I have this friend who occasionally invites me to hang out with him and his friends.  They're nice enough people, but I consciously keep my conversations with them away from the realm of politics.  You see, many of them are social workers, or employees at NGO's and the like.  Although I'd never talked to them about politics, I was sure such a discussion would not be pretty.

Well, Sunday was the last time I intend to hang out with them because the conversation turned to politics and could not be avoided.

One guy advocated seizing a person's property when they die on the basis of the idea that people have no rights when they die.  He said that my claim that "rights" was merely an abstraction that he doesn't recognize and that there is no obligation to honor anyone's wishes with regard to their property once they're dead and that no one has a right to property they didn't earn it themselves.  The idea behind this was to "level the playing field."

Another girl made the claim that Wal-Mart, specifically, destroys communities in spite of the fact that it does not and I offered to call my mother for her.  My mother had a business that was driven out of business when Wal-Mart came to their town.  Now, my mother is able to buy more for less and their community is wealthier overall with Wal-Mart representing a crucial part of the economic environment there.

It seems the ignoring basic moral concepts and proven economic principles are activities that come easily to these people.

I thwarted every hypothetical situation they put in front of me even though they were all absolutely ridiculous.  In one case, they asked me what a group of people is supposed to do if they live in the middle of some huge tract of non-arable land and Wal-Mart is the only business and they refuse to employ or serve this group.  Wal-Mart has never done this and no such place exists, but when I suggested that those people start their own businesses or start walking, they protested saying it costs money to start businesses and to walk.

Ridiculous.

At one point, they posited a future where houses, computers, food, and everything is produced automatically and perpetually by nanobots.  And even though the idea of any such thing happening within our lifetimes is preposterous (And is literally preposterous because it is based on a premise that natural resources are unlimited, which they are not.) they felt that this warrants re-examination of capitalism.

When I pointed out the obvious violation of property rights involved in all of their schemes and the blatant Marxism behind their justification by need, they asked things like "Who owns education?"  The idea of education being a service was beyond their comprehension.  The idea of it being their right to do or not do as they please with their person was abhorent.

I was actually shocked at how they rejected basic concepts.

Ultimately, I discovered that these people don't even believe that reality is objective.  They do not claim certainty about anything.  There is absolutely no activity imaginable -- slavery, pederasty, torture, murder -- about which they think their moral protests may be mistaken.  Morality is something determined by popular opinion.

I cut off the conversation after this.  These were not rational people. They were not interested in figuring out the truth.  Evasion and denial of reality is their bread and butter.

So, anyway, I won't spend time with them in the future.  They seemed to shrug off our disagreement as unimportant and even invited me to go with them to see movies in the park tomorrow.

It's really tragic that ideas aren't at all important to these people.  They will (and already seem to) suffer for it.

Posted by: Flibbertigibbet at 06:33 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Category: Importance of Ideas
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