Letter to a Friend

Based on early episodes of Stefan Molyneux’s podcast on freedomainradio.com please check that out to fully understand both his view and my response.

Hi Rohan

Like most things in modern life the current medium for transferring ideas via short sharp instant messages is not adequate at all for philosophical commentary and conveying complex ideas. I have not listened to enough of Stefan Molyneux’s podcasts to give a definitive commentary on all of his ideas so instead I will merely comment on what I have heard. There may very well be a counter argument he makes in his later works for everything I say. However the issues with what his podcasts have laid out so far have huge and fundamental weaknesses that make the system he is selling not only unworkable but not the fluffy utopia that it seems. These are of course just my thoughts and I hope they are interesting.

This shall be made like any argument with a series of premises mostly laid down in the podcasts which are then assessed and then eventually my conclusion postulated in the previous paragraph should carry some weight. To quickly add to this my own thoughts are that ultimate freedom would be a wonderful thing however just because you really want it doesn’t mean it exists, Otherwise my pet dragon and magical powers would have freed me from my job a long while ago.

I would also like to add as a note that anything Stefan says should be carefully scrutinised after listening to his introduction where he promised a logical and empirical approach what was delivered was only a skeleton version of this product. Making large concessions and sweeping absolute statements which almost always declare an absolute right or wrong. I have always taken a degree of scepticism of anyone who claims an absolute answer in anything that isn’t mathematics and logic and even then these should not remain unquestioned.

Now the meat and bones to be looked at one part at a time. This will be ultimately a utilitarian approach on how viable this political view as well as a few ideas on how nice this system actually is to the individuals that make it up. The bullet points bellow will encompass the raison d’être of each section.

•          Gaining Power
•          Maintaining Power
•         Human Nature
•          The ugly side of the free market

Gaining Power

The pursuit of power and control over large groups of people as obviously been a steady evolution from man kinds early days to now where we have large countries controlled by states which exist  in some eyes to look after their population and in others eyes to manipulate and use them for nefarious ends. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Now the Stateless society, which in this case will always refer to Stefan Molyneux’s model to be found on freedomainradio.com. This is a model promoting pacifism and the free market as its two founding pillars. However in the environment we live in any attempt to take over a country with non violence is going to be very difficult. A steady education of people towards the stateless society’s agenda followed by support in elections could see this happen. However seeing as they are run by states it seems fit that the state agenda is what will be imprinted onto the system. Now the state of course in democratic countries is run by an elected group of people which form a representation of that group of people’s views. In order to govern effectively these representative often belong to political parties which have a philosophy and try to implement that. So it seems reasonable to believe that what is often made to sound like an evil machine is actually just a bunch of political philosophies trying to win support and power through votes. Stefan’s own model would have to do this short of a military coup and a complaint made about the states agenda in the education sector would be mirrored by the stateless society party in order to gain power mumble hypocrisy mumble mumble.  Anyway a long period of effective education could lead to the rise of a stateless society party and from there to a country where the government is dissembled. A look at history and the previous stateless society known as communism which never made it past the transition stage which was meant to prepare a country to exist without a state indicates that not everyone may be as willing to relinquish power as Stefan might hope even among similar thinkers. Communism itself also carries a lot of bad press despite its origins in Marxism being one of the fairest and theoretically best ways to govern society.  A view brought about because of its disfigurement over years of trying to maintain power with the various products being Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism. It would seem likely any real world attempt to implement the stateless society would see its original views having to adapt to win favour and power in pursuit of its goals which would also be the biggest threat to it achieving those goals. Might I also add that Stefan’s own theory is very different to communism despite the obvious stateless end goal that they both share. In fact and I shall mention later why communism (Marxism) represents a more pleasant master when left to live under its rule.

