If humans are lifeforms native to planet Earth, they are the present end result of millions of years of evolution. That is not determinism; it is a recognition of the laws of causality. Humans came up through a very long chain of selection, not laid out by some creator but whittled into their current form by an incomprehensibly long and complex set of interconnections and combinations of causes and effects. Man did not become a “rational animal” suddenly, in some magical uncaused process. It is NOT irrelevant that the template kept evolving.

Acquiring sophisticated brains capable of abstract thought rests on a long chain of building on earlier capabilities. Just as we have residual organs and physical endowments, our brains still carry the messages of our genetic programs. Our capacity for rational thought did not replace in toto what we built on. Our science has not yet progressed enough to be able to analyze how the higher brain functions integrate the earliest with the new, the animal code (heavily intertwined with our emotional equipment) with the abstract, “objective” (meaning detached from emotional influence) functions.

The potential to be a rational animal is not equally exercised by all humans, nor is it the only way humans function. The default setting is the most primitive, just as with the genetic, physical growth from an egg to a complete human being. As a child develops, depending on its stimuli, its cognitive facilities grow but never detach from the original code. Total suppression of all emotions is considered a pathological syndrome.

Emotions, as Ayn Rand correctly identified, are value judgments, part of humans’ diagnostic equipment for evaluating what is good or bad for survival. When you want to reason with someone to persuade them to your views, invariably it requires understanding their emotional bias. The entire craft of salesmanship, marketing, commerce, political campaigning, propaganda, and controlling others’ minds depends on this device. That is why Ayn Rand’s most powerful statement is “Check your premises.” Not just your current opinion, but its deepest roots, the singularity at the start.

Self-awareness, self-reflection, cognitive integration are capacities that humans appear to have to a higher degree than other animals, as far as we can identify. But animals have feelings, too, no matter how cavalierly we treat them, and they also make decisions for their survival. They are just at an earlier level of evolution.

The default setting is automatic. Higher levels of thinking require further development and the recognition, the awareness, that one can exercise it intentionally (the famous “free will” that is so controversial). Historically, individuals are taught from birth to behave a certain way, to believe what they are taught, to obey the rules laid upon them.

Children are predisposed to accept rules from authority figures without proof, thus early indoctrination can be embedded without resistance. It is the rare individual who questions everything, and is considered a rebel, a traitor, a troublemaker and punished in any number of ways, from spankings to beatings, to shunnings, excommunication, exile, or even execution. Under such conditions, a thinking individual will be conditioned to keep quiet about his revolutionary ideas unless he finds enough like-minded associates.

And what are ideas? In an advanced brain, they are the software formed from perceptions into concepts, and reinforced with repeated confirmations from sense data. Like the scientific method on a grander scale, from evidence to experiment to verification and proof. This process is what we call “reasoning”. Once initiated, this process works on its own protocol.

There is no guarantee that there will be no errors. A mind with integrity will not seek to evade evidence of its own errors. Most people, though, want to protect their adopted ideas and beliefs, and will squirm every which way to avoid admitting error. All the self-protective emotions will rise to their defense, reinforced by collective groups that share those ideas. When values conflict, whether in a quarrel between two individuals, or in political opposition, at the extreme it leads nations to war and genocide.

Ideas, like other organic forms, acquire the will to survive, capturing the individual’s emotional reactions into their service. All means at the individual’s disposal, from logic to rage, are activated to rationalize and justify faulty ideas and the destructive actions engaged in to defend them. Philosophers become especially skilled in denouncing, dismissing, condemning, mocking individuals whose ideas are contrary to their own. Facebook aficionados do it simply by name-calling and ad hominems, especially toward a commenter who displays even the slightest opposition to their socialist bilge.

