Trading my Humanism for Nihilism

Not that different from much of what actually happened in America during that last administration. Immigration law, advise and consent, all of that - simply flat out ignored. And a great many people insisting it was all perfectly fair. Which is why we now have another party in power. Elections bring consequences.

Any judge who dares go as far as your example takes a gamble with his own life. Lawlessness cuts both ways. But there are situations where law has already broken down. That’s when we experiment, and without apology.

From the point of view of the King of England and his advisors, the American Revolution was highly illegal. But eventually England just accepted it. That’s the way it works. Whoever wins gets to define all the lofty terms.

By the way, it’s interesting that you choose a judge as your example. Judges have no personal power. All their power is proxy power. The minute the bailiffs decide not to listen to the guy in the robe any more, he’s finished.

Political power flows from the barrel of a gun. Politicians, bureaucrats and jurists forget this at their peril. The pen is not mighty without the sword to back it up.

That’s part of why the ‘veil of ignorance’ mind experiment is useful. Because you decide if the relationship is fair or not by choosing to be put in the situation- or not - without actually knowing where you will stand within it. You dont know if you are the king of england or the settler or who you will be. But without knowing that decide on wether the relationship is acceptable to you. if it is, then it is fair. Thats the logic.

What’s acceptable you may not be acceptable to someone else. This fairness is wholly subjective and personal. You can’t settle disputes with something like that. Personal and subjective is what STARTS disputes.

Fairness is divisive.

That is exactly the point.

So screw fairness. Survival is an objective test. It depends on no one’s opinion and requires no one’s acceptance. If you survive, you’ve already beaten those who didn’t want you to survive - and they can suck it.

So you are the Chairman’s long lost twin! :grinning: :grinning:

By the way, it’s interesting that you choose a judge as your example. Judges have no personal power. All their power is proxy power. The minute the bailiffs decide not to listen to the guy in the robe any more, he’s finished.

Gee, I wonder how a judge persuades bailiffs to do anything then. Does he beg them? :ponder: Come to think of it, how does a general convince foot soldiers to do anything, while their guns outnumber his? :ponder: :ponder: Come to think of it, how does a head of state/government convince anyone to do anything? :ponder: :ponder: :ponder:

Could it have something to do with “civilization”? :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished:

Nah, that’s a subjective term.

I do have one more question for the Founder of Rowlandia: what is the relationship between Rowlandian law (or the non-existence thereof, since law implies justice, and justice cannot exist because fairness does not exist) and Randian law?

(Spoiler alert: climax from “The Fountainhead”)

In case you prefer the remake:

You’ve got it exactly backwards. That’s your problem. First comes force and persuasive rhetoric to rally the force. Then comes military victory, and then comes order and civilization. Codified law comes last.

Civilization is a social construct. Never forget that.

Oh, and by the way… law does not imply justice. if it did, no one would speak of unjust laws. Actually, it’s when people conflate justice with their personal notions of fairness that law gets called into question.

Law is a social construct. Justice is an abstraction. And fairness is personal sentiment.

If you lose in court, you can appeal to a higher court. The highest secular court is the battlefield. The battlefield is also the ultimate legislator.

Consider that no one individual is capable of survival and propagation of his or hers kind. There always is a social interaction. That’s why for example we are able to speak. Objective is just a word, test is just a word, fairness is just a word, opinion is just a word, suck, is just a word and all those words only have meaning in a social context. If fairness is useless than so are all the other words.

I agree with you here. Power is largely founded in violence or at very least in the capacity for violence, and wielding power generally seems to involve unequal relations, however that does not imply that the all power has to be unjust. inequality and violence can be fair if everyone was given an equal say in setting up the system. Or at least is given some kind of choice to sign up or not. Also there are degrees of unfairness. for example skipping a que, versus killing someone.

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True up to a point, but it’s easy to overestimate it.

Small groups defeat larger groups all the time. That’s the whole basis of most governments. Individuals beat small groups all the time. It’s rare - but not unheard of - for an individual acting alone to bring down an entire society. Quality matters. The clever and determined few can beat the complacent and stupid many.

And when a new bunch is in charge, it’s a a whole new ball game, with new players and new rules. The culture changes from the top - the new top.

Society is an epiphenomenon of human interaction. Any given society is impermanent. Never put too much faith in society as it currently exists. It may not be there tomorrow. With it will vanish all the laws, conventions and shibboleths that you took all so seriously - the things you labeled ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’, that you imbued with religious awe. Instead there will be entirely new things that have these same names. What’s in a name? Distraction from the true nature of things, that’s what.

Humanistic ideals don’t hold up to scrutiny. The only defensible alternative to nihilism is cultural Darwinism. Winners tend to win. Either their victory is arbitrary, or it is not. The point of human conflict is to find out who the winners are. If victory is random, then war is senseless, but so is everything else. Otherwise… not.

I’m not sure about ‘last’ exactly, but certainly a lot of other stuff has to happen before laws come into existence and are followed.