Maintaining Power

The stateless society has won the vote and managed to avoid being distorted by the whims of people. Now in its end state it represents the ultimate free market governed entirely by itself. By itself I mean the whims of the free market through an almost collectively representation of the spending habits of those within it. There is now only an economic price to be paid for any misdeeds and those are doled out by the Dispute Resolution Organization’s and the system that they all share.  This of course in reality would not be a global take over but like all political movements confined to a set group of countries. The power of the Dispute Resolution Organizations would be significantly reduced by this seeing as anyone who breaks an agreement can just leave. In Stefan’s original version I believe the assumption is made that this is a global movement which everyone has signed up to. So with no laws or rules just financial penalties any sort of stability should be highly suspect. I realise Stefan sees it as impossible for people to try to go against these rulings because being financially crippled to too difficult to live with. It should be obvious this is nonsense humans were fine without currency for thousands of years and that was at a time when pacifists were not in the majority like the stateless society. I will ignore this for now and answer the internal turmoil of a stateless society in the next section. The biggest issue with its long term prosperity is anybody who doesn’t share its pacifistic ideals. In Richard Dawkins ‘The Selfish Gene’ Evolutionary stable strategies are discussed. One of the strategies is to behave like a dove and it runs from fights. The other is a hawk which always fights, the basic gist is that in an all dove or all hawk society everything is fine. However if a dove society is invaded by a hawk then hawk numbers skyrocket and doves plummet and then it sea sores for a while before reaching a stable point for obvious reasons. This brings us nicely to our stateless society that has no standing army and no one within willing to fight and unlike the dove it cannot run because it is fixed to the land it exists in. Any nation that forgoes its niceties with the stateless society and decides to invade wins. Like all fights where one side has an army and the other chooses not to have one it generally ends one way. So the stateless society would require political allies that would be prepared to defend it. Which in all likelihood would want money to do so, meaning that some sort of charge for everyone who lives in the stateless society would be inclined to pay essentially setting up a protection racquet. This charge kind of like a tax which of course everyone would have to pay to keep the stateless society which would otherwise be crushed and added to a state once more. Pacifism was also a key tenant of Christianity until it no longer had Roman legions to protect it at which point it picked up arms to instantiate its power. The chance of the stateless society surviving without any violent means either by proxy or on its own seems unlikely. This also means it is still dependant on a state or setting up infrastructure slowly morphing itself into a state.

Human Nature

The argument is made that anyone who drops out of economic standing within the stateless society will not last very long and be reported by those watching to DRO’s to deal with. Leading to the conclusion that only limited amounts of people would do this. Of course this is a free market and as in recent years free markets when left unwatched are unstable and companies are likely to take shortcuts to get ahead or just simply make mistakes. These companies have employees who all have insurance against being fired and thus the insurance company has a vested interest in keeping the company afloat. This would be the norm in the stateless society. However sometimes people are bad at their job and will be fired and receive nothing. These people will exist in large numbers as on the whole humans make mistakes and are not always that bright. They also tend to want more for very little and with the cost of healthcare, education, security and everything else now no longer insured if they lose their job it would seem people would be in a fearful situation most days. Those who can no longer support themselves get dropped from the DRO system and live in the gaps being constantly monitored by the DRO’s who have huge amounts of power and control and with no monopoly laws could all exist under one roof. They are also not bound by any enforcement that commands them to remain as pacifists. It wouldn’t take long for people dropping off the grid or merely unhappy with having to live in fear of being financially crippled to band together and start a revolution to ensure that they will all be protected. The people who are then within the stateless society being assaulted by the new rebel group will need protection from the DRO’s who will merely need more power and the use of violence to remove the threat. Now as farfetched as this rapid dissent into rebellion sounds just look around the world at people who are suffering and how often it is those people who end up controlling the country before long for example The Round Heads in England, The Bolsheviks in Russia, The Founding Fathers in America and of course the huge list of French revolutions. Power in the world is gained and maintained by force this applies to nature and it applies to humans (also part of nature despite our ideas of grandeur), there are few examples that counter this and non that have lasted very long. Even on a small scale order breaks quickly e.g. The London riots and New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.