As Ayn Rand also brilliantly observed, there is no conflict of interest between rational men. Likewise, there is no disagreement on essential topics among rational individuals. Differences of taste in food or movies or books or clothes are not a reason to condemn a person as wrong or evil. Creativity and innovation are the most superb qualities of human beings, and the antidote to the totalitarian drive of any system. So long as no one takes violent action or other destructive maneuvers against others, vive la difference.

Galt’s oath is the fundamental golden rule, summarized as “do no harm”. An entire body of ethics and morals can be evolved from that axiom. But so long as people, whether as small groups or as whole nations, are in the grip of cancerous totalitarian ideas, we have our work cut out. Violence begets more violence. And that is rooted in the animal predatory instinct residual in human consciousness. And that is the tool for socialist altruism and all the other variants of political philosophies that justify depriving individuals of their unalienable rights.

Very, very few individuals have the capacity of an Ayn Rand in genuinely rational thought and understanding, of building an Objectivist ethics on their own. Very, very few people are “the rational animal” that humans can be. If everyone were, mankind would have a perfect world, neither would they make war anymore.

I’m thinking about what’s moral rather than the law as we have in. In our world, we don’t jail people for civil disputes. If someone promises to do some work or pay and fails to fulfill her side of a contract, the other party can get a judgment. If the person who breached doesn’t have any wealth, there’s no way to make her work. You can’t get blood from a stone. If she ever acquires anything of value, the other party can take them to collect on the judgment.

I think in the past there was debtors’ prison in which people were forced to work until the debtor worked off his obligation through work or someone on the outside paid it. This practice seems more consistent with someone owning his body. Just as if someone owing money can have a rental property taken to pay a debt, the court could take someone’s body, which like a rental property is capable of generating income.

“Beating violates the law”
This is a good point. Under current law, contracts involving illegal acts are unenforceable. So even if there were gov’t-run debtors’ prison, you couldn’t make a private contract to become someone’s slave.

I read ewv’s comments about the mind and body being inseparable, and that rings true to me. Maybe I’m on the wrong track thinking of debtors’ prison to understand body ownership.

The police do that (lock you up) already if you violate the law, social contract restricting conduct on behalf of society. When those violation occur they even remove the right to vote and a felon must ask for reinstatement.
Beating violates the law..In this country equal force is allowed by the police and anyone else. Beating someone to coerce or intimidate or another reason which isn't reciprocation in kind is illegal (and immoral).
I'm no lawyer but that's my understanding.

But could you enter an agreement that allows someone to lock you up? Could you give him an irrevocable right to beat you if he believes you're not working as hard as agreed?

If you truly and completely own yourself there is no reason why you can't enter a contact for a agreed on duration. The same ownership can apply to the voluntary restriction of rights, as in the formation of council's and other government structures.

"But the ownership of self provides the owner with the option of voluntary servitude, no? "
Does it provide the option of voluntary irrevocable servitude? Could someone sign an agreement to be a slave for a fixed period or until a project is completed? Our current law doesn't allow it, but do you think it should? I've never thought about it, but it doesn't sit right with me. It just seems like freedom should not be for sale, even if there's a willing buyer and seller.

The bank does not own your home with a mortgage. It has a partial ownership claim to its value to back the amount of money it gave you in the loan, but you have the exclusive right of use and disposal of the home and are fully responsible for it. You use it however you want to and can sell it whenever you want to for whatever you can get, all without bank permission. The bank owns the amount of money you borrowed, with a lien on the deed since the house is collateral. You are obviously required to pay off the mortgage in accordance with the terms of the loan -- monthly while you still own it, and the balance if you dispose of it because then you no longer own it as collateral for the loan. But the home belongs to you.

Loss of ownership rights in your home are due to government restrictions, not the bank. As for the political collectivists seeking control of our live's and property, that isn't restricted to the Federal government. State and local governments are doing the same, especially with taxes (including property taxes on your home) and land use controls, increasingly for nature preservationism over human use.

