Lesson 2: Liberty is the Basis for Objective Morality

Lesson 2: Liberty is the Basis for Objective Morality

Morality

Morality is an assignment of right or wrong to acts and objects.

As explained in lesson one in the decision making process, a person who is about to commit an act they believe is morally wrong will experience negative feelings to discourage the action.  The subconscious initiates a negative feeling to prevent the act because completing the action will result in a loss of self worth that results in negative feelings.  Your value of your self decreases when you commit an act that you perceive as being wrong.  

We also experience moral feelings in the perception of immoral acts or objects.  Moral feelings typically consist of anger, sadness, and joy.  Anger when we witness an immoral act or are subject to the immorality of someone else and we can resist, sadness when we cannot, and joy when we perceive justice, where the wrong act has been revenged, righted or prevented.  

Objective morality is based on the preservation of free motion in a multi being setting.  

I’m going to explain how that applies to human beings, and then I’ll explain what it means.

In all settings human beings want to do what they want to do.  All human beings can do what they want to do so long as they are not imposed on.  If the limits of each person’s liberty are reached where they interfere with the liberty of someone else, then all people can do what they want to do, which is the human ideal.  

There are two categories of imposition with three subsections.  The two categories are direct, and circumstantial.  

Direct Imposition

A: Imposing spatial restrictions, physically or through threat limiting where someone can go in a neutral setting.  

B: Imposing physical harm.

C: Imposing on someone’s property which represents their means to do.  

Circumstantial Imposition

A:Systems: An individual’s opportunities to do are determined by their circumstances, most specifically, their opportunities to make money and have time.  Systems are primarily responsible for an individual’s circumstances.  Systems exist by way of collective consent and participation.  Therefore systems that produce trapping circumstances for individual’s is an imposition by the collective on those individuals.

B: Deception: By causing an individual to believe something is true that is false or false that is true it harms motivation, because what an individual likes is affected by what they believe is true and false.  Meaning deception can cause people to like what they wouldn’t like and do what they wouldn’t do.  Obviously, it also causes people to be less capable of understanding and navigating their circumstances which causes them to be less capable of doing what they want to do.  

C: Time: Since time is required to do people can impose on the time of others, although time is mainly considered in the applications of rules that do not prevent imposition.  We have rules because we are typically freer with them than we are without them.  An illustrative example is a rule against theft.  Without agreeing to such a rule and being able to enforce it, most people’s time would be spent guarding against their property and they wouldn’t be able to be productive in other capacities.  A rule like a law against theft results in net liberty.  It prevents imposition.  Other rules, like in a job setting or school setting may not prevent any imposition, but they facilitate a common purpose like production or education.  In that facilitation of purposes, time is saved by allowing all parties to achieve a higher output in that common purpose.  For example, assigned seating in a classroom may not prevent imposition, since the act of a student choosing their seat doesn’t prevent anyone else from doing what they want to do. However, if choosing seats causes students to excessively socialize and this distracts the class then it takes more time to learn which imposes on the time of everyone involved in the purpose of education in that classroom.  The rule is morally sound, because it prevents imposition on people’s time.  

D: Speech: Speech is only objectively imposing when it is a threat.  Otherwise people should be free to say what they want to say to one another so long as each party has the ability to depart the other.  Someone can say the same thing to 2 different people and one is offended and one is not.  If a person is offended by something that is their choice to be offended.  They can either understand why they are offended to overcome the offense, explain why they are offended to the offending party, or choose not associate with the offender.  The offender has not imposed because the feeling is imposed by the individual’s interpretation of what is being said, not what is being said, and that’s whether or not it was intended to be offensive.  

Justification for Imposition

The justification for imposition is to impose to prevent or remove imposition.

A moral assignment cannot be correct without knowing whether the imposing act witnessed was to prevent or remove imposition.  

Liberty and Tyranny, the Moral Determinant in Conscious Motion.

Objective morality is based on the preservation of free motion in a multi being setting.  If people have relatively equal opportunities for money and time to facilitate what they want to do, and people do not impose on one another all people can do what they want to do.  They’re free to do anything so long as what it is does not interfere with what others want to do, based on the definitions of imposition defined above.  It facilitates the greatest and most diverse expression of subjective creativity.  

