I submit that the concept of Original Ownership, or any statement implying that Aboriginal Australians as a race or ethnicity have a superior social status or value to other Australians, is an expression of nativist supremacism, a core feature of Nazi ideology.
I propose a new Acknowledgement of Original Owners ceremony, otherwise know as 'Welcome to Reality', that should be conducted before every public event, performance or community meeting:
‘We acknowledge the Original Owners of the Earth on which we are standing, the Human kind of which we are all representatives. We all share the same ancient ancestors. We are all related. Reason unites us.’
The fundamental question that is yet to be answered in relation to the above article is why is supremacism wrong?
Humanity is the Ground of All Meaning
All your rights, all your values, including your value as a person, all meaning and sense, derive from your belonging to the Human kind: the kind of beings who possess reflexive conscousness vis-a-vis one another, and the capacity for rational thought, by means of which WE are able to collectively generate meaning. Humanity has the absolute priority over tribal, racial, cultural or ideological identity, because all these value-categories derive from and are conditional on being human, above all else. To ascribe any priority to your tribe, race, culture or ideology over the value of humanity is to negate the ground of these values, and thus to contradict and negate yourself. Tribalism, racialism, culturalism and ideologism all contradict themselves, negate themselves, refute their own priority, their moral status, their meaning and values. In order to be wholly yourself, to be a fully integrated being, to be fully human, absolutely valuable, of inviolable moral status, one must first abandon all contrary value commitments. A more formal analysis of this question is available here: https://philpapers.org/rec/KOWODO
The referendum will be held this year to recognise aboriginal people in the Constitution as the original owners of Australia, and establish a race based democratic body for ‘advising’ the Parliament on any issue that affects people of aboriginal descent. It is true that about half of Australia is already covered by the native title, which is race-exclusive land ownership, but this is a separate issue to the Voice referendum. Anything beyond that is speculation. The letter was motivated by the continuous promotion of racial discrimination by the government, not specifically by the referendum.
I see, thank you! Very interesting how a lot of countries simultaneously have their own, more or less non-organically tailor-made developments going on with regard to basically modifying current ownership of rights, and current autonomy status, away from how these are at present. Someone out there, some interest group out there, is making efforts at restructuring, and shifting, rights and properties away from one set of people, over to such other set of people. Where however, the such other people group seem always to have one thing in common -even though they may be very different culturally from each other-: they differ from the self sufficient, self assertive, strong-minded majorities that currently own human rights, voting rights, and properties which they do not want to yield to third parties' business interests. They are groups with a certain characteristic, yes. But each of these groups is probably a less typically WEIRD (Henrich) group, and having potentially less power and maybe even less self-assertiveness than the group type that everything is being shifted away from. Resulting in, probably prospectively, having a less significant say in whatever is done both to them and done in their name and done on the now officially transferred to them, territory. One might say, why - the Aborigines are powerful, their text is assertive, they claim the land for themselves. Yes, but, that is not them who is writing and claiming. Someone does it for them. Provenly in the Voice case. (And for migration movements within Europe, see Soros and Mastercard collaboration with UN HSR on prefilled debit cards for migrants to be able to move on, where without that interference they would be unable to.) So, these weaker groups may initially feel they benefit from, and endorse what is done presumedly on their behalf and for their benefit. The Aborigines may endorse what he writes. But once the time comes where different interests will be promoted in the future - interests and projects which no longer benefit them-, their (then presumed) non-endorsement may prove to have no effect, and prove to not stop the new developments. Whereas the previous owner groups would have known to defend themselves in a more obstructive way. Which is why they are currently being disavowed, demoralized, guilted, then disentitled and finally dispossessed the world over in a lengthy but lately accelerating process. What are your thoughts if any about the intentions and possible consequences/risks of the WHO's amendment to the International Health Regulations with a view in particular to the deletion of inalienable human rights and dignity?
Do you think that removing those rights reflects and is the logical consequence of a materialist worldview being at work, and obviously in charge, in which humans are determined beings with no soul as e.g. Mr Harari out of Davos sometimes suggests? Could life then become dangerous for humans, in a global health construction where inclusion and equity ensures that every human be treated alike, meaning in certain circumstances: that every human without exception be treated full stop? And the relatively recent phrasing in medical studies with animals, where now it is said that after such time, the animals are "sacrificed". This underlines the "for the common good" justification for forcing and then killing these animated beings. With other life forms being, according to deep ecology, at least as valuable as humans, and "salvage or survival of the planet" the paramount goal since the Population Bomb and WEF and Club of Rome if not since much much earlier (if taking into account also (neo) malthusianism and eugenics movement): Do you foresee that soon, this term of "sacrificing" some specimens of a life form (for the greater good either of all life forms in general, or, for the good of the planet to be still more comprehensive), could under the materialist-reduced new human-rights paradigm in the WHO, be extended to the affirmative, overt and morally accepted sacrificing of certain humans that for certain characteristics can be deemed an impediment to the greater good? I would be very interested in your assessment.