This is much deeper than a Constitutional issue -- as illustrated in the psychology in Antherm, as you mentioned. You should also know that George Orwell was a socialist, objecting only to the more extreme totalitarian tactics.

Unfortunately, for many of us, the actual property an individual owns technically is their personal effects including what is inside the home that is already paid for. The home is maybe the last item to be owned. The banks are the real owners, through mortgages and other financial vehicles. Those are on the personal side. Due to the current political environment the Dems with their anti-Constitution socialist policies what to own our very souls. Ayn Rand's "Anthem" and George Orwell's "Animal Farm & 1984" is where the Dems want to assert control. The people of the US would beholden to the federal bureaucracy.

Philosophies, ideologies, thoughts, ideas, and actions based on rationality are admirable. Rationality is worth teaching and explaining and should be practised. An increase in rationality would benefit groups and the individual, it would benefit those who do it, and (using rationality as seen by Objectivism) even those who do not.
One of the barriers to an increase in rationality is the inherent human ability to rationalize, this is the use of intelligence and imagination to justify ideas and actions not reached by the use of rationality but which are preconceived, innate or not.
Rationalization is common, rationality is rare. Perhaps one is gaining over the other, but which? Gulchers post up examples of irrationality such as the use of emotional thinking and animal instincts, sometimes Gulchers description and analysis use good rational thinking, perhaps more here than elsewhere.

You are basically correct. Although I would support Trump in a race against pretty much ANY democrat, I agree he is not a pure capitalist. He has effectively raised the income tax on my small business with his "tax cuts", and he has cost me dearly in tariff payments that he claims "are paid for by china- but they are definitely not).

Trump is intellectually challenged for sure. He should exonerate Snowden, and instead he called for his execution, and he has done the things I noted above to ME personally. I will vote for him in 2020 if he lasts that long, but I wont contribute to his campaign. I think this country is beyond saving actually.

Defending yourself against political thugs does not make the principle of the "pursuit of happiness" nebulous. You have to know what it means to know what to defend against what.

Philosophy, in particular ethics and epistemology, is based on the nature of man as he is as the rational animal who must use his reason to survive. Principles for correct thinking are required because the process is not automatic and not guaranteed to be correct. That such a nature of man did not "appear out of nowhere" over time is irrelevant to identifying what we in fact are. Philosophy does not depend on prior biological evolution and the nature of lower animals and identifying proper principles is not based on prior evolution.

We do not have "animal instincts" or innate ideas. Emotions are the result of values implicitly or explicitly chosen and held. Every individual can choose to be rational or not, and establish that as is habitual character or not. There are no "evolutionary components" or "animal instincts" determined in our thinking. That is a deterministic view of man as inherently irrational.

Some are fighting collectivism -- such as the Pacific Legal Foundation in its legal defenses of private property rights against government controls -- and most conservatives today oppose the more extreme socialist Democrats that are now current, and there has been some deregulation under Trump.

But conservatives are not for capitalism and cannot intellectually defend capitalism as a social system. The populist and religious conservatives are promoting their own statism and collectivism with religious and populist demagoguery, such as more government control violating freedom of speech, anti-immigrant economic protectionism, the usual rabid anti-abortion campaign, and interference in molecular and cell-based medicine. Some of the intellectually worst anti-capitalist propaganda is coming from the likes of Prager who defends European welfare statism and socialism as the answer to the more extreme socialists.

Trump himself does does not support individualism. He is anti-intellectual in general but in policy advocates and has implemented higher taxes for punishment (like his tariffs and his new income tax on money that must be paid to other taxes in order to punish everyone in "blue states"), a government "infrastructure" boondogle, pro-forced unionism in international trade deals, personally pressuring private companies to not move overseas (just like Kennedy against the steel companies), his long standing promotion of eminent domain as "wonderful", national mercantilisim in trade restrictions, economic protectionism as part of his immigration policies, and expanded government controls in health care to "replace" parts of Obamacare.

This is all being falsely equated with capitalism.

