Sex and Right, Part 4; Or, Raping Babies with Pickets

So here's the low-down. The post-objectivist anarchist who answers to the Youtube username XOmniverse recently posted a video where he calls deontology "authoritarian" and says "duty is an anti-concept." In the comments section I asked "is it safe for me to assume that you mean *positive* and not negative duties when you say "duty is an anti-concept"?

His response was "No. I mean all duties. Yes, this means I don't accept the non-aggression principle in a deontological sense."

Good evening, this is Mr. I.R. Sage responding to XOmniverse’s latest Rational Ethics video.

Rational self-interest is a refreshing way to approach personal morality. When you’re talking about doing things with yourself or with others who freely consent, rational self-interest accounts for pretty much every moral consideration that needs to be made. But it doesn’t account for every consideration that needs to be made regarding force against others, and so I think rational egoism makes an inadequate political morality.

Rational egoism’s virtue is that it doesn’t label things as just wrong. And this is also its weakness. Many things that we normally consider to be flat-out wrong – for example, raping babies with a picket – are, according to rational egoism, unadvisable at worst.

Rational egoist political morality posits rights by advising that one who wishes to live happily in society should act with regard to those who can affect one’s own reality. So it quickly acknowledges the rights of the strong and well-connected. But those who do not have the power to affect other people’s reality have no moral status unless they are given it by those who do have the power to affect reality.

Under rational egoism, raping babies with pickets is immoral only in those communities where those who can affect your reality consider it morally repugnant to rape babies with pickets. Thankfully, most people in America today do consider it morally repugnant to rape babies with pickets. But babies aren’t always given moral status. Just consider ancient Phoenician societies, where sacrificing babies was considered legitimate under some circumstances.

Under rational egoism, then, political morality is relative to cultural sentiment. If a certain class of individuals is not accorded rights by broader society, there is no way (that I know of) for rational egoism to condemn abusing those individuals.

Individual sovereignty is a funny word to use under rational egoism. Individual sovereignty makes sense only with a charitable and dogmatic presumption of the other’s rights. But under rational egoism, the only ones you have a “rational ought” to grant rights to are the ones who (a) are conducive to your own happiness, (b) can make your life miserable, or (c) already are granted rights by broader society. The rational egoist, then, can only talk about the rights of some individuals.

Egoist political morality fuzzes the difference between things that are wrong just because other people think so, and things that are wrong just because. Under Egoism, raping babies with pickets is wrong only for the same reason that burning the flag is wrong – there may be some people who, shall we say, may affect your reality in a way that is not conducive to your happiness if they see you doing it.

Of course, the wrath of others may be a burden worth bearing if the controversial act is a necessary means to greater happiness. And sometimes, the wrath of others is the very thing that brings happiness. Since egoist morality is relative to what would bring you ultimate happiness, it seems to justify some grotesque things. If what would bring you ultimate happiness is to kill yourself and as many other people as possible in the most spectacular way possible, then a 9-11-type act would be the moral thing for you to do, under rational egoism. The only reason that a rational egoist can give to persuade you otherwise (short of a death threat, that is) is to suggest that the happiness you would get from spectacularly killing yourself and others would be less valuable than the contentment of a long, peaceful, productive and moderate life.

But that sounds like a hard prediction to make. Whether the happiness got through one act is better than the happiness got through another act depends on the preferences of the subject. In short, I doubt we can know for sure that the intense pleasure of going down in flames is always less than the pleasure of a temperate life. Since this prediction can hardly be made, the rational egoist has no principled reason against mass-murder suicides.

Maybe I’ve grossly mischaracterized rational egoism a la Xomniverse. If I have, please point out where I misunderstood. But from what I see right now, rational egoism as a political morality can’t condemn raping babies with pickets. Neither can it condemn terrorism or totalitarianism.