Freedom, Democracy, and Multiple Paths

Part 1. Freedom of Thought: Virtue and Root of All Other Virtues

The person's action, behavior and life is a result of the mindset that he possesses; and the same is the case for societies. The people's beliefs, perspectives, perceptions and feelings and outlook that are their function shape the world they inhabit and the world they bequeath to their kids. The mindset, through actions done in its pursuance, becomes self-perpetuating and self-fulfilling. And the ideas shaping it become reflected in the nation at all its levels, shaping its social movements and its climate and ultimately the lives of all that are in it involved.

The mindset, however it came to pass, therefore becomes the ultimate and complete authority over the lives of the people within the civilization. It becomes so complete and encompassing that people don't question it, but are rather by it shaped. The mindset - whatever its origins, whatever its methods, whatever its function - becomes therefore a greater, more complete and more invasive power over the lives of the people than does the government. By shaping the minds of the people it shapes all their actions and then the world they create with these actions. As such it becomes the true authority of the land.

To be in any way regarded as democratic, an authority has to be balanced and checked and held accountable. In other words it must be official and open and complete and thus subject to accountability that comes from being brought open into the sun. An authority that is not official is an authority that becomes unaccountable, unchecked and unbalanced. Which means that it is well on its way to becoming totalitarian.

America, seeking rightfully to avoid totalitarianism, has applied checks and balances on all levels of official government. This has prevented any official organ of power from turning tyrannical and absolute. The same checks and balances, however, have not been applied on American society. They have not been applied on American communities; on American media; on American business; on American churches; and especially on American public opinion. Which means that totalitarianism has found a way to slip under the radar screen and through controlling the minds of people has found a way to create a de facto tyranny in a country that has been intended to be free.

I refer to this as conman's totalitarianism, precisely because it is unofficial. To people who think they are free under this arrangement, the correct question to ask is, "If you all are so free, then why are you all the same?" To go further: Why do you all dress the same, want the same things, believe the same lies, approach life with the same - mindset? And if you truly believe in freedom, then why are you so vehement in attacking anything that is in any way different from yourselves, whether these be the people within or the people without?

It makes no sense to create a country designed to be free of official tyranny when unofficial tyranny takes its place and exercises over people's minds (and thus over their lives, and over their civilization) a greater coercive power than is exercised by the President, Congress, Supreme Court and state and local government. It makes no sense to create a country designed to be free when the basic unit of human consciousness - the mind - is twisted into perpetuation of a big lie. To be democratic, authority - all authority - must be official, checked and balanced, and thus accountable. And in standing up to conman's totalitarianism in all its aspects, one does one's duty as a true American citizen.

Freedom of thought is at the basis of all other virtues. Freedom of thought means true freedom; freedom that shapes one's mind and radiating out of it one's life and one's actions within the world. Freedom is prerequisite for knowledge; as it is only within the context of freedom that one can be free to acquire true understanding, one not shaped or manipulated by usurpatory interest or mindset of any kind. Knowledge, in turn, is a prerequisite for responsibility and ethics; as it is only through knowledge that one can understand the world enough to know the full range of consequences of one's actions and then act in a manner that's calculated and thus could regard itself responsible. And it is only a choice that is calculated and informed that can consider itself ethical, as it is only by knowing the consequences of one's actions and taking responsibility for them that it is possible to make a choice based on values.

By transitive rule, freedom is a prerequisite for ethics; as it is only within context of freedom that it is possible to make choices, not based on avoiding or anticipating consequences for self, but rather because they are the right thing to do. And freedom of thought, being the root of all other freedoms, becomes the prerequisite for ethics.

Thus, it is impossible to have ethics, responsibility, or any other virtues we see people claim to profess to believe without freedom and knowledge. And it is impossible to have actual freedom and knowledge without freedom of thought.

Which means the following: That it is only through freedom from the oppressive mindset that it is possible to attain to any kind of virtue. And that in freeing people from conman's totalitarianism one does sacred duty before ethics, responsibility, knowledge, and America.

Freedom of thought has another virtue that is just as real. It is freedom of thought that allows people to see what others don't see. This has multiple applications. The first of these is that it corrects errors that happen when people think the same way and exposes them to perspectives they need to think better and understand the world more completely. But it does this furthermore: Become the root of all innovation that exists in the world. Which innovation depends on people to come up with new ideas that are a result of original perspectives.

And it is this innovation that is at the root of all manmade good that exists in the world.

Therefore freedom of thought is not only at the root of all other virtues (liberty; knowledge; responsibility and ethics) that are espoused by America. It also is the reason the world has what it has now. And as such, it is the true and unshakeable source of not only moral good, but physical and political and technological and artistic good. Which makes it, quite truly, the saving grace of humanity and the reason for all it has accomplished.

Part 2. Absolute Case for Democracy

I say not only that it is man's right to be free of all forms of unofficial authority. I say that it is man's DUTY to do so - duty before America and the Republic For Which It Stands. I say that any mindset that is unwritten and unofficial, is unaccountable, unchecked and unbalanced, and as such lacking accountability becomes tyrannical. And that any serious interpretation of democracy - also of life and liberty - requires a citizenry that is aware of all unofficial forms of tyranny and stands against it.

Whether that tyranny be the mindset of Fort Wayne, Indiana, or the mores of the average East Coast suburb, or the mindset of gangs.

I do not advocate freedom of thought as a form of rebellion. I advocate it in and of itself, as a virtue, and the necessary condition for all other virtues. I embrace it passionately and completely, not as a matter of contrarianism but for its own sake and for the sake of all else that requires it - all the other virtues stated above.

And I say quite clearly that true democracy and true liberty demands a passionate, unconditional and absolute embrace of the freedom of thought - as the true accomplishment of civilization and the core of all its stated virtues.

In many cases, the arguments for democracy have been the wrong ones. Relativism - the belief that all things are uncertain, and that certainty is what distinguishes totalitarianism from democracy - is a flimsy justification for democracy. Indeed it is a definition that opens democracy to accusations of cowardice and corruption and serves not democracy but totalitarianism of a creeping kind. The only true, moral, absolute basis for democracy is absolute conviction in absolute rightness of human freedom. And that means absolute, unconditional and passionate embrace of freedom of thought. In and of itself and as a basis for all other virtues.

The freedom of thought is the most fundamental of human liberties. And freedom of thought involves also freedom of personhood. And radiating out of that freedom of thought and freedom of personhood come all other freedoms and all other virtues. It is impossible to have a country that one proclaims free when there is no freedom of thought, self-definition, emotion and personality. It is impossible to have a country that one proclaims free when official totalitarianism is replaced with unofficial totalitarianism of a mindset controlling people's minds, hearts, spirits and personalities.

And in freeing people from such unofficial totalitarianism it becomes possible to arrive at population that is truly free. Freedom is therefore a necessary condition for all other virtues. And in affirming, passionately and absolutely, the freedom of thought, one affirms likewise all other virtues. Which then becomes the absolute and unshakeable ethical foundation for democracy, and, as I have just shown, the root of all human attainment. One that is far superior to the conman's ideology of relativism - and one that possesses enough strength to combat the threats to democracy, both external ones and internal, that we see today.

It is of course unavoidable that mindsets will come about. Recognizing their power of authority over people's lives, I thus postulate applying to them the same logic that has been applied rightfully and successfully to the branches of American government; The logic of checks-and-balances. Seeing in all mindsets - as in all governmental organs - the capacity for both right and wrong, I seek to subject mindsets to the same accountability as is done to American government.

Making them known and official is the first step.

Part 3. Ideology and Psychology

Scott Peck described as "neurotics" the people who take responsibility for things that are not their responsibility - and as "character disordered" the people who do not take responsibility for things that are.

My response: The issue in many cases is not psychological but ideological, and the ideological explanation is both simpler and more precise than the psychological one.

It may come as a surprise to people who think in terms of emotional forces, but one's conscious beliefs have a fair amount of things to do with how one relates to the world. And these conscious beliefs differ tremendously in what is believed to be one's own responsibility; what is believed to be the next person's responsibility; what is believed to be the government's responsibility; or what responsibility is shared, to what extent and among whom.

Do you remember Beatles' song, "Hey Jude, don't carry the world upon your shoulders?" The "carrying the world upon your shoulders" appears to be a quite common - ahem - neurosis among people with particular ideologies. Let me ask you a stupid question. Was Jude an objectivist? A libertarian? Could he have been these things? Or was he a liberal whose self was identified with the good of the world, who believed in shared responsibility, and who found life meaningless for himself and intolerable for all unless the world was in a good shape?

I ask another stupid question. What is the responsibility of any given person, for what, and according to whom? We see people fight over this issue all the time. We see people shunting the responsibility at someone else; we also see people taking responsibility for one or another issue, or cause, or project, or society, or outcome, that many would say is not their responsibility - but that, without someone taking responsibility for it, would never get accomplished at all. Are the first group character-disordered? Are the second group neurotics? Or is this something that people have been doing for as long as - well, for as long as there was a responsibility to shunt one way or another, which is to say for as long as there were people?

Remember Communism? These were the people who believed that responsibility was shared and a part of each citizen as well as humanity as a whole. Indeed the same ideology was mouthed once by American leaders, from FDR to Kennedy - and now, guess who - Mr. Compassionate Conservative. Were these people possessive of character disorders? Were they pushing on America a mass neurosis? Or did they simply recognize that responsibility in any given society contains both the individual and the shared aspect - something that was articulated by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt of all people, long before these - ahem - supposed sociopaths took these ideas to such places as "The only thing to fear is fear itself," "Do not ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" and "Mr. Putin has a good soul."

Indeed I am of the belief that each ideology arrives at its own peculiar mix of supposed character disorder and neurosis. The people who believe in shared responsibility will be described by people who believe in individual responsibility as both taking responsibility for things that aren't their fault and not taking responsibility for things that are. The same is the case the other way around.

I ask the final question. Where does your responsibility stop and another person's responsibility begin? What is responsibility of which citizen or which entity or which collection of citizens or entities? I've had people tell me that I had a responsibility to myself, and to tell me what that responsibility was. I've had people grow exasperated because I kept saying that I was not interested in things in which an American citizen is supposed to be interested and in pursuit of which he is supposed to expend his life. Let me get this straight. You tell me what I owe myself? You tell me what I should want and what I should strive for? And then you claim that we are living in a free country?

