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KulakRevolt  1yr ago (anarchonomicon.substack.com)   1831 thread views

Teach a Man to Revolt: Dreams of a Dark Bill of Rights

anarchonomicon.substack.com

Long take I wrote on what sustains a cultures values and the dream of a "Dark Bill of Rights" that could be unalterable and untarnish-able, like the 1400 year long tradition of Sharia.

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Elites are opposed to deontology because from the outside, it looks like a stupid, close-minded reason to reject what should be a good deal. This is not specific to elites.

Well are you using "deontology" to mean "weird superstitious beliefs" or are you using deontology to mean "non-utilitarian thinking[1]"? If it's the latter, I don't see why that should be "stupid and closed-minded". There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of utilitarian ethics.

Torture vs. Dust Specks is one such case. But for a more practical example: statistically speaking, you're probably not an Effective Altruist, and if you are, you probably don't commit yourself to it as much as you could (please correct me if I'm wrong!). Unqualified utilitarianism places extreme demands on all of us to work to increase global utility (or preference satisfaction, or however you want to formalize it). If you think that people have any sort of right to choose their own life project, independent of the consideration of starving people on other continents, then you're using deontological reasoning. It's difficult to see how utilitarianism can account for a concept of rights or freedoms.

Maybe you would describe your own position as consequentialist but not utilitarian? But, that already seems like a sort of hybrid position to me. If you accept that there are counterexamples to strict utilitarianism, then you're committed to the idea that some things just matter independent of what the math tells you about net global utility. The only argument at that point is over specifically what things just matter, and how much.

[1] (Virtue ethicists might say that their position is neither utilitarian nor deontological but I think we can ignore that for now)

I’m using it in the same sense as M’aiq. Perhaps “revelatory” was the load-bearing word.

Insofar as “elites are so opposed” to, say, Islam? It’s not because they’re afraid of ubermenschen who can’t be manipulated. Rather, it’s because working with an opposing deontology is a pain. This is true whether or not one’s own ethics are utilitarian or even deontological. Deus Vult.

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