While the simplest explanation that fits the circumstances may seem the most probable, this is not necessarily the case. I assume the people who rule are exceptionally competent at what they are doing, having access to genius and institutional resources that puts them many levels ahead of the strategic capacities of the general population. I would argue that anything that appears to us as most plausible is precisely so because it is intended to appear that way; the ultimate purpose may be concealed by a combination of induced anxiety and decoy appearances. In short, I do not know what the rulers are planning, and any leak about intentions and plans should be regarded as suspicious, but it is certain that they believe they are doing something good, because only the idea of the good can persuade people to dedicate their life to the cause. They BELIEVE is some special purpose, not just more power. I do not think it is necessary to know what they are planning, but sufficient to interpret every proposal, policy, idea logically and reveal any hidden contradictions. Deception and manipulation cannot be achieved without lies, and lies are inconsistencies, contradictions, and can be refuted. This approach allows for defeating the unethical means without having to know the unethical aim. I call it integrity.
So, would you say that eliminating human rights from a presumably human wellbeing-centered set of rules, is such a suspicious inconsistency where one can demand a stop to the project ot these grounds or under that scope at least?
OR,
Assuming an extremely materialist worldview in the actors, and maybe sharing that worldview, you say that a new binding contract with eliminated individual dignity in a moment whereas new treatment platforms require testing at scale, and whereas world population can well tolerate a reduction by many billions in pursuit of "the good" that is "the good" that certain groups profess as their aim: would you say that in that constellation: all fine, what can possibly go wrong, and whatever happens in that regard is indeed justified in the great scheme of things?
Any intentional violation of human rights is logically inconsistent and can be refuted in principle at that level, shown to be self-defeating. So even if they aim at some good future outcome by violating human rights at this time, their strategy is inconsistent and will fail.
All our rights and values, including our value as a person, all meaning and sense, derive from our belonging to the Human kind: the kind of beings who possess reflexive consciousness vis-a-vis one another, and the capacity for rational thought, by means of which WE are able to collectively generate meaning. Humanity has the absolute priority over all other value commitments, because they derive from and are conditional on being human. To negate the value of humanity in anyone else is to negate the basis of the value of oneself, to diminish one’s own intentional agency. All evil ultimately destroys itself. https://philpapers.org/rec/KOWODO
As regards your paper, thank you for sharing. You deal with extremely relevant stuff it seems to me. Fascinating! I will have to read. Also the other texts, about transhumanism for instance, I am very interested. As regards your abstract above, sounds like a great definition, but I retain it quite possible that they would reject the seeming equation of being an agent who values above all being an agent, with being a human. They might bring in other types of agents wanting to bf agents ghat the human agents need to play nice with and, insofar as still clumsy and undeveloped, humans must show respect and compassion for, and INCLUSION, meaning, they are morally and later legally obliged to train them... Because it looks to me as if they are planning on a different set of rights also for non-human entities. In all those toy, show, game productions targeting children, you always have the sad android or nindroid who first feels excluded because not human, but then everyone agrees that human supremacy must be overcome. The producers don't tell. They show. But it's what they are transporting, and the children who are always happy to spot inequity that they can repair, lap it up!
And speaking of repairing. Peter Hotez explicitly refers to the zikkun Olam concept with his "science Tikkun". Repair, improve God's creation. The sky is not the limit once a person endorses such a hubrid (?) ambition. Also the human agent is not the limit. What do you think? Maybe I have to read the transhumanism text first. - I like the encouragement I feel in your comment, that all that disrespects our humanity will fail. What I find important is that moral laws allow us to (in absence of brute force) resist. Do you have any good approaches for justifying rejection of human laws that jomahainst divine law? K Watts had a text about that. Drawing on theologians. Are there any philosophers that you would draw from?