A person who believes in every person being completely responsible for his life will be both a character disorder and a neurotic. He will strive obsessively to be completely at top of everything, including things that he can do precious nothing about; and he will do nothing to contribute to shared good. That similar characterization will be frequently made for people who believe in shared responsibility, needs no elaboration. So this is my question to Mr. Peck: Where does one person's responsibility end and another's begin? Where does one entity's responsibility end and another begin? What responsibility belongs to individual, to country, or to one or another entity?

And what does a healthy character do to determine which delineation and which ideology is legitimate?

There are two directions of interest in any human being. One is self-interest; the other is other-interest. The I-Thou duality manifests in concern for self and concern for the next person or for the world. The two components can be arranged in many different ways. I am seeking a better way to arrange them.

Part 4. Self-Interest and Other-Interest

The evolutionary theory supposes that man has evolved both as species and as self. That is, man exists as part of humanity and as his own unique self, and interests of both are combined. Man competes against other men, but he also serves mankind. The error made by tribal, or statist, or religious ideologies, is to claim man as solely part of humanity; the error made by Ayn Rand and Nietzsche is to claim man as solely himself. Both are half-right. Man exists as himself and as part of humanity.

Which means the following: That man's orientation to the world consists of self-interest and other-interest. Both are absolutely legitimate and natural and worthwhile.

Currently in America we are seeing the worst possible combination of the two. The other-interest is to attack in man all that is original and all that is his own and all that is different from that of his neighbor - in essence, all things that a man stands to contribute and all that in him makes for meaningful liberty and existence worth having. The self-interest meanwhile, under the rubric of liberty - the liberty that I've just shown the same people to deny others in any meaningful form - is used to attack man's ability to engage in any collective political or philanthropic action to improve the lot of one's fellow man. The concept of "selfishness" gained from collectivist ideologies is misused to attack all meaningful liberty - especially anyone whose thoughts, beliefs, feelings and interest differ from that of those who claim to represent social interest. Meanwhile the concept of liberty gained from capitalist ideologies - the liberty that, as I've just shown, is denied to most people in any meaningful manner - is misused to attack any collective action that seeks to give people a way to a better existence. Thus we have the worst of all possible arrangements: People formulated on the inside, with all meaningful freedom and goodness and originality and beauty forbidden - and the fear of collective action denying people political power necessary to actually improve their condition, while forcing these people to compete against one another and be isolated from one another and being more and more ensnared in a culture of consumer coercion that claims to give liberty while essentially binding the person for life.

Ayn Rand offered a way out of this arrangement: Complete self-interest and interaction among people based on even exchange within the framework of rule of law. Socialism offers another way out of this arrangement: Collectivization of all economic activity and unified push for common good. Both are half-right. There is self-interest and species-interest, and the way for human benefit - both at self level and at species level - is to allow people to do the most toward both.

This means arranging existents in a way that makes the best existence. This means making the best of self-interest and best of collective interest: Meaningful liberty, with freedom of thought and feeling and being and choice - and provident, species-directed activity that does actual and noticeable good to the people who live now or are yet to live. This means making the best of one's life and the best of what one does for humanity. And it means affirming both individual life, liberty and human rights, while affirming also constructive and beneficial action toward benefit of mankind, both those living and those yet to live.

Liberty does not mean gobbling up and polluting the world without sight for the rest of the world or for future generations. Liberty means freedom to think how one chooses to think, feel how one chooses to feel, be what one chooses to be and select what one has to contribute. And common good does not mean turning the people into replicas of oneself or destroying in them what they themselves uniquely are capable of being or dictating to them what they can be or how they can live. Common good means sustainable development, technological solutions that fulfill material needs while impinging minimally on health of nature or people, meaningful education of children, scientific knowledge, taking care of the elderly, philanthropic work, helping those who are not advantaged to have a shot at existence worth having, producing thought or artwork or products or architecture that enrich people's worlds and create legacy for the future, and pursuing goals that actually lead to improvement in lives of humanity. It means being of service to others and to one another; while allowing for each other complete freedom of thought, feeling and being - and, from this position of true, actual, meaningful liberty, to interact as actually free people who, as such, also rightfully see the need for improving life for the existing and the yet-to-exist.

In essence then, the concept of liberty and the concept of common good must be redefined, from the worst possible form we've seen in 1980s and 1990s to a form that makes the best life for man and the best life for humanity. Instead of the enslaving and short-sighted models of thought we have seen, will be necessary models of thought that are liberating, benign, prudent and leading to the best life, both for the existing and the yet-to-exist, as much as for humanity at individual level and as a whole. It is through this arrangement of existence that life can be elevated to a state beneficial both to man and to mankind.

I do not believe in treating everyone the way I want to be treated. I do not believe in introjecting my needs, wants and personality into everyone around me and bludgeoning them into being carbon copy of myself. I do not believe that the world is made best by there being 6 billion Ilya Shambat's, or Mike Tyson's, or George Bush's, or Dilbert's, or Beaver Cleaver's, or Joe Blow's. I believe in human individuality and as a result of it different needs, wants and mindsets that are to people most natural and most enhancing of them expressing their potentiality.

As such, I believe in treating the next person the way they, not I, want to be treated.

And that is the categorical imperative that I seek to serve.

Part 5. Forms of Rational Interest

There is a presumption among many, pursuant classical economics, that people are driven what is called rational self-interest, which is equated with interest in accumulation of property. That is an article of faith that falls apart under examination.

From the position of each person, in reference to the world, there is perspective toward self and perspective toward others. In relation to which, each person can be said to possess self-interest and other-interest. There are some people - including Ayn Rand - who believe that man is only himself and that all interest is a form of self-interest. There are others who believe that man is evolved as part of humanity and that therefore that all interest is a form of species-interest. Of course there are both, and it functions differently in different people. If humanity has evolved, then it has done so both as individuals and as species; which means that interest in one's own good and interest in the good of the species are part of human makeup. And any creationist worldview likewise recognizes the same: That there is man; that there is mankind; and that man is both man and part of mankind.

Furthermore, for each person, self-interest is different. There are unquestionably some who are driven by property; but there are many others who are driven by interest in knowledge and wisdom, or by interest in legacy, or by interest in service, or by interest in beautiful life, or by interest in improving their lives or the lives of others in ways that matter to them. The scientist who is driven by interest in knowledge is just as rational, if not more so, than the person who is interested in accumulation of wealth. The teacher who is driven by interest in raising the future generation is just as rational, if not more so, than either of the preceding. The environmentalist who seeks to preserve for the future generations the masterpieces of life that man cannot recreate and that are necessary for healthy future is also rational.  The policeman or military officer or diplomat who is driven by interest in securing peace for his community or serving his country is likewise driven by a perfectly rational interest. And the same is the case for the people interested in making life more just, or in creating sustainable development, or in guiding people who are disenfranchised to better places, or in developing new ideas that can improve lives for many other people, or in helping people have better relationships, or in creating beautiful work that celebrates the world and enriches the lives of the members and gives it legitimate sense of accomplishment and inspires the future generations to similar and greater heights.

A new useful theory in psychology is a theory of multiple intelligences. This theory states that there are many different forms of intellect of which people are capable, and that different people have different intelligences to different extents. Thus, there is no single function for intelligence; there are many functions for intelligence. The same is true for the natures that are present within humanity; and pursuant them the interest they have most need of fulfilling, the interest they are most interested in pursuing, and the liberty that is to them most dear.

There are people who are fulfilled by property; there are others who are fulfilled by achievement, legacy, service, meaning, beautiful relationships, wholesome family life, and wisdom and intellect that cater to and make possible the preceding. The good of the existing and yet to exist is enhanced by there being talented and dedicated people in education and police work and diplomacy; it is enhanced by there being wisdom that helps people to be empowered for personal happiness and people dedicated to helping people to actualize that wisdom. It is enhanced through sustainable development that uses high-technology, high-intelligence abundant clean energy to fulfill the physical requirements of the world of civilization that man has created while reducing imprint on world of nature that man has not. It is enhanced by there being great works of architecture and technology and science and medicine and space program and music and film and graphic arts. It is enhanced by all forms of intelligence having a path to impart of their riches, in the act of fulfilling the form of interest that they are most competent to fulfill. Indeed all these are legitimate aspects of human existence, and they are enhanced by people taking the path to which they are most suited - applying the form of intellect they have the most - to fulfilling the nature and interest of the people that they have most aptitude to fulfill and whose fulfillment they find most meaningful - and being likewise compensated for their efforts in a way that matters to them.

The concept behind economics is that happiness is actualized through people fulfilling their monetary self-interest. Given the multiple forms of human nature, it can be said better that happiness is actualized through people fulfilling their interest, whether it be monetarily denominated or not, as a function of the natures that live within them and the interests that are present as a result. Which means the following: There are many rational forms of interest, both self-interest and other-interest, and to reduce the totality of human existence to one out of many forms of interest is to do humanity a grave disservice. Quite simply, it is wrong to believe that everyone has single form of interest, whether self-interest or not and whether rational or not.

This is the same error that was made by Marx in assuming that there is a single value function of collective benefit, and that people would pursue it if properly educated or coerced by force. The diverseness of people and the multiple levels of human nature mean that there are many legitimate, informed and rational forms of interest, both self-directed and other-directed, as function of those levels of nature; and that happiness means different things for different people, as function of both having those levels of nature fulfilled by other people's agency - and imparting of gifts that their natures are most competent to impart.

Given these multiple levels of human nature and human interest, it further follows that people have different basic values and derive meaningful existence from participation different pursuits. And thus people find life that is worth living, on individual basis, by finding a way to path that is suited for them according to their nature. Given these multiple levels of human nature and human interest, furthermore, it follows that freedom means different things to different people. This is likewise is inevitable from the fact that there are multiple forms of human nature, which are present in different people to different extents. The government is prevented from becoming tyrannical through different branches of government working within framework of checks-and-balances. And liberty, as it matters to people on individual basis, is served through mindsets and interests doing the same thing among each other.

Therefore, a civilization that truly allows meaningful life, inclusive liberty and pursuit of happiness for its citizens as it matters to them on the individual basis is one that recognizes multiple levels of human nature and allows for all of them a functional and legitimate path that allows people to apply their talents to fulfilling the forms of interest that they are most equipped to fulfill - and from which other people can have accomplished the form of utility that matters to their own natures.

