Shermer Interview

I enjoyed reading an interview of Michael Shermer recently by the neo-Objectivist organization The Atlas Society in its magazine "The New Individualist" (TNI). Shermer and the interviewer cover topics on libertarianism versus Objectivism, neo-Objectivism versus orthodox Objectivism, socialist Humanism versus libertarian Humanism, and a little bit of what I have labeled "genetic egoism". In reading this article, you might see why I felt I had to come up with a new term, Optihumanism, to describe the set of beliefs that I hold at the intersection of libertarianism, Objectivism, and Humanism.

Vongo

If you are a Blockbuster Total Access or a Netflix subscriber, consider Vongo instead. I have used Vongo for a few weeks now and I am a satisfied customer. It lets you download movies off of their website to watch on your computer for a flat fee of $9.99 per month. I have been waiting for something like this for years. Things just keep getting better and better.

Optimist Manifesto

I first learned of the book Life, Liberty, and Happiness: An Optimist Manifesto by Frank S. Robinson from an e-mail from the author himself. I am not certain how I came to be on his list of e-mail addresses but he correctly identified me as being within his target market. Being fond of the Humanist Manifesto and having named my own religion Optihumanism, the subtitle immediately caught my eye. I was further intrigued by the fact that he originally started out to write a letter to his daughter about life, something I have considered doing for my own children.

I have described my Optihumanism as a blend of Religious Humanism,
Neo-Objectivism, and Libertarian Transhumanism. Being at the tiny overlapping intersection of what are small minority beliefs to begin with, I suspected I was alone. You can imagine how pleased I was, then, to read in his introduction that his book "reflects elements of libertarianism, humanism, objectivism, and so forth". I even found a footnote in his chapter "The Meaning of Life" that leans toward Transhumanism.

The more I read, the more astonished I became that this book could so closely mirror my own beliefs while simultaneously covering so many different topics. It was not until I reached one of the last chapters where I finally found one issue, capital punishment, where I was not in substantial agreement with the author. It made me wonder how was it that we thought so much alike.

One possibility is that it is because we are reading many of the same books. A criticism I do have of this work is that it perhaps leans too heavily on repeating historical examples I have already read in other places. I can forgive this, however, if I consider that the author might have had a different target audience in mind where these core examples are still novel.

My other criticism is what I perceive to be his overuse of footnotes for parenthetical side comments. This seems to me to distract from the flow of reading his main text. I wonder if this comes from his twenty years of service as a judge in which footnotes in legal opinions frequently do convey significant information yet are considered subsidiary.

I started heartily recommending this book long before I finished reading it. Now that I have completed the text in its entirety and I am assured that there is nothing in it to which I have any strong objections, I am pleased to say that I am adding this title to both my top ten books list and my Optihumanist reading list. I plan to purchase a number of copies for my friends. I look forward to reading additional publications from this author in the future.

The table of contents follows:
Introduction
The Meaning of Life
Reason, Science, and Human Values
Living a Good Life
Happiness is a Choice
Satisfaction
Consciousness, Thought, and Personal Responsibility
Always Question
Relativism and Nonjudgmentalism
The Mystery of Creation
Freedom from Fear
Love, Marriage, and Sex
Political Vocabulary
The Social Contract
Individualism and Society
Government is the Problem
The Forced March to Paradise
The Era of Big Government
But What About the Truly Needy?
Wrongful Rights
America the Beautiful
The Morality of Free-Market Capitalism
Globalization and World Poverty
Why Corporations are Not Totally Evil Scum
Territoriality and Tribalism
Why the Gloom and Doom Crowd is Wrong
Man, Technology, and Nature
History and Its Lessons
Freedom of Expression
Race
Pro-Life and Pro-Choice
Animal Rights
Crime and Punishment
Homosexuality
The War with Islamic Extremism
Coda
Index

In Search of Memory

I have finished a number of books recently, some good, some not as good. One that I can recommend is In Search of Memory by Eric R. Kandel, winner of the Nobel Prize for his work in neuroscience. It is part autobiography and part history of neuroscience with a layman target audience. From reading this, I have concluded that one of the best ways to learn a science is to learn the history of that science. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the philosophy of mind from a reductionist viewpoint.

