This is the third of a set of emails, which included WORD attachments. This written critical exchange was arranged with libertarian writer George H. Smith in the summer of 2003 as a paid critique service for the purpose of obtaining logical analysis of the philosophical basis of the Self-Sovereign Individual Project by a knowledgeable libertarian thinker. (See Link Note)
"Part Two" below from George was sent prior to him having read Paul's response to "Part One".
Paul's inline response follows George's intact email and incorporated WORD attachment.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Part Two
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2003 11:43:06 -0500
From: George H. Smith
To: Paul Antonik Wakfer
Paul,
You will find Part Two of my remarks in the enclosed
attachment. It should be self-explanatory. My suggestions
for our discussion at the conference appear at the end.
Best,
George
Part Two
Paul,
Please keep in mind my preliminary remarks from Part One as you read this. I'll cover what I can. When I don't feel a need to comment on a passage, I will simply delete it, so there will be gaps in your text.
"The purpose of the Declaration of Individual Independence (DOII) is to enable a person to declare his essential, necessary, and complete ethical independence from all governments everywhere - to state that he is self-sovereign (the "political" portion of self-ownership), is not bound by the rules and regulations of any government anywhere, and reserves to himself the ultimate determination of, judgment of and responsibility for his own actions.
You draw an interesting distinction between self-ownership and self-sovereignty, one that would be worth developing in more detail. Historically, the terms were used as virtual synonyms, but this doesn't mean they should not be distinguished for explanatory or heuristic reasons. Valuable theoretical distinctions sometimes emerge from distinctions like this, and I would encourage you to write more about it. (It's possible that you discuss this issue, as well as others I will raise, elsewhere on your website, but, given the volume of material, I'm afraid that I cannot remember all of the particulars.)
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the earliest terms like this were "self-propriety" and "self-proprietorship." These go back at least to the Levellers during the 1640s. John Locke and many of his contemporaries spoke of "property in one's person" -- an expression that again became very popular (for obvious reasons) during the anti-slavery crusades of the 18th and 19th centuries. The label "self-ownership" became popular among libertarians after Auberon Herbert used it repeatedly (c. 1880s) in his journal "Free Life." I don't know the origin of "self-sovereignty," but I do know it was used (in the early 19th century) by the American anarchists Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this expression goes back much earlier, but this is just a hunch.
I mention these details in case you ever decide to delve into the origin of these expressions in the course of drawing the kind of distinction mentioned above. This can easily prove to be more than an idle historical exercise. On more than a few occasions, this kind of research has yielded valuable insights that have aided my thinking about fundamental theoretical issues, as I gained a greater understanding of the significance of certain expressions -- e.g., self-sovereignty in contrast to state sovereignty, which took on a special significance with the rise of the modern absolutist state.
A thoughtful and curious reader may immediately ask, "What prompted you to write such a Declaration? And why should any person wish to make it?" The answer to the first is that my wife (Kitty Antonik Wakfer) and I (Paul Antonik Wakfer) (the "we", "us" and "our" in most of the following) are convinced that the myriad of government restrictions of our voluntary actions, which violate no one, is growing so fast that if we do not act now, it will become increasingly impossible to attain our goal of vastly extended life nor possibly any more life than is currently attainable. Of course, it should go without saying that our desire for more life is a direct consequence of our desire to maximize our lifetime happiness.
I personally think it is a strategic error to introduce the issue of life extension at this point, but this would take me a while to explain, and it's no big deal in any case. This is something we could discuss this weekend, if you like.
Parts of this passage (e.g., which violate no one -- it will become increasingly impossible to attain our goal of vastly extended life nor possibly any more life than is currently attainable -- our desire to maximize our lifetime happiness) are quite awkward and should be revised and/or tightened up. There are similar problems elsewhere in this piece, but since you wish me to focus on substance rather than style, I will pass over them from now on, unless I find something that is especially troublesome.
I will say that this is a fairly serious problem at times, and not just in the annotations. There are few passages in DOII itself that could be considerably clarified with a few minor revisions. Your ideas are very important, and it is obvious that you have invested considerable time and effort in working them out. Given all this, it would be a shame if some readers lost the essential meaning owing to a few stylistic problems that could be easily fixed.
Furthermore, we think that the avalanching restrictions on nonviolent activities will soon be so invasive and prohibitive as to make any such Declaration, and even moreso the Self-Sovereign Individual Project of which it is a part, a far more dangerous endeavor than now, and that any improvement in human freedom may thus become impossible for decades or even centuries to come. Since the end of the 18th century, the United States of America has been a bastion and a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world. However, in the last 50 years that has been fast declining and it is now all but gone. Since there is nowhere else on Earth that is significantly freer, it is even conceivable that human civilization is on the brink of a new "dark ages" with respect to liberty, if not, as a result, also with respect to human happiness, production and scientific/technological progress.
More stylistic problems, especially after with respect to liberty.
General Annotations to the Declaration of Individual Independence 1) If some of the phrasings and word usages in this Declaration of Individual Independence appear a bit "odd" and "out of place or time", that is because I have written it as much as possible in the style of the original American Declaration of Independence (TDOI), even purposefully using some of the phrases from that document.
You won't like this -- especially given all the work you have invested in this format -- but this is perhaps my biggest problem with DOII, and something we should definitely discuss this weekend. For now I will just touch on a few things.