Laws always reflect social mores, not the other way about. Laws that are fundamentally at odds with the way people think are simply not obeyed, either by the population or by the enforcers. Worse, people tend to make up their own laws.

For example, there are dozens of countries with statutes about land ownership that in theory implement the Torrens titling system. In practice everybody ignores it and transfers land as they see fit. There are usually two underlying reasons: (a) people just don’t grok how or why the system is supposed to work and (b) the laws are usually designed to impose rapacious taxes rather than to impose a mutually-beneficial social order. The result, predictably enough, is complete chaos.

There are a few countries where murder is de facto legal, even if forbidden on paper, because that’s how it’s always been and no new social memes have arisen to challenge it.

And social mores reflect which side won the last war.

Sometimes. It can certainly be a war of words rather than a hot battle though. Consider Taiwan’s improvement in driving standards, to the point where most people now follow the letter and the spirit of the law (OK, I know, there are still quite a few who don’t, especially outside of Taipei). That was achieved mostly by PR work, and handing out lots of fines. They didn’t have to put the army on street corners taking potshots at scooters blasting through red lights at 60kph.

Ah wait. Come to think of it, natural selection might have played its part :slight_smile:

If the gummint didn’t have guns,those fines wouldn’t be enforced.

And If China invades and takes over - all that is out the window.

Not really. Lots of gubmints have guns, and lots of them are happy to use them. They also hand out fines. The fines are not enforced. The reason they’re not enforced is that vehicles are not properly registered and nobody has addresses. Or driving licenses. Or names, sometimes. Therefore, fines tend to mutate into bribes, payable on the spot, and driving skills are nonexistent.

Ah, so Rowlandians do believe in law (though apparently not justice). It’s just that Rowlandia is such a “developing country” that it hasn’t figured out how to get to the codified law stage yet. Do tell us if they ever get there. :sleeping:

Oh, and by the way… law does not imply justice. if it did, no one would speak of unjust laws. Actually, it’s when people conflate justice with their personal notions of fairness that law gets called into question.

Law is a social construct. Justice is an abstraction. And fairness is personal sentiment.

In English, etymologically speaking, you have a point.

Law: that which is laid down
Justice: that which accords with law, and before that (apparently) that which accords with ritual
Fairness: pleasantness, beauty

It doesn’t really work in Chinese.

法律:fa implies natural law (the way of water); lü implies human law (following what is written)
正義:zheng is correct, right, proper (and supposedly “stopping at the stop line” so another word for human law); yi is the virtue of righteousness
公平:as explained before
公正:a word that covers both justice and fairness

The Ministry of Justice is the ministry of “legal (law) affairs”.
The Judicial Yuan is the yuan of “management (administration) of law”.

(I realize some of this may be contentious; linguistic criticism is welcome.)

I’m still interested in your critique of Randian Objectivism wrt to law etc. Is Howard your hero, or is he just another breed of beggar who messed up his life and would never amount to anything in the real world? (Let’s not forget he was a manual laborer.:astonished:)

So, the Scalia clones – the originalists – waiting in the wings for Director Donald to appoint them to the SCOTUS would have no place on the SCOR. (Of course, before there can be such a thing, Rowlandia needs to graduate from the “battlefield legislation” phase of national development, which it doesn’t seem very interested in doing. Codified laws are such a distraction!)

Howard Roark: my take.

His great desire is to bring wonderful things into existence. His other desire is to live with personal integrity. His dilemma is how to survive.

His approach is… experimental. At first, quite bumbling. But he learns from his mistakes. That is the mark of a superior man.

He is, arguably, an asshole. But he’s up against assholes, so there’s a moral equivalence as far as that goes. Maybe he should learn some empathy, you might say. But from whom? His selfishness and insensitivity are just him treating others as he has been treated by others. And if he seems more selfish than the rest in what he says, it’s only because he’s much more candid. He says out loud what other people pretend not to believe. He chooses naked egotism over hypocrisy.

He lacks negotiation skills… at first. But through trial and error he figures it out. He’s a learner. Much more interesting than - for example - John Galt. More human. He’s got a character arc and everything.

He’s perfectly capable of working with others as equals, but only if they’re worthy others. For everyone else, he needs to develop political skills to keep them at bay. That trial scene is a breakthrough. He recognizes the practical importance of rhetoric, and he hijacks the minds of the jury with a textbook perfect reframing maneuver.

At that point, he could have led a revolution. But Rand didn’t have the guts to write that scenario.

One of Rand’s better works, by a particular standard. Atlas Shrugged really does have serious drawbacks as literature. But The Fountainhead is more a proper novel.

Bloody hell. My nihilistic mood suffers a smack down.

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Okay, so if the RoR ever gets a functioning legal system, disgruntled architects will permitted to commit acts of terrorism on domestic soil with impunity because that will somehow contribute to the country’s eventual victory in the World Cultural Darwinism Championships (not to be confused with the other competition that bears Charlie’s name). Glad we got that cleared up! :grinning:

And now I will leave you to your contemplation of (the abstract and therefore worthless concept of) nothingness. :bowing: