The anti-humanism of libertarianism

The most troublesome thing about libertarianism as preached by Ayn Rand is not that the ideology is illogical and irrational. The most annoying thing is that it is anti-human and anti-scientific. It is the mirror image of communism in terms of denying the nature of man.

Atlas sculpture, New York City, by sculptor Lee Lawrie. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Human beings belong to a larger family of great apes called ‘Hominidae‘. In this grouping you will find quite a diversity of traits and behaviours. Hominids can be divided into two subgroups: homininae and ponginae. Ponginae contains the Orangutan, and the homininae contain Bonobos, Chimpanzees, Gorillas and humans.

One could say that gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees are the control group in the study of humans, and it is clear that there are a number of traits which span the whole group. Chief among them is that all homininae form clans and communities. Another thing that the way the homininae form their clans and communities is universal. All communities have a hierarchy with an alpha leader on top, and individuals with lesser status below that.

The idea of individualism as practised by the libertarians is antithetical to the way all the homininae structure their societies, and for this reason the ideology is quite anti-human. Communism wants to rework man to remove the ego; libertarianism wants to rework man to remove the community. Both are as extreme as the other, and both are as anti-human.

Part of the problem is that Yulia Timoshenko is, probably, part of the Ukrainian problem

The key thing about the reports coming out of Ukraine is that one needs a high degree of scepticism about them. Particularly here in the west, we are given broken shards of a bigger picture, and believing that the small pieces is the truth leads to a distorted understanding of what is going on.

Euromaidan (Photo credit: jlori)

One such broken bit of the bigger picture is the near rapturous reception in the west of the news that the former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko has been released from her prison, and that she has spoken to the crowds occupying Maidan square. While EU and American media has focused on it exclusively, there are reports that her speech were not greeted so enthusiastically.

Part of the problem is that Timoshenko is part of the Ukrainian problem. Yakunovich could be said to have attainted power because of mistakes and abuses done by Timoshenko. That was why she didn’t win the last election. The Ukrainians were sick and tired of her, her cronies, and her corruption. That she was jailed on trumped charges for political reasons does not remove the problems with her.

For the media in the West to rally around Timoshenko when the Ukrainian population is sceptical of her would lead to more misunderstandings about what is going on. There have been plenty of those already, particularly the simplistic and distorted myth of the divisions in the country between the East and the West. Ukraine simply can’t fit into that model. When events then take turns that does not fit the model, journalists will sow confusion and false expectations. That could lead to a loss of interest, or support, for the protesters in the west.

So, the absolute best thing to do is to keep an open mind, and to question everything one hears. As with any complex process, like a revolution, the dangers of the game of whispers from opining journalists who aren’t in Kiev are high. Also the deliberate sowing of misinformation or partial information by the conflicting sides who struggle for positions and influence exacerbates the distortions about what is going on.

This is not over yet, and will probably continue for months if not years. We’d all do well to remember all the different actors who wants us to think a certain way, and side with forces we may or may not want to support. The best is to support democracy, the will of the people, and keep it at that.

What exactly ARE you?

Look in the mirror – any mirror – and ask yourself this question: What exactly are you?

That’s your cousin right there. Honest. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Strictly speaking you are a Homo Sapiens, one of the members of the group ‘Hominidae‘. All members of this group are called hominids, and they are also called ‘great apes‘. Included in the same group are other animals like Chimpanzees and Orangutan and Gorillas. The great apes have large brains and high intelligence. So, that’s it then? You are a great ape!

Most of the great apes are very social creatures. The exception to this are the Orangutans who live solitary lives in tree-tops. There are always those people, aren’t there? Can’t get along, and so they go off and live in a tree. But that’s not you. You’re a homo sapiens. You are social. What does it even mean?

Like the Chimpanzees, humans live in large groups. However, humans trump even Chimps. Unlike the other great apes, humans have abstracted a troupe of apes into ‘nations’. Suddenly the troupe counts millions. Somehow, even if you’ve never met, or have never heard about, individuals at a great distance from you, you are somehow part of the same clan of apes. Chimpanzees only bother with a few dozen other individuals. Gorillas even fewer. Humans must count millions or they feel like nothing. It’s like genetic Facebook likes.

This abstract nation has acquired a value to each member of a geographically localized troupe. For instance, in this country the United Kingdom, members of ‘homo sapiens’ are connected even though they live on opposite sides of the island of Great Britain. A Geordie and a Brummie are part of the same troupe of apes.

Genetically the local ape clan of the nation ‘United Kingdom’ is almost indistinguishable from the clans in the neighbouring bits of geography, who too have adopted the concept of ‘nation’. The mixture of French, Danish, and Celtic apes give this nation ‘The United Kingdom’ a bit of a difference I suppose – as much as there is any difference in any of the other ‘nations’ around the UK – but the original Celts came from the mainland, as did the Jutes and the Angles and the Saxons. They migrated to this island at different times, and were already basically the same, genetically.

So, what are you, except a social great ape. The social great ape?

Welcome to the new blog!

Welcome to ‘If Human’, a new collaborative blog written by young good writers. Except, as of yet, there’s only one person – and I usually blog at Colinology.

This blog is not about religion, which the original title would have suggested (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The original title of this blog was ‘Idou ho anthropos’. That is ‘Ecce Homo’ in Greek. I couldn’t use ‘Ecce Homo’ because there are literally hundreds of sites with that name, and then I thought I should be clever and use the Greek version. But it wasn’t as clever as it was obscure and a misdirection.

This is not a blog about religion, and it seemed silly to take one of the key phrases of the Christian bible as the title then. And furthermore, that title just reeked of self-indulgence. While the idea of a literature student who have an obscure arts blog is par for the course, it is also self-indulgent too, but I suppose that can’t be helped.

Over the years I’ve bored the readers on my own personal blog with lots of outbursts about the nature of humans, science and art. I enjoy writing those, but I’m not sure anyone enjoy reading posts like that. So, for a long while (a few weeks) I’ve wanted to separate that a bit. Build it, and the people who like to read that sort of thing will come. I hope. Then I can moan about my private life on my blog.

So, this is it. I hope you like it. My plan is to convince others to write for the blog too. It won’t be too frequent – maybe one or two posts a week until I get more writers. So, any other literature students out there who stand agape at the sight of man and cosmos, and who want to write for an obscure arty blog? You need to be able to write well. Get in touch.