What is your assessment of the situation in European countries? Forced mass immigration, many small massacres with 1-3 victims (often women and children, such as attacking schoolgirls on schoolyards with dead victims and attacking toddlers on playgrounds with serious injuries. Killing girls in drug stores with double edge sharpened knives in front of their friends (wouldn't be better if alone but some of the other people may also succumb to the trauma of what they had to see over the following years). Luring girls to remote places and kill them. Molest and beat girls in urban settings at night. Stab indigenous males in pedestrian zones at daytime. Kill male couples in urban settings at daytime. It's a low level asymmetrical war for submission, that would simply not be taking place at all, if belonging to a place or not belonging there were honored more. There are many forms and shapes of dangerous and harmful concepts of supremacy. People following one of these concepts (the Tikkun Olam set), herd people following another of these concepts (the Dar Al Harb set) into European countries. The attacked indigenous populations are forced to keep their mouths shut and submit to murder and debasement by means of accusing them of the one of the three concepts of supremacy, the one that you mention. It is a big problem that once people enter a foreign country in quantities, and gain the right to vote, their sensitivities of not feeling that they belong in all respects, disrupts the process of discussing and protecting their interests on the part of the indigenous peoples. The indigenous populations quite naturally -and you as extremely precisely thinking person know it-, share a common interest that cannot, it can never be identical with the interests of those who too have their own home country, but have decided to leave that behind and enter the home country of others. We all know this is so. Those not in their home country, with references to nazi supremacy, hinder honest discussion and formulation of goals among the indigenous populations that still actually reside in their home countries. Now comes the important part. I say that this is morally wrong. It would be morally right for people who have left their own home countries, to settle for less entitlement to shape their second country after their preferences - which however they do, with the help of political manoeuvering with at its core the Nazi supremacy accusation to thwart indigenous resistance against such policies. What would be morally right, would be full freedom for indigenous populations to be able to formulate their best interests, for everyone else who are outside their own homecountries out of own choice to have to acknowledge those interests, including learning to live with the intermittent small (narcissistic) pains of there being interests shared only by people of a home country proper. Which "privilege" they could have enjoyed too if having remained in their own home country. And then, after accepting the legitimacy of the interests of that large and very different set of people than oneself, who were there long before oneself left one's homecountry, accepting the legitimacy of them having different interests than oneself as well as the legitimacy of those interests which most probably will not benefit me the later arrived leaver of my own home country. Then after that acknowledgment starts the building of compromise. After that. And it musr never be a pseudo compromise that is in reality fully disadvantageous to those having stayed in their own home country, as it usually is in especially some European countries but also in the case of certain compacts and treaties applicable to all EU countries. Because that would be morally blatantly wrong.
Just think, by the way, that everyone living for a longer period of time abroad, sometimes in certain situations experiences the emotional, social pain of actually not belonging in all senses because not sharing certain important phases of socialization, experiences,... One cannot buy full belonging is what one learns on long stays abroad and I mean years. And I posit, it is morally wrong that an increasing number of increasingly aggressive policies and laws try to _force_ belonging. This is not humane. My view on things. Btw it is the legal left leaning immigrants who then vote for facilitating increase of mass immigration and non refoulement of dangerous (and therefore in reality legally "refoule-able") individuals. The former do the voting, the latter do the killing and maiming and terrorizing. Not all, but too many indeed, too many indeed, plus there are other tragic albeit less immediately gory ways in which life of indigenous populations is negatively affected And indigenous populations are not permitted to form a collective opinion about it due to that being Nazi supremacist.
So, for Australia I don't know if it could have merit for Aborigines to give up their claim, but I am unsure about whether they really should need to. As regards the argument that you make, for Australia it may be a new one, but in Europe it is being used ad nauseam and at mortem indigenorum in too many cases. (Is that genitive correct? Who knows. Maybe you would...) So just because it hurts emotionally to hear people say, we have a longer relationship with his place than you, this should not justify unpacking the large Nazi accusation weapon.
A related question that comes to mind is whether citizens of a particular country have the right to dictate the terms on which migrants enter their country. They do, but not because there are Original or Native, but because they have created something of value that other people desire to benefit from. The immorality of nativist supremacism (and migrant supremacism) is that it does not care who contributed what but demands special rights over other races or tribes, in perpetuity, irrespective of their contribution, as a God-given birthright.
There is indeed a flipside to the problem of nativism: invasive migration. On one side you have social stability being disrupted by mass immigration with supremacist ambitions and propensity for violence; on the other side you have migrants being denied equality forever, irrespective of how they behave, because the natives declare themselves superior. The problem is actually the same in both situations: it is tribal supremacism, either as a migrant or as a native, and both are equally wrong. Nativist supremacism is wrong for reasons explained above, with a strong historical precedent, but the problem can be extended to any in-group identity. The moral wrong of migrant supremacy does not negate the moral wrong of nativist supremacy; they are both moral problems. The solution lies in the middle.
Being immersed from birth in a culture/tradition results in a great ‘sense’ of familiarity, but it is not coextensive with the capacity to generate meaning. Echoing the same behaviours for thousands of years may feel like a profound connection, but it is only involuntary conditioning; even animals can do it. The distinguishing property of rational consciousness over animality is the capacity to begin from incompatible states of conditioning, develop a common language, resolve irrational/inconsistent elements by utilising the universal laws of logic, and generate common meaning.
The most irrational aspect of every nation, ethnicity, tribe or identity group is their culture. Once you strip away the culture, down to bare humanity, all people can be reasoned with.