Given the multiplicity of human natures and talents and intelligences and interests within humanity, it therefore is incorrect to believe that the entire human nature can be reduced to a single form of interest or single definition of freedom or single definition of meaningful existence. There are many forms of rational and legitimate interest, both self-interest and other-interest, and they are natural to different people to different extents. In making a single approach - a result of addressing a single form of interest - universal, what is accomplished is bludgeoning people into the same mentality and the same supposed nature and supposed interest, even if it is to them completely ill-fitting. Which does not serve any liberty or happiness or even life worthy of having, and is only done through extreme disfigurement, which requires in many cases coercive and malicious tactics. What is created, is a single mindset that is bullied into the heads of everyone, and a single path controlling everyone's minds and efforts and ultimately, by becoming the substance of their minds, controlling their lives that are a function of their minds in pursuit of these indoctrinated beliefs. And what is accomplished is, in effect, de facto tyranny; a tyranny of a single mindset, bludgeoned into everyone's heads, and in that manner controlling the reality of everyone's lives.

I believe that life and liberty and happiness deserve better.

Part 6. Multiple Paths

I do not advocate socialism, and I do not advocate communism. I advocate something that builds on the status quo, based on what has worked well in it. I am applying here two concepts that have worked wonders: The concept of competition and the concept of checks-and-balances. I take it to a higher level. And that is as follows:

For there to be multiple paths based on fulfillment of multiple forms of self-interest and other-interest, is to achieve, through these paths struggling among each other, the optimal outcome for the people -

As they check and balance among each other, for them to prevent any form of nature or mindset from being tyrannical and thus to create meaningful freedom -

And in the process allowing people to find the place in these paths in which they, according to their talents and propensities, contribute their best toward that outcome and thus have fulfilling lives.

Now I am saying this based on the computation that, as far as a people's good is affected - the good that is a result of the natures that are present in them and thus of the form of interest that is to them most significant - there are many forms of good that can be created, which serve the totality of human nature and thus the totality of human happiness.

The multiple forms of human nature means this: That there are many forms of good that people are capable of fulfilling; and many others that they would demand. The multiple natures and multiple intelligences mean that there are different things that people legitimately may demand, and different things that they may be equipped to supply. "Things" here do not merely mean consumable goods; they also mean anything that can fulfill one or another form of nature, mindset and interest. They mean everything from physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual nourishment, to addressing common concerns, to educating the youth, to improving relationships, to creating embodied artistic, architectural, technological and literary legacy of the civilization.

To address which are created multiple paths, in which people contribute the intelligence that they have most present to fulfill the interest they are most suited to fulfill and most interested in fulfilling, and from addressing which interest the people derive most meaning and thus arrive at most meaningful life.

And as they struggle among each other - as do branches of American government within the context of checks-and-balances - they ensure that none of them (and with that, neither interest; neither approach; neither intelligence; neither nature) becomes omnipotent and tyrannical, and that true liberty of people is served.

With there being multiple forms of interest, and there being paths catering to those interests, it becomes possible further for people on individual basis to find freedom that is significant for them. The entirety of human nature is fulfilled; and the entirety of human intelligence and talent is given a practical, free way to be actualized. This is done using the mechanisms that have worked already- the mechanisms of competition and checks-and-balances. Rather than concentrating power, as did Marx in his errors, it in fact diffuses it among paths. Which, as they struggle among each other, make each other create the best outcome; and, as they check-and-balance each other, not only protect liberty but take it to a far more inclusive place.

By paths, I mean business; I mean education and academia; I mean science and technology; I mean policing and diplomacy and legitimate civil service; I mean thought and service that improves people's lives and relationships; I mean high-technology clean-energy solutions that extend the future of the world while fulfilling the present; and I mean artwork and architecture that becomes the embodied legacy of the civilization, that adorns it, enriches the lives of its members, gives the civilization a legitimate sense of accomplishment, and inspires the yet-to-exist. All these are legitimate and rational pursuits, both involving different forms of intelligence as present in humanity and through expression of these intelligences providing fulfillment for sets of human nature that they are most equipped to fulfill. All of them are valid, but neither of them has right to absolute authority or to claim the interest it serves or mindset it furthers to be definitive. And that it is by all of these paths existing and struggling among each other that is served both the outcome (through mechanism of competition) and liberty (through mechanism of checks-and-balances, here applied by paths upon each other).

Which means that through competition among paths is accomplished optimal outcome; that happiness as fulfillment of all forms of nature and interest is attained; that more inclusive liberty - is served, with neither approach being definitive and tyrannical; that meaningful life becomes a reality for more and more people as they find ways to paths that the forms of intelligence they possess are most equipped for, and that people have way to contribute the form of intelligence (or labor, or talent, or any other form of potential) in which they are most endowed.

In mathematics there is a concept known as game theory. Based on it, the participants in a system seek to maximize their benefit, and some solutions benefit some at expense of others and others maximize the benefit of all. The solution known as Pareto-optimal is the outcome in which the interest of one can only be increased by harming another's interest to a greater extent. And the goal of the so-called game - which of course is completely serious - is to attain that Pareto-optimal outcome: The outcome that is regarded as the optimal solution to the game.

Each path - as defined above - fulfills the mindset that is appropriate to it and a basic interest, self-directed or other-directed, that is most present in each individual and that is most significant to him or her. It allows people to actualize in the process the forms of intelligence and talent in them and gives them a legitimate way to impart of their fruits. And in so doing they fulfill the entirety of human nature - by the entirety of human intelligence finding a way to contribute to the outcome. The result is the optimal one: One in which people find ways to achieve according to their basic form of intelligence - and the entirety of human interest is served through their efforts.

That means, optimal on both demand side and on supply side. Optimal in the level of human fulfillment accomplished on the demand side - through what is created by different paths to serve different levels of human nature and interest, and in the levels and the completeness of self-interest and human nature that their efforts serve. And optimal on the supply side - through people involving themselves in pursuits that serve the level of human nature and interest that their talents are most competent to address and that their values are most interested in fulfilling.

I involve in this situation concepts, once again, that are behind the greatest economic and political accomplishments in history: The concept of competition and the concept of checks-and-balances. As paths compete with each other, they are made to create the optimal outcome, while people find the way to contribute their optimal by finding place in paths that actualize their form of intelligence. And as they struggle among each other within a framework of nderstanding of each other's roles, they exert checks-and-balance upon each other, making sure that neither become tyrannical, and that liberty and life in people are protected and actualized at the highest possible level.

This is not Communism. This is not socialism. This is America's principles taken to the next level. This is not increase of control but its reduction. And this is furthermore something that increases rather than decreasing liberty, happiness and meaningful life, by logic shown above.

The multiple intelligences among people; multiple forms of human interest, both self-interest and other-interest; multiple mindsets and talents and outlooks; mean that life, liberty and happiness are accomplished by there being a functional way to fulfill these interests - through people using the forms of intelligence of which they have in most abundance finding their way to paths that fulfill these interests. There are multiple forms of human nature, and making the most of human existence consists of acknowledging and valuing all these forms of nature and giving them a way to be fulfilled within a legal framework. As function of these forms of human nature, there are many legitimate forms of interest, both self-interest and other-interest, and making the most of human existence consists of acknowledging and valuing all of these interests and giving them a way to both be legitimately fulfilled. As function of there being multiple forms of intelligence, there are many legitimate paths in which people can give of the form of intelligence that they have in the greatest abundance; as function of there being multiple values and outlooks, people find way to pursuits that to them are most meaningful. And through there being multiple paths, which struggle among each other, is made the highest outcome created - while, as they struggle among each other, they destroy tyranny and stranglehold of a single mindset and make liberty that matters to people on individual basis a reality for more people.

The success of free-market economics is based on the businesses having to strive to achieve best product, and people finding ways to contribute according to their gifts. The success of check-and-balances system of governance is based on the branches of government checking each other in order that none should become tyrannical or unconstitutional. I am taking the logic of both and applying it to the next level:

That many paths - all fulfilling different forms of interest - are necessary for the fulfillment of the entire thing that is human nature and human interest;
That through struggling among each other they are made to produce their best outcome;
That through there being multiple paths that check each other the tyranny of a single mindset or interest or attitude or approach to life is averted;
That as a result of this there is meaningful choice and meaningful life and liberty;
That people working within these paths use their intelligence and their efforts to feed the form of happiness that they are most equipped to impart;
And that people finding a way to involve themselves in these paths, according to the forms of intelligence and talent and mindset that is to them most appropriate, is the way to make the entirety of the human creature bear fruit and, through these efforts, fulfill the entirety of human nature.

Thus, it becomes possible to achieve happiness as fulfillment of the entirety of human interest - through people finding the way to the paths that utilize the intelligence that they have in greatest abundance and through work in those paths fulfilling the interest they are most suited to fulfill -

That through competition among these paths brings them to optimize their product and accomplish the best outcome -

While the logic of checks-and-balances allows multiple mindsets bring them to balance among each other and check each other and make sure that none ever become tyrannical, thus achieving the maximum freedom as experienced by people on individual basis -

And as a result of that the approach of multiple paths arrives at most complete happiness, most meaningful life and most inclusive liberty for everyone involved.

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Building on Lerner: Social reality and psychoethical equilibrium

Melvin Lerner's concept of just-world hypothesis postulates that, for his sanity, man must believe world to be just - and that, in order to explain any given situation, invents ethical or worldly reason why different people are in the situation that they are in or why things are as they are. Thus, if the world is to be left alone as is, then it must be just; and if the world is not just, then it must be changed in order to be made just. The second attitude is the driving call for every political movement. The first attitude, besides of course in the actions of those who accept any given status quo or the values that made it, we see likewise in Eastern religions that believe karma to be the source of all things however good or bad. The Christian attitude that the world is evil (and redemption comes through Christ) is a way to explain injustice as way of the world - in fact, as something that people have merited - and in so doing to excuse all injustice in the world as a result of sin - which explanation of course allows the person to regain a just-world hypothesis: Namely that injustice of the world has a cause and, though it is the way of the world, it is possible for the Christian to find a way to ultimately defeat it (essentially by defeating the world itself).

