{"id":3824,"date":"2008-08-09T22:32:38","date_gmt":"2008-08-10T05:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=3824"},"modified":"2008-08-09T22:33:47","modified_gmt":"2008-08-10T05:33:47","slug":"redemption-is-egoism-in-action-in-support-of-mike-farmer-even-if-other-people-are-criminal-i-am-not-but-i-will-not-cause-them-to-become-good-by-becoming-a-criminal-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3824\/redemption-is-egoism-in-action-in-support-of-mike-farmer-even-if-other-people-are-criminal-i-am-not-but-i-will-not-cause-them-to-become-good-by-becoming-a-criminal-myself\/","title":{"rendered":"Redemption is egoism in action:<\/em> In support of Mike Farmer, even if other people are criminal, I am not — but I will not cause them to become good by becoming a criminal myself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not completely off topic, but well above the normal fray<\/a>. I wrote this ten or twelve years ago:<\/p>\n

 
What I want to discuss is Socrates’ question about whether it is better to inflict an injury or to have an injury inflicted upon you. It’s a favorite of sophists and sophomores, I know, but I think it strikes at the very core of justice. The justice I seek and seek to defend is not “out there”, apart from myself. Justice (or injustice) is not what others do to me, it’s what I do to myself and to others. Where I find myself availing myself of the fallacies tu quoque<\/em> or two wrongs make a right, I am rationalizing injustice, and the worst<\/em> havoc I am wreaking is upon my own ego.<\/p>\n

The Nazarene’s answer to Socrates was this: It is better to have an injury inflicted upon you, because redemption is still possible to one who has not inflicted injury upon another. I don’t believe in an afterlife and I don’t believe redemption hinges upon any one event. But I do<\/em> believe that a “justice” that is itself unjust is vain at best and evil at worst.<\/p>\n

We can make a joke by saying, “Political philosophy is the means by which ethical systems betray themselves.” There are actually a host of reasons for this, and all of them are amusing to me. For one, a political system has a meta-goal apart from the ethical system in which it is rooted: It must function in the real world.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the political system itself has a meta-ethical or even extra-ethical goal in that its proponents will tend to imbue it with what they view are essential survival characteristics even if these betray the ethical system in which the political philosophy is putatively based. Any form of argument that the polity can or should or must do what it would be immoral or criminal for any individual to do is a form of this error. The counter is, but if we don’t<\/em> inflict this injury, the polity won’t survive. And the counter to that is that a dispute resolution Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not completely off topic, but well above the normal fray. I wrote this ten or twelve years ago:  What I want to discuss is Socrates’ question about whether it is better to inflict an injury or to have an injury inflicted upon you. It’s a favorite of sophists and sophomores, I know, but I think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,212,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-egoism-in-action","7":"category-flourishing","8":"category-group-therapy","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11601,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11601\/splendorquest-redemption-is-egoism-in-action-even-if-other-people-are-criminal-i-am-not-but-i-will-not-cause-them-to-become-good-by-becoming-a-criminal-myself\/","url_meta":{"origin":3824,"position":0},"title":"SplendorQuest: Redemption is egoism in action: Even if other people are criminal, I am not — but I will not cause them to become good by becoming a criminal myself.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote this a dozen years ago, and I've posted it here before. It's apposite today, because, to all indications, we are all about to be involuntarily inducted into a cannibal cult. My question for you: Will you choose to be devoured by your neighbors, or will you elect to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Mother"","block_context":{"text":"Big Mother","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/big-mother\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1227,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1227\/egoism-in-action-how-you-can-grow-and-prosper-at-work-and-everywhere-even-in-the-face-of-hostile-criticism\/","url_meta":{"origin":3824,"position":1},"title":"Egoism in action: How you can grow and prosper, at work and everywhere, even in the face of hostile criticism","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This is email I had from Corey Hague, one of the founders of BuyerHunt.com. This is important to the philosophical issues I've tried to raise, and Corey agreed to let me talk about this in the weblog:Well Greg, I am out of ideas, slowly becoming \"zestless\" and looking for some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16180,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/16180\/he-blinded-them-with-science-taking-up-the-vocabulary-of-self-adoration-at-the-21convention\/","url_meta":{"origin":3824,"position":2},"title":"He blinded them with science: Taking up the vocabulary of self-adoration at The 21Convention.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This is me speaking at The 21Convention earlier this month in Austin. The title of my talk -- \"Ontologically-Consonant Teleology\" -- was a joke, an early intimation that I intended to be dry, pedantic and boring. In reality, I gave them my pure schtick, hard-core egoism delivered with a garage-band\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5889,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/5889\/privacy-is-an-artifact-of-inefficiency\/","url_meta":{"origin":3824,"position":3},"title":"“Privacy\u00a0is an artifact of inefficiency”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 30, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I say that just about every time I speak in public, and people always ask me to repeat it, and they inscribe it carefully into their notes. It's a simple enough idea: What you've thought of all your life as privacy has simply been a function of inefficient data processing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6246,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/6246\/my-own-little-gift-on-christmas-eve-ive-discovered-a-way-that-a-contributor-to-bloodhoundblog-can-get-fired\/","url_meta":{"origin":3824,"position":4},"title":"My own little gift on Christmas Eve: I’ve discovered a way that a contributor to BloodhoundBlog can get fired…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I would ask, is this sick-making to me alone? -- but I heard about it from a nauseated reader before I had seen it myself. We don't take any money out of this site at all, not even Amazon affiliate fees. I don't want for anyone reading BloodhoundBlog ever to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11672,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11672\/splendorquest-redemption-is-egoism-in-action\/","url_meta":{"origin":3824,"position":5},"title":"SplendorQuest: Redemption is egoism in action","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This is clipped from a book I wrote in 1988 -- a book I really need to write anew. It's an epistolary novel, so the writing is kind of affected. I expect you can worry your way through it. \"Madness,\" as the term is used here, is an attempt to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3825,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824\/revisions\/3825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}