This does sound sensible. And that is its problem. As people actually are and are allowed to be animal not only rational so to say, this approach as useful as it seems, is actually inhumane as mentioned above. Absolutely without wanting to, I am certain of that, ou have just accurately described the ambition of those who are forcibly social-engineering everyone to give up their identities so as to form one malleable compliant mass reciting in unison "we are all thr same". Reread your last passage. Strip away culture. Down to bare humanity. Reasoned with. It sounds dangerously radical. Reaching that goal would kill the soils. I am only warning you. You are extremely intelligent, I have admirfd your reasoning so often. This reasoning is sharp too, no doubt. But don't succumb to the same temptation that the one world totalitarian social engineers have succumbed to. How can I describe it? There is a point where one has to exit logical reasoning, a point where with humility one has to face how humans are. Let them keep some shortcomings. Don't engineer until together with the shortcomings you have engineered their humanness out of them. Humans have limitations. Those who according to the engineers don't behave standardizedly enough. But also the engineers who are driven by an ambition for the optimal optimized good and overlook what they have to destroy to reach perfection. Humility is what the engineers lack while thinking they are not lacking anything but that the normal ones lack understanding.No, they don't. - Do you know Iain McGilchrist? The Master and his Emissary. Of all people you are the one who needs to acquaint himself with that left and right brain concept because you will understand it and you are so sharp minded that it is of crucial importance for us all that you do not go I the direction of a rogue emissary. Acknowledging shared humanity is great. Also acknowledging that humans have deficits but that working with those deficits which are a part of being and staying human, is more humane than stripping them of human deficits. And working with them means that we modestly contain dangers instead of stripping all of everything that can make them feel there are individual traits that merit fighting for. That fighting, whether in migrant aggression or in indigenous supremacist forcible domination is what is bad. It needs to be contained. But the differences need to be honored. From that point, either a compromise or a separation. But between groups that have individualities. All else: inhumane.
All traditional cultures are irrational and totalitarian, demanding unconditional adherence to contingent customs whose function is only to sustain the illusion of moral authority and legitimacy. By implication, culture has social utility commensurate with the degree to which the group is irrational and its moral authority objectively deficient; only then it needs to be repressed and artificially organised, to prevent its disintegration. When the objective, logically indispensable and provable moral norms become commonly discernible, there is no need for the arbitrary constraints of culture; the objective reality of being Human spontaneously takes the place of culture.
I am not saying that culture should be abolished, but rather outgrown, evolved beyond.
I understand your misgivings, but there is a profound difference between the kind of human unity I am advocating, accomplished by voluntary communication and creation of common meaning, exercised in good faith and without ideological impediments (this is actually an objective condition of consciousness, always already in place but merely denied by our irrational impulses and dependencies), and the kind of unity of obedient drones that social engineers may seek to accomplish by deception and force. Culture is an impediment to both, because it is an imposed dependency, not a moral choice of the individual. Conformity is always irrational and immoral, because it delegates the authority to think and make moral choices to others. The desire for conformity is itself a supremacist ideology, but also an expression of the fight/flight instinct. Social engineers seek to control others only because they need it to control their own anxiety. Rational, moral humans are inherently free, and have the courage to be free, to take full responsibility for our individual moral choices, and only this freedom truly unites us as a kind, and only this is a source of our moral status as humans.
Sounds very good. We should all be more exposed to and reminded of this kind and level of reasoning, and of the higher demand to be made to oneself and to the others, a demand of better reasoning and higher expectations of our own morality but in a reasoned way, than we are challenged in homecountries all over the globe. We are not challenged at all, but have all been dumbed down and demeaned, our intellectual abilities have not been developed but dulled, and now we are being addressed by individual and world governmemts alike, as premoral four year olds who need to be steered. I have now understood what you are aiming at. Could be difficult to achieve under the dumbed down and oppressive circumstances but fair enough. 👍
It is the frailties that make us human, and the challenges of individualism that make life interesting. Stripping away those characteristics would turn us into zombies, GOD forbid. Just my thoughts.
Re: Tikkun Olam-"People following one of these concepts (the Tikkun Olam set), herd people following another of these concepts (the Dar Al Harb set) into European countries." Tikkun Olam is a Hebrew phrase that means "world repair" and has become synonymous with social action and the pursuit of social justice in modern Jewish circles. It refers to doing something with the world that will not only fix any damage but also improve upon it, preparing it to enter the ultimate state for which it was created. Firstly, responsibility for oneself, in health, mental and spiritual, in morality, respect for every human, be charitable/compassionate in helping those in real need who are ill, disabled, showing kindness and concern, being ethical, humble, upholding integrity, honesty, and accountability. it’s been central to Judaism, not a religion, for millennia. “repair the world” from its spiritual wounds. Jewish values are not conservative nor liberal; the richness is that it offers “a house of many rooms” where people of different persuasions can find inspiration and wisdom. Summing up, Tikkun Olam begins with each human being responsible for themselves, individually, then communally in values of character traits, before one can try to 'fix' others and the world. It is a beautiful, positive concept all humanity should strive towards, (not as you seemingly portray it), rectifying the prevailing corruption and degeneration of the human character, through free will not fully appreciated.