I build upon the concept of just-world hypothesis to show the world to be the product of interactivity of many different people's sets of just-world hypotheses, resulting in what I call a psycho-ethical equilibrium: a byproduct of different people's concept of self and concept of others according to their just-world hypotheses; that places people at the intersection point of the just-world hypotheses held by all members involved - that, when altered, leads to changes in either people's senses of self, senses of others or concept of what makes a just world - and that of course is changed by alterations in all these things. The state of any person in this continuum - as well as their self-appraisal, their sense of just world and their effect on others - is an integrative function of factors internal and external.

A former friend put forth in her graduate essay that meaning of communication is a function of both the speaker and the listener: That the beliefs and actions of both contribute in creating the meaning as it is perceived. I believe the same dynamic to shape both the just-world hypothesis and, pursuant it, the concept of self, the concept of others, and ultimately the place one inhabits. While one set of dogma (seen especially in the business world) wants to see all factors as being internal - and another set of secular dogma (seen in sociology departments) wants to see all factors as being external - I see both dogmas to be fallacious; the first one discounting external factors and blinding people to them (making them easy prey to manipulation and depending on them to have a culture of deliberate ignorance and suppression of insight) - and the second discounting internal factors and thus blinding people to individuality. Having seen both dogmas for what they are, I refuse to buy into either dogma and recognize the reality, and that is: That a world is an integrative function among many influences, all of which have one or another origin and all of which result directly or indirectly in changes in condition of others.

The psycho-ethical equilibrium is constantly in flux, as different people strive to change their condition; others strive to make the world reflect their sense of justice; and - the mechanism I choose to focus on especially - the people's sense of world (and sense of self) adjust constantly to reflect the reality of their situation and that of others.

Another source of fluctuation is the influence of people with different justice views from without the system. Thus, a civilization confronted with another civilization (if it does not get annihilated, or if it does not kill off the other completely) is confronted with other just-world hypotheses, other ideas, other influences, inventions, etc, all of which reshape both the actual reality and the reality as it is perceived by the civilization and its citizens. Indeed the world at any given time - the state of the world at any given time - is akin to that of an ocean, with changes in reality of people's condition occasioning changes in people's judicial-ethical view of people involved - and changes in ethical view of parties occasioning them to make changes in their (and each other's) condition. The entire world can be seen as an ever-shifting sea, sometimes calmy sometimes stormy, whose members wobble up an down, occasioning shifts in their own condition and in condition of others, and the interplay of whose actions shapes the equilibrium at any given time: The changes in which equilibrium result in changes in justice views, self views, and views of others in people involved.

The observation that brought this concept into focus for me - and one that gave me a fair amount of consternation and led me to place under serious doubt the quality of human design rather than simply of "human nature" or "human condition" - consisted of observing many situations in which people engaged in bullying, violence or other forms of amoral destruction of the next person and then invented reasons why the person deserved to be mistreated; which reasons the other people around readily gobbled up - and which the people under attack were under tremendous pressure to either fight off or to succumb under. The process that I observed in these situation consisted of sense of self from within (and sense of person from without) followed the change in the reality of the sitution (indeed in the reality of the treatment), eventually shifting the entire psycho-ethical equilibrium to a state reflecting the new reality. Thus, an action that had no moral quality changed people's sense of the moral worth of the next person or of themselves. And another dynamic that I observed, consisted of people repeatedly changing their view of one or another person who was going up or down in one or antoher respect, with their sense of them changing depending upon their position.

Thus, a bully (or set of bullies - this can include anything from a group of schoolboys to a brutal husband to an entire civilization) attacks a person or set of persons; whom, after they have been attacked or wiped off the world, the moral faculty invents a reason to devine as deserving of what took place. In order to maintain the just-world hypothesis, the person either must make the situation accord with his sense of justice and ethics - or else make the sense of what constitutes just world accord with the reality of the situation. The latter can be manifest in changes in view of self (when self is affected); in changes in view of the other person who is affected; or, if the changes of the person remain unaffected, changes in view of the reality of the world (changes in the just-world hypothesis).

The truly obnoxious quality consists of the pressure I've seen to see people who come under injust attack as morally inferior. This is, quite simply, outrageous; and yet the human design allows such things to take place! How? Well I've just shown how: Either you believe that the person is good and the world is injust - a situation that puts you in the uncomfortable position of having to take action and risk all kinds of nastiness - or you take the easy way and find out one or another reason why the person deserves what they're getting! The latter of which is of course the path taken especially by the moral cowards we've seen taking the path of the last two decades: A path that combines the worst of the two to arrive at a mindset peculiarly Eastern in its passivity and resulting moral cowardice - and peculiarly Western in its soulless (and likewise morally cowardly, some would say sociopathic) blame-the-victim attitude.

I refer to the Eastern mindset as being one of moral cowardice, precisely because it blames the victim for every atrocity and therefore justifies every wickedness done to the next person under the face of the sun, allowing the leader to get away with any injustice and leading to systemic atrocity that manifests in evil social orders such as caste system, Confucianism and Mongol hordes. The Christian solution ("the world is evil; humanity must be overcome and replaced with the Holy Spirit") may be seen as curing the patient by killing him. The effect of both religions is to give people the sense that the world is just in presence of injustice. The genius achieved by both approaches consists of giving people a sense of justice in presence of injustice, and thus of achieving fuflilment of just-world hypotheses necessary for stable functioning - and then giving the people the way to maintain the just-world hypothesis by behaving in ways that each religion believes to be rightful and to lead to a world it wants to see.

Which meant that, essentially, the religion bought into the just-world hypothesis mechanism and took it to the place it wanted to take it. Whether the world created as a result was in fact just or even better, is of course another story. And for this reason many justice-oriented movements reject the religious beliefs, both Eastern and Western, precisely because the result affectuated by them is anything but just.

In cases of both the change in the situation and the sense of just world, the situation moves from one psycho-ethical equilibrium to another; which equilibrium, in order to remain stable, achieves accord between state of ethics and situation. Through directed action in pursuit of one's concept of what makes a just world, the person changes reality of the world changed to reflect his person's just-world hypothesis and attempts to shift the psycho-ethical equilibrium deliberately to a level that accords with his sense of justice (after which all the affected parties have the option either to change back the reality of the situation to original equilibrium, to change the view of the participants in order to accommodate the new equilibrium, or to change their idea of what consitutes a just world). Through action that changes reality in a manner shorn of justice consideration, is put a pressure to take the psycho-ethical equilibrium to a level that justifies the action - and that, in and of itself, would result once again in either the participants' view of the person involved, or in their view of the world.

This, of course, can be used to believe human nature amoral or weak or of sellout quality. Whether or not that be the case, the situation can be explained from the just-world hypothesis standpoint. Either you make the world adjust to your sense of justice, or you make your sense of justice adjust to reality of the world; and the world, once again, in whatever psycho-ethical equilibrium exists at the time, is an integrative function of the interactions among the just-world hypothesis of all participants, with every lasting equilibrium a result of adjustments (right or wrong) of either people's views of the world, selves and each other or their reality - and any dischordance leading to pressure upon both reality of the condition and the beliefs of its participants. In both cases, the situation moves from one psycho-ethical equilibrium to another - which equilibrium, in order to remain stable, achieves accord between reality of situation and view by participants of themselves and others involved; the lack of which accord in any direction results in instability.

It is for this reason that it is so difficult for a person or a group of people at the receiving end of abuse to rise out of such conditions. Not only the external reality of the situation, but internal reality must alter: namely the warped sense of self that results from maintenance of just-world-hypothesis in presence of mistreatment - or alternatively the warped just-world hypothesis that is the result. In addition to the preceding, there is also the third factor. To make this new position permanent, one must furthermore make sure that it accords with the sum total of other people's just-world hypotheses: Which means changing the other people's view of self in a manner that's lasting and permanent and accords with their sense of justice (or changing pemanently their concept of what is just world). Which explains, for example, the troubles that faced America's women and blacks after they got their rights. The brutal domestic situations of many women, the far more insidious destruction of women's self-esteem in the media and in schools that undermine the self-confidence of most women especially the most talented, the rabid hatred we hear from around the world and from many (frequently unexpected) places within America, and the many self-inflicted errors of feminism's self-proclaimed leaders, are all manifestation of the equilibrium seeking to remain in place, through all the mechanisms previously stated, even after the legal situation changed.

It is of merit to note that the perceived ethics and the perceived justice have typically no relation to actual justice or actual ethics. People have seen many orders as just and rightful, from slavery to Islam to Communism to Confucianism to 50s America to 60s America to Imperial China to Russia under the Tsars. So it is naive to expect that people would recognize justice and injustice for what it is and honor it properly. But one thing that can be relied upon, is the moral outrage coming from population whenever they see someone whom they have bullied - and then convinced themselves worthy of being bullied - leaving the bonds that have constrained them and strive for a better life.

And when a person who has a legitimate grievance refuses to press for its redress, it gives the other side the opening to continue attacking for made-up reasons. The the just-world model of universe required for sanity - and which the mind to maintain the cozy lie that is sanity always twists the worldview and world-morals to accommodate - always finds fallacious reasons to justify unjust states of affairs, and twists its conceptions of people, its conceptions of values and its conceptions of world into perpetuation of the same. When unchecked, it forms a psycho-ethical equilibrium that not only perpetuates but in fact justifies and morally ensconces the states of affairs arrived through worst of actions and worst of intentions. And the only way to see things as they are requires extricating oneself from the lie of sanity and the cozy but fallacious just-world-hypotheses-shaped moral shroud over a state of affairs arrived at through entirely uncozy means, and accepting the mental discomfort of knowing world to not be just and being determined to fight for justice regardless of psychic cost.

It is for this reason likewise that we see people slip back into old habits and bad situations once they've been in them. The sense of self is adjusted to psycho-ethical equilibrium corresponding with these habits, and often hard work (from introspection onwards, especially if introspection is done in terms of a bad value systems or malignant ideology) is performed in vain. For true, permanent alteration in psycho-ethical equilibrium, three things must happen. Change in reality of the situation; change in sense of self; and change in other people's sense of the person. Which is why, for any social movement to ultimately succeed, all three elements must be necessary. It does no good to get rights if your sense of self (and the world's sense of you) is adjusted to level corresponding with condition of slavery. The entire psycho-ethical equilibrium needed to maintain justice hypotheses must be taken to higher level. And it must be maintained there through deliberate action, until the equilibrium is regained - only now, rather than corresponding with state of inferiority, it must exist at a level corresponding with state of respect-worthiness as reflected in reality; in sense of self; and in the other's sense of the self.