The Ugly Side of the Free Market

It is assumed throughout Stefan’s writings that corruption is sourced from the state and that once it is removed corruption will simply vanish. Any look at world corporations or any human endeavour should dispel this idea. People are ultimately individuals out for their own survival or if they get comfortable enough their own ambitions. The direction a country or company or family takes  is often that of the most powerful member rather than a consensus. That direction is of course not always a morale one but ultimately we all have different views on morale’s and the world is merely created by opposing objectives sugar coated with morale reasoning to make us all feel a little better. The natural world controlled by competition and the theory of evolution culminating in a survival of the fittest is one of the most ruthless and difficult places to survive and certainly something we would not like to be ruled by still. This is however the core of the stateless society. The free market is very much the economic incarnation of survival of the fittest and certainly not a peaceful house of freedom where everyone is equal. This is where I would recommend communism over the stateless economy of Stefan Molyneux everyday of the week. As much as we might all hope that a stateless system might work this is ultimately a utopian idea where reality and human nature rendering the stateless society the most dystopian utopian idea I have ever been presented with. To expect companies and people to always to the right thing when in the free market their ultimate goal is measured in dollar signs is a difficult one to understand.

Conclusion

Like I have stated at every turn there are obvious weaknesses with the stateless society and its applicability in the real world. As bad as some states are they are a concession which we ultimately choose to submit a portion of our freedom to in order to survive. Maybe we should be taught how to survive in the wild giving us a better chance to turn the social contract down but ultimately Stefan Molyneux’s views have been allowed to exist because of the state that protected and cared for him. I will admit there are areas of my life I would like more freedom in but I also do not rate my chances without the state I was born in to. Of course this is not the case for everyone and people will always disagree and have a right too which is why governments change all the time. The state is allowed to exist because its population benefit more from it than they would from the effort needed to change it or break the social contract. When breaking the social contract becomes more viable than following it a revolution is likely to change this. Many may not always like the state but maybe like Stefan says we should try to envisage a world without them. How would the world look if western democracy was removed? I would given the choice certainly choose to live in one of those states instead of any other state or system of government that has ever existed. Stefan’s stateless society is a nice academic idea but in practice is not viable or likely to be the bastion of freedom it sells itself as unless you are head of a large company and wield a giant amount of financial weight

These are just some thoughts and can be criticised and picked apart where necessary and I admit given the little amount of time I had to spend will be flawed at points but I would certainly stand by a lot of what I have thought and the suspicion of the stateless society unless it had a major rework.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T

belief 
n.

1. something believed; opinion; conviction.

2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof.

3. confidence; faith; trust: children's belief in parents.

4. a religious creed or faith.

Consider an island on which there are two people A and B. A holds a belief which to them means certain foods are prohibited. B has no such belief and can eat anything edible.

B is given control over how the food is split between both A and B. The pieces of food will be X and Y. A can eat X but holds a belief which means they choose not to eat Y. This is where B’s choice becomes important. Within the modern world great emphasis is placed upon the freedom of others and their right to believe and think whatever they like. This is of course is important and should not ever be changed however the issue comes from the virulent nature of some beliefs and their brutish and arrogant assertions which can encroach upon the freedom of others.

Personally everyone has the right to think and mould ideas however they like and also the right to voice these opinions, however once voiced it is also the right of everyone else to question and debate these views. After all ideas have elements which can be tested using empirical evidence and logic to convey the validity of these ideas. In a perfect world this would mainly be done in a purely objective fashion with no emotional attachment to the ideas and their fate. This of course comes with the proviso that the challenge of these ideas is constructive and based around reasons and not ad hominem attacks upon the arbiter of the idea or subjective comments which are baseless. This is not the case and it causes vast problems when trying to provide freedom for all.

Now back to the scenario, the fairest way to split the two pieces of food is 50/50. Both A and B are capable of eating both X and Y without incurring any physical consequence.  To some it would be disrespectful of B to force A to eat Y. However this is deliberately choosing one side over the other on subjective grounds. In a similar regard it is wrong of A to demand a certain pattern of behaviour from B because of A’s personal belief. This belief could be affiliated with a religion or just a personnel philosophy it makes no difference. A has no right to change the behaviour of B because of his own thoughts on the world just like B should not do the same unto A.

