It’s Complicated

My own moral code is somewhat complicated. As all of you know, I am not a believer in any sort of deity. I guess that’s odd, being that I grew up in a Catholic household and was sent to a Christian private school for three years. My parents were hoping that the experience would help. It didn’t. All my experiences with organized religion did was make me believe that the people in the churches were mostly lying hypocrites. There is a joke I once heard that goes like this:

When I was a kid, I wanted to pray for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work like that. So I stole a bike and then prayed for forgiveness.

My experiences really turned me away from religion, but I also knew that I needed to develop my own moral and ethical code. That was when I discovered Robert A Heinlein. In more than a couple of his stories, his characters remarked on the importance of developing one for yourself, and that is exactly what I did.

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.- RAH

In doing this, I looked at many different philosophies. For example, there are some cultures that don’t believe in owning property. To outsiders, they don’t believe that taking something that you want is stealing, since no one actually owns property. Still other cultures believe that objects belong to the maker. I discarded those and kept looking.

I think that it’s fair to say that most of my personal ethics and morals are a close parallel to Christian beliefs. So even though I don’t claim to believe in the spiritual and mythological parts of Christianity, I do align quite closely with its tenets on most things. I guess you can say that I am Christian adjacent. I guess, growing up on Heinlein novels, a lot of my outlook is close to his. Why did L. Ron Hubbard become the prophet for a religion, but RAH was not the founder of a political party? Puzzling.

Force and Violence

My first and most important one is that it is always morally wrong to initiate violence or force against another. That doesn’t mean that you have to wait for the other guy to throw the first punch- quite the contrary. Force to me doesn’t just mean that you are physically striking someone. I can use force against you in various ways- shouting in your ear with a megaphone, shining a laser in your eyes, or even sitting at the end of your driveway so that you cannot leave your house without running me over are all uses of force. Taking something of yours while daring you to do something about it is still force. I think this part of my philosophy came from that time when I was a child and my dad told me that I wasn’t allowed to start a fight. So I just forced the other kid to throw the first punch by being a royal asshole. Now that I am an adult, I know that there are more ways to start a fight than merely hitting someone, and I recognize it to be wrong.

Still, anyone who attempts to use force against me will have a fight on their hands. That fight might be a physical one, a legal one, or some other pushback.

Stealing and Fraud

We all trade our time in order to secure property. Whether we make the object, or trade our labor for money in order to buy the object, everything we own represents a slice of our limited lifetime. Stealing an object is no different than stealing time from another’s life or making them your slave. On the contrary, gift giving is indirectly giving someone some of your life, whether the gift is an object or your time, it still represents something.

It’s also wrong to use deception to take things from others. Lying to someone and telling them that this car has never had mechanical problems when you know damned well that it needs a new transmission is still stealing, it’s just stealing by fraud. It’s wrong.

I have no problem with charging all that the traffic will bear- an eager seller and a willing buyer is fine with me- as long as both are honest about what is being traded. I won’t sell you a broken car, you don’t pay me with a counterfeit bill.

Taxes and Charity

Taxes for the public good aren’t stealing as long as everyone gets the same benefit. So a tax that pays for police, courts, streets, or fire service can be a good thing, while a tax that takes money to hand out to people simply because they are poor is nothing more than theft.

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”- RAH

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.- Also RAH

Defending the Helpless

I also believe that we have a duty here in this life to defend those who are unable to defend themselves. I will always fight for what I think is right- even at great personal cost. In fact, the times in my life that got me in the most trouble were the times that I stood my ground and defended my principles.

There are plenty of things that I believe, and I suspect that many who claim to be Christians would find that our beliefs are actually quite closely aligned.

Limited Government:

I believe in a government that primarily focuses on internal police, courts, and external defense. Other matters should be handled by individuals and private organizations.

That we were slaves I had known all my life—and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren’t bought and sold—but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.- RAH

Individual Liberty:

I stand behind individual freedom, including freedom of speech, thought, and expression. Censorship and any attempt to control people’s knowledge or beliefs is wrong. That’s why I run this blog.

Distrust of Authority:

I have a great deal of skepticism towards authority, particularly government authority, but also authority of organized religion. How the pope can tell us we need to donate to the poor while he is taking a crap on a solid gold toilet just smacks of hypocrisy. It is far too easy for power to be abused. That is where the founders were so very wise in keeping government of limited power. That was destroyed from the Civil war on.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.- RAH

Still, we need government. Why? Because true anarchy can’t exist, because someone with a yearning for power will always take it, by force if necessary. That’s why police morally exist- to protect the rights of those who are accused of crimes to receive a fair trial. The problem is that people don’t monitor their government to ensure that the powers aren’t being abused. Too much effort? No, it’s that people are good at wanting to use government power to force others to follow their own beliefs.

There must be a yearning deep in the human heart to stop other people from doing as they please.- RAH

Importance of Education and Critical Thinking:

Education and critical thinking are tools for individuals to resist tyranny and make informed decisions. However, education institutions can twist education to be a tool for ignorance, tyranny, and actually increase ignorance. That’s what we are seeing now. See my post tomorrow about Harvard.

I just do my absolute best to be worthy of being treated the way that I treat others. How would I feel if someone treated me or my loved ones the way that I am treating you? That doesn’t mean that I will be a doormat, and it doesn’t make me a Saint- after all, I sometimes fall short of my goal. I am far from perfect, even in meeting my own standards. We are all a work in progress.

I have committed transgressions against others, because I am not perfect. Some of the things that I did and said in my youth truly shame me when I think about them. I hope that those I hurt or offended through my faults have forgiven me. I am not that person any longer.

Does that make me Christian adjacent? I don’t know, but that’s my code. Parts of it, anyhow. It is what enables me to look myself in the eye in that mirror in the morning. I think that RAH and myself would have gotten along quite well.