I was probably five years old. My first true best friend (I’ll call him T for anonymity) and I were happily playing computer games. It was a Fischer Price Pirate’s Treasure game, which had us hooked from the beginning. We were scalawags, dressing up in our red bandannas and drawing mustaches and beards on ourselves with black face paint. Those sure were the days. As children, we were still unknowingly learning about morality from our experiences and our parents, but all we really cared about was having fun — lots of fun. However, with only one game and two meddling kids, conflict arose frequently.
One day it got wild. Simply out of control. We played a fierce game of tug of war with the CD case, in which the case was cracked and the CD barely made it out alive. In a passionate rage of tears and screaming, T threw a whirlwind punch to my nose. Bleeding and crying, I ran down the block to my dad. After all, he had told me that it is absolutely wrong to hit anybody, and that I should tell him if I was ever hit so he could take care of it. After approaching my father, he was extremely proud that I had listened to him. He told me to slug T in the face the next time he tried to hit me.
T’s cheap-shot on me is a demonstration of a violation of the non-aggression principle. By this principle, it was immoral for T to initiate the use of force on me. This principle is perhaps the most universally agreed upon facet of morality. Nearly all, if not all, mainstream philosophies hold this particular use of force to be morally hazardous– from Christianity to Taoism, utilitarianism to anarcho-capitalism. Why? Why does it seem wrong to initiate force upon another human? To explicitly state why this is so appears to be something many of us never care to think about. Unfortunately, human action often shows these lapses in thought, look no further than the latest breaking news.
Many popular trains of thought hold this principle, but do not display the premises behind it. What is force? It is a non-sequitur (it does not follow) that force is wrong because God decrees as such, nor because the Categorical Imperative determines so, nor because the Golden Rule suggests it, nor because the Constitution says so, nor because your neighbor doesn’t like it, nor because society condemns it, nor because the Social Contract binds us.
Lysander Spooner is right: the last time I checked, I haven’t signed a Social Contract either, and the Founders couldn’t have signed it on my behalf. Though these can be very persuasive arguments for non-aggression, they are not the logical basis for it.
The use of initiatory force is diametrically opposed to enhancing life. Necessarily, we have a right to life that is primary to any other rights (update 3/30/2012: I no longer believe this). In fact, the right to property and liberty are derivatives of this initial right. We must live before any value, meaning, or principled morality can arise. It is not because we are “endowed by our Creator” with these unalienable rights. Frederic Bastiat rightly argues in The Law:
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
It directly follows through reduction, rather than divine providence. That is, because these rights are unalienable holding life as a standard of value, initiatory force is therefore immoral.
It's more than a sheet of paper, you know.
And, how appropriate is that! It is through non-violence that Gandhi, MLK Jr., and Jesus were able to spread their ideas. And it’s also no surprise that, historically, as societies use less force, they become more prosperous in the long-run. For many reasons, force injures a nation’s economy, slices cultural tolerance, and generally decreases the standard of living. I’m not speaking only of wars and physical violence, force manifests itself in many other ways, and it is these areas which we fail to understand the most.
We often think it is “less wrong” to steal or lie than to murder, and this may well be true; but, we neglect the fact that they are both morally wrong as a whole.
Force is the umbrella term for any form of coercion, deception, physical harm, or fraud. The use of force, whether physical or otherwise, paralyzes a man by separating him from his means of survival, that is, his ability to act in his own free will (update: I don’t believe in free will).
Force effectively causes a fission between man and his rights to life and freedom. To use force against somebody is to deprive them of their humanity and their faculty for choice. It is never “OK” to sacrifice one innocent man to save ten men, to save one hundred men, or even to save one million men (update: I now disagree).
So the next day T and I were back being friends, sword-fighting like the buccaneers that we aspired to become. When it came time to play the computer game again, tensions began to arise. T decided to punch me again, because it allowed him to play longer. His punch landed me in the shoulder. This time, I brushed it off and swung at his face with a vengeance. His nose bled and he began crying. (On récolte toujours ce que l’on sème?)
Love and Marriage..
You see, non-aggression is not pacifism. It is rationally prohibited to initiate, to start using force against another individual; however, it is rationally permissible to retaliate in self-defense. In fact, it may even be encouraged that you step up and act to continue your right to life in the face of suppression, just as you would on a deserted island.
This also boldly implies that the threat of force is an initiation of force. The concept of force becomes essential in ethics and politics, and it is one concept of which we hold many different interpretations.
For many, the supposed fact that initiatory force is wrong is the guiding principle behind solving ethical dilemma, making moral decisions, and even answering very controversial political and economic positions. It is perhaps the most specific universal moral law that can be held as a rule of thumb.
When force is removed from the picture, all that is left is voluntary cooperation. Moral behavior seems readily attainable, and ahimsha is ours for the keeping.
Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality. -Gandhi
Take care, and thank you for reading!
D
