have any evidence that this is where “self” resides. Indeed, such claims are in the realm of the mystical and religious.

The typical argument by property ownership advocates does however involve “control over my body” so I think it would be reasonable to take that as the definition of the “self” here. We can now return to questions asked above:

“Can an object have a causal relationship with itself? Can an action of an object cause a reaction of that same object?”

The object referred to here is the “self” and it is above defined as “the body” and a body is actually consisted of a multitude of organs which are further consisted of a multitude of cells and then finally molecules and atoms. For this body to be alive and animated many processes must be ongoing within it which essentially represent action and reaction between organs, between cells and between molecules. In other words if we define the object as a consistence of many other objects then that object can have a causal relationship with itself by means of one part of an object having a causal relationship with another to in turn make the entire object be what it naturally is.

In other words, self consistence (the state of being formed by structure of smaller parts which harmoniously interact with each other) allows self-ownership. It’s of course worth pointing out that the same is true of all objects in the macro universe we are living in. Rocks are self consistent as well and thus self-owned. Trees are self-consistent and thus self-owned.  We sometimes describe certain object by what we say to be its “properties”. This is quite interesting because as we’ve established here, it indeed has properties within the very context of ownership. It owns its properties.

We may for instance describe the properties of a flower to be its shape, composition, color, smell etc. Incidentally, the causal processes within a flower allow it to have these properties. These processes and smaller parts that it’s consisted of define the flower’s “self”. The flower thus owns itself and these properties as what it caused into being, consistent with the definition of ownership expressed above.

The objection that might be put forward at this point is that if flowers own themselves, how come we can own flowers. To respond I would refer to what I’ve said when I addressed the issue of parents owning their children which is the reference to the nature of the object itself. It changes everything. A flower may be self owned, but its ownership cannot include the capacity to consciously say no to a man cutting it down. So it has exclusive self-control only to the extent to which it by its nature CAN have exclusive self-control. This is also precisely why cutting it down is not a violation of its property. Its ownership extends only as far as its capacity to control does.

As an interesting side not, if there were beings so superior to humans that they would look at us the way we look at flowers, according to this they would be right in considering us their property because our capacity to own doesn’t extend as far as theirs. However the existence of such beings is currently limited only to the realm of pure fantasy. In any case, we are evolving and just like flowers we can strive to the maximum capacity that we can muster, but no further.

PROBLEM 3. Why exactly does self ownership extend to ownership of things other than self? What is the logic behind that? Also, what happens if we stop being human-centric about this and look for evidence of property outside of the human sphere? This is important if such evidence exists because it provides a significant additional proof for property beyond the disputed “I own me” reasoning.

I think that my answer to the resolution of this problem is dispersed in my answers to the above two problems. My definition of ownership is completely agnostic to humans and simply applies to “objects”, whatever they may be. The definition rests solely on exclusive control, causality and an implied principle of priority. When either of these conditions isn’t met ownership ceases. Control itself has a built-in limitation to ownership in that it only extends as far as the object in question is capable of controlling another object or itself. Human beings are capable of controlling more than just themselves and to the extent to which this is so they can thus own objects external to themselves.

There is also no fundamental distinction between the self and other objects in terms relevant to this definition of ownership. Both involve exclusive control of objects whose existence in time/space and form is caused such as they currently are. This fits a libertarian explanation of homesteading as means of acquiring the most disputed kind of property; ownership of land. The homesteading principle involves “mixing your labor” with the land which is just another way of referring to actions which cause the land in question to change some of its properties. A simple enclosure of the land typically does the trick and the more is done with the land the stronger the ownership case for it.

PROBLEM 4. How can you at the same time say that self-ownership arises from a physical objective fact that you control your body and then go about speaking of property as if it doesn’t have roots in the physical and objective world and is rather just an abstract, but useful concept that we can dismiss once we have abundance and infinite resources?? Do infinite resources suddenly change the fact you control your body?

This problem is expressed in form of the above rhetorical questions which by themselves illustrate the contradiction and my point which is the gist of my answer to such a contradictory practice.

