Miscellaneous ramblings:

May 2013

If you know me, you probably know that I wrote a book.  Yeah, it’s available at Amazon, but don’t bother.  Don't waste your money.  It’s a lousy book.  If you want a copy, let me know and I’ll get you one.  But it’s not a very good book.  If I were to write the same book today, it would be a very different book. Nonetheless, it does accomplish what I intended it to.

Anyway, my publisher called recently, all excited, with plans to market the book to a wider audience.  I tried to tell him that I had no intention of selling any copies of it—that that wasn’t why I wrote it.

But he just couldn’t (wouldn’t?) understand.  I wrote it for me, I told him.  I wrote it as an exercise in organizing my thoughts… my moral philosophy.  So, I tried to tell him...

It starts with a few axioms.  The first one is “A is A.”  Obvious, right?  A thing is what it is.  A is not B.  B is not A.  A may become B.  An acorn may become an Oak tree.  An Oak tree may become a table.  But A is not B.  A is A. 

The second axiom is:  “My life is my life and your life is your life.”  This is actually just a re-statement of “A is A,” but it has implications that go beyond that.  Since my life is my life, you can’t live it for me.  Nor can I live your life for you.  I own my life.  It’s my property.  And the same goes for you.  This has all sorts of moral ramifications that come up later in the book.

Now, because you own your life, I have no moral right to take it.  It’s not mine to take.  So the third axiom is: “No one has a moral right to initiate force against another person.”  Period.  Notice I said “initiate.”  We all have a moral right to react to force with force.  I believe we have a moral responsibility to do so.  This axiom can be generalized: “There is no moral right to take what is not yours.”  The flip side of this is: “There is no moral right to give what is not yours.”

From here, the book goes on to establish, using Aristotelian syllogistic Logic, the moral principles which govern my relationship with any other person (i.e., you and me).  And it wraps up with our relationship with others (i.e., us and them). 

Throughout, I take current events and apply these moral principles to those events.  As such, I don’t have a political philosophy.  Rather, I apply my moral philosophy to political issues.  And THAT’S why I wrote this book.  If you ask me what I think about abortion, immigration, anthropogenic climate change, gun rights, or any topic, I can trace the logic of my answer all the way back to…  “A is A.”  And if I can’t—then I’ll have to re-think and adjust my beliefs until they are logically valid within my moral framework.

So my book is a tool. That’s why I wrote it—to have a tool for determining whether my political opinions are integrated into—and consistent with—my morality. If my beliefs are integrated into my moral system, then there’s integrity.

My publisher still didn’t get it.  Oh, well.  He’s a book publisher.  I’m a soi-disant thinker.