Subjective morality becomes imposition when acts that do not impose are regarded as immoral.  If people say that something someone does is wrong but what they do doesn’t interfere with what someone else does, then the prohibition of the act is imposition.  

The tyrant imposes on others so long as there is no consequence imposed for doing so.  The tyrant is imposed on when he cannot return a consequence to others.  Each individual and group perceives others in that relationship, groups and individuals they can impose on and groups and individuals who can impose on them.  This is in the absence of objective morality, and obviously, as motion is concerned, depending on where you or your group is in the hierarchy, determines your range of motion.  

Objective morality exists 1st as a determinant of individual motion in a multiple being setting.  

2nd it is the human ideal, because the ideal is for all people to do what they want to do, and all people are free to do as they please so long as they are free from imposition.  

I believe that objective morality is innate.  Where imposing acts are perceived by people and there is a moral response even if the person has not been told that an imposing act is morally wrong and hasn’t considered why the act is wrong.  This innate human moral compass is corrupted by the subjective morality of authority and liked figures, and the human propensity to act morally is prevented by circumstantial imposition.  Where the circumstantial imposition creates the reaction of direct imposition by members who are circumstantially trapped by systems.

1: I can’t prove objective morality is innate, but it is ideal nonetheless. 

2: It’s self evident that subjective morality is supplied externally, from parents, family, teachers, clergy, religion, etc.  

3: Evidence that most imposition is a product of circumstantial imposition is observable in the following: A: The median income of incarcerated people is nearly half the median income of the general population.(1)  B: the lower the household income a person is born into, the greater likelihood that they will be in prison in their 30s.(2)  C: the higher a nation’s income inequality, the higher crime rate they have.(3)

1: Bernadette  Raybuy and Daniel Kopf measured the pre incarceration income of people in prison and found that the median income was only 59% of the median income of the general population. Bernadette  Raybuy and Daniel Kopf, 7/9/15  “Prisons of Poverty: Uncovering the  Pre-incarceration Incomes of the Imprisoned”.  http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html

2: A brookings study found that the lower the income of a man’s parents the more likely it is that he will end up in prison.  20x more likely to end up in prison is a male born in the bottom 10% of the income distribution than someone born into the top 10% and there is a steady reduction in probability of incarceration as income levels rise.  Lucius Couloute, March 22, 2018, “New Data Highlights Pre-Incarceration Disadvantages”.  Prison Policy Initiative.  https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2018/03/22/brookingsreport_2018/

3: Luke Flemming’s cross section global analysis of crime and inequality found a correlation between crime and poverty and crime and inequality. Luke Fleming 2011, “The Relationship Between Crime and Poverty: A Cross Section Analysis of the World”.  Bryant Economic Research Paper Vol. 4 No.7 Spring 2011.     

Responsibility to Help

There is no responsibility to help unless an individual has contributed to the circumstances that another person needs help from.  

This doesn’t mean that people will not help others if they’re not morally obligated to.  Helping others typically creates good feelings within an individual, and this gives value to the act.  Whether a person helps another person depends on the energy required or substance sacrificed versus the anticipated feeling they believe the act of help will produce.  

If a person comes across a person drowning in quicksand, there is no obligation to help the person, but most people would because they would feel good for doing it.  

If a person is circumstantially trapped, advantaged members of the population do have some responsibility to at least support correction for the systemic functions that produce that individual’s circumstances and some responsibility to help those individuals directly according to their means and opportunity.  

QUESTIONS

1: Why is liberty the basis for objective morality?

2: What is the purpose of rules?

3: What are the 2 categories of imposition?

4: If you witness someone impose someone else, what do you need to know to determine whether the act was morally right or wrong?  

5: What will cause a tyrant to refrain from imposing if his valued objective involves imposition?

6: When does a person have a moral responsibility to help someone?

7: Create a scenario where liberty is the basis for objective morality is wrong.  

Email answers to [email protected]

For a more thorough explanation of Liberty is the Basis see article.