Ownership as defined above relies on processes which are fundamental to everything in reality. Control is a stream of actions and causality is the relationship between an action and a reaction whereas an action is a cause and a reaction is an effect. The principle of priority which I derived from it also directly derives from a chronological nature of causality as we can observe it. Denial of priority would essentially be akin to the denial of time. So all of the components of ownership as defined here are completely fundamental to the functioning of the universe as we know it.

Ownership is essentially about the relationship between the cause and the effect whereas cause owns the effect. While causality refers to cause and effect themselves and the fact that they form an ongoing process, ownership refers to the very relationship between that which causes and that which is caused. To fully understand ownership would be to fully understand how a particular effect relates to any act within the causality chain it is a part of and to which extent can that act be credited for it.

It’s not too difficult to see how this applies to humans. We are after all a part of the same universe, the same ocean of causality chains. We have our specific natures which gives us specific capacities and therefore specific potentials to cause and therefore control and therefore own. To fully understand ownership as it pertains to humans is to understand how exactly does the effect (a particular piece of property) relate to all of the acts in the action-reaction chain that was necessary to put that object in the form it is, at the time it is in and in the place that it is at. Who was the first cause? Did he or she act to dispose of it? Who was the next controller? Did he act to dispose of it or was it stolen against his will? Etc. etc.

Infinite resources or infinite amount of desired objects never changes the fact that ownership exists any more than it changes the fact that the process of cause and effect continues. It merely changes the amount of value assign to the exclusive control of any given object and the likelihood that a dispute over its ownership will arise. Just because prosperity removes the distinction between haves and have nots doesn’t mean that what made them prosperous to begin with ceased to exist – the capacity to act in order to cause what is needed or desired, control the resulting effect and trade it in for effects caused by others – the free market of caused properties.

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My KDE usability article on dot.kde.org

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

After writing an article for the Nuxified blog about KDE4 possibly overtaking GNOME in terms of usability and getting over 6000 views of it I’ve been contacted by a “marketing guy” of dot.kde.org interested in rewriting the article for them.

I thought it was a good opportunity and pretty much the same day (or more technically, next night), I wrote a piece and it was after minor editing and approval published by the KDE promo team here: KDE4 Demonstrates Choice Is Not A Usability Problem.

Feel free to check it out. :)

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Upgrading the purpose of Memeverse.com

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

So far this site has been nothing more than a personal blog that served as a bin for anything I want to express that didn’t specifically fit any other sites. While I will continue to use it for that purpose, albeit erring towards more professionalism, I am expanding its purpose into a wider presentation of myself and my projects.

“Daniel Memenode” is the alias that I have adopted some time ago for my online identity across multiple venues. It is a kind of personal brand that I am more comfortable with using than my real name.

“Memeverse Media” is a name for all of the projects that I am doing online. While that may seem a little superfluous it has multiple purposes. It’s a brand that I can use to represent all of my work online in an unified manner, such as through this site. It is a convenient shorthand for all my projects. And it has personal meaning to me. Not only does it represent an “universe of ideas”, but it helps me think of my projects not as a necessarily disparate collection, but something with a particular direction to pull towards. It’s basically like the name of any other business or company which has multiple products, but a single brand associated with all of them.

I’ve done something similar before with “Libervis Network”, but the difference is that I assigned a rather limited set of meanings to that brand. It was meant to represent projects related to “digital freedom”, mainly free open source software, creative commons and such. Another difference is that I treated it as if it was an entity in some manner separate from me, but owned my me, which is a common but silly fiction.

With “Memeverse Media” I’m being open ended and more individualistic. I don’t consider it a fictional entity, just a name for all of my projects online, not something pretended to be separate. “Memeverse” seemed like a logical name since it has a great meaning and ring to it and has served as the name of my personal blog for quite a while.

So in addition to being my personal blog this site now also serves information about my projects and services, which is after all still fitting for a personal blog. There is a page outlining my current projects and a page with the services I am currently offering and examples of prior work (yet to be finished). I will also, in addition to typical blog entries, post references to articles and other material I create elsewhere on the web. So if I publish a new article on Nuxified.org I will post a reference to it from here. Same for any other of my sites.