It should be noted that the latter can be done in many different ways, from earning respect by proving the selves respect-worthy according to the other's values to changing the reality of the condition in a way that likewise accords with the other's values and cannot be justified by them in taking away. This we are seeing done finally by many black people who have pursued honest business, professional, military, priestry, scientific or social service paths: Paths that not only raise the reality of their condition, but likewise legitimately alter the world's sense of their value.

A more minor issue consists of the flux between the individual's sense of self and the world's sense of him. A person whose sense of self is higher than other people's view of him attracts attack intended to drag him down to the level of the other's idea; a person whose sense of self is lower than another's sense of him attracts love to help him rise to their level. The flux however is not only from outside in; it's also from inside out. A person's sense of self, beside being either attacked or supported if it disagrees with the other people's view of him, also exercises effect on other people's view of him - and ultimately on themselves. The people involved will have to keep pushing their view upon the person - to accept a different sense of the other person - to create a different just-world hypothesis - or have to change their beliefs.

A more salient issue is that we see people earn in estimation, or lose in estimation, all the time. The case of a society either unjustly punishing or unjustly rewarding somebody causes moral outrage: In other words, the person's just-world hypothesis revolting against perceived injustice. This is of course true with actual injustices (such as for example the burning of Joan of Arc) and injustices perceived in relation to the person's just-world hypothesis (such as, for example, in the mind of the Muslim fundamentalist, Western women working outside the home). And of course we see people manipulating people's just-world hypotheses all the time, for one or another set of agendas. We know this as politics. Another aspect of politics concerns the individual's place on the psycho-ethical equlibrium. Essentially, to move up and stay up, a person has to affect positively his estimation in the minds of others to a greater extent than he affects it negatively.

Given the back-and-forth nature of flux between reality and sense of reality and sense of justice, there are many ways to accomplish this. One can either earn respect and good treatment (and let the reality follow); one can change the place in reality (and let the people's sense of reality and justice hypothesis follow); or one can attempt both at once. The tactic involved depends on the quality of the forces with which one is dealing. The first tactic can work in the climate of actual conscientiousness (true conscientiousness) of the population; the second tactic is the only one that can deal with people who deal in force (as I've spoken in other situations, the people who speak the language of strength respect you only if you are strong). In the second case - in dealing with mindset of might-makes-right - force is in fact the way of changing the other person's justice hypothesis. With the mechanism of force mastered, it then becomes possible to put it in service of actual justice - which has of course been the expressed goal of Western civilization for centuries on end.

Actions by people to change their condition change either other people's sense of them, or their sense of the world. When someone who used to be well-regarded turns to "the dark side," that frequently occasions a shock: "Were we wrong about this person? Did something happen that I don't know about? Is something wrong with the world?" A similar shock can be heard when we see someone who's been conventionally mistreated gets something that the people buying into the just-world hypothesis warped by that mistreatment into believing him evil do not believe him or her to deserve.

Which leads me to speak of perhaps the most significant issue here of all, and that is: The quality of the just-world hypotheses. Not all just-world hypotheses are created equal. I see that to be a function of three variables. The first is actual truthfulness, compassion, sagacity, fairness, depth and integrity of the hypothesis in relation to the reality of the world and the fact of human beingness. The second is the method of its development - whether it started with principle or was developed through legitimate methods, or else followed from accident of force and fraud. And the third and perhaps ultimately most important is the ability of the hypothesis to allow for a better state of existence: That is, the HEIGHT to whether the entire equilibrium as it affects oneself and those who stand to be affected by oneself can rise; the level of life allowed for the entirety of the equilibrium; the movement (upward or downward) along the scale that is afforded to people affected and ultimately to the entire system.

With their position - the others' sense of them - their sense of themselves and the other - and worldview of all involved a constantly interactive synthesis, the people can be thought to relate like Leibniz's monads, connecting to one another and to the whole and through these interactions shaping the reality of each other, themselves and the world. The reality of their lives, and the reality of the meaning - the reality-concept - are a shared function of all parties involved: Of their sense of self; of their sense of each other; of their condition; and of the meaning and sense of justice that they assign the world. The reality of the world becomes a shifting sea, resting on monads of each individual's condition and that are always struggling to achieve a psycho-ethical equilibrium continuously reshaping each other through the recombinant flux of their just-world hypotheses and their sense of themselves and each other, with each individual unit of consciousness (individual or social) a monad - and each relation between them a part of the interconnectivity. And through effect on their lives, on themselves, on each other, and on the world, is created both the meaning (in terms of world hypotheses) and the reality of the world in which we live.

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Intercultural Relationships and Gender Fairness

Everybody thinks that they know what is justice, but what they conceive of as justice is different from place to place. The just-world hypothesis of different people in different places and times conceive of completely different kinds of justice. And it is by flux between people and places that any meaningful concept of what is justice can be attained.

In Muslim and rural Indian cultures, it is seen as justice that man bludgeon the woman into being his dog and kill her if she disobeys in the slightest. In American feminist culture, it is seen as justice that a woman treat men like garbage, get a coworker fired for sexual harassment if he tells her she's good-looking, deal with all women who are nicer and prettier by abusing and sabotaging them and destroying their careers and relationships, abuse and emasculate any relationship partner, screw exes in court out of every cent they can get, claim that anyone who objects to such conduct is a misogynist or a bimbo, and aim to destroy as many men and beautiful women in one's life as one can and then claim oneself strong or smart or spiritual or a true servant of woman's cause. Both sets think that they are right and that what they are doing is justice. With such extremes in the world claiming themselves to be justice and righteousness, the way to arrive at any realistic notion of the preceding is for the real-world mechanism of people choosing each other based on how they are willing to treat each other to balance out whatever is believed in their respective homelands - and create a more informed conceptions of justice and a more balanced just-world hypothesis in every component part of the world.

It is ridiculous for Islamists in Middle East to claim to be speaking for justice; in Middle East, Islamists are the injustice. The same is true for the Dworkin-McKinnon types in the United States. The in-good-faith feminists have a real point about behavior of men in Middle East and many other parts of the world (and some in the West), and Islamists about behavior of the not-in-good-faith ones among American women. But they both have much less of a point at home. On their home turfs, they apply a grossly imbalanced conception of justice pursuant a grossly slanted just-world hypothesis to shape the country's concept of justice into gravely distorted forms that lead to grave mistreatment of people - women or men - who have done the least to deserve it.

A positive match is created between men and women whose just-world hypotheses are a positive-sum situation. A man from a feminist culture, whose just-world hypothesis would be seen at home as slanted toward patriarchy but in most of the rest of the world would be seen as fairly matriarchial, and a woman from a patriarchial culture, whose just-world hypothesis is seen in her own country as feminist but would be seen in a feminist culture as patriarchial or equalist, have just-world hypotheses that are better than complementary and that therefore can create among them a joyful appreciation of one another and a positive-sum relationship. Take a woman from the patriarchial culture, and put her together with a man from the feminist culture, and we see people who stand to treat one another better than they've ever been treated by other gender at home. As intercultural flux allows people to make matches based on what they see in each other and how they are willing to treat each other, is checked the wrong in each culture that caused the imbalance, and the graver wrong that is the mistreatment of either women or men in relationships in pursuit of that false concept of justice. And this creates a real-world mechanism toward creating social justice between men and women, as well as toward a goal that is just as important:

Creating relationships between men and women where both parties appreciate one another and treat each other in a manner that merits their vows of love.

The global social injustice will be solved at least in part by large-scale intercultural, interracial and international flux of people for love and marriage. Bringing together the men from cultures where the concept of justice is an extreme of feminism, with women from cultures where the concept of justice is an extreme of patriarchy - even people from cultures whose concepts of justice are not as extremely off-target but still noticeably apart - will bring together people who can appreciate one another, treat each other better than they are treated at home, and be seen by each other as positive influence and an improvement upon what they had to deal with. It will also create a real-world check-and-balance upon the tendency of societies - all societies - to go injust in one or another direction at the expense of one or another group. There were many people for a long time who believed that economic justice around the world would be achieved by Communism. In fact global capitalism did a much better and faster job by allowing billions of people in places like China and India to rise out of poverty using their own efforts with global market for their goods. And it is international flux for purpose of marriage that has real possibility of doing the same for social justice - while also creating many marriages along the way where people have genuine appreciation for one another and treat each other in commensurate way.

Global economy made it possible for international business to move across borders to find people who want to work and know how to work, and for people to move across the borders to find employers who constructively use and rightfully reward their endeavor. This resulted in over a billion of people rising out of poverty in less than three decades and businesses having better and more affordable products that benefited consumers and business itself. By similar mechanism, the men and women being free to move across borders to find people who would treat them better than they are treated at home results in tremendous improvement in people's relationships, as well as improvement in gender fairness.

But far more importantly, it creates a real-world incentive for people in all societies to treat their partners - men or women - in rightful manner, for knowing that there are other people around the world who would treat them well if they do not. And this breaks the stranglehold of local oppressors and thugs - both thugs of muscle and thugs of morality - who want to keep one or another group in their cultures in shackles so that they can be guiltlessly and without consequence mistreated.

Protectionism - attempt by rich countries to create walls against international products - has been described as bullying and
extortion. The consumer is being extorted, and the working people around the world are being bullied, by the rich country attempting to protect unearned priviledge of some of its workers at everybody else's expense. The communities that want to deny their citizens the right to make interracial, intercultural or international matches, are likewise using extortion and bullying to protect unearned privilege - such as the unearned privilege of Middle Eastern or rural Indian men to treat women like cattle, to throw vitriol in their faces, and to execute them in case they do not obey their every command. Like tariffs and quotas of the protectionists are used to maintain economic imbalance, so the violence, moral thuggery, and oppressive laws, are used to sustain social injustice. And just as in case of protectionism, where the greater the economic imbalance the higher the obstacles that are required to sustian it, so the greater the scale of violence, moral thuggery, and oppressive legislation, the greater the social injustice and the graver the system abuse.