For example A’s belief should be considered to have more weight behind it than B’s personal preference to eat Y instead of X and vice versa. Given this there is only one way to split the two which is 50/50. Should there exist a queue for the food in which first come first serve applies then whomever is first will get to choose X or Y with no consequences. This would be exactly the same as if A or B are given first pick of X and Y, whichever one the person with first choice would like they get. So if B wants Y he may take Y with no judgement even though A believes they cannot eat X. Again this comes down to the fact that A’s reason for wanting Y is purely subjective.

This remains the same for any belief or preference unless one of A or B has a ailment which would inhibit them from eating one of either X or Y in which case there is more than just opinion behind the preference and the food should be split accordingly. For example if A is allergic to X then they should receive Y and B X.

This should apply to everything and work both ways. You have no right to assert your beliefs or preferences upon others just like they have no right to do the same to you. Although it is clear everyone is not equal to one another in so many ways we should at least give everyone the freedom we would demand if placed in the same situation. The baseless argument that can be thrown at people who are not a member of a large social group or religion is that they are not respecting an established pattern of behaviour. This is both hypocritical as it potentially undermines the persons opinions and thoughts showing the same disrespect they would charge that person with coupled with an ignorant disregard for the rights of others even though they would demand those rights themselves.

Gettier

Gettier, Clark and the tripartite theory of knowledge all closely link together in the complicated debate that has become the definition of knowledge. As Gettier questioned is justified true belief knowledge picking flaws in an attempt to define knowledge. This definition was the tripartite theory of knowledge which shows in three steps whether someone can have knowledge as shown below.

S knows that P IFF           i) P is true, ii) S believes that P, and iii) S is justified in believing that P.

In principle the tripartite theory of knowledge will allow anyone to decide whether an agent has knowledge based on a certain event. However as shown by Gettier this is not the case as it is possible through what has become known as Gettier cases to show that this rule is not all encompassing. It allows for the agent to believe in certain cases that they have knowledge when in actual fact their belief is based on false premises. Gettier wrote this in his only paper on epistemology titled is true justified belief knowledge. In this he gave counterexamples which showed that although the agent is justified in believing that something is true it cannot say that it has knowledge. Gettier offers no changes to the tripartite theory to allow it to accept the scenarios he proposed as he did not publish or even show any interest in following up his paper so all the responses have come from other philosophers who have either tried to patch up the theory or tried to say the Gettier cases themselves are not valid counterexamples.

Clark who makes the point that if the agent has solid grounds for their belief then they can in turn infer that they have knowledge Clarks shown below.

S knows that P IFF i) P is true, ii) S believes that P, iii) S is justified in believing that P, and iv) it is on true grounds that S believes P. Michael Clark (a response to Gettier)

This now means that as long as there are solid grounds for the belief and the agent believes in it they can have knowledge. However this leads on to what is then known as the chain where each one of these grounds must also be checked and in turn the grounds of the grounds of the grounds of the belief must also be called into question and so on. Only when all the grounds have been proven can the original belief be fully grounded and considered knowledge. This can of course become very complicated and it is quite possible that several different grounds can be balanced upon each other leading to a mesh network wherein if one of the links becomes un-grounded then all of the beliefs connected to this can no longer be considered knowledge. Although Clark’s changes to the theory improve upon the original but it still will not satisfy all scenarios.

For example the dictionary definition of knowledge is: the psychological result of perception, learning and reasoning.

This depicts knowledge to in fact be from a first person perspective and not from an observer like Gettier and Clark. The observer has prior knowledge of the event being considered by the agent and can therefore make the assessment that the agent is not justified in their belief and that they do not have knowledge.

Knowledge itself should be considered as the best available explanation to the agent at the time of the event considering that this explanation is fully grounded at the time from the best possible information available. Making knowledge an evolutionary concept which with an infinite amount of time would be correct at the end and considered correct at all points before that.