This conservativism is part of the general trend towards more statism and collectivism, but the worst conservatives are increasingly emotionally militant in their anti-intellectualism and populist collectivism. now appealing even to the "will of the people" in defense of local oppression they oppose by the Federal government in the name of the Constitution. They are not for capitalism but are tying it to their own nationalist, statist ideology (especially with today's improved economy) and irrationalist religious promotion, creating a false alternative between different brands of collectivism and statism in the name of capitalism.

There is no such thing as "a people" as a thing. Only individuals exist. A mob of individuals calling itself "a people" is only a number of individuals in a mob, not an entity. No one has a right to "empower" anyone or anything to violate the rights of the individual, and he does acquire such a "right" by ganging up on the target and insisting an entity called "a people" has "bestowed" a right to the state to violate his rights.. Such "empowering" is a violation of rights, not the source of rights and not a legitimate basis of government. The only proper purpose of government is to protect the rights of the individual. That is not government by a collective. The basis of rights is the nature of man, not the will of a mob engaging in collective subjectivism.

I absolutely do "deny that a State, at least in theory, represents its people and in the context of the larger body (nation) on behalf of the interest of its local population." Nor does it matter as a justification for government. Most governments have not existed to represent the citizens, nor would it justify its violating the rights of the individual on behalf of any collective for "it's" "interests". A collective is not a thing and does not have "interests"; only individuals do and they may not morally use government force to pursue them just because a mob wants to.

Representative government is a means of implementation, not the purpose or justification of government, which is to protect the rights of the individual. Representative government as the "consent of the people" is only proper when the purpose and functions of the government are proper. It is not proper when the backers "consent" and demand authoritarianism and collectivism. Mob action is not moral basis of government. No one has a right to impose his "interests" violating the rights of others, and does not acquire such a "right" by "empowering" government on behalf of a mob.

You did say, emphatically, that a local group can properly do what its members want to:. You defended local government violating the rights of individuals as "the will of the people". You denounced the rights of the individual as the standard as an irrelevant, rhetorical "soap box". You rejected national government doing the same only because of the Constitution, not out of any moral principles.

You have further confused "empowering" government to violate rights with "empowering states with rights to act", and have adopted and appealed to the false premise of "state's rights". You called the distinction between "use of rights and authority" "splitting hairs". And asserted that "the presumption of authority by any state is built on the bestowed right to act authoritatively." There is no such thing as a "bestowed state's right".

Might does not make right. State's do not have "rights", "bestowed" or otherwise. The difference between the rights of the individual and state authority is not "splitting hairs"; it is essential. The distinction is not obliterated by mob action in the name of "the will of the people".

You assert again, "people can absolutely bestow authority on an entity that can restrict rights and liberty, Tribal? No, simply society irregardless of political ideology." Restricting rights and liberty is not "regardless of ideology". What people do depend on what they think. The ideology of the actions you describe is tribalism -- a group of people coercing others on behalf of the group, and endorsing the oppression as a matter of principle because they are collectivists.

The conservative movement has declined even beyond what it was when Ayn Rand denounced it almost 50 years ago. "Populist conservatives" demanding that government impose their "interests" are much worse collectivists and statists than they were then. Conservatives used to understand the difference between the American Revolution and the collectivist French Revolution, though they have never understood or supported the moral basis of American individualism and still don't.

They are slowing down the spread of collectivism in the short term

Man's conceptual faculty did not appear out of nowhere. It is part of the evolutionary process, and is based on what was there before. Our animal instincts are still part of the building blocks of our emotional and impulsive tendencies. The human software is a complex mixture. Everyone's default setting differs and fluctuates. The "ideal man" who can be fully rational 100% of the time exists only in the pages of a book. Every individual is a unique integration of his or her evolutionary components rooted in millions of years of survival rules.