I propose a new Acknowledgement of Original Owners ceremony, otherwise know as 'Welcome to Reality', that should be conducted before every public event, performance or community meeting:
‘We acknowledge the Original Owners of the Earth on which we are standing, the Human kind of which we are all representatives. We all share the same ancient ancestors. We are all related. Reason unites us.’
The fundamental question that is yet to be answered in relation to the above article is why is supremacism wrong?
Humanity is the Ground of All Meaning
All your rights, all your values, including your value as a person, all meaning and sense, derive from your belonging to the Human kind: the kind of beings who possess reflexive conscousness vis-a-vis one another, and the capacity for rational thought, by means of which WE are able to collectively generate meaning. Humanity has the absolute priority over tribal, racial, cultural or ideological identity, because all these value-categories derive from and are conditional on being human, above all else. To ascribe any priority to your tribe, race, culture or ideology over the value of humanity is to negate the ground of these values, and thus to contradict and negate yourself. Tribalism, racialism, culturalism and ideologism all contradict themselves, negate themselves, refute their own priority, their moral status, their meaning and values. In order to be wholly yourself, to be a fully integrated being, to be fully human, absolutely valuable, of inviolable moral status, one must first abandon all contrary value commitments. A more formal analysis of this question is available here: https://philpapers.org/rec/KOWODO
Was it in this context:
https://nationfirst.substack.com/p/the-voice-is-a-trojan-horse
that you drafted the open letter? I saw just now by coincidence that that is something that is currently going on in Australia.
The referendum will be held this year to recognise aboriginal people in the Constitution as the original owners of Australia, and establish a race based democratic body for ‘advising’ the Parliament on any issue that affects people of aboriginal descent. It is true that about half of Australia is already covered by the native title, which is race-exclusive land ownership, but this is a separate issue to the Voice referendum. Anything beyond that is speculation. The letter was motivated by the continuous promotion of racial discrimination by the government, not specifically by the referendum.
I see, thank you! Very interesting how a lot of countries simultaneously have their own, more or less non-organically tailor-made developments going on with regard to basically modifying current ownership of rights, and current autonomy status, away from how these are at present. Someone out there, some interest group out there, is making efforts at restructuring, and shifting, rights and properties away from one set of people, over to such other set of people. Where however, the such other people group seem always to have one thing in common -even though they may be very different culturally from each other-: they differ from the self sufficient, self assertive, strong-minded majorities that currently own human rights, voting rights, and properties which they do not want to yield to third parties' business interests. They are groups with a certain characteristic, yes. But each of these groups is probably a less typically WEIRD (Henrich) group, and having potentially less power and maybe even less self-assertiveness than the group type that everything is being shifted away from. Resulting in, probably prospectively, having a less significant say in whatever is done both to them and done in their name and done on the now officially transferred to them, territory. One might say, why - the Aborigines are powerful, their text is assertive, they claim the land for themselves. Yes, but, that is not them who is writing and claiming. Someone does it for them. Provenly in the Voice case. (And for migration movements within Europe, see Soros and Mastercard collaboration with UN HSR on prefilled debit cards for migrants to be able to move on, where without that interference they would be unable to.) So, these weaker groups may initially feel they benefit from, and endorse what is done presumedly on their behalf and for their benefit. The Aborigines may endorse what he writes. But once the time comes where different interests will be promoted in the future - interests and projects which no longer benefit them-, their (then presumed) non-endorsement may prove to have no effect, and prove to not stop the new developments. Whereas the previous owner groups would have known to defend themselves in a more obstructive way. Which is why they are currently being disavowed, demoralized, guilted, then disentitled and finally dispossessed the world over in a lengthy but lately accelerating process. What are your thoughts if any about the intentions and possible consequences/risks of the WHO's amendment to the International Health Regulations with a view in particular to the deletion of inalienable human rights and dignity?
Do you think that removing those rights reflects and is the logical consequence of a materialist worldview being at work, and obviously in charge, in which humans are determined beings with no soul as e.g. Mr Harari out of Davos sometimes suggests? Could life then become dangerous for humans, in a global health construction where inclusion and equity ensures that every human be treated alike, meaning in certain circumstances: that every human without exception be treated full stop? And the relatively recent phrasing in medical studies with animals, where now it is said that after such time, the animals are "sacrificed". This underlines the "for the common good" justification for forcing and then killing these animated beings. With other life forms being, according to deep ecology, at least as valuable as humans, and "salvage or survival of the planet" the paramount goal since the Population Bomb and WEF and Club of Rome if not since much much earlier (if taking into account also (neo) malthusianism and eugenics movement): Do you foresee that soon, this term of "sacrificing" some specimens of a life form (for the greater good either of all life forms in general, or, for the good of the planet to be still more comprehensive), could under the materialist-reduced new human-rights paradigm in the WHO, be extended to the affirmative, overt and morally accepted sacrificing of certain humans that for certain characteristics can be deemed an impediment to the greater good? I would be very interested in your assessment.