I fully understand the appeal of writing a consistently pro-freedom version of the Declaration of Independence, but this "gimmick" hurts you far more than it helps. (The term "gimmick" will probably strike you as more pejorative than I intend it to be. I merely find this a convenient label, one that I can introduce at any point in this discussion without having repeatedly to explain what I mean.)
1) The gimmick forces you into using stilted rhetoric at times, when clarity of expression should be your goal, first and foremost.
2) There is also the problem of stylistic consistency. Given the nature of your material, you are often compelled to stray far from the style of the original DOI. The 18th century style cannot be consistently maintained, nor should it be, and the result is a random mixture of the old and the new. You would be better off sticking with one style consistently throughout, viz., simple, straightforward English prose. Here the entire focus would be on expressing your ideas and arguments as clearly as possible.
3) The gimmick is distracting. Whenever you revert back into the 18th century gimmick mode, the reader once again becomes aware of a certain artificiality.
4) The gimmick is not original; if anything, it's been overdone. I have read various revisions and rewrites of the Declaration over the years, each pushing its own ideological agenda (including socialism of all things).
5) As I said before, you have some very important ideas to communicate. Form should therefore follow content, which is primary. The structure of your document should emerge naturally from the inner logic of your ideas rather than being forced into a prefabricated mold. In many cases you have done an admirable job in adapting your ideas to the form. You clearly put a lot of work into this, but I think you are still hampered by the gimmick and that the problems are inherent in the format itself. This goes back to what I said in Part One about the fundamental differences between Jefferson's purpose in writing the DOI and your purpose in writing DOII.
6) At this point you might be getting either discouraged or pissed off, since it might appear I am recommending a wholesale scrapping not only of the DOI format but also of the very idea of a new DOI. But this really isn't my intention at all. Almost everything, especially matters of substance, can stand, as can the fundamental idea of a new DOI. In terms of a fundamental restructuring, I am suggesting only that (a) you get rid of constructions like when in the course; hold these truths to be self-evident (this involves you in needless confusion about the meaning of "self-evident"); that whenever; prudence, indeed, will dictate, etc. etc. And (b) that you develop your own structure and style, ones based on the inner logic of your ideas. These changes would not affect the basic purpose of the DOII in the least; it would still be a "declaration" instead of an essay, etc. Only now the format, as well as the ideas, would be your own.
Well, given the chance that you will disagree with my suggestion (which is entirely understandable), I think I had better cease my pontificating about this and turn to other issues. I have spent so much time on this because it bothered me from the very beginning. Thinking this was perhaps a personal prejudice on my part, I asked my wife to read DOII and give me her opinion. I did this without first telling her about my concerns, but her reaction was very similar to mine.
This was done for two reasons. First, TDOI was organized with a reasonable structure, attempted to state its message in terms of basic principles, and was quite elegantly phrased for its time; even though, as I have shown in a critique of TDOI, it contained major omissions and flaws.
Second, I wanted to have a declaration which would inspire, and grab the hearts and minds of as many US citizens as possible because I think that group is still the most fertile among which to find people to join us in this cause. Thus, this Declaration is not as I would have written it had the historical TDOI not existed, but it is not necessarily deficient from what that would have been, and it may, hopefully, be more persuasive.
There is something else you may wish to consider, aside from the points I mentioned above. On a pragmatic level, "revising" a historical document of this stature, especially one that is so widely admired by pro-liberty types, will generate some resentment, which in turn will generate resistance to giving your ideas the fair and full hearing they deserve. For whatever reasons, there tends to a natural and widespread assumption that ideas expressed in a gimmicky format (especially one of any length) should not be taken very seriously. I fear this format gives you two strikes before you even get to the plate.
After decades of subconscious uneasiness about the practice of using the first person plural, recent months of conscious thoughtful analysis has convinced me that to do otherwise shows: a fundamentally anti-individualist, pro-collectivist view of mankind, and is either an arrogant presumption of knowledge about others, or a deceitful identification of oneself with others in a fraudulent attempt to more easily persuade them. I hasten to add that I am not accusing everyone who uses the first person plural of either being or thinking as described above. I am simply stating that such is the implication of that usage, and that all such usage should be eschewed by anyone who does not wish to appear that way.
You are making far too much of this. Linguistic usage is a largely a matter of convention. For centuries the use of "we" instead of "I" was a standard convention in formal writing. It is no more justified to say that this reflects collectivist thinking than it is to say that the traditional uses of "man" (as in "man qua man") and "he" to describe people of both genders was a type of sexism.
There is another problem, which is one of perspective. To place so much emphasis on this minor point tends to blur the distinction between fundamental and subsidiary issues. Some people will resent being told what is supposedly implied by their use of conventional language, when they man no such thing. And, given how early these strong remarks appear in the annotations, you are likely to turn these people off before they read any further.
If you wish to say something about this, I would do it in a low-keyed manner in on or two sentences. I would simply state that you are personally uncomfortable with first-person plural pronouns, etc., and that you think it serves the interests of clarity to avoid them whenever possible. But I wouldn't make a big deal out of this, since your fundamental ideas will stand or fall regardless of what people decide to do in this matter.
It is therefore fallacious and distorting of reality to use "we" in any statement which refers to human thought or action, unless in those extremely rare and simple circumstances where it is known with certitude to be a unanimous thought or action.