There are many people who falsely claim that protectionism is more moral than global economy. It is not; it is bullying and extortion against one's citizens and against the world to protect unearned privilege. The same is also true of efforts by any local entity at any level to keep people from marrying people external to itself. If a country or a community constructs walls against intercultural, inter- ethnic or international marriage, then it is performing bullying and extortion against its own citizens and against the rest of the world, in order to keep its citizens chained to partners who want the unearned privilege of treating them like trash.

The greater the scale of economic imbalance, the greater the need for protective barriers. And the greater the scale of social imbalance, the more artificial barriers are required to keep it in place. Thus, the greatest amount of violence, threats, moral bludgeoning, character assassination, psychological abuse and oppressive legislation will be expected to be, and is, done by the communities that are the most gravely injust and abusive - and to the least extent by the communities that are the least abusive and least injust.

It takes more barriers to keep people from leaving a raw deal than it does to keep them from leaving a fair deal. From this follows that the greater the obstacles placed by the culture to women or men finding partners elsewhere, the greater the systemic injustice that they embody. The more abuse, violence, legal oppression and moral bludgeoning is directed against one or another group, the greater the injustice that is perpetuated against them. The greater the actual need for intercultural, interracial or international flux in order to rectify the imbalance.

The people are bullied into lives they would never have chosen if they were aware of the true range of options before them, and are kept there by oppressive laws that want to make a commitment based on inadequate knowledge and false advertising life-long. That state of affairs is falsely regarded as being moral. It is not moral state of affairs; it is a state of affairs based on systemic injustice. The disadvantaged are kept to inhuman treatment and denied relationships with people who would treat them better, and the people around the world are kept from partaking of what they have to offer, all in order to defend unearned privilege of the wrongly advantaged class to abuse and oppress the disadvantaged.

Thus, the people who are against intercultural matches in cultures such as the Muslim scream about tradition and morality. The real reason they are against such matches is that they want to abuse women as much as they want to abuse women, and for the women to have no other options but to put up with living hell that is life as a woman in Middle East. The people who attack intercultural matches in feminist cultures claim all kinds of silliness as well. The real reason is that they want to treat men like trash, and for the men to have no possibility but to take it. In both cases, the resistance to international relationships is a result of systemic wrong that leads to systemic imbalance. And it is this wrong that is checked and balanced by the real-world mechanism of people being meaningfully free to choose their partners in parts of the world that are not formulated by the same systemic imbalances and the wrongful mistreatment of one or another gender that these imbalances create.

The same of course is the case in relationships themselves. The greater the scale of the intended and later accomplished injustice, the greater the amount of physical violence, threats, psychological abuse, character assassination, reputation destruction and legal and social bullying that the perpetuator of the injustice needs to do in order to artificially protect and maintain the wrong. This is the case either when the imbalance is that of the perpetrator being with partner who is too good for them but not being willing to treat the partner at level accorded their merits, or of the desire of the perpetrator to grossly mistreat the partner, or of the desire by the perpetrator to take from the partner all that they have to offer and give poison and violence in return. Like barriers to trade being evidence of artifiically maintained economic imbalance, these actions are evidence of artificially maintained imbalance in the relationship.

The more we see done of all or any such things, the more the intended or the accomplished injustice, the more apparent is the injustice perpetuated by the partner who does these things.

Which means that abuse in relationships is more likely to be done not for the things that are wrong in the partner, but for things that are right in them. And the greater the amount of any such violence, the more we see the injustice that one commits or intends to commit. In the same way as global economy provides a way for workers around the world to rise out of poverty - and for entrepreneurs to have access to people who are willing and able to work effectively - so do international matches allow a way for women from cultures slanted against women and men from cultures slanted against men to create matches with people from whom they can expect better treatment that in home societies, and whom they likewise will treat in ways better than they are treated at home. The women from cultures where women treat men right but are mistreated by men in their own homeland - and men from cultures where men treat women right but women do not treat men right - find in each other better treatment than they could hope for in partners from their own communities. Not only are beautiful matches created, but social imbalances are rectified, and people in the communities are shown how truly loving, mutually appreciative and mutually respectful relationships can be made real. In this are created two positives, and rectified many negatives. The positive of mutually appreciative, mutually positive matches and positive influence that they exert on the disadvantaged group in society - and the negative of the wrong that creates social imbalances and the abusive ways that maintain them.

Thus international relationships therefore work for freedom, fairness, and good treatment by men and women of one another in relationships. And that is a valuable and meaningful good toward which it is worthy to aspire for men and women around the world.

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Cultural Flux and Dynamic Integrity

When cultures come into flux, they reshape each other and battle each other.

The multilectic creates all kinds of creations, some that embody the best of component cultures; some that embody the worst of component cultures; and some that contain both benign and malignant features of all of the above. Each culture's belief on the Autonomy on Good (and the power it seeks to exercise over the minds and lives of the people) is undermined by existence of other mindsets in its vicinity. The culture's illusion of Integrity, as a function of adopting its precepts and following it unconditionally, is challenged by the fact that any intellectual honesty in a climate that contains other influences leads one to know better.

The flux fills minds with confusion; it also gives people a chance at much better Integrity that is a result of Integrating multiple influences and coming up with a higher synthesis that enriches every culture that comes into the picture, as well as increasing the wisdom and knowledge of individuals involved in the flux.

Through integration of the Good in different cultures it becomes possible to build on the Good in all of them and to improve all of the cultures involved (as well as the people in them) and to impart to them Greater Wisdom. The Dynamic Integrity that is arrived in the process is a Higher Form of Integrity than the Static Integrity of False Upbringing or False Paradigm, and one with Greater Knowledge - Knowledge that embodies Experience Across Multiple Context. It also requires the presence of mind to sustain, and thus makes the most of man Intellectually and the most of Man's Creations.

Through the mechanism of intercultural competition - akin to free-market competition among companies - the cultures involved are held accountable to the people for the quality of the cultural goods produced and are made to become the best they can be or else go out of business. 

In applying the concepts of free-market competition to cultures rather than only companies, and checks-and-balances to mindsets and societies rather than only entities in the government, the tendency toward totalitarianism in both entities is held in abeyance, and people have chance at greater liberty, greater wisdom, and experience of life.

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Communitarian Totalitarianism

The business entities, from single proprietorships to giant corporations, are made accountable to the public through the mechanism of competition from other companies, as well as through scrutiny by media and law. The government entities are made accountable to the public through the mechanism of electoral system sustained by active and involved media and electorate. A corrupt corporation like Enron or WorldCom, like the corrupt officials in the government, are exposed and either lose their market, their status as legal entities, their electoral base, or their official position. But communal organs of power have no checks upon them and therefore have the potential to get away with far greater abuses than either of the preceding.

Communitarianism - the belief that community is more important than individual and deserves to have power in itself - may sound appealing until one runs into reality of what communitarianism means. Community organizations such as tribal separatists, the KKK, militias, gangs, mafias, Muslim terrorists, old-boy networks, and religious cults, are the real-world manifestation of communitarianism - and none of them are benign. In all cases these are entities that arrogate for themselves life-and-death power over the lives of others and commit horrible violations of human rights, both within the community and without. These entities are not accountable to the consumer through the market, and they are not accountable to the voter through the elections. And that means, they become tyrannical, seeing it their right to control everyone in the community and to commit horrible violations to that effect.

When communitarianism began developing, I foresaw the creation of effective totalitarianism. I recognized that the unofficial local organs of power are capable of at least as great abuses as are the official ones, and lacking the constitutional principles and accountability to the public that keep the official government from becoming despotic, they could, and would, perform greater abuses than the official democratic governments can under Constitutional law. And I recognized that those communities and organizations, lacking either the human rights and civil rights principles that these governments or the mechanisms of check and balance upon them, could, and would, do graver damage to people's life, liberty and existence than the governments that they were seeking to supplant.

I foresaw this in America; and now I am finding it in Australia. A rural small town in the Australian state of Victoria, that prides itself on being a model community, shows exactly what the term means. My wife’s older friend, a lady who has achieved great professional success and raised a family of highly effective people, married a self-made millionaire from this community. When her husband had a stroke, his family, that wielded significant influence in the town, repeatedly claimed that she was not competent to take care of him even though she was a registered nurse. Unable to take custody over him, they poisoned the entire town against her, until she had to beg even cabs to come to her home in order that she could go shopping. They finally had their way when she had to go to a hospital for an operation, and her husband was placed in the town nursing home for a week. He entered the nursing home alive; he came out in a vase. During that week, he was not properly fed or given medicine, and nurses gave conflicting accounts of his death. When the daughter of my wife’s friend asked for an autopsy, his body was cremated before it could be performed.

On the Internet, communities become so arrogant that they decide it’s rightful to commit real crimes. Forgery, harassment, slander and defamation are common; as are such actions as mailing someone a piece of manure; pursuing someone to career networks in order to damage their job prospects and reputation; sending viruses to people’s workplaces, web pages and home computers; and making credible threats of death. The community mindset takes over and deems itself more powerful than the law. And anything that is seen as threat by the communal mindset, is deemed to be exterminated by any means possible. This means illegal action and violation of human rights. And while the potential for abuses of power in government and business are checked by media, consumer, voter and other branches and levels of government, the abuse of power in communities - unofficial organs of power - goes on unchecked.

In America, my friend C. had an aunt that went into a nursing home in New Hampshire. She was administered wrong medication that destroyed her health, after which she had a hole ripped in her back with a bedpan. When the nursing home found out that C., who has an M.D., was on the way, the nursing home murdered her aunt. Her body was still warm when C. showed up. Tests showed a six times the lethal dose of morphine in her body. C. has the photographs and the medical chart readings of the matter. But when she tried to go to court to get justice for what took place, her lawyer betrayed her. He was found out to be a part of the town‘s old-boy network. He since then continued to lobby other lawyers that C. tried to hire, who all betrayed her as a result. The employee who told C. what had happened was fired, and when C. had tried to call her last summer she was told that she'd had a nearly-fatal accident at her next workplace. That's the reality of old-boy networks; the reality of communitarianism.

The same reality can be seen, to even greater wrongs, in the parts of the world where communitarianism has had a longer run of power. In Indian rural communities, the goal is to beat a young bride into submission, and it is a common practice to murder brides who are not completely obedient to the will of the family to whom she's been given. In rural Ethiopian communities, the most common way to get a bride is by raping a teenage girl - and as the family rejects her since they can no longer give her in marriage, and the rest of community rejects her since she is no longer a virgin, the only place she can go to is to the rapist. In both cases, the national law and the human rights law does not reach these communities; and the horrendous wrong goes unchecked by media, politics and law.