While the simplest explanation that fits the circumstances may seem the most probable, this is not necessarily the case. I assume the people who rule are exceptionally competent at what they are doing, having access to genius and institutional resources that puts them many levels ahead of the strategic capacities of the general population. I would argue that anything that appears to us as most plausible is precisely so because it is intended to appear that way; the ultimate purpose may be concealed by a combination of induced anxiety and decoy appearances. In short, I do not know what the rulers are planning, and any leak about intentions and plans should be regarded as suspicious, but it is certain that they believe they are doing something good, because only the idea of the good can persuade people to dedicate their life to the cause. They BELIEVE is some special purpose, not just more power. I do not think it is necessary to know what they are planning, but sufficient to interpret every proposal, policy, idea logically and reveal any hidden contradictions. Deception and manipulation cannot be achieved without lies, and lies are inconsistencies, contradictions, and can be refuted. This approach allows for defeating the unethical means without having to know the unethical aim. I call it integrity.
So, would you say that eliminating human rights from a presumably human wellbeing-centered set of rules, is such a suspicious inconsistency where one can demand a stop to the project ot these grounds or under that scope at least?
OR,
Assuming an extremely materialist worldview in the actors, and maybe sharing that worldview, you say that a new binding contract with eliminated individual dignity in a moment whereas new treatment platforms require testing at scale, and whereas world population can well tolerate a reduction by many billions in pursuit of "the good" that is "the good" that certain groups profess as their aim: would you say that in that constellation: all fine, what can possibly go wrong, and whatever happens in that regard is indeed justified in the great scheme of things?
Any intentional violation of human rights is logically inconsistent and can be refuted in principle at that level, shown to be self-defeating. So even if they aim at some good future outcome by violating human rights at this time, their strategy is inconsistent and will fail.
All our rights and values, including our value as a person, all meaning and sense, derive from our belonging to the Human kind: the kind of beings who possess reflexive consciousness vis-a-vis one another, and the capacity for rational thought, by means of which WE are able to collectively generate meaning. Humanity has the absolute priority over all other value commitments, because they derive from and are conditional on being human. To negate the value of humanity in anyone else is to negate the basis of the value of oneself, to diminish one’s own intentional agency. All evil ultimately destroys itself. https://philpapers.org/rec/KOWODO
As regards your paper, thank you for sharing. You deal with extremely relevant stuff it seems to me. Fascinating! I will have to read. Also the other texts, about transhumanism for instance, I am very interested. As regards your abstract above, sounds like a great definition, but I retain it quite possible that they would reject the seeming equation of being an agent who values above all being an agent, with being a human. They might bring in other types of agents wanting to bf agents ghat the human agents need to play nice with and, insofar as still clumsy and undeveloped, humans must show respect and compassion for, and INCLUSION, meaning, they are morally and later legally obliged to train them... Because it looks to me as if they are planning on a different set of rights also for non-human entities. In all those toy, show, game productions targeting children, you always have the sad android or nindroid who first feels excluded because not human, but then everyone agrees that human supremacy must be overcome. The producers don't tell. They show. But it's what they are transporting, and the children who are always happy to spot inequity that they can repair, lap it up!
And speaking of repairing. Peter Hotez explicitly refers to the zikkun Olam concept with his "science Tikkun". Repair, improve God's creation. The sky is not the limit once a person endorses such a hubrid (?) ambition. Also the human agent is not the limit. What do you think? Maybe I have to read the transhumanism text first. - I like the encouragement I feel in your comment, that all that disrespects our humanity will fail. What I find important is that moral laws allow us to (in absence of brute force) resist. Do you have any good approaches for justifying rejection of human laws that jomahainst divine law? K Watts had a text about that. Drawing on theologians. Are there any philosophers that you would draw from?