This is not necessarily true. For instance, the president of a corporation can "speak" for the shareholders if, say, a majority has agreed on a course of action, and if majority rule is a procedural rule within that organization. This is the basic idea behind the Lockean version of social contract theory. There must first be unanimous consent to form a "civil society," but a basic condition of membership in this society is to abide by majority decisions in procedural matters. Even in a purely free society, this kind of arrangement would be possible -- indeed, even necessary in some cases, so long as members are free to enter or exit an organization..
What you are dealing with here is a theory of "corporations" -- and I mean this in the classical sense (often associated with Roman Law) of any organized group of people, such as a university, labor union, church, or even something as mundane as a bridge club. If the majority of a bridge club decides to meet every Thursday instead of every Friday, then the president of the club could reasonably send out a flyer than announces, "We have decided to change the meetings to Thursdays, since so many people have other things to do on Fridays." This does not imply that every member of the club agreed to this change. It merely implies that the change was made according to the legitimate procedures of the club.
Again, this notion of a voluntary society in which members agree to abide by majority rule (in some matters) is what we find in Lockean versions of the social contract. Like you, I don't find the arguments for this version of the social contract convincing, at least not as a justification for existing governments, but this is a different issue.
Even if the Lockean model of social contract ultimately fails (as I believe it does), it was not collectivistic in either its premises or intent. On the contrary, it was firmly rooted in what I call political reductionism. This is the doctrine that only individuals have rights, and that if we are to ascribe rights to groups we must show how these group rights can logically be derived from -- i.e., reduced to -- the rights of individuals. This is what Locke and others in his tradition attempted to do, via a theory of consent. And this was the dominant theory in 18th century America.
Other versions of social contract, such as that defended by Rousseau and Kant, took a different approach. (Kant proposed a kind of hypothetical consent, based on what a reasonable person would agree to.) Still other versions (such as we find in Samuel Pufendorf) did claim that new rights (especially the "executive right" to enforce the rules of justice) emerge an organized society. In this latter we do indeed find a form of collectivism, since this theory ascribes emergent rights to "society" that no individual can possibly possess. But no such collectivism is present in the Lockean model.
This document is first and foremost a declaration of independence and self-sovereignty by an "individual" human, not by any group of them, political or otherwise. This is because for the same reasons that first person plurals don't exist as thinking, acting entities with any semblance of human characteristics, neither do any groups of humans have any existence which is in any manner similar to individual humans. This difference is not trivial, nor merely syntactical or superficial; it is a basic fact of reality. In my view, ignoring the foundational character of this fact of reality is the fundamental flaw lurking within the writings and conclusions of most thinkers on the subject of human social relationships.
This needs to be clarified, for you are in danger of attacking a straw man. Even most "social holists" would not claim groups of humans have any existence which is in any manner similar to individual humans. They typically claim that groups can display emergent properties, such as institutions, that cannot be adequately explained by referring to the actions of individuals.
I have some ideas about how you might word the point you wish to make, but this would be easier to discuss in person.
I am getting pressed for time, since I will be leaving for Canada in a few hours and I have more work to do on one of my lectures. Even if this were not a factor, I would prefer to discuss some of the more complex philosophical issues in person, since in some cases I'm not sure of your arguments -- and it would take me many, many pages to explore them. At this stage I couldn't do much more than say, "Well, I think this needs clarification" or, "I think there might be a better way to put this," and these general remarks wouldn't mean a whole lot.
Here is what I propose: The best time to have a serious conversation (the time with least distractions) would be immediately after the conference. This is largely because I am giving the final lecture, and I will be involved with mental preparation up until then. We could sit down for an hour and go over the more complex points. I can ask you some questions in order to clarify some things, and we can also go over some of the points I have not yet discussed.
If you are unable to stay for an hour or so after the conference (or if you are leaving early), then we could arrange to do this on Saturday, after I give my first lecture. I'm sure I can arrange with Peter for us to use his home for our discussion, and I think this environment would be better than wandering around outside. If Kitty wishes to participate, that's fine with me.
After that, if you still feel that some issues need further examination, I will send you a summary of my philosophical comments shortly after returning home. This will be much easier for me to do at that time, after I have been able to ask you about a few things.
See you soon.
Best,
George
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Part Two
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 13:04:27 -0700
From: Paul Wakfer
Organization: MoreLife
To: George H. Smith
George,
Attached is my reply to your comments labeled "part two", together with a supportive essay entitled "We" [later renamed "The Essential Collectivism of Language and Thought"].
In my estimation, I have not received anywhere near $250 worth of critical comments from you concerning the Self-Sovereign Individual Project and the documents involved.
Here, within quotes, are excerpts relating to what I wanted you to do and my comments concerning your lack of fulfillment of my requests or of stating ahead of time your inability to do so.
"Therefore, it is nearly impossible to get
any intellectually advanced person to even take the time to read my
current work, let alone critically analyze it and help me with it."
"Since I appreciate the logical analysis which you bring to your work as
shown in your writings, I am willing to pay you the retainer of $250 in
order to get you to seriously read and analyze my work."
Clearly I wanted logical analysis of my work, rather than comments on its style and appropriateness.
"This request does not quite fit your writing
consulting services, because I do not think that I really require any
help in analysis or in organizing and expressing my thoughts. But, of
course, I am always open to suggestions here too."
Again I made it clear that this was not to be an analysis of my organization and style, but of my meaning and information contents.
"you could of course send me written critiques, questions,
suggestions etc both before and after that weekend."
You have not queried me on any meanings, purposes or anything else to help you understand what I am saying and why I am saying it. I can only assume that you are reading my writing according to fully preconceived ideas instead of with a fresh open analytical mind as I expected from you.