An example of this can be observed in the case an automatic hoover which has a basic program which allows it to map the world around it and to remember everywhere it's been. When first turned on, sensors will tell it if the squares around it are flat and if it has cleaned them or not. Using Clark’s theory the machine can when first switched on and consider according to its memory which is all it will use as its grounded reason for making its assumptions. Its first assumption is “The world around it is all flat therefore the world is flat”.

The machine will recursively follow a pattern of going to every single tile possible, as it passes through a tile it will consider that tile clean or not as well as whether its surroundings are flat or not to make sure it does not run into anything. Eventually one of the tiles around it will not be flat. Once this has happened, its old assumption which it previously considered knowledge is now no longer fully grounded and is in fact incorrect. At this stage the machine can now make a new assumption that not all the world is flat and its knowledge has evolved.

As the hoover has a perfect memory it can give an exact numerical value for the amount of the world that it knows is flat. So if it has searched 100 tiles and five of them have not been flat they it can say that 5% of the world is not flat. In this case the five tiles will be considered as P. P is true the agent believes that it is true the agent is justified in believing it is true and the belief is fully grounded because its memory is perfect and the world that has explored is all confirms this therefore an exact value can be given.

This cycle will continue for an infinite amount of time while the machine explores the world around it. At no point can the hoover hope to know the world outside what it has explored. However it can happily make statements about the world that has been memorised. At every single point it can consider itself to have the best available knowledge about the world is true at that point in time. If you were to look at the hoovers statements from a observers perspective with prior knowledge you could easily say that it's justified true belief is not knowledge however as the definition of knowledge itself is the perspective, learning and reasoning of the person or in this case thing, then from its point of view the belief it holds will be not only justified but correct and therefore knowledge.

This approach would mean that Clarks definition would require an extra line that would essentially say that while all the grounds at the time are fully grounded, can change when new information becomes available and the outcome should change appropriately along with the belief that fuels it. Taking this new five line rule is shown below then the agent can consider it self to have knowledge.

S knows that P IFF           i) P is true, ii) S believes that P, iii) S is justified in believing that P, iv)it is on true grounds that S believes that P, and v) P and its grounds remain the same.

This rule however does not work if two people are both using the same rule this case should call them X and Y. If X goes up and down stairs on the right-hand side and Y uses the left-hand side. They are both on the same staircase with X going up Y going down. When they will collide both will consult their rule and both will consider their knowledge to be incorrect and change their behaviour appropriately to use the opposite side. From this the two will then when the next and are going up and down stairs in opposite directions will collide again this will recursively occur whenever they meet on the stairs. Meaning the knowledge they hold at different points is both correct and incorrect which would point to the fact they have no knowledge because of its continuous fluctuation.

It is from this it can be considered that no matter how many changes to the theory philosophers come up with the whole idea of an all-encompassing definition of knowledge is one of grandeur that most disciplines have sought after from the theory of everything that physicists dream of but have yet to achieve to systems people believe will win every time when gambling. As physics and gambling both require knowledge to prove their theories then knowledge itself should be considered infinitely more complicated as neither of the two aforementioned examples have ever been reached. Surely then knowledge itself should also be considered near impossible to explain or to define without having itself broken down into many smaller parts like physics has with its equations in order to explain events. As knowledge encompasses everything it is unlikely to be defined in such a way that the definition is able to cover all possible scenarios past present or future.

X is the same person as Y if and only if

Who are you at the moment, a question that could quite easily flummox most people? Describing and being able to convey who you are to others is tricky so add to that question the metaphorical prefix and the suffix in the form of who were you and who will you become is going to take a while to provide a decent answer.

With about 7 billion people alive today it is probably worth having the ability to pick yourself out from the crowd and answer the previously posed question. Some people have set about this task already explaining who we are in many different forms one of which is quantitative identity, X and Y so often used in mathematics to describe numbers and objects can now be used to denote a person. They can be used to describe the same person at different stages of their life. For example X could be a young boy and Y an old man. Which leads to this first part of the statement which is “X is the same person as Y if and only if” with different endings being alluded to below to best explain when X and Y are the same or if they can be.