It is likewise the communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan that hide the terrorists, using community codes and loyalties to protect people whose goal is to murder and fear-monger their way into unearned power. It is communities and families that are the root of the Mafia, and the community organization that is the Mafia wields power given to it by the families and the communities to terrorize and enslave the families and communities for which it claims to work. The community-based KKK and inner city gangs; the Southern old boy networks and fraternities; the survivalist militias; all commit horrible crimes under the name of community. And for as long as this is the ideology, they continue to get away with it.

The co-founder of pioneering software giant Cisco, Sandy Lerner, found out the reality of communitarianism when she moved to rural Virginia and attempted to open a diner. "The problem with small towns," she said, "is that the mind takes the size of the town." She is a self-made multimillionaire with power and experience. Imagine what someone who's not a multi-millionaire, who's less experienced, and who is in a less powerful condition, will discover if she were to move to such a place.

It is communities in America that create the phenomenon known in psychology as conspiracy of silence against the victims of sexual abuse. In order to keep up the lie that the community represents tradition, family and happiness, those on whose backs this pretence falls are silenced, slandered, demonized, broken and destroyed. The police does not do its job; it is co-opted by the community to perpetuate the deception. Mental health and social services do the same. And then the community built on brutality, incest, deception, and corruption goes on claiming that it is moral and the rest of the world is not moral and has its representatives usurp the values platform to bludgeon the civilized world into perpetuation of the community's barbaric, deceptive, corrupt, poisonous ways.

In business, false advertising - presenting a product as something other than what it is, or failing to inform the customer about problems with it - is a crime that is punishable by law. But communities continually advertise falsely, claiming to have a wholesome way of life while in fact being places of extreme corruption and abuse. And at issue here is not simply a product; at issue here is people’s lives. How many are lost to false advertising by corrupt and brutal communities? How many find their lives taken by smilie-faced lie disguising a snakepit of brutality and corruption? How many cannot find their way out because the community is more powerful than the law, claims itself as the law, and is made that way by communitarian attitudes and beliefs?

The women who fall for the siren song of country community find themselves stuck in a horrible situation from which they either get out with greatest difficulty or not at all. Far from idyllic existence, they become the town's and the family's acquisition, scapegoat, whipping girl, object of control. Like the brides in rural India, these women experience extreme physical and psychological violence from the families into which they have married, whose goal is to make her their own in every way possible and to never relent until she submits completely - after which, if she does, violence still goes on because violence in the country is way of life. The police and the court system refuses to acknowledge abuse but instead seeks to silence its witnesses in order that the community's big lie and selling line do not get punctured by fact of what goes on in the community behind closed doors. And if the woman attempts to flee, the community seeks to break her down entirely and to use all its representatives to not only destroy her but also to take away her children.

This is what happens when unofficial entities hold greater power than official entities, and corruption, venality, deceit, and brutality perpetrated by communities is not subjected to openness, scrutiny, accountability, check and balance.

Without such check and balance, the communities arrogate for themselves life-and-death power over the lives of people. I have heard from many people in Midwest that they kill people like me. Which means not only that they have adopted murder as way of life and must have killed many along the way, but further that they believe they have right to kill people by virtue of how they think. Which means that they create an effective totalitarianism and do not shy away even from murder to keep it going. And communitarianism, by sanctioning such a thing, is in effect sanctioning corruption, murder, and indeed every other crime, by way of creating de facto totalitarianism.

This is not coincidental; this is inevitable. An official organ of power is subject to its official precepts; but a community is an unofficial organ of power and is therefore not subject to any laws. As such it becomes lawless - indeed it becomes a law unto itself. A law that is unwritten; that is not subject to checks and balances; and that therefore becomes despotic. A law that claims for itself all the psychological weaponry that comes with being associated in public mind with family and morality, and in so doing can silence any criticism on moral grounds and get away with extreme abuse against the ever-diminished individual and ever-more-discredited official power organs. And people, rather than seeing a freedom from oppression they have mistakenly identified to be based in “statism,” are bound much deeper, much harder, and much more completely by an entity that is far inferior to capitalism, and far inferior to liberal democracy, in ethics, legality, principle, vision or human rights.

Another problem, and one that Sally Lerner has discovered, is one known in psychology as groupthink. Even when not deliberately intending wrong, people in closed systems prevail on each other to think the same way and control their thinking until it accords with the rest of the group. This problem has been responsible for Challenger disaster, when everyone knew of the problem but none had the courage to talk about it; and when even the people as smart as those at NASA are subject to this, then so is clearly any other closed system in the world. Besides the result seen in Challenger - the result of leading people to overlook crucial information, silence real perspectives, deny legitimate understanding, and thus make horrible and uninformed decisions - groupthink leads to this: Absolute similitude of mind that does not tolerate anything that differs from whatever lie it becomes. Which leads to extinction of freedom of thought, subversion of democratic process and due process, failure to honestly address and resolve endemic problems, and conspiracy of silence on matters that violate the community's pretence before the world.

But even worse that that it leads to this: The collective hubris of the community that would judge it acceptable to murder people and to destroy people's lives in the name of the community - to create corrupt, venal, oppressive and murderous cancers upon the face of the Western Civilization - and, as if that was not enough, go on and aggressively claim on political scene to speak for values, tradition, and family, while in fact representing murder, oppression, corruption and deceit.

As if that weren't enough, there is something here that is yet more sinister and far-reaching, and that bodes horribly for the future of democracy. And it is this: The moral and psychological power given to unofficial entities as vehicle for power-tripping as the supposed spokesperson therefor. As Stalin claimed to speak for the people and claimed that his enemies were the enemy of the people - and as the aggressive feminists claim that they speak for women and that their enemies are enemies of women - likewise those who claim to speak for communities portray their enemies as enemy of community and wield the power of the community to kill them or force them to submit. To speak for an unofficial authority is a power gambit that does not possess check and balance and therefore has the complete capacity for becoming tyrannical. There is no official code for a community, a society, a gender, a family, a tradition. Thus the people who claim to speak for these entities have nothing to check their words and actions against and can get away with any deception, any usurpation, any cruelty, any injury, any violence, any vileness, any violation, under the sun. All this of course has taken place at communitarian entities the world over and can only take place given the mechanism that underlies communitarianism.

That an entity is unofficial, does not make it not real. Instead the power that it wields is unaccountable, unbalanced and unchecked. As such it becomes insidious as well as tyrannical; and far from fostering good character as many communitarian types would claim, instead fosters the character of treachery, deception, venality, subterfuge and corruption. Which undermines and degrades the character of the people instead of improving it, and also undermines and degrades the character of the countries in which they live.

Communitarianism has been wrong from its inception. An unofficial organ of power, without constitution or checks and balances or accountability, can, and will, abuse power to a far greater extent than an official one that is by law forced to operate within official constraints or one that is accountable to the market or the law. If the communities are to be made organs of power, then it must be a power that is official, accountable, checked and balanced, and placed under the rule of law. Their rules and their ways must be codified and advertised precisely as they are, and then checked from both government entities from the outside and individuals from within in situations where either the rules or their enforcement violates human rights. Otherwise the result is absolute and unchecked criminality of whoever claims to speak for community; effective destruction of liberty and civil and human rights; effective destruction of honesty and transparency in the civilization; false advertising leading to lifelong ensnarement; degradation of character of the population toward venality and corruption; and mafia values, mafia tactics, mafia character, and creeping totalitarianism everywhere that such an ill-conceived ideology is given green light.

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Who truly speaks for Australian fathers?

In September of 2007, I began writing on the Internet about the injustices committed in Australian family courts. The response from men on the boards was revealing. One responder said that Australian men have “figured out long ago that women are b*tches, and breed them out of that attitude.” Two justified wife-killing, one saying that a man who kills his wife “does not murder her, he corrects her existence” and another saying that some wives deserve to be killed. One respondent kept claiming that I was a Lesbian from Women’s Electoral Lobby while claiming my identity as someone I don’t know and undoubtedly violating that person’s privacy rights in the process. A representative of Fathers4Equality began posting injunctions for people to “have strength in numbers” and vote in the upcoming election for their candidates.

As I started exploring, I found laws and institutions designed to perpetuate violence. The people are forbidden to talk in the media about what goes on in the family court system, keeping the abuses in family system outside the scrutiny of free speech. Many women have lost their children because they had the courage to report in court the abuse that their children received from their exes. Women who flee from violence are being treated as criminals. Men who have put their children in hospitals with their brutality are still allowed equal access, while women reporting abuse are denied access to children because they have the integrity to puncture the lie that is the basis of the family court system - the lie that marriages and family life in Australia is everything other than what it is.

Before all else, let’s start with the wrongs that are the most blatant. The Australian family court system employs a racket known as Parental Alienation Syndrome. The concept was invented in 1980s by Richard Gardner, an American conman who also condoned pedophilia, and was quickly discredited in United States as a result of studies that showed explicitly that out of children’s abuse allegations against their fathers, only 2% were found to be false. In Australia however it is used by the family court system. The racket claims that a woman who speaks up about her ex-partner abusing the children is mentally ill and fabricating the accusations, and if the children make accusations as well then she has manipulated them into doing so. Out of that consideration Australian courts make a policy of taking away the children from any woman who has the courage to leave an abusive relationship and whose children have courage to tell the truth to the court about what happened behind closed doors.

The recent changes in legislation, passed in 2005, aimed at giving both parents the chance to have meaningful role in the lives of the children. But the Parental Alienation Syndrome racket aims to eliminate the mother from children’s lives when the abuse is being brought to the court. Not only is abuse not dealt with, but the abuser is rewarded with a full custody while the person confronting it loses the children. I doubt I am the only man who believes this is an outrage.

The rights that these men take away are, most of all, those of their daughters. They seek advantage in court over wives they brutalize, break, beat down and degrade; but in enshrining them in the law they are doing the same to their daughters. And a man who would sacrifice his daughter’s rights, in order that he have court privileges that he does not deserve, is not worthy to be a father. Any more than a man who would sacrifice the rights of 50% of the population is not worthy of having rights himself.