"Just so that my purpose in employing you is clear."
"What I need most from you is *inline* written comments, questions,
critiques and suggestions concerning what I have written. You can cut
and paste the text into any word processor and comment, question,
critique and suggest to it that way where and when necessary. Also
mostly concentrate on the annotated DOII since that is where I begin my
"solution" for an ordered anarchist society. The review and annotations
of the "revered" documents are simply to set the stage, and more gently
and related to the familiar, introduce the ideas which come into full
bloom later. This review is also to convince people that there never was
any real "promise of the American Revolution" or at least not any
promise which any of those documents and the ideas behind them could
fulfill."
You made no comment on any of the above. If you do not agree with the last sentence of it (which it now appears that you do not) then I consider that it was fraudulent to let this pass without saying so. This is exactly why I *demand* an inline response to everything which I write from anyone with whom I correspond. [Later note: I should be clear (but was apparently not to George) that since I have no means to use force on anyone over the Internet, a *demand* for inline replies simply means that if someone refuses to do this then I will generally refuse to correspond with them.]
I expect a response to both my reply to your "part one" comments and to my reply to your "part two" comments. [Note: there has never been any response directly to those two replies.] In addition, you barely scratched the surface of the most important parts of the DOII. Did you agree with the other parts? Did you not understand the logical progression of the statements I - VII that I presented? Perhaps it is impossible for you to do so until you see the Natural Social Contract.
--Paul Wakfer
MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
The Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org
Rational freedom by self-sovereignty & social contracting
Part Two
George,
Once again your original is in blue and indented.
Note: Since this response was never replied to, it has been somewhat modified to make corrections, to make the arguments stronger or clearer and to take into account changes which have been made to the documents since it was written. With these few exceptions, however, it still remains very close to what was sent.
Please keep in mind my preliminary remarks from Part One as you read this. I'll cover what I can. When I don't feel a need to comment on a passage, I will simply delete it, so there will be gaps in your text.
"The purpose of the Declaration of Individual Independence (DOII) is to enable a person to declare his essential, necessary, and complete ethical independence from all governments everywhere - to state that he is self-sovereign (the "political" portion of self-ownership), is not bound by the rules and regulations of any government anywhere, and reserves to himself the ultimate determination of, judgment of and responsibility for his own actions.
You draw an interesting distinction between self-ownership and self-sovereignty, one that would be worth developing in more detail. Historically, the terms were used as virtual synonyms, but this doesn't mean they should not be distinguished for explanatory or heuristic reasons. Valuable theoretical distinctions sometimes emerge from distinctions like this, and I would encourage you to write more about it. (It's possible that you discuss this issue, as well as others I will raise, elsewhere on your website, but, given the volume of material, I'm afraid that I cannot remember all of the particulars.)
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the earliest terms like this were "self-propriety" and "self-proprietorship." These go back at least to the Levellers during the 1640s. John Locke and many of his contemporaries spoke of "property in one's person" -- an expression that again became very popular (for obvious reasons) during the anti-slavery crusades of the 18th and 19th centuries. The label "self-ownership" became popular among libertarians after Auberon Herbert used it repeatedly (c. 1880s) in his journal "Free Life." I don't know the origin of "self-sovereignty," but I do know it was used (in the early 19th century) by the American anarchists Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this expression goes back much earlier, but this is just a hunch.
I mention these details in case you ever decide to delve into the origin of these expressions in the course of drawing the kind of distinction mentioned above. This can easily prove to be more than an idle historical exercise. On more than a few occasions, this kind of research has yielded valuable insights that have aided my thinking about fundamental theoretical issues, as I gained a greater understanding of the significance of certain expressions -- e.g., self-sovereignty in contrast to state sovereignty, which took on a special significance with the rise of the modern absolutist state.
It seems to me that self-sovereignty can be seen to be quite different from self-ownership or self-proprietorship by merely examining the dictionary meanings of the words sovereignty and ownership. Upon reading the descriptions of their meanings, the following becomes clear without any need for additional detailed historical research. "Sovereignty" implies supreme authority over or external rule of. It does not imply either possession or knowledgeable intimate control. OTOH, "ownership" generally implies possession, knowledge and ability to fully control what is owned. In that sense proprietorship and ownership would be very similar, if not identical. However, the point is moot since in my Natural Social Contract I have abandoned even the term self-ownership because I think that it lends itself to the notion that a human can actually be owned as a material possession. I argue that a human cannot be so owned because no one but the individual himself can ever have the intimacy of possession and control over his body and mind which he himself has by nature. Thus, the possession, use and control of himself by an individual is different in kind and far stronger than the ownership of any other existent can be. I therefore think that it is unwise to use the term self-ownership for that attribute of an individual. The term that I have chosen instead is self-master. Thus, each individual is, by nature, self-master or the (exclusive) master of himself. [Later note: I have since in the revised Natural Social Contract somewhat reversed this view and again use Self-Owner with Self-Master also used differently and separately.]
However, even if you argue that these expression do not clearly have these meanings, it is of little import to me because I will simply say that is the way in which I am choosing to use them. Where meanings of words are not completely clear and distinct, I am entitled to assign my own meaning in order to make them clear, and I do not need any historical authority to justify my usage. Sure it might be interesting to research the historical usages of these words to see if there were differences, and I would welcome someone else doing so. However, it is of little direct interest to me and to my current purposes. While it is true that one occasionally gains some fundamental insight by reading historical writings, and this may have been an important method for you to develop your thoughts and understanding, for me, I have found that my own thoughtful penetrating analysis is time much better spent.