There are two prominent criteria for X to be the same as Y, these are the memory criterion and the bodily criterion. Both have their own way of explaining identity and making it quantitative. The first which is the memory criterion which dictates that someone who has memories of their previous state is the same person as the one who existed when that state was in the present. So essentially X is the same person as Y if and only if Y has memories of being X.

¹The bodily criterion dictates that if X is a kid from 20 years ago and Y has the same body as X then they are the same person. This means that the bodily criterion can convict Y of a crime X has committed even if they have no memory of it as long as they share the same body.¹

¹The memory criterion relies on consciousness simply being that X and Y are the same consciousness if they share memories.¹ Consciousness is probably better defined as the blueprint for personality. It is often said that people don't change and the only reason for anyone changing is the memories they have gained throughout their life and how they react to them. Physics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed only transferred. That same logic could be applied to consciousness when someone dies their conscious is transferred to a living entity with the same personality but with a different physical form that will again if placed in exactly the same scenarios make exactly the same decisions.

So X and Y are the same person if and only if the two are placed in a series of scenarios with no previous memories and they make exactly the same decisions and the reason for making  those decisions and thought behind them is exactly the same.

This means that unlike the original memory criterion if X committed a murder which is only discovered after X's existence has finished and Y's has commenced then Y can still be charged because despite there being no memory of the event the decision-making process that led to X taking someone's life is also present in Y.

²Mentioned earlier the bodily criterion states that we are the same if we have the same body as stated earlier. So if X is originally a child and 20 years later Y inhabits the same body despite being an adult then they are the same.²

This of course is all well and good as long as you can define what a body is. The human body is made up of billions of cells; each of these cells like people can only live for so long therefore the cells that made up the child's body will be different to the cells that make up the adult body some 20 years later. If X and Y have completely different cells then their body is completely so they surely cannot be one and the same.

A way around this is to assume that although the cells will completely change the new cells will presumably inhabit the same entity as the previous ones. Therefore the position of that entity and the cells contained within the body at that time and place. If every change in the entity is recorded into an array along with the entities position in the universe essentially it will be possible to track back from Y to X each state that has existed and confirm if they are the same body.

This would create the rule X is the same person as Y if and only if when tracked back through Y's array there exists a state that is equal to the state of X. This would also allow fission cases to have each of the identical people within each case distinguish who is who and that they are not the same.

³A fission case is where an identical copy of you is created. Then the memory criterion would dictate that because you both share the memories you are the same person. Again the same issue occurs with the bodily criterion where if the at an atomic level then you would have the same body and therefore you would be the same person.³

The change in the bodily criterion would mean that though at the initial point when your copied you would indeed be the same person the minute a new entry is created in the universe position array then you'd be two different people as you would no longer be able to match up every single part of the array although you would share a significant amount of similarities.

The adapted memory criterion may have redefining our conscience but it will still suffer from fission cases as the newly theorised conscious cannot be created or destroyed and therefore would be an impossibility to create a copy. Meaning that both fission cases would be proved wrong and the adapted memory criterion proved right or vice versa.

With the fission case issue forcing the memory criterion back to the drawing board and the issue that X and Y are merely linked by a memory, a shrewder change is needed. If Y is changed to be itself and each state it has been along its journey to be added to Y with varying amounts presumably becoming smaller over time. Then you can prove that X is part of Y as no matter how slight its effect X is within Y. So Y and X are the same person.

For example M (Y) = Y + 1/2X. Then suppose that the next stage in this person's life is represented by Z then M (Z) = Z +1/2Y + 1/4X with M representing a function that gives a person’s memories. The previous states that person will always be fractal and never be zero meaning that if X was a young boy, Y a middle-aged man and Z an old man. X would always be a part of Z that cannot be removed.

The reason why it is impossible for X to not be a part of Z is because although there may no longer be any memories that Z can remember about being X the thought patterns and the way that Z approaches every part of his life will have been set up as such as a direct result of something X has done. Each of the steps after X is an evolution which requires an original step to begin and without this step Z could not exist. So X and Y are the same person, if X no matter how smaller percentage exists in the total memory of Y

In terms of the fission case related to this new memory criterion the original clones like the bodily criterion would be the same person after that point they would become less and less alike and can never be considered as the same.