The attitude of claiming women to be “b*tches” who are to be “bred out” of that attitude is very revealing. It reveals a mechanism identified by Eric Berne as racket anger, in which a person invents false reasons to be angry at someone in order to justify wanting to mistreat them, and then treats them in such a manner as to bring forth the reaction that appears to justify the abuse. The men running anger racket come into relationships expecting to be somehow betrayed and mistreated - and injure, wear down, beat and abuse the women until she either suffers so much that she does something (in which case the man claims he was right from the beginning), or is completely destroyed and accepts the abuse as a way of life. At which point many of the abused, either believing this to be the natural lot of women or feeling that no woman is allowed to have better than they have, go on and abuse, destroy and entrap other women in their communities into lives of brutality and degradation. In either case, the racket continues, and the lie gets bigger and bigger and breaks and strangles more people into a world of self-perpetuating injustice, atrocity and deceit.

Which then becomes the true character of the arrangement and the formative core of all its claimed values, attitudes and ways.
Which then markets itself as tradition, common sense, sanity, reality or religion and thus profanes all these concepts by using them for perpetuation of ways whose true character is one of atrocity and deceit.

The Father’s Lobby is stating statistics that claim that one in seven Australian men commit suicide. As is to be expected from men who would not take responsibility for their actions, they blame it on the women, precisely upon feminism. Let me get this straight. A woman who’s isolated, disempowered, beaten down, and subject to ongoing brutality and destruction that ruins her health, lives in hell, but goes on to take care of her children, while irresponsible men opt for suicide when they do not get what they want. And these people want to speak for men? For fathers? For family? For Australia?

They don’t. They speak for the lowest in men, the lowest in fathers, and the lowest in humankind.

The same men claim that a “genocide” is being committed against Australian men by “feminist terror.” This is extremely revealing. The people who intend to commit a large-scale atrocity, frequently start it by claiming that the group they intend to wipe out or to subjugate is committing the atrocity against them. Thus, Nazis claimed that Jews wanted to do to Germans what Nazis wanted to do to the Jews. And what we are seeing now, being prepared and in many cases caried out, is terror against Australian women that in many cases is worse than genocide.

It is a terror intended to subjugate not only their wives, but also the women of future generations.

And no man and no woman worth being a parent, would participate in such a thing or allow it to be committed.

They also site statistics that claim that 60% of marriages in Australia end in divorce. Given the attitudes these people have shown, it is no wonder that women leave them at first opportunity. And I don’t blame them. What woman worth knowing would accept her daughter being seen as a “b*tch” and “bred out” of that “attitude”? What woman worth knowing would allow her children to stay in a home run by someone who thinks wife-killing is justified and have that same person role-model marriage and family life for them? What woman worth knowing would allow for perpetuation of racket anger upon her and then on through her children and into the following generations? The women who have courage to leave abusive husbands in order that their children have chance to grow up free of violence and degradation, does her sacred duty as a mother and as a citizen.

And it is only when the Australian men stop abusing their wives and children that they will have earned the right to have their wives and children stay with them.

The same people likewise claim that children have need for a father. And yet they want to take children away from the mother, who bore them for 9 months in her body, weaned them, and has been their primary source of nourishment, love and comfort. Need for a father? Need for a mother first. And a man who would deny the children their rights to a mother - who would sacrifice that basic necessity of their children in order that he have control over the children - does not deserve to be a father himself, having put his interest in control over their children over their children’s most primary psychological and personal need. When two women came to Solomon claiming the child to be theirs, he figured out which was the real mother by threatening to kill the child. The real mother was willing to let the child go to the other woman in order that the child can live. The same applies for men who have valid prerogative for fatherhood. A real father cares about the child more than he cares about his own interests over the child. And a father who would take away the child’s right to a mother, cannot be trusted to do anything right by or for the child.

Especially if the child is his daughter.

As for fathers, children have need for a father or stepfather who’s not abusive. Children have need for a father or stepfather who’s good to their mother and to them. Children have need for a father or stepfather who models for them a real, genuine, loving, respectful relationship. And while many people I know whose mothers have left their fathers at first hated them for that decision, many of them have realized that their mothers have made the correct decision when they figured out what their fathers were like.

The Father’s Lobby claims to be speaking for family. In fact they are speaking for this and this only: Abuse, control and deceit. The person who truly is worthy father and truly has values treats the partner in such a manner that she does not want to leave him, not create laws and social institutions that make it difficult for her to leave. And a man who truly cares about his family, cares about his daughter’s rights, as well as about the children’s rights to be with their mothers. The only person who wants the protection of such institution, is the person who wants to abuse the partner and for the partner to have no recourse.

It is the person who wants to brutalize, degrade, undermine and mistreat the partner - and have the institution of marriage, or institution of family, or institution of community, to keep the partner from leaving.

It is the person who wants to commit crimes in the privacy of the household, and let the social institution of househod to keep these crimes from getting redressed.

It is the person who wants to appeal to a borrowed virtue to cover for his own lack of virtue.

And this - appeal to borrowed virtue to cover for own lack of virtue - is the essence of Australian father’s lobby.

The people who want the protection of tradition to keep their relationships, are ones who do not want to do what it takes to keep a relationship going. What they want, is license to commit disgusting crimes against their partner and children behind closed doors and under the guise of tradition and family. As such, they use appeal to ethics to hide ethically damnable behavior. Which profanes the ethics they appeal to as much as it profanes themselves, but far more importantly the fathers, the men, the family, for which they claim to speak.

As man and father I tell the Australian father’s lobby explicitly: YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME.

Appealing to fallacious ethical arguments, the men involved are blaming everything on women. At Current Affair, there was a story about a woman who has six children by six different men. Even though the woman is working hard and keeping her children well-fed and well-cared for, she has been singled out as an example of women’s immorality. An obvious question to ask is, What about the men? Where are their ethics? Where is their responsibility? It takes two to have a child, and if the woman is prosecuted - but man is not - then one group has an immoral free ride at the expense of the other. Which ruins whatever claims of ethics or responsibility or morality that they may assert. I once ran into a man who called himself “a producer” because he “produced” eight children by eight different women and did not take care of any of them. Immorality to be blamed on women? What about their partners who impregnate them and then leave them or batter them and the kids?

What about you, Australian father’s lobby? Where is your responsibility?

So, some among men would say, how can I as a man be going against my own gender. My response to that is, if you see life in terms of battle of men against women, then you have no chance of being good to anyone you’re with and should not be getting married or having children at all. Others would say, how can I be so stupid as to deny having privileges as a man against my wife. My response to that is that I do not need such privileges; I seek to treat her in such a manner as to make these unnecessary. My far greater concern is with the rights of my daughter, who will have to live in the world created by these movements. And if you do not want your daughters to have rights in the world in order that you can have short-term advantage against your wives in the court of law, then you are too selfish and too short-sighted to be adequate material for parenting and do not deserve to have that privilege.

The people who would employ a concept, like Parental Alienation Syndrome, that has been soundly discredited in the place it originated have no regard for the truth. And that 98% of the children are forced to be with the people who have abused them, and denied a right to be with their mothers, is an outrage. Not only does this prevent children a right to be with their mothers - it does that. Not only does it give children to abusers - it does that. But worse than all that, it tells people they can’t be honest; they can’t be forthright; they can’t reveal crimes committed behind closed doors, in order that pretense of family and tradition not be violated by the scrutiny of the fact of what actually goes on behind the facade.

To teach people that they can’t tell the truth in court without facing disaster, is to teach them dishonesty as way of life. And that bodes horribly for the future society for Australia. It seeks to turn it into a society of abuse and brutality, but far worse a society of systemic venality and corruption. Which not only is abominable in itself, but becomes more abominable by using the concepts of family and tradition and morality to cloak itself. If people can’t tell the truth without losing their children, then the only thing they can do is lie and backstab each other. Go down this road, and you’ll find your country turn as venal and corrupt as Iran or former Soviet Union, where people likewise were not allowed to tell the truth without losing their freedoms or their lives. And which society turned into a snakepit of snitches, tattle-talers, crooks, black marketeers, and hypocrites screwing each other over for portions of ever-diminishing pie.

A facade of tradition and family values sustained by silencing those who tell the facts of what goes on behind the facade of tradition and family values leads to that exact set of conditions. The people become social onanists wearing a facade of decency in public while being monsters to people over whose lives they have the most power. The separation between fact and facade creates a schizophrenic civilization in which people lie, abuse and control as way of life, and where they quickly learn dishonesty at deepest levels as habit of mind and heart. Deception, venality, corruption, hypocrisy, become instilled in people since earliest ages and then perpetuate through the society to every level, turning it into an extrapolation upon the theme of deception - a growing, all-subsiming Big Lie. The ever greater dishonesty and insincerity of the society requires ever greater oppression, ever greater deception, ever greater system abuse and violence and personal destruction, to perpetuate the lie at its core, with the worst violence and gravest conmanship directed against the most naturally sincere. And then not only does honesty vanish from the civilization, but so do freedom and human rights, and what is created is the only thing that can be created based on a Big Lie: an effective totaltiarianism that requires extinction of all meaningful forms of honesty, freedom, and human rights.

The people who would do that to their country, are unworthy citizens. And the people who would inflict such a cesspool upon their children are also unworthy parents. To take away the rights of their children to be with their mothers - to take away the rights of their daughters to a country in which they have a chance - to take away from their children the right to a free and honest society - to inflict upon them a Big Lie at long last leading to effective totalitarianism - is a crime against one’s children and any generation that may come.

Make no mistake about it. Systemic dishonesty can only lead to effective totaltitarianism. And those who would inflict systemic dishonesty on Australia, have nothing less than effective totalitarianism in mind. And that makes them far worse than any supposed danger the Right conceives as coming from anywhere, either externally to Australia or within.

I believe that Australia is too good a country to have to go down this road. And I know I will not accept for my daughter to have to live in a snakepit. My concern is not only with the present; it is with the future as well. Which incidentally is the meaning of what it is to be a father.

The people who would employ a concept that has been soundly discredited where it has originated have no regard for the truth. And the people who would seek legal privileges that they do not merit, while in the process sacrificing their country, their daughters, and their children, are ones who are least worthy of them. Show me someone involved in Australia’s father’s lobby, and I’ll show you an abuser, a liar and a tyrant.

And that makes dirt-poor material for having the parenting rights that they seek.

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