Religious Humanist Association

I created a webpage and a mailing list for a proposed democratic Religious Humanist Association (RHA). The purpose would be to promote Religious Humanism in the tradition of the Humanist Manifesto I in independent congregations and related organizations.

Democratic Minarchist Caucus

In 2005, I proposed an Objectivist Party. In May of 2006, I proposed instead to call it the Minarchist Party.

A day after elections, I am now proposing a Minarchist Caucus within the Democratic Party. It would parallel the Republican Libertarian Caucus and the Democratic Freedom Caucus.

The reason I am advocating forming it within the Democratic Party initially is because the state I live in is a one-party state with the Republicans dominant. In many of races on the ballot yesterday, there was only a Republican candidate running unopposed or a Republican versus a Libertarian.

In 2002 I ran for Congress in a four way race: Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and Green. The Democratic Party candidate for 2002 was a fairly weak one-issue candidate as no other Democrats wanted to run and lose in this Republican district. Later in 2004 the same Green Party candidate of 2002 ran as a Democrat where no Democrats would bother to do so. By joining the non-incumbent major party, he had secured a platform for his message he would not have otherwise had. I have been thinking about his tactic for two years now.

This Green Party candidate also ran as a Democrat in 2006. Given the mood of the nation yesterday, he did surprisingly well in the polls. I wonder how much better a minarchist Democrat with a message of small government and civil liberties might have fared in this Republican stronghold. In addition to gaining a platform for spreading your message, running as a candidate of the non-incumbent major party puts you in a position for victory when there is a strong anti-incumbent sentiment such as the vote yesterday.

I think the DeLay race also deserves some mention here. I think the lesson to members of the Libertarian Party should be obvious. This is another reason I am now advocating a caucus within a major party instead of working through a new third party.

If you are interested in this proposal for a Democratic Minarchist Caucus, please join me in discussion on our mailing list.

Religious Humanist Reading List

I started a Religious Humanist Reading List. I had been meaning to do it for some time but it was not until I was especially inspired by my reading of Timely and Timeless: The Wisdom of E. Burdette Backus this morning that I decided to go ahead and make the time to do it. I will be adding to this list of books over time.

In the Absence of God

I just finished the short book In the Absence of God: Religious Humanism as Spiritual Journey: with special reference to Julian Huxley by John H. Morgan, published this year. The title suggests that it covers Religious Humanism with an emphasis on Julian Huxley when in fact it is about Julian Huxley with an emphasis on his own formulation of Religious Humanism. If you have already read some of the original writings of Julian Huxley and you liked what you read, you will enjoy this book.

I wanted to share with you a couple of my favorite passages where the author quotes Huxley:

A Religion is an organ of man in society which helps him to cope with the problems of nature and his destiny -- his place and role in the universe. It always involves the sense of sacredness or mystery and of participation in a continuing enterprise; it is always concerned with the problem of good and evil and with what transcends the individual self and the immediate and present facts of every day. [p64]

For want of a better, I use the term divine, though this quality of divinity is not truly supernatural but transnatural -- it grows out of ordinary nature, but transcends it. The divine is what man finds worthy of adoration, that which compels his awe. [p84]

I caught an interview on the radio last night with Julia Sweeney, former castmember of Saturday Night Live and current atheist activist. If you listen to the audio archive, you will hear two things that I found quite interesting in light of what I recently read in Morgan's book. The first is that Sweeney believes that even when we lose our childhood fear of divine judgment, we remain moral because we have evolved to be so. I suspect that Morgan, who also authored Naturally Good: The Behavioral History of Moral Development, would agree.

The second is that toward the end of the interview Sweeney expressed her sense that something was missing from her life and that of her young daughter ever since she left the Catholic church. As she stated, it was not something that she could get from her local tennis club. I suggest it is what my wife and I were seeking for our family just as many others have before us ever since the revelation by Darwin about the origins of life on this planet. In the words of Morgan, it is this:

A humanistic religion, a religion based on the science of evolution and fostered by the awe and wonder perceived and adored in the creation of the cosmos by the human community, invites conscious development as we invite and work to foster ever deepening appreciation of nature and music and art within our offspring. [p119]

Privacy Disclaimer

I took a couple of photos of the decal in the U.T. Dallas library which reads "Audio Monitoring On These Premises / Louroe Electronics". I highlighted the position of the sign in red in the second photo so that you can see where it is located over the checkout desk.