A thoughtful and curious reader may immediately ask, "What prompted you to write such a Declaration? And why should any person wish to make it?" The answer to the first is that my wife (Kitty Antonik Wakfer) and I (Paul Antonik Wakfer) (the "we", "us" and "our" in most of the following) are convinced that the myriad of government restrictions of our voluntary actions, which violate no one, is growing so fast that if we do not act now, it will become increasingly impossible to attain our goal of vastly extended life nor possibly any more life than is currently attainable. Of course, it should go without saying that our desire for more life is a direct consequence of our desire to maximize our lifetime happiness.
I personally think it is a strategic error to introduce the issue of life extension at this point, but this would take me a while to explain, and it's no big deal in any case. This is something we could discuss this weekend, if you like.
It was introduced simply as our own personal reason for a recent change of direction of our major time resources. However, upon re-reading, I see that it was out of place and I have now rewritten that paragraph to speak more generally of why one should make such a declaration before mentioning our particular reason. The scientific possibility of vastly extended human lifespan being soon available is almost certainly more widely accepted than is objectivism, market anarchism or atheism. And it is not nearly so radical and unacceptable an idea even with those who are still not knowledgeable enough to give it much credibility, as are those political and anti-religious ideas to statists and theists respectively.
Parts of this passage (e.g., which violate no one -- it will become increasingly impossible to attain our goal of vastly extended life nor possibly any more life than is currently attainable -- our desire to maximize our lifetime happiness) are quite awkward and should be revised and/or tightened up. There are similar problems elsewhere in this piece, but since you wish me to focus on substance rather than style, I will pass over them from now on, unless I find something that is especially troublesome.
I have been re-reading the DOII and its annotated version and fixing such awkward places. I needed time away from those documents before returning to be able to spot such things. That is why the documents are still "drafts".
I will say that this is a fairly serious problem at times, and not just in the annotations. There are few passages in DOII itself that could be considerably clarified with a few minor revisions. Your ideas are very important, and it is obvious that you have invested considerable time and effort in working them out. Given all this, it would be a shame if some readers lost the essential meaning owing to a few stylistic problems that could be easily fixed.
Furthermore, we think that the avalanching restrictions on nonviolent activities will soon be so invasive and prohibitive as to make any such Declaration, and even moreso the Self-Sovereign Individual Project of which it is a part, a far more dangerous endeavor than now, and that any improvement in human freedom may thus become impossible for decades or even centuries to come. Since the end of the 18th century, the United States of America has been a bastion and a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world. However, in the last 50 years that has been fast declining and it is now all but gone. Since there is nowhere else on Earth that is significantly freer, it is even conceivable that human civilization is on the brink of a new "dark ages" with respect to liberty, if not, as a result, also with respect to human happiness, production and scientific/technological progress.
More stylistic problems, especially after "with respect to liberty".
You are correct. I am fixing them and they should appear with the next upload.
General Annotations to the Declaration of Individual Independence 1) If some of the phrasings and word usages in this Declaration of Individual Independence appear a bit "odd" and "out of place or time", that is because I have written it as much as possible in the style of the original American Declaration of Independence (TDOI), even purposefully using some of the phrases from that document.
You won't like this -- especially given all the work you have invested in this format -- but this is perhaps my biggest problem with DOII, and something we should definitely discuss this weekend. For now I will just touch on a few things.
I fully understand the appeal of writing a consistently pro-freedom version of the Declaration of Independence, but this "gimmick" hurts you far more than it helps. (The term "gimmick" will probably strike you as more pejorative than I intend it to be. I merely find this a convenient label, one that I can introduce at any point in this discussion without having repeatedly to explain what I mean.)
1) The gimmick forces you into using stilted rhetoric at times, when clarity of expression should be your goal, first and foremost.
Actually very little so. Almost always, where I used direct text from DOI, it very naturally fit into what I was saying. That is perhaps because I wrote the entire DOII by essentially taking a copy of the DOI and making changes to remove the statist rhetoric and the collectivist phrasings, and to create a document which is a consistent declaration of individual independence from all governments everywhere.
2) There is also the problem of stylistic consistency. Given the nature of your material, you are often compelled to stray far from the style of the original DOI. The 18th century style cannot be consistently maintained, nor should it be, and the result is a random mixture of the old and the new. You would be better off sticking with one style consistently throughout, viz., simple, straightforward English prose. Here the entire focus would be on expressing your ideas and arguments as clearly as possible.
I have reread it again and I really do not agree that the styles are an inconsistent mixture which detracts from the focus of the content. I think that I have well integrated the original phrases with my new phrases. Perhaps I am not so conscious of style as you appear to be, but rather read everything more purely for content and meaning. However, I think most people will do the same, especially as most will not have any great feeling for the style of the writing of that time. In fact, I think that most people will find the occurrence of well-known phrases from the DOI attractive, perhaps as much or more than you are put off by this.
3) The gimmick is distracting. Whenever you revert back into the 18th century gimmick mode, the reader once again becomes aware of a certain artificiality.
I think this will be true only for readers such as yourself who know the DOI so well and are so appreciative of its style.
4) The gimmick is not original; if anything, it's been overdone. I have read various revisions and rewrites of the Declaration over the years, each pushing its own ideological agenda (including socialism of all things).