This way the memeverse feed truly becomes a feed that represents me on the web, the way I see fit, which should help build better relationships with my readers and customers. In other words I’m unifying my web presence under one identity and one brand. :)

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She dreamed a dream… and it came true

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

What a meme this is! I haven’t seen something quite like this in a long while. First, my dad who visited us briefly in our apartment mentioned that there’s a video on youtube of an old woman singing professionally like Celine Dion. It was interesting to hear, but I soon forgot all about it. There’s all sorts of interesting stuff on youtube.

But what an interesting coincidence, or perhaps a testament to how incredibly powerful this was for so many people to the world.. I accidentally stumbled on the video in question. I was looking for reviews of a book on self improvement with introspection exercise I’m following (“How to finally find what you love to do and get paid doing it” by Brian Kim) and on one blog where I found it, one of the entries was “5 Feel-Good YouTube Videos” which claimed that “any one of them could make your day” and that “you might choke on your own happy hormones”. I was somewhat skeptical as I tend to have a general dislike of cheesy meaningless feel goods in a sense that they’re like drugs which wane away and wont make you permanently happy (knowing who you are and becoming the full of your potential would).

The image linking to the first video portrays this ugly woman (sorry..) and I clicked expecting something cheesy and perhaps boring..

Oh boy was I wrong. The video in question is of Susan Boyle achieving her dreams in a dreamy song called fittingly “I dreamed a dream” and literally helping possibly up to 100 million people in the world become genuinely inspired, hopeful and more open minded in these gloomy times of crisis. It is like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly in all its glory, a flower in the middle of the desert of cynicism, like some sort of a miracle. Well see for yourself:

Susan Boyle

That video was viewed almost 40 million times so far and there are other uploads getting millions so far. That’s just youtube though. As linked from the video’s description there are already numerous fan sites. Even Wall Street Journal blogged about her. I hear there is an album for sale, the only album she ever made, for incredible $1000 USD (due to high demand no doubt). This lady is an instant super star and is quite possibly gonna quickly become quite wealthy, as she deserves.

What’s so special about her though? When I step back I realize that she certainly is not unique in her talent in that there’s a lot of singers out there with great singing talent. What’s so special about this is that against all odds she was persistent, she applied again even after she was turned down before for talent shows like this. This shows courage and belief in yourself and unwillingness to see failure as the end. She knew what she had. She had a dream and when this chance was given to her, she achieved it in a blaze of glory. Her path towards this was probably difficult due to her looks.. which says something about the society we’re living in, but what was on the inside far outweighed what was outside. This context makes for a story that enamored millions and gave her the fame and possibly resulting wealth that she can now enjoy, in the middle of the economic depression, dispensing inspiration to others as well that no matter who you are, if you know yourself, be yourself, you can make it.

Some people say her talent is god given (or even go as far as imply that she’s an angel from heaven, human capacity for hyperbole is certainly amazing). I don’t believe that. Her talent is all her. It should be insulting to ascribe all achievements of an individual to a mythical entity and thus rob the individual of his credit and inherent worth.

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“This is John Galt speaking…”

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

After being referred by a friend who is reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand to a speech made by a character in the novel called “John Galt” I’ve searched and ultimately stumbled on this series of videos which present an incredible dramatization of John Galt’s speech. For the sake of viewing convenience and because I think it contains so many ideas that I desperately wish the world of people to hear I’ve embedded all parts of the series made so far below. :)

Ayn Rand is usually credited as the originator of the philosophy of objectivism and had a lot to do with promoting the ideas of capitalism. She was not a voluntaryist which is evident from a brief part of this series where her character John Galt speaks of the proper role of government being only to defend against initiation of force, which is effectively the minarchist view (as close as one gets to voluntaryism without still entirely rejecting the idea of needing a coercive monopoly for anything). I don’t believe there needs to be a coercive monopoly on defense because that would mean forcing all who would want to compete in providing this service out of the market therefore making those who are supposed to merely defend against initiation of force, THE initiators of force themselves.

