Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities by Chris Kluwe
Authors: Chris Kluwe
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with empathy, enlightened self-interest will never cost another individual his rights, as that leads inevitably to conflict.
The rights of individuals in a stable society are:
The Right to Free Will—Whatever actions consenting adults take that do not deprive other individuals of the opportunity to exercise their own free will are nobody’s goddamned business but the people’s involved. Live your own life and let other people live theirs.
The Right to Knowledge—All individuals must have access to the fundamental basics of education and all information available in the society. The only way for a person to make rational choices is to have all the information in hand so he can weigh the potential benefits and consequences. Ignorance can be only a personal choice, not the enforcement of others. All requests for information will themselves be a matter of public record; a truly free society has no need for privacy laws because everyone knows who is watching at any given time.
The Right to Humanity—Any individual, regardless of race, gender, species, or origin (biological or nonbiological), who can demonstrate empathy, logic, and enlightened self-interest shall be regarded as human and benefit from all rights and protections afforded thereof. Appearances don’t mean a thing. Actions do.
Who Is John Galt?
S o I forced myself to read
Atlas Shrugged
. Apparently I harbor masochistic tendencies; it was a long, hard slog, and by the end I felt as if Ayn Rand had violently beaten me about the head and shoulders with words. I feel I would be doing all of you a disservice (especially those who think Rand is really super-duper awesome) if I didn’t share some thoughts on this weighty tome.
Who is John Galt?
John Galt (as written in said novel) is a deeply flawed, sociopathic ideal of the perfect human. John Galt does not recognize the societal structure surrounding him that allows him to exist. John Galt, to be frank, is a turd.
However, John Galt is also very close to greatness. The only thing he is missing, the only thing Ayn Rand forgot to take into account when writing
Atlas Shrugged,
is empathy.
John Galt talks about intelligence and education withoutdiscussing who will pay for the schools, who will teach the teachers. John Galt has no thought for his children, or their children, or what kind of world they will have to occupy when the mines run out and the streams dry up. John Galt expects an army to protect him but has no concern about how it’s funded or staffed. John Galt spends his time in a valley where no disasters occur, no accidents happen, and no real life takes place.
John Galt lives in a giant fantasy that’s no different from an idealistic communist paradise or an anarchist’s playground or a capitalist utopia. His world is flat and two-dimensional. His world is not real, and that is the huge, glaring flaw with objectivism.
John Galt does not live in reality.
In reality, hurricanes hit coastlines, earthquakes knock down buildings, people crash cars or trip over rocks or get sick and miss work. In reality, humans make good choices and bad choices based on forces even they sometimes don’t understand. To live with other human beings, to live in society, requires that we understand that shit happens and sometimes people need a safety net. Empathy teaches us that contributing to this safety net is beneficial for all, because we never know when it will be our turn.
If an earthquake destroys half the merchandise in my store or levels my house, that’s something I can’t control; it doesn’t matter how prepared I was or how hard I worked. Trying to recover from something like that can cripple a person, both financially and mentally, unless he has some help from those who understand that we’re all in this together, we need each other to function as a society, and the next earthquake might hit one of
our
houses.
If a volcano erupts and takes out vital transportation and infrastructure, should we just
The rights of individuals in a stable society are:
The Right to Free Will—Whatever actions consenting adults take that do not deprive other individuals of the opportunity to exercise their own free will are nobody’s goddamned business but the people’s involved. Live your own life and let other people live theirs.
The Right to Knowledge—All individuals must have access to the fundamental basics of education and all information available in the society. The only way for a person to make rational choices is to have all the information in hand so he can weigh the potential benefits and consequences. Ignorance can be only a personal choice, not the enforcement of others. All requests for information will themselves be a matter of public record; a truly free society has no need for privacy laws because everyone knows who is watching at any given time.
The Right to Humanity—Any individual, regardless of race, gender, species, or origin (biological or nonbiological), who can demonstrate empathy, logic, and enlightened self-interest shall be regarded as human and benefit from all rights and protections afforded thereof. Appearances don’t mean a thing. Actions do.
Who Is John Galt?
S o I forced myself to read
Atlas Shrugged
. Apparently I harbor masochistic tendencies; it was a long, hard slog, and by the end I felt as if Ayn Rand had violently beaten me about the head and shoulders with words. I feel I would be doing all of you a disservice (especially those who think Rand is really super-duper awesome) if I didn’t share some thoughts on this weighty tome.
Who is John Galt?
John Galt (as written in said novel) is a deeply flawed, sociopathic ideal of the perfect human. John Galt does not recognize the societal structure surrounding him that allows him to exist. John Galt, to be frank, is a turd.
However, John Galt is also very close to greatness. The only thing he is missing, the only thing Ayn Rand forgot to take into account when writing
Atlas Shrugged,
is empathy.
John Galt talks about intelligence and education withoutdiscussing who will pay for the schools, who will teach the teachers. John Galt has no thought for his children, or their children, or what kind of world they will have to occupy when the mines run out and the streams dry up. John Galt expects an army to protect him but has no concern about how it’s funded or staffed. John Galt spends his time in a valley where no disasters occur, no accidents happen, and no real life takes place.
John Galt lives in a giant fantasy that’s no different from an idealistic communist paradise or an anarchist’s playground or a capitalist utopia. His world is flat and two-dimensional. His world is not real, and that is the huge, glaring flaw with objectivism.
John Galt does not live in reality.
In reality, hurricanes hit coastlines, earthquakes knock down buildings, people crash cars or trip over rocks or get sick and miss work. In reality, humans make good choices and bad choices based on forces even they sometimes don’t understand. To live with other human beings, to live in society, requires that we understand that shit happens and sometimes people need a safety net. Empathy teaches us that contributing to this safety net is beneficial for all, because we never know when it will be our turn.
If an earthquake destroys half the merchandise in my store or levels my house, that’s something I can’t control; it doesn’t matter how prepared I was or how hard I worked. Trying to recover from something like that can cripple a person, both financially and mentally, unless he has some help from those who understand that we’re all in this together, we need each other to function as a society, and the next earthquake might hit one of
our
houses.
If a volcano erupts and takes out vital transportation and infrastructure, should we just
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