It is an original creation with me! I do not care if it has been done before. In addition, few readers will know that or care. My purpose is not to imitate and my content of changes is surely very unique with a powerful message. That purpose, content, meaning and message is what will prevail.
5) As I said before, you have some very important ideas to communicate. Form should therefore follow content, which is primary. The structure of your document should emerge naturally from the inner logic of your ideas rather than being forced into a prefabricated mold. In many cases you have done an admirable job in adapting your ideas to the form. You clearly put a lot of work into this, but I think you are still hampered by the gimmick and that the problems are inherent in the format itself. This goes back to what I said in Part One about the fundamental differences between Jefferson's purpose in writing the DOI and your purpose in writing DOII.
Apart from a few old-style phrases (which have perfectly valid and appropriate meanings), I think the form does follow the content. The structure of the DOI very well fitted exactly what I wanted to say and to do. It really was not hard to state what I wanted and needed to using that form. However, I have now enlarged my annotated remarks about why I used the DOI form. The different purposes will be made up by the enhanced remarks in the annotations and even more those in the Natural Social Contract. The DOII itself needs to be a fairly short and succinct document, just as was the original DOI.
6) At this point you might be getting either discouraged or pissed off, since it might appear I am recommending a wholesale scrapping not only of the DOI format but also of the very idea of a new DOI. But this really isn't my intention at all. Almost everything, especially matters of substance, can stand, as can the fundamental idea of a new DOI. In terms of a fundamental restructuring, I am suggesting only that (a) you get rid of constructions like when in the course; hold these truths to be self-evident (this involves you in needless confusion about the meaning of "self-evident");
In this case, "self-evident" simply means that they are clear to any rational person who examines reality. If you read them again you will notice that my statements, at least I - V, are true scientific facts of reality, as opposed to so-called natural rights which are not! And VI - VII are also clear from any rational analysis of the social meta-needs of human individuals based on the factual statements I - V.
that whenever; prudence, indeed, will dictate, etc. etc. And (b) that you develop your own structure and style, ones based on the inner logic of your ideas. These changes would not affect the basic purpose of the DOII in the least; it would still be a "declaration" instead of an essay, etc. Only now the format, as well as the ideas, would be your own.
I think it is much more likely to "grab" the average American if it is left in the form that it is in now. I may write another version in my own words as you describe, but this one is much too powerful and attractive to many to be abandoned. I already have people who wish to execute it.
Well, given the chance that you will disagree with my suggestion (which is entirely understandable), I think I had better cease my pontificating about this and turn to other issues. I have spent so much time on this because it bothered me from the very beginning. Thinking this was perhaps a personal prejudice on my part, I asked my wife to read DOII and give me her opinion. I did this without first telling her about my concerns, but her reaction was very similar to mine.
This was done for two reasons. First, TDOI was organized with a reasonable structure, attempted to state its message in terms of basic principles, and was quite elegantly phrased for its time; even though, as I have shown in a critique of TDOI, it contained major omissions and flaws.
Second, I wanted to have a declaration which would inspire, and grab the hearts and minds of as many US citizens as possible because I think that group is still the most fertile among which to find people to join this cause. Thus, this Declaration is not as I would have written it had the historical TDOI not existed, but it is not necessarily deficient from what that would have been, and it may, hopefully, be more persuasive.
There is something else you may wish to consider, aside from the points I mentioned above. On a pragmatic level, "revising" a historical document of this stature, especially one that is so widely admired by pro-liberty types, will generate some resentment, which in turn will generate resistance to giving your ideas the fair and full hearing they deserve. For whatever reasons, there tends to a natural and widespread assumption that ideas expressed in a gimmicky format (especially one of any length) should not be taken very seriously. I fear this format gives you two strikes before you even get to the plate.
I just don't agree with this. I think most pro-liberty types will welcome and respect it. I am not trying to revise DOI. I specifically did not do that in my critique of DOI and I am certainly not trying to do that now. It was not a revisable document. It needed a complete rewrite and that is what I have done using only the original structure and some excellent phrasings where they well fitted my purposes.
After decades of subconscious uneasiness about the practice of using the first person plural, recent months of conscious thoughtful analysis has convinced me that to do otherwise shows: a fundamentally anti-individualist, pro-collectivist view of mankind, and is either an arrogant presumption of knowledge about others, or a deceitful identification of oneself with others in a fraudulent attempt to more easily persuade them. I hasten to add that I am not accusing everyone who uses the first person plural of either being or thinking as described above. I am simply stating that such is the implication of that usage, and that all such usage should be eschewed by anyone who does not wish to appear that way.
You are making far too much of this. Linguistic usage is a largely a matter of convention.
That may be so, but this one is an insidiously distortional convention with respect to clear thought and it should be eradicated! See my second attachment entitled "We" [later renamed "The Essential Collectivism of Language and Thought"].
For centuries the use of "we" instead of "I" was a standard convention in formal writing.
That is because of its origins in tribal, clannish thinking. Language conventions evolved long before philosophical thoughts of individualism. It is way past time to remove this vestige from the past when people knew no better. Did you never read Anthem? [by Ayn Rand] Or did you never really understand it?
It is no more justified to say that this reflects collectivist thinking than it is to say that the traditional uses of "man" (as in "man qua man")
No. That usage, while not always done correctly, can simply mean any individual of the collection of all humans.
and "he" to describe people of both genders was a type of sexism.