And while I’m at the few disagreements that I have with Rand, I have to mention I’m not entirely confident about objectivism either, at least according to my limited understanding of it as what seems to be a rather absolutist view of reality that might leave too little room for subjectivism. On the other hand I can come up with no real criticism for anything that is said in the Galt’s speech presented in the videos below as far as the philosophy goes and I realize that my acceptance of subjectivism goes only to the extent of accounting for the fact that each of us may perceive reality in somewhat different ways, have different preferences and so on.

In either case I can find no disagreement to the assertion that a human individual, his or her nature and belonging life, liberty and property are the beginning of all exploration. Before you can know the universe around you, it helps to know yourself and dare to be yourself without clearly self-nullifying delusions getting in the way, much of which is greatly explained below. So I’ll quit my babble and encourage you to click that big play button below. Give it a chance, you might just be hooked to go with it to the last part. I’ll update the post as the author uploads new parts.

Enjoy and.. think.


Part 1.


Part 2.


Part 3 & 4.


Part 5.


Part 6.


Part 7.


Part 8.


Part 9.


Part 10.


Part 12. (he skipped a number it seems)


Part 13.


Part 14 (with spoilers!).


Part 15.


Part 16.


Part 17.

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Think twice before you endorse violence

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

Before I go to sleep, here is something to ponder:



So in short, if you would say to me that government must be there to provide ANYTHING you will essentially be saying that you want to force me, by the threat of incarceration or death or any other kind of violence, to buy the service that you want.

At this point any statement which calls in the need for government to do something is equally disgusting to me as a statement like “I would like to rape you or hire someone to rape you every day”.

Now think about that before you go on to march for your pet “cause” like “free government healthcare for all” or “net neutrality legislation” or “proprietary software should be illegal” (yes, that’s for you Richard Stallman).

Statists disgust me.

Good night

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Moral science?

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

If I piqued anyone’s interests with my previous entries maybe I can start this one with an open ended question. Do you think there can be such a thing as moral science?

To define it, it would be equal essentially to physical or biological science in that it would describe universal processes that go on in the world or within a specific set, like human beings.

A moral science would thus describe at the very least, a framework according to which to determine how ALL people form their morals and at most determine the actual morals that are universal to all people.

It is important to distinguish this from the imposition of ones morals on to others. This would not be the objective of moral science anymore than it is an objective of physical sciences to impose ones arbitrary idea of why objects attract each other on to all others to believe. It is about observing, hypothesizing and then testing the hypothesis.

Someone attempted to create such a scientific framework already. I’m not sure he’s the only one (probably not), but he’s the one who caught my attention. He is Stefan Molyneux and his theory is called “Universally Preferable Behavior“. I’ve read Part 1 where he explains most of his theory and I have to say it’s quite interesting. Stefan Molyneux is quite an unorthodox and somewhat controversial philosopher with a bit of a cult following. My assumption is that the latter is due to him being one of those easily impressive people with leadership qualities that tend to, intentionally or not, attract a little too much zeal from those impressed. I’m not a big fan of personallity cults, but it’s no reason to completely dismiss the man and his ideas. Often the best and most revolutionary ideas have been brought about by most controversial of persons.

But I’m not necessarily making up my mind about whether UPB is a valid moral science theory or not. By default I do subscribe, to an extent, to moral relativism if not because I believe that morals are always subjective and cannot be a part of predictable patterns, then because I don’t yet understand such patterns. Just because something hasn’t been discovered yet, doesn’t mean it wont be, and attempts like the UPB are thus worth paying attention to.

One thing I continue to believe as strongly as ever though is this. I can hardly go wrong if I adopt only a single moral principle, or just The Principle if you wish, a “prime directive” to use trek-speak: non-initiation of force. Whether one is a moral absolutist or a moral relativist if both can agree that at least we wont force each others beliefs and morals on to each other we can make tremendous proggress as we continue to journey through life and explore the world and our beliefs.

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