Natural rights and egoism

[variagil]

No right is given by dialectics, state or community. Rights should be conquered and defended once achieved. If there are few rights nowadays, like sometimes freedom of speech, is because the power -those that denies rights- is not only upside, but downside and by sides. Everyone can define what he or she thinks should be a right, by instance public access to football TV. This right is mostly achieved because some people believes it is necessary to maintain social order.

By instance I have defended my right to be vegetarian or vegan, and this is not allowed in jails or many places. We can think about the significance of this trofalaxia -feed through an axis- of meat and the simbolic and hedonistic meaning of the meat in a culture. The only sure is that to be vegetarian has given me the freedom and right to be free I had lost. In a political speech the right says the left is putrefacted and the left says the right is hipocrit. But no matter who denies the right to be free, and once one has conciousness of this, the infinite sentences fall down.

[Anarchological]

It would seem that no "rights" are logically compatible with anarchism:

Legal rights, such as the right to a minimum wage or the right to bear arms, which are guaranteed by governments, exist until they are modified or repealed. But since anarchists believe that all government power is illegitimate, these "rights" are irrelevant.

What about inherent or "natural rights", allegedly guaranteed by God? The US Declaration of Independence says "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator "... with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But what good did God-given rights to life and liberty do those 55,000 American boys who were drafted and died in Vietnam, or the others who lost their limbs or their eyes? What good did alleged God-given rights to life and liberty do Jews, gays, Gypsies, and other minjorities under The Third Reich?

Thus, legal rights are irrelevant to anarchists who are opposed to state coercion, and natural, inherent, God-gioven rights are just plain nonsense. But, the flip side of the coin is that since divine rights of kings, or the rights of governments do not exist, no authoritarians can claim that they have a rights to control our lives. Yes, they may have the power and the guns to control us, but they can make no logical case against our claim to self-ownership, so, at the very least, we have the psychological benefit of not being deluded into believing their bullshit and drinking their Kool-Aid.

[variagil]

NEVER MORE!!!

[NoID]

What keeps you all from murdering whenever you feel like it? What keeps you from stealing, raping, vandalizing others' property? The threat of retaliatory State violence? No, of course not. As immoral as the State is, government agents are not on every street corner, holding guns to our heads and preventing us from doing violence to one another. In practice, we could commit random acts of violence with near impunity, were we so inclined. The point is, we are, by and large, simply not so inclined. It is upon this observation which the concept of natural rights is founded, that is, the observation of universally preferred human behavior.

One need not resort to theistic arguments to prove the existence of natural rights. Observe: Human beings are more likely to survive (and thrive!) when they peacefully cooperate with one another then when they initiate violence. The argument is thus reduced to Darwin.

[Christopher777]

Which applies to a large percentage of the population, but not to all individual human beings.
Which, as I understand this argument, is the point.
There are serial killers who believe it is their right to prey on all those they consider weak.
We, as society, do condemn them and remove them from society, because we say it is wrong.
But, where is the rights of the serial killer?
It's nonsense to say they have rights because they took away the right of an individual to their life, but try explaining that to a serial killer. They won't buy into it.
We can all pretend that these vast minority of the population do not exist, but yet, they do.
Same with rapists. There are far more rapists than there are serial killers, mind.

I'd say social conditioning plays a large part in why we don't do these things.
What about a starving man who refuses to steal food to survive?
It's illogical. This person is acting against his own self-interest in the name of the right to property, enforced by society.
I think we live based on internalized fears. We go through so many years of life as "children" learning to accept all the norms and dictates of our culture. Then we have things like peer groups, the media, churches...
We don't always act in our own self-interests, because it can be very hard for an individual to think in those terms.
If we all thought in our self-interests, we'd never go to war, because no one would agree to risk their life in the name of "god, king, or country". It's illogical, but yet people do it.
I agree that the concept of elightened self-interest is very powerful. I wish everyone did think that way. It would create such a better world, but the facts are that most people do not think that way.
I can work for a boss for this amount of wages, or I can work together with my fellow workers and control my own work and be a boss. Which one is based in self-interest?
But, yet, Capitalism still exists.