If a people choose to empower an entity to govern then it has the right to govern them. The governing entity itself doesn't have the rights of an individual. You cannot deny that people empower others, give them the right (and thereby make concession with their own to a degree) to work on the groups behalf. Nor can you deny that a State, at least in theory, represents its people and in the context of the larger body (nation) on behalf of the interest of its local population. All governments at any level is a collective.

"States posses government coercive power whose only moral purpose is to protect the rights of the individual -- that and only that may be done with the "consent of the governed". No collective and no government may morally do whatever it wants to -- i.e., employ freedom of action -- to violate anyone's rights in the name of "rights"." On this we agree. However no one, particularly me, said they can do whatever they want to.

"No "will of the people" can "bestow" a "right" on anyone or on any group to violate rights. Rejecting collectivist authoritarianism is not circular."
People elect governments. Government employ and train people to enforce the laws. Some break laws. The police come to collect them. Those people a tried and put in jail, their rights are suspended as well as their liberty. My point, Yes, people can absolutely bestow authority on an entity that can restrict rights and liberty, Tribal? No, simply society irregardless of political ideology.

Chickens do not "feel a right" to anything. They are-sub conceptual. So are the humans with the anti-conceptual mentality. Sanders "feeling that 'society; has a right to your property" is not a disagreement over "boundaries" for rights. He has no concept of rights at all. Collectives do not and can not have "rights". Only individuals have rights. A mob feeling it is entitled to take what you have is not operating in the realm of rights at all.

Conservativism isn't helping. For all their numbers and resources they are incapable of defending individualism and many don't want to.

Recognition of the rights of the individual was widely accepted as a result of the Enlightenment, though not in as clear a from as enunciated by Ayn Rand. This country was founded on the rights of the individual. That has decayed under the intellectual influence of the counter-Enlightenment, culminating it its 20th and 21at century collectivism in various forms -- in this country Pragmatist Progressivism now moving more explicitly to outright socialism among the intellectuals.

This is not a result of predatory animal instincts. There is no instinctual knowledge at the conceptual level. The collectivist trend is due to bad philosophies of unreason, altruism and statism. Establishment intellectuals are the leaders of the "barbarians" -- the Witch Doctors goading on the Attilas.

Objectivism -- and human civilization -- do have "a long way to go to lift mankind to lofty principles and obtain people's reasoned and volitional cooperation". That can only be done at the level of spreading the right ideas against the establishment intellectuals who monopolize education and the media.

I said nothing in a circle. A state is a collective. It does not and cannot have "rights". Only individuals have rights. That is not "splitting hairs". That a state cannot have "rights" means both that it does not have rights by its nature nor can rights be "bestowed" to it. Collectives cannot have "rights". There is no such thing as "state's rights".

A right is not "authority"; it is a moral sanction of freedom of action in a social context. Collectives do not and cannot have rights. There is no justification for a 'will of the people' violating the rights of any individual nor can such collectivism "bestow" any such right on a state.

States posses government coercive power whose only moral purpose is to protect the rights of the individual -- that and only that may be done with the "consent of the governed". No collective and no government may morally do whatever it wants to -- i.e., employ freedom of action -- to violate anyone's rights in the name of "rights".

No one has the right to violate the rights of another individual and no one can obtain such a right by ganging up on him in the name of the "will of the people". That is tribalism. No "will of the people" can "bestow" a "right" on anyone or on any group to violate rights. Rejecting collectivist authoritarianism is not circular.

One can grasp the concept of rights but not agree on what they are. Both chickens feel they have a right to the worm. Sanders feels that 'society' has a right to your property. You think you have a right to your property. You both have a concept of rights, you just don't agree on the boundaries.

True enough. It’s very upsetting to live in these times

The thugs are already after me!! They are leftists/ democrats. And I didn’t do a thing to them

True enough. What I battle with lately is the relentless pursuit of power over me that seems to be the goal of the leftists. To purse MY happiness seems to involve force against them