What is your assessment of the situation in European countries? Forced mass immigration, many small massacres with 1-3 victims (often women and children, such as attacking schoolgirls on schoolyards with dead victims and attacking toddlers on playgrounds with serious injuries. Killing girls in drug stores with double edge sharpened knives in front of their friends (wouldn't be better if alone but some of the other people may also succumb to the trauma of what they had to see over the following years). Luring girls to remote places and kill them. Molest and beat girls in urban settings at night. Stab indigenous males in pedestrian zones at daytime. Kill male couples in urban settings at daytime. It's a low level asymmetrical war for submission, that would simply not be taking place at all, if belonging to a place or not belonging there were honored more. There are many forms and shapes of dangerous and harmful concepts of supremacy. People following one of these concepts (the Tikkun Olam set), herd people following another of these concepts (the Dar Al Harb set) into European countries. The attacked indigenous populations are forced to keep their mouths shut and submit to murder and debasement by means of accusing them of the one of the three concepts of supremacy, the one that you mention. It is a big problem that once people enter a foreign country in quantities, and gain the right to vote, their sensitivities of not feeling that they belong in all respects, disrupts the process of discussing and protecting their interests on the part of the indigenous peoples. The indigenous populations quite naturally -and you as extremely precisely thinking person know it-, share a common interest that cannot, it can never be identical with the interests of those who too have their own home country, but have decided to leave that behind and enter the home country of others. We all know this is so. Those not in their home country, with references to nazi supremacy, hinder honest discussion and formulation of goals among the indigenous populations that still actually reside in their home countries. Now comes the important part. I say that this is morally wrong. It would be morally right for people who have left their own home countries, to settle for less entitlement to shape their second country after their preferences - which however they do, with the help of political manoeuvering with at its core the Nazi supremacy accusation to thwart indigenous resistance against such policies. What would be morally right, would be full freedom for indigenous populations to be able to formulate their best interests, for everyone else who are outside their own homecountries out of own choice to have to acknowledge those interests, including learning to live with the intermittent small (narcissistic) pains of there being interests shared only by people of a home country proper. Which "privilege" they could have enjoyed too if having remained in their own home country. And then, after accepting the legitimacy of the interests of that large and very different set of people than oneself, who were there long before oneself left one's homecountry, accepting the legitimacy of them having different interests than oneself as well as the legitimacy of those interests which most probably will not benefit me the later arrived leaver of my own home country. Then after that acknowledgment starts the building of compromise. After that. And it musr never be a pseudo compromise that is in reality fully disadvantageous to those having stayed in their own home country, as it usually is in especially some European countries but also in the case of certain compacts and treaties applicable to all EU countries. Because that would be morally blatantly wrong.
Just think, by the way, that everyone living for a longer period of time abroad, sometimes in certain situations experiences the emotional, social pain of actually not belonging in all senses because not sharing certain important phases of socialization, experiences,... One cannot buy full belonging is what one learns on long stays abroad and I mean years. And I posit, it is morally wrong that an increasing number of increasingly aggressive policies and laws try to _force_ belonging. This is not humane. My view on things. Btw it is the legal left leaning immigrants who then vote for facilitating increase of mass immigration and non refoulement of dangerous (and therefore in reality legally "refoule-able") individuals. The former do the voting, the latter do the killing and maiming and terrorizing. Not all, but too many indeed, too many indeed, plus there are other tragic albeit less immediately gory ways in which life of indigenous populations is negatively affected And indigenous populations are not permitted to form a collective opinion about it due to that being Nazi supremacist.
So, for Australia I don't know if it could have merit for Aborigines to give up their claim, but I am unsure about whether they really should need to. As regards the argument that you make, for Australia it may be a new one, but in Europe it is being used ad nauseam and at mortem indigenorum in too many cases. (Is that genitive correct? Who knows. Maybe you would...) So just because it hurts emotionally to hear people say, we have a longer relationship with his place than you, this should not justify unpacking the large Nazi accusation weapon.
A related question that comes to mind is whether citizens of a particular country have the right to dictate the terms on which migrants enter their country. They do, but not because there are Original or Native, but because they have created something of value that other people desire to benefit from. The immorality of nativist supremacism (and migrant supremacism) is that it does not care who contributed what but demands special rights over other races or tribes, in perpetuity, irrespective of their contribution, as a God-given birthright.
There is indeed a flipside to the problem of nativism: invasive migration. On one side you have social stability being disrupted by mass immigration with supremacist ambitions and propensity for violence; on the other side you have migrants being denied equality forever, irrespective of how they behave, because the natives declare themselves superior. The problem is actually the same in both situations: it is tribal supremacism, either as a migrant or as a native, and both are equally wrong. Nativist supremacism is wrong for reasons explained above, with a strong historical precedent, but the problem can be extended to any in-group identity. The moral wrong of migrant supremacy does not negate the moral wrong of nativist supremacy; they are both moral problems. The solution lies in the middle.
Being immersed from birth in a culture/tradition results in a great ‘sense’ of familiarity, but it is not coextensive with the capacity to generate meaning. Echoing the same behaviours for thousands of years may feel like a profound connection, but it is only involuntary conditioning; even animals can do it. The distinguishing property of rational consciousness over animality is the capacity to begin from incompatible states of conditioning, develop a common language, resolve irrational/inconsistent elements by utilising the universal laws of logic, and generate common meaning.
The most irrational aspect of every nation, ethnicity, tribe or identity group is their culture. Once you strip away the culture, down to bare humanity, all people can be reasoned with.