Who says what is "preferred" behaviour anyway? That sounds very social.
There are a lot of people who say that homosexuality is not a preferred social behaviour.
Sure, you can say it's an individual's right to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own lives, and I agree, but is there really some set of rules (The Ten Commandments, maybe?) which say what behaviours are "preferred" by society? Or, are these just ideas which you'd hope are preferred behaviours?
What about paedophilia, which is a big issue amongst some individualist anarchists? The arguments for and against are actually both quite compelling even though I dislike the concept. As I was told by a person who supports paedophilia (but is not one himself) it's just my social conditioning. I don't know. Is it? Maybe, maybe not.
Actually, why is rape not in someone's self-interest? It's not in female's self-interest, but the majority of males do not need to worry about rape, so if there's no need to think in someone's head "If I start raping women then someone might start raping me", why wouldn't they see it as male self-interest to rape a woman?
Individuality removes distinctions like "I'm a male, she's a female" it is true, but yet, biological urges will still exist.

It's nice to think that laws don't hold back the majority of people, but there's no way to really test this theory.
Just because every corner doesn't have a cop doesn't mean that we don't think about the legal consequences of going around robbing stores. A majority of "criminals" are caught by the law at some point, even if the cop isn't waiting behind their back to arrest them as soon as they steal something.
I don't think laws stop people from becoming serial killers, no, but I do think they might hold back from violent urges which are natural for humans, or at least some humans.

You may question why I am an anarchist. Well, I am an individualist anarchist in the tradition of Emile Armand, first of all, but secondly, I believe in freedom for every individual as a concept. It doesn't mean I'm a "true believer".
We eliminate the State, Capitalism, or all society it doesn't mean I don't think things might not get much, much worse. I just think the concept of total freedom is better, even if it leads to chaos, rather than living safe bourgeois lives in the comfort of our imaginary "civilization".
-Before anyone asks I mean that our concept of civilization is imaginary, not that civilizations are just figments of our imagination, ok? heh

[Anarchological]

Christopher 777. I agree with NoID that the state does not cvreate ethical behavior, but I think I see your concerns. It seems that individualist anarchism is completely compatible with the Golden Rule. I'm not espousing The Golden Rule as a type of religious Commandment, but as a suggestion that it might be logical, ethical, and compatible with human nature. Mark Twain said that "When you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." Twain was suggesting that it was easier to tell the truth. Contrast this with Thomas Aquinas' explanation of the Commandment not to lie that a lie is a misuse of God's gift of speech. That attempting to be truthful conforms to human nature is evidenced somewhat by the fact that lie detectors detect stress as shown by blood pressure and other factors, showing that humans are innately uncomfortable lying unless they are well-conditioned to it, or are born politicians. Teaching children that perhaps honesty is, after all, the best policy, and that they might be better off in the long run if they try to avoid lying and stealing, would not, IMHO, do them a disservice.

Anarchism could exist in what Butler Shaffer, The Boundaries of Order, 2009 calls a horozontally organized society, not a pyramidaly organized society with a politician at the top. When we recognize that it is second nature for politicians to lie and steal, why would we want to organize a society with them in control?

[variagil]

I do not think the Golden Rule is useful to describe the ethics, it is so simple. The honour in the battle is needed to win the war. Without honour the humans and nations became worse than animals. Without honour you should be death hundreth years or more, if you do not reject with strength the dishonour were you can act. The honour is present or absent in every action, from sharing of spoils to the speech of honour.

[variagil]

One need not resort to theistic arguments to prove the existence of natural rights. Observe: Human beings are more likely to survive (and thrive!) when they peacefully cooperate with one another then when they initiate violence. The argument is thus reduced to Darwin.

I've seen "Bowling for Columbine" -and other independent movies in OVS- and Michael Moore puts very good questions over the table, I'm sure people is tired of this shit of ultra-violence and wants to live in peace, not afraid of the last fool that can buy a gun everywhere and, more or less, this have been seen recently.