Thursday, January 4, 2007

Charlie's Manifesto

I believe everyone has a worldview. Some are more informed than others. Then, there are those like me who can actually write that worldview down on a piece of paper. This is what I believe.

THE MANIFESTO

1. I believe in empiricism. I believe we know what we know through our five senses. We can come up with theories or what have you, but what we know is determined by what we can prove and what we observe.

I believe in the scientific method. I believe that what we know is held with a tenative grasp to be improved upon in the light of new information and the rigorous demands of peer review.

I do not believe in the postmodern claptrap that truth is purely relative to the individual. There are not many "truths" that are equally valid. There is the truth which is objective reality, and then there are our perceptions of that truth. All viewpoints have value but those viewpoints do not have the same value. They are not necessarily true either.

2. I do not believe in God or the supernatural. I have no religion nor do I care to have one. The reason I do not believe in God is because there is no empirical evidence that he exists. Believers tell me that you have to know God through feelings or "faith." This is simple horseshit.

3. I believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are no objective aesthetic values. Your tastes may differ from mine and one is not objectively superior to the other. An environmentalist may find beauty in a forest while I may find beauty in seeing that forest chopped down and paved over to make a parking lot. I think Titanic is a suck ass movie, but a whole helluva lot of people liked it enough to make it the top grossing film of all time. Who am I to argue with this?

4. I believe in capitalism and the free market as being the best means for human beings to achieve material prosperity, and history shows us that this is actually the case. Thanks to the free market, poor people of today enjoy a standard of living far in excess of the wealthy a century ago. I reject socialism and communism as being inferior economic systems, and the evidence overhwelmingly inidcates that these systems destroy wealth, hurt the poor, and lead to totalitarian forms of government.

5. I believe that the best form of government is that which governs least. I am a minarchist, and I believe that government exists solely for the purpose of preserving liberty from criminals and foreign threats. When government becomes the enemy of liberty, it has strayed from its proper role and must be fixed or abolished.

6. I am an egoist. I believe that in order to be happy you should live for your own sake and not for the sake of others. I reject altruism which demands that we live a life of sacrifice for the "greater good." I reject narcissism which demands that others live for my sake. I wish to be neither slave nor tyrant.

7. I am an individualist. I reject collectivism and consider it antithetical to the interests of the individual. A collective is merely an abstraction that serves to enslave individuals to the agenda of some narcissist and is the essence of tyranny. There is no such thing as the "greater good" or the "common good." There is only the individual good.

8. I believe that there are only three human rights, and those are the rights to life, liberty, and property. These are rights that any individual may possess without infringing upon the rights of others. Government sanctioned rights to universal healthcare, a living wage, cable TV, etc. are not rights at all but theft of the property of others.

9. I believe in the Golden Rule that states that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us. In this, we see that egoism and respect for the rights of others are the basis of ethics and morality. I do not believe in violating the rights of others unless they have violated my rights or threaten to violate them. I have no claim to the life, liberty, or property of other people, and they have no claim to mine.

10. I believe that the purpose of life is to find happiness, and this happiness is relative to the individual. I believe that each person should be as free as possible to find their happiness in any way they desire as long as it does not violate the rights of others.

There you have it, folks. This is what I believe. I don't have a label for this worldview, but if I did, it would probably be "secular individualism." As it stands, my manifesto is subject to change in the light of new information, so you might see revised editions in the future.

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