Revealing The Censor

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Anarchy in a community means that censorship is not an acceptable practice.

Copenhagen street art.

Censorship is the suppression of expression, using force. Usually, the censor is unidentified, and not answerable to those being censored.

This is dissimilar to the moderating of an activity. The role of a moderator is to limit the conversation visibly, according to the rules agreed on by the participants. And every action of the moderator is answerable to them!

The censor is, in principle, an authoritarian ruler, judge, and executioner, invulnerable to feedback.

Anarchy, in the context of community, can present itself in any number of possible social structures, but all of which will follow the same rule. All interactions are free. Not only voluntary, and definitely not coerced. But free!

Free, as in any person can, at any time, do what they wish, as long as they cause no physical harm or threat to another. No force can be inflicted on them. Even if agreement was previously made, such as a written contract, further disagreement, or nulling of contract, does not justify the use of force against them.

Those who betray trust, will simply not be trusted again - until forgiven, and that is the only moral strategy in a free society.

Even within private property, such as a house, where the owner can - if necessary - use force to remove people; those people are still free, and cannot be coerced or threatened, just for voluntarily entering the private property of another. It is immoral to abuse a guest.

To conclude, there is no place for censorship within any group, community, or organization. In order to moderate activities, methods of refereeing must be applied; while those who moderate are explicitly not above the same community standards.

It is only in this way that all community members are properly represented.

On Moral Agnosticism

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Ayn Rand, the 20th century philosopher and novelist, who coined the term Objectivism, spoke of the avoidance of moral judgement by one person on others:

Virtue of Selfishness, pp. 82–83.

We lose our personal integrity, when we deny the existence of morality. This is our own belief in ourselves: opinions and emotions. Our ultimate natural intuition. This denial is equal to naming ourselves liars. It is often correlated with dismissing our own opinion in favor of someone else.

Self-trust is not about being right or correct. It is about having a clear set of priorities in mind. All decision come from and rely on the self. If the self is dismissed, then no critical thought is allowed. Without the benefit of critical thought, we cannot come to conclusions. We then must either wager or rely on others.

It is the responsibility of each person to choose. Without choice there is no free will. Without choice there is no learning and correction. Choices are always based on our inner morality; what we decide is good or bad.

Would you care for an uneducated life?

Responsibility VS Ownership !

All human conflict derives from the ideological conflict between responsibility and ownership.

Responsibility is the measure of how much a person is willing to give, time or resources or even risk, in order to support his ideals. A natural example is that of investing in a child. The child is given his needs from the parents, because the parent idealizes, to a degree, the importance of their child.

Ownership is the attempt to control the ideas of other people. In order for a person to own anything, they must convince others that they (the others) have no power, over the choices of the owner, in regard to the owned object. For example, the only way in which I can own an apple, is if other people accept that my choices about the apple are superior to their own ideas about the apple.

It is possible for both ideologies to overlap:
1. Own & take responsibility, over something.
2. Not own, but take responsibility, over something.
3. Own, but not take responsibility, over something.
4. Not own & not take responsibility, over something.

The greatest conflict of interests is when one person or group decides to take responsibility without ownership, while another person or group decides to take ownership without responsibility. I first tackled this issue over at the FDR forums, here:
http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/36950-responsibility-versus-ownership/

I propose that this is best solved by acknowledging that responsibility is a higher ideal than ownership. I do not propose, however, that ownership does not have a right to exist. Only, that in the case of dispute, that side which proves the need for taking responsibility, must be allowed priority, over the side that claims ownership.

First, we recognize the fact that being the owner of something, for example a tree, does not mean that you would always have all the rights to it. If the owner does not take care of the tree, so that it is rotting and might fall on others, then it is fair for others to take responsibility, and cut the tree down, for their own safety. This is in the case of the owner not doing so, beforehand.

Second, we realize that it is not enough to simply disagree with the owner's opinions, but that actual proof is required, for intervention. If it is not evident why intervention must be required, then no intervention should exist! When an owner and an interventor (someone who wants to take responsibility) go to court, in order to resolve a dispute, then it is up to social rule to dictate the result.

This is why we talk and argue our ideas. So, that we can imply what is right and what is wrong, in society, as a whole, and so be able to trust our fellow peoples' decisions.

Eventually, I wanted Stefan Molyneux's opinion in the matter; him being a person I share a lot of views in common with and who is able to debate well, and so sent him an email and received this response:

"I think that everything that is enforced rather than inflicted is superior, [so] I think we agree."

I conclude that he, and many on the forums, sum this idea into, 'we either have a contract or we don't.'

This is my final conclusion, which I consider the most practical:

In order to enforce conflict resolutions, we must decide which person has the higher moral ground. The ideals of the Non-Aggression Principle and Self-Ownership are insufficient for the resolution of conflicts, without proper investigation into the facts and nature of each conflict.

Only when there is no doubt that one side has a clearly higher moral position, over the other, then that side must enjoy the support of the community, as a whole, and of us as individuals, in private.