This does sound sensible. And that is its problem. As people actually are and are allowed to be animal not only rational so to say, this approach as useful as it seems, is actually inhumane as mentioned above. Absolutely without wanting to, I am certain of that, ou have just accurately described the ambition of those who are forcibly social-engineering everyone to give up their identities so as to form one malleable compliant mass reciting in unison "we are all thr same". Reread your last passage. Strip away culture. Down to bare humanity. Reasoned with. It sounds dangerously radical. Reaching that goal would kill the soils. I am only warning you. You are extremely intelligent, I have admirfd your reasoning so often. This reasoning is sharp too, no doubt. But don't succumb to the same temptation that the one world totalitarian social engineers have succumbed to. How can I describe it? There is a point where one has to exit logical reasoning, a point where with humility one has to face how humans are. Let them keep some shortcomings. Don't engineer until together with the shortcomings you have engineered their humanness out of them. Humans have limitations. Those who according to the engineers don't behave standardizedly enough. But also the engineers who are driven by an ambition for the optimal optimized good and overlook what they have to destroy to reach perfection. Humility is what the engineers lack while thinking they are not lacking anything but that the normal ones lack understanding.No, they don't. - Do you know Iain McGilchrist? The Master and his Emissary. Of all people you are the one who needs to acquaint himself with that left and right brain concept because you will understand it and you are so sharp minded that it is of crucial importance for us all that you do not go I the direction of a rogue emissary. Acknowledging shared humanity is great. Also acknowledging that humans have deficits but that working with those deficits which are a part of being and staying human, is more humane than stripping them of human deficits. And working with them means that we modestly contain dangers instead of stripping all of everything that can make them feel there are individual traits that merit fighting for. That fighting, whether in migrant aggression or in indigenous supremacist forcible domination is what is bad. It needs to be contained. But the differences need to be honored. From that point, either a compromise or a separation. But between groups that have individualities. All else: inhumane.
All traditional cultures are irrational and totalitarian, demanding unconditional adherence to contingent customs whose function is only to sustain the illusion of moral authority and legitimacy. By implication, culture has social utility commensurate with the degree to which the group is irrational and its moral authority objectively deficient; only then it needs to be repressed and artificially organised, to prevent its disintegration. When the objective, logically indispensable and provable moral norms become commonly discernible, there is no need for the arbitrary constraints of culture; the objective reality of being Human spontaneously takes the place of culture.
I am not saying that culture should be abolished, but rather outgrown, evolved beyond.
I understand your misgivings, but there is a profound difference between the kind of human unity I am advocating, accomplished by voluntary communication and creation of common meaning, exercised in good faith and without ideological impediments (this is actually an objective condition of consciousness, always already in place but merely denied by our irrational impulses and dependencies), and the kind of unity of obedient drones that social engineers may seek to accomplish by deception and force. Culture is an impediment to both, because it is an imposed dependency, not a moral choice of the individual. Conformity is always irrational and immoral, because it delegates the authority to think and make moral choices to others. The desire for conformity is itself a supremacist ideology, but also an expression of the fight/flight instinct. Social engineers seek to control others only because they need it to control their own anxiety. Rational, moral humans are inherently free, and have the courage to be free, to take full responsibility for our individual moral choices, and only this freedom truly unites us as a kind, and only this is a source of our moral status as humans.
Sounds very good. We should all be more exposed to and reminded of this kind and level of reasoning, and of the higher demand to be made to oneself and to the others, a demand of better reasoning and higher expectations of our own morality but in a reasoned way, than we are challenged in homecountries all over the globe. We are not challenged at all, but have all been dumbed down and demeaned, our intellectual abilities have not been developed but dulled, and now we are being addressed by individual and world governmemts alike, as premoral four year olds who need to be steered. I have now understood what you are aiming at. Could be difficult to achieve under the dumbed down and oppressive circumstances but fair enough. 👍
It is the frailties that make us human, and the challenges of individualism that make life interesting. Stripping away those characteristics would turn us into zombies, GOD forbid. Just my thoughts.
Re: Tikkun Olam-"People following one of these concepts (the Tikkun Olam set), herd people following another of these concepts (the Dar Al Harb set) into European countries." Tikkun Olam is a Hebrew phrase that means "world repair" and has become synonymous with social action and the pursuit of social justice in modern Jewish circles. It refers to doing something with the world that will not only fix any damage but also improve upon it, preparing it to enter the ultimate state for which it was created. Firstly, responsibility for oneself, in health, mental and spiritual, in morality, respect for every human, be charitable/compassionate in helping those in real need who are ill, disabled, showing kindness and concern, being ethical, humble, upholding integrity, honesty, and accountability. it’s been central to Judaism, not a religion, for millennia. “repair the world” from its spiritual wounds. Jewish values are not conservative nor liberal; the richness is that it offers “a house of many rooms” where people of different persuasions can find inspiration and wisdom. Summing up, Tikkun Olam begins with each human being responsible for themselves, individually, then communally in values of character traits, before one can try to 'fix' others and the world. It is a beautiful, positive concept all humanity should strive towards, (not as you seemingly portray it), rectifying the prevailing corruption and degeneration of the human character, through free will not fully appreciated.
Nice.