In conclusion to truly define whether X and Y are the same person a number of dependencies would be required. Both the memory and bodily criterion should be combined to create a larger rule which essentially combines the adapted bodily criterion using the universe positional array and the evolutionary memory criterion to create a single all-encompassing formula to define if person X is the same as person Y. This would minimise the effect of any fission case surrounding a person and also give the best possible identification of X and Y. So X and Y are the same person if the adapted bodily and memory criterions are true.

Hello World

As a brief introduction I am 22 years old well at least I was at the time this was written. Having been assigned the name of Thomas at birth and then Tom by most people years later writing took my fancy. The reason is simple having gone through 22 years of life my pursuit of interesting ideas often gets left behind and forgotten in place of football results and video game manuals. It has long been evident that instead of just thinking about ideas and briefly boring anyone within ear shot that these ideas should be written down to both improve my own understanding of them and to bore people in another medium.

With the rise of social media it seems everyone is writing more but most the time about nothing or at least in my opinion nothing. Anyone who knows me will be aware that small talk or mindless data transfers bore me beyond reason. This is not out of any need to offend the people or that what people are doing isn’t interesting to them or anyone else merely the fact that it is boring to me. To get to know someone I would much rather get their take on what they think is a good way to govern people or what they think about the universe than the contents of their breakfast, the quantity of alcohol ingested the night before and the location at which said alcohol was purchased.

Like peoples taste in music differs so does my taste in conversation which would be considered to be away from the norm. Small talk just doesn’t resonate with me as it isn’t really giving a lot away about what the person thinks. In the same respect no one has to like my attempt at writing some philosophical pieces. This is merely a space for me to write down my thoughts on the world whether they are listened to or not. If you end up liking these pieces and wish to comment and discuss further then great if not there is an almost a vast amount of things to do and I would strongly urge you to do what you enjoy and not fall asleep to my musings. Unless of course you have been suffering from insomnia and I have somehow developed a personnel cure for you in which case please inform your doctor of my blog and have him spread the word.

Philosophy: The study of general and fundamental problems such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and language. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy)

Now I was once told during a brief spell at the University of Birmingham (Studying Computer Science) by my Philosophy lecturer that the only good philosophy is published philosophy. This view didn’t sit well with me as in my opinion everyone will have something worthwhile to say. After all published philosophy is written by people, a quick look will also reveal you are a person and although the authors of published philosophy have had more training and spent more time on it this does not mean that there isn’t good philosophy beyond the published kind and that it is out of all of our reaches. This also does not mean what I am writing is good merely that it can be done by anyone and I wish to create a premise where I have a chance even if it may be biased in my favour. We all face the same existential issues and possess the ability to communicate our thoughts on these general and fundamental problems to one another. Whether what is written is right or not is for every individual to decide, of course using a logical and rational thought process to assess the material does help get a general picture otherwise there is a danger of descending into complete randomness, but these tools at least in their basic form are easy to pick up at any good hardware store.

Another quick proviso is that I have no qualms with any idea. It has become the bedrock of my thinking that any idea can be expressed and should be however when that idea is made public it can be scrutinised and discussed. This goes for every idea including but not limited to personnel beliefs, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs and political beliefs. I will most likely deal with all these topics in a purely rational and logical way to the best of my ability and use on the whole objective arguments to explore these. I will also clarify that scrutinised and discuss does not mean to abuse or discriminate against an individual person this wholly encompasses the idea itself and not its connection to any one person or group of people coupled with the intent of evolving the meme. For me an argument is not between people to prove one right and the other wrong but a mechanism to evolve a meme.

Meme: An idea behaviour or style which spreads from person to person. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme)

From here onwards there will be more substance but it seemed like a decent way to explain what the blog was meant to be about and who I am as well as giving myself a sort of framework to build on. I hope you enjoy reading more of what I write and If not all the best with whatever you do. J