I disagree that it is equivalent in importance and scope to that usage. I think the (mis)usage of "he" to describe people of both genders is relatively minor (particularly today when there is near complete social equality of the sexes - certainly among all advanced thinking individuals) whereas the misusage of plural pronouns is extremely divisive and distortional to rational thought about the true individual nature of human beings even among the most intelligent and rational analysts. In addition, as I have indicated it is often used in a fraudulent attempt of the author to be more pursuasive by placing himself among those who he is trying to proselytize - fraudulent because he is patently not guilty of that of which he is accusing them!
There is another problem, which is one of perspective. To place so much emphasis on this minor point tends to blur the distinction between fundamental and subsidiary issues.
This would certainly be true if it were a minor point!
Some people will resent being told what is supposedly implied by their use of conventional language, when they man no such thing. And, given how early these strong remarks appear in the annotations, you are likely to turn these people off before they read any further.
I have rewritten the annotations to refer to the attached essay on the subject. Though most people may not think they mean any such things as I have stated, their usage of plural pronouns does imply it. See my attached essay for examples - two from your own writings. If people are "turned off" by this, then they are lost causes anyway and I am better off without them. I only want people who are open to the truth, however radical it is.
If you wish to say something about this, I would do it in a low-keyed manner in one or two sentences. I would simply state that you are personally uncomfortable with first-person plural pronouns, etc., and that you think it serves the interests of clarity to avoid them whenever possible. But I wouldn't make a big deal out of this, since your fundamental ideas will stand or fall regardless of what people decide to do in this matter.
Since I think it is extremely important (a "big deal") and do not consider it to be merely a personal pet peeve, it would be fraudulent for me to not emphasize it.
It is therefore fallacious and distorting of reality to use "we" in any statement which refers to human thought or action, unless in those extremely rare and simple circumstances where it is known with certitude to be a unanimous thought or action.
This is not necessarily true. For instance, the president of a corporation can "speak" for the shareholders if, say, a majority has agreed on a course of action, and if majority rule is a procedural rule within that organization. This is the basic idea behind the Lockean version of social contract theory. There must first be unanimous consent to form a "civil society," but a basic condition of membership in this society is to abide by majority decisions in procedural matters. Even in a purely free society, this kind of arrangement would be possible -- indeed, even necessary in some cases, so long as members are free to enter or exit an organization.
1) I reject the validity of corporations as entities with any contractual standing. Collections of persons cannot have any of the essential human attributes of persons. I will be writing a separate essay on this subject.
2) I reject the validity of and the need for any majority decisions under a natural social contract (with the single exception of that of a trial jury, where one is used). Any social contract which requires such majority obedience is not "natural" and should not be executed.
3) I accept the entitlement of individuals to agree to such irrational arrangements if they want to. But I won't enter into any such, and I will be wary of dealing with anyone who does.
Furthermore, there need not be unanimous consent to form a society. There need only be consent of all those who form it. They can agree on methods for dealing with others who are outside their society (perhaps having formed other consenting societies).
What you are dealing with here is a theory of "corporations" -- and I mean this in the classical sense (often associated with Roman Law) of any organized group of people, such as a university, labor union, church, or even something as mundane as a bridge club. If the majority of a bridge club decides to meet every Thursday instead of every Friday, then the president of the club could reasonably send out a flyer than announces, "We have decided to change the meetings to Thursdays, since so many people have other things to do on Fridays." This does not imply that every member of the club agreed to this change. It merely implies that the change was made according to the legitimate procedures of the club.
You and I may know that the "we" does not imply that, however without a clear definition of the collection to which it refers, that is the implication of the form of its usage. It is just such distortional (almost fraudulent) forms and the further distorted usages and thinking which comes from using them which I am striving to eliminate.
The solution is for him to state on the flyer that a majority of those members present at the last meeting decided to change the meeting day to Thursday. And he should report how many of those eligible to vote were there and agreed to the change. Even more accurately and honestly, he should actually report the names of those who voted for it and those who vote against it (this also has a relationship to my total opposition to the idea of secret ballots). There is no need for him to imperiously hype the action by using the term "we", and no need to gloss over the true facts of what really happened. If it was made clear all the time that major decisions were being made by a very small percentage of the membership (and exactly who was making them), then the other members might act differently. As such decisions are now done, all too often the true nature of matters is disguised and hidden by the use of "we", "us" "our" and "they". I submit that is why "leaders" of every stripe love to use these plural pronouns - just so that the details of their official operations can remain murky.
I want to also note that during the weekend seminar in Orono, most comments were rife with these collectivist uses of "we" - particularly as in "when should we wage a just war?" You specifically did not correct the young man who addressed this question to you that his use of "we" was totally inappropriate; that he could actually only decide and speak for himself, not anyone else unless given specific authorization to do so. You didn't even respond on the wrongness of the whole notion of a "country waging war" as though it were one enormous volitional entity. You didn't even speak of individuals protecting themselves as in a defensive action against an invading force. What needed to be said is that the entire concept of war - as in one tribe or a country attacking or defending itself rather than individuals attacking or defending - is collectivist in nature and contrary to the principles of libertarianism. Even with the war of independence, it was not correctly the "Americans" against the "British". Many residents of the colonies either did not agree with the war or did not fight. Many British citizens were against the war and only a very small percentage actually fought. At best it was a battle of some residents of the colonies against soldiers and mercenaries who King George had sent to the colonies to fight them. In the end, it was a fight of individuals against individuals. To imply that (all) British were enemies of (all) Americans (as TDOI in fact did) is the worst kind of exaggerated collectivism. The same has been fomented by the involved governments during every war that has ever been fought. It is long past time that such collectivist fraud was exposed, castigated and terminated - and not accepted merely because of the assumption that the leaders involved are speaking "stylistically"!!