The Louroe Electronics website states:

The First Amendment of the Constitution provides that any conversation between individuals is private, unless otherwise notified. In simple terms, this means that any overhearing or recording of a conversation is illegal ...unless both parties are aware that it is being done.

In order to comply with the law, LOUROE ELECTRONICS provides a disclaimer stating, AUDIO MONITORING ON THE PREMISES. These disclaimers must be affixed, in plain view, to all entrances where the microphones are installed.

I have been told that the audio monitoring in the library has been going on for years. I have been going to the library for years and this was the first time I noticed the decal. No other student or faculty that I have told about this was aware of this either.

I have two problems with this. The first is that it seems to me that a violation of privacy of this magnitude should require explicit acknowledgment on the part of the patron. It seems contradictory to put up a notice and then use hidden microphones. It suggests they do not really want people to know that their conversations are being recorded.

The second problem I have with this is that there is no consent. This is a government building funded by taxpayer dollars. I should not have to waive my privacy rights in order to use it. Whereas video monitoring records our actions within the building, audio monitoring records our verbalized thoughts and intentions. It is too much to ask that we yield our privacy rights on this level whenever we need to enter a public facility.

Update: I just got off of the phone with Ellen Safley, Senior Associate Director, University of Texas at Dallas Library. Whereas last week a librarian told me that hidden microphones were placed upstairs to monitor conversations for homeland security, Dr. Safley assured me that the only audio monitoring in the library took place in the immediate vicinity of the checkout desk. She stated that this was so that they could refer to the recording if there was a problem. I assume by this that she meant a conflict between a patron and a librarian. Although I was still unaware that I was being recorded while I was talking near the desk, I find this much less offensive than library-wide audio monitoring among the stacks, which she assured me is not taking place.

Audio Monitoring

Years ago I fought a town council in West Virginia that passed a law requiring convenience stores to purchase security cameras and to allow the police to take the tapes whenever they wanted them. I had argued that this was an example of a Big Brother video camera in our private businesses. They replied that it would reduce crime. I then asked whether they would consider putting security cameras in our homes if they thought it would reduce domestic violence. I had meant for the question to be rhetorical but one council member immediately answered yes.

This afternoon I submitted the following letter to the editor of the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) school newspaper:

Today I noticed an "Audio Monitoring" sign over the checkout desk in the U.T. Dallas library. A librarian explained to me that they used microphones to record conversations in the building for homeland security. This seems excessive for an unclassified facility.

I also asked the librarian if anyone had made any comments about the audio monitoring. She answered no with a questioning tone that communicated "Why should they?" Apparently those of us who do question such things are few and far between. If you are one of those, please join me on the Minarchist Party discussion list.

Shared Bookmarks

I have uploaded my bookmarks to del.icio.us, a website for storing and sharing bookmarks online. I will be updating them over time.

Microsoft and Libertarians

As a Java programmer, I followed news of Microsoft's anticompetitive practices closely over the years. I was interviewed by the trade press for a parody piece I wrote about it, The Ten Commandments of Java.

In the antitrust suit, one federal judge compared Microsoft to drug dealers and gangland killers. Another judge compared Microsoft to Tonya Harding. That was a number of years ago. Since then, Microsoft has paid billions of dollars in damages to the injured parties and everyone has pretty much settled.

I never forgot, though, my irritation with the national Libertarian Party for their public defense of Microsoft during the antitrust lawsuit. Instead of simply blaming the prosecution for enforcing antitrust laws and painting Microsoft as an innocent, the Libertarian Party should have pointed out that individuals have an alternative free market mechanism to punish Microsoft for its practices via the consumer boycott.

I just came across this blog entry I wanted to share with you that expresses my sentiments on this better than I ever have. It is Why Bill Gates is not Hank Rearden by Pedro Timóteo.