The Tao of Arizona Atheist: Prime

In the last piece I explained what anarchism was and in this third part of the Tao of Arizona Atheist series will explain how my friend Bob Clapp’s philosophy relates to anarchism.

Prime is the first principle of Scientific Individualism, the personal philosophy of Bob Clapp, and is the philosophy I’ve come to adopt as my own. For those who are interested in Bob’s philosophy I’d recommend his book Every Man and Woman an Island: The Individual Human Being as Prime in the Universe and his personal blog, bobclapp.blogspot.com. Bob has also written a very good piece about his first principle on his blog, here.

Allow me to begin by citing a quote of Bob’s from the second chapter of his book:

The individual human being and the planet Earth are scientifically given facts. The nation-state, borders, and gods are the fictionally given facts of non-existent collective man.

Prime, in essence, is the fact that without a conscious observer nothing exists. To quote Bob once more, “Very compactly and simply put, WHEN I’M HERE EVERYTHING IS HERE, WHEN I’M GONE EVERYTHING IS GONE.” With each individuals' consciousness they perceive the world and other people around them, as do others. Without each individuals' consciousness, nothing would exist, including other people. I’ve written about this in the past, though I’ll try to sum it up here as well, though I don’t believe I can get any more clear than I was in the post I just linked to: Anarchism: A Philosophical & Scientific Justification. Because this is the undeniable fact - the fact of existence - this is Bob’s first principle, the one in which everything else is based upon, such as morality, government and economics.

This first principle was chosen because in order to be a sound philosophy your first principle must stand on firm ground because that is the foundation for the rest of your particular beliefs. If your first principle isn’t sound, neither are the conclusions that are based on your premise. So, Bob chose what he believed was the most irrefutable position: the fact that everything begins and ends with each individuals’ consciousness. Of course, Bob readily admits that his first principle will fail once human beings transcend the carbon world and begin interfacing with the silicone world, and humans merge with machine. Then, human beings will likely become immortal and his first principle will become obsolete. But, until then, his first principle stands firm.

Morality

Now, just how is this first principle linked to morality? Well, before I get to that I have to explain this fact. The fact that we humans exist in groups does nothing to counteract Prime; the fact remains that, as I said before, without each individuals' consciousness, nothing would exist, including other people. This fact demolishes the “non-existent” idea of man as a collective entity. While individuals may gather to form various groups the fact remains that these groups are still made up of individuals and it follows from the first principle of Prime that each individual is to be taken account of because their very existence is special and should not be taken for granted. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone express this as eloquently as the famed atheist and evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, from his book Unweaving the Rainbow:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

The other reason the individual should come first is because of the very basis of morality under the first principle. Because only I exist, in theory, all I can truly know is how I would feel if another individual I came into contact with harms me, or violates me, in some way. Because I know how I would feel, I can rightly assume, since other human being are likely much like myself, that they most likely wouldn’t like to be harmed or violated in some way either. In essence, this is one of the oldest forms of moral advice there is and was spoken of by Jesus, the Buddha, and even the Greeks.

Due to the fact that so many moral and political systems are based upon society at large, and therefore forget that societies are composed of individuals, the current ideas of organizing society are often detrimental to the minority and favor the majority, which is anti-Prime and immoral.

Because of this group mentality so many individuals are forgotten or are trampled under the weight of the collective. The homeless, homosexuals, atheists, African Americans, etc. Throughout history minorities have suffered because of this group mentality and individuals have been brutalized, killed, and marginalized because of it.

The Social Contract and Democracy

How do we organize a system that takes into account each individual? I believe that the Social Contract is the best moral system because it most closely adheres to the first principle: Prime, and does not sacrifice the individual to the majority. Each individual gets their voice heard and is not forced by the (non-existent) collective to bow down to their will as is now done with the vote.

While Democracy has often been hailed as one of the best forms of government, when one really thinks about it, it leaves much to be desired simply because it, like most other forms of government, forgets about the individual while focusing on the majority. Because of this, all governments are anti-Prime, thus favoring anarchism, to which I will now turn. However, before I get to the next section I want to be clear. Prime does not de facto reject government. It does so because of the oppressive, murderous actions it commits against individuals. If a form of government only helped each individual prosper then government would be a welcome institution. Unfortunately this is not the case, hence the anarchist position.

Anarchism

By now, I think it should be clear how Prime assumes anarchism and why. It is the anti-thesis of government. It is its negation. It allows each individual to make use of their freedoms and does not sacrifice the individual for the majority. It abhors authority, and hence, the all too common abuse of that authority. It abhors the power that the government contains (forceful coercion) as the enforcer of the will of the majority upon an unwilling minority. It abhors the abuse of power that the government is guilty of as it is continually eroding our freedoms and rights away (I mentioned this fact in the last piece and gave references to back up that assertion).

Economics

When considering Prime, the best economic choice would be the free market. Free market capitalism, also known as laissez-faire capitalism, is the only economic system that takes into account each individual human being. Once I was chastised by a fellow anarchist for supporting capitalism because that was apparently an ‘un-anarchist’ thing to do but hopefully with this series, you will now understand why I choose laissez-faire capitalism. It supports Prime.

With free market capitalism no governments come in and try to set prices or tax anyone (theft). All people work to provide services that are dependant upon the needs of people, the subjective value that each human being sees in a product (thus determining its value without outside intervention, i.e. the state), and the whole system works without any interference by government. The idea of the invisible hand, as conceived by Adam Smith, is an ingenious concept because people themselves with their own desires and wishes will allow an economy to produce, consume, over and over again, all the while keeping abuses in check (individuals largely won’t want to deal with unethical or dishonest people), and prosper all without any outside intervention.

It’s actually with government intervention that things go wrong. Take for example, this article titled Rolling Back Government: Lessons from New Zealand, by Maurice P. McTigue, which gives a very good example of the excellent outcomes of keeping government out of economics and allowing the free-market to do what it does.