Again, this notion of a voluntary society in which members agree to abide by majority rule (in some matters) is what we find in Lockean versions of the social contract. Like you, I don't find the arguments for this version of the social contract convincing, at least not as a justification for existing governments, but this is a different issue.
Even if the Lockean model of social contract ultimately fails (as I believe it does), it was not collectivistic in either its premises or intent. On the contrary, it was firmly rooted in what I call political reductionism. This is the doctrine that only individuals have rights, and that if we are to ascribe rights to groups we must show how these group rights can logically be derived from -- i.e., reduced to -- the rights of individuals. This is what Locke and others in his tradition attempted to do, via a theory of consent. And this was the dominant theory in 18th century America.
The doctrine that each individual has given some prior consent to be governed (by being born?) is pure contradictory nonsense. To invalidate this, all that anyone needs to do is to say: "I don't consent!" That would then withdraw any delegation of my rights to any government and leave me free to follow my own arrangements. The problem with the whole business of natural rights is that they do not form a complete and compossible set. And that is because they are derivative (where they apply) from a much more fundamental set of truths of the reality of man's nature. Trying to use natural rights as the foundation for ordered social interrelationships is like trying to use the laws of Newtonian physics as the foundation for understanding phenomena in the extreme conditions of relativity (high velocity, energy and mass) and of quantum reality (small mass, charge, energy, momentum, duration, and distance).
As for "political reductionism", if you don't want groups of humans to have rights in the first place (as I don't) then there is no need for it at all! In my Natural Social Contract, there are no collections of humans which are entities and therefore, no group rights or entitlements.
Other versions of social contract, such as that defended by Rousseau and Kant, took a different approach. (Kant proposed a kind of hypothetical consent, based on what a reasonable person would agree to.) Still other versions (such as we find in Samuel Pufendorf) did claim that new rights (especially the "executive right" to enforce the rules of justice) emerge an organized society. In this latter we do indeed find a form of collectivism, since this theory ascribes emergent rights to "society" that no individual can possibly possess. But no such collectivism is present in the Lockean model.
Although I agree with the notion of emergent properties of objects in reality, the same does not apply to collectives, since they are artificial constructs rather than existents themselves. Only actual existents can have properties which emerge from their complexity.
However, I disagree strongly with your statement that "no such collectivism is present in the Lockean model." Collectivism is inherent in the very idea that any group of humans should even be considered as an acting entity - ie. that it is another entity with any of the attributes which a human has. There does not need to be any attempt to ascribe new emergent properties to a collection in order for its use to be collectivist.
This document is first and foremost a declaration of independence and self-sovereignty by an "individual" human, not by any group of them, political or otherwise. This is because for the same reasons that first person plurals don't exist as thinking, acting entities with any semblance of human characteristics, neither do any groups of humans have any existence which is in any manner similar to individual humans. This difference is not trivial, nor merely syntactical or superficial; it is a basic fact of reality. In my view, ignoring the foundational character of this fact of reality is the fundamental flaw lurking within the writings and conclusions of most thinkers on the subject of human social relationships.
This needs to be clarified, for you are in danger of attacking a straw man. Even most "social holists" would not claim groups of humans have any existence which is in any manner similar to individual humans. They typically claim that groups can display emergent properties, such as institutions, that cannot be adequately explained by referring to the actions of individuals.
They may not "claim" it, but that is nevertheless the implication and result of what they are saying, writing and doing. The Lockean reductionist approach was precisely that - an attempt to ascribe the same rights to groups as were ascribed to individual humans within the group.
I have some ideas about how you might word the point you wish to make, but this would be easier to discuss in person.
Since you do not appear to understand what I am trying to say, I fail to see how you can help me to better make my point. However, please state any ideas that you have. Since much of what is discussed in person is not recorded and thus, cannot be easily and precisely analyzed, I do not agree that anything much is "easier to discuss in person".
I am getting pressed for time, since I will be leaving for Canada in a few hours and I have more work to do on one of my lectures. Even if this were not a factor, I would prefer to discuss some of the more complex philosophical issues in person, since in some cases I'm not sure of your arguments -- and it would take me many, many pages to explore them. At this stage I couldn't do much more than say, "Well, I think this needs clarification" or, "I think there might be a better way to put this," and these general remarks wouldn't mean a whole lot.
I would not benefit much from a conversation at this point and that is why I refused to have such on the weekend. If you really cannot understand where I am going or what I am trying to say from my annotated remarks at this point, then you could ask questions, or better still, read the Natural Social Contract and its annotated version of this document.
After that, if you still feel that some issues need further examination, I will send you a summary of my philosophical comments shortly after returning home. This will be much easier for me to do at that time, after I have been able to ask you about a few things.
I expected to receive something by now (Aug 20, 2003). Although you may have spent 5 hours or more, I have certainly not received $250 worth of benefit according to my evaluation. You have commented largely on what you wished to comment on and very little on what I wanted your comments on. I wanted comments on the meaning and logical content, not the style or the history of the ideas!
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