Jacob on Towards Freedom

Negative Preference Morality

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 17:37:00 -0800

The Golden Rule is the only moral principle that grounds itself in objective observation. The primary three systems of normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics, all share the common failure to conclusively answer the question “Why should I care?” when they make claims of how individuals ought to behave. The Golden Rule, however, does not even ask that we care about the principle at all, it simply explains that when we act in a manner toward others that is inconsistent with how we would like to be treated, then we are being hypocritical and unfair. This replaces opinion with fact, so that the desires of individuals cannot be held above it. However, the Golden Rule does have some loopholes that ought to be addressed in order to form a more solid basis for morality.

One common criticism of the Golden Rule is that it permits those with self- harming preferences, such as masochism and suicide, to commit harm to others. But this is only true if we take the Golden Rule to mean that we should treat others with the same actions that we desire. But to say that individual A deserves action X because individual B desires X is a non sequitur, since if A does not desire X, then B is violating A’s preferences, which B would not want for himself. The criticism actually implies its own solution: instead of treating others with the same actions we want to be treated with, we should instead uphold a respect for others’ preferences. By the very nature of a preference, everyone wants theirs to be treated well, since you cannot hold a preference that you do not want to be fulfilled.

Another important issue to cover is that of conflicting preferences. Ideally, everyone could satisfy all their preferences without infringing upon those of others, but there are some preferences (i.e. bigotry) that are violated simply by existing or by not sacrificing oneself for others (i.e. slavery). However, the only way to enforce such positive preferences (desires to be accommodated) is by violating the negative preferences (desires not to be invaded upon) of others. For example, a slave owner’s positive preference to keep slaves is unjustified, as it violates the negative preferences of those who do not wish to be enslaved. The slave owner could then restate his desire as a negative preference: “I don’t want to have my slaves taken away from me”, but this would just be rewording the initial statement. Once the enforcement of that preference is put into action, it becomes evident that it’s just a positive preference in disguise, since the initial act of enslavement was theirs. That aggressive act was driven by the positive preference “I want to have slaves”, which could only be reworded as “I don’t want to not have slaves”, which is a blatant double negative. Since the enforcement of a positive preference over a negative preference is in itself a violation of the Golden Rule, only negative preferences are morally viable.

When an individual violates the negative preferences of others unjustly, they lose the right to have their own preferences protected to the same degree that they committed a violation, as demanding righton for yourself when you break those of others is hypocritical and therefore invalid. Since preferences cannot be measured, the amount of force we can justifiably use to punish criminals for their actions is also indeterminable, and since excess punishment harms criminals worse than what their crimes deserve, we should keep force to the minimum necessary to make them stop and make amends for their actions. This way, the more that a criminal threatens (verbally or otherwise) to repeat their actions and resist consequence, the more force we can rightfully use to make them comply.

From these conclusions, we can now restate the Golden Rule as, “Do not violate the valid negative preferences of others”. This can be expressed

in deontology as “We have a duty not to harm the preferences of others”,
in consequentialism, “We ought to avoid outcomes that contradict preferences”,
in virtue ethics, “Those who respect preferences are of pure moral character”

So depending on the individual circumstance (i.e. personal decisions versus social/organizational policy-making versus character assessment), we may use this principle differently, but the underlying moral remains the same.

Martial Arts and Animal Liberation

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 17:36:59 -0800

I think that there is a lot to be said in terms of how martial arts philosophy applies to life in general, and in regards to the animal righton movement it is especially pertinent and beneficial.

Many martial arts, such as Okinawan Karate and Capoeira, were developed and practiced so that oppressed people would have a means of defending themselves in lieu of access to arms.

Others, such as Tanglang Quan and Aikido, were designed with the explicit intention of giving a smaller or otherwise physically disadvantaged combatant an advantage over larger and stronger adversaries, and even greater numbers of adversaries.

The animal righton movement is currently in a position somewhat similar to both: there are no vast animal righton armies or police forces that can enforce compassion for animals with overwhelming artillery, and the movement itself represents a minuscule opponent going up against a much greater enemy, which is of course the status quo of mass apathy, prejudice, and abuse toward animals.

Lacking both firepower and numbers, the ostensible bleakness of our situation may make our ends seem impossible, or at least horribly distant. But this is only the case if we charge into our problems head-on; with the strategic mind of a good martial artist, we can find and utilize opportunities to give us an advantage, no matter how outnumbered we may be.

Leverage in Martial Arts

Since each joint is a lever, and since each martial art requires movement of the joints, leverage is a physical concept ubiquitous in the principles of all martial arts. However, one martial art that comes to mind that I have substantial experience in and exploits the concept of leverage extensively is Hapkido, a Korean martial art that is renowned for its hellishly painful joint manipulation techniques (believe me, I know).

The Ancient Greek scientist Archimedes famously said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” While he may have been disappointed to find out that attempting such a thing would quickly see him killed in the vacuum of space, this does serve well to explain the magnitude to which even small forces can have a great effect, provided that they find the right leverage with which to express their potential.

Getting to an advantageous point of leverage can be a challenge in itself, but it often proves to be a more worthwhile effort than colliding force with force, especially when you simply don’t have the mass to overpower what you’re colliding with.

Hapkido means “the way of coordinating energy”, which can be done by intercepting the energy of an opponent’s attack and then redirecting that momentum in a way that is disadvantageous for them, or by initiating an attack that manipulates their body into a position where you can exert an extraordinary degree of stress on their joints with only the slightest of effort.

Clearly, if we can extrapolate these tactics from Hapkido and apply them to animal righton, we can then bolster the effectiveness of our efforts considerably.

One very effective avenue for animal righton, that I think could be utilized much more, is lobbying. There are some instances in which something as simple as being friendly to a singular, tie-breaking legislator can determine decades worth of large-scale legal ramifications for animal righton.

This is a very strong example of both utilizing leverage to supersede a problem greater than yourself, as well as redirecting the momentum of a powerful force to gain an advantage.

Soft vs Hard Attacks

Another way in which we can utilize martial arts concepts, is the theory of meeting hard attacks with soft counters, and hitting soft spots (pressure points) with hard counterattacks, which is a strategy employed extensively in T’ai Chi Ch’uan. In martial arts, this could mean lightly parrying a straight punch, then using one’s spare hand to punch into the armpit that one’s opponent left exposed while extending out the straight punch.

When we apply this to animal righton, we may find that the difficulty lies in finding an adequately analogous situation, as there are no literal armpits to punch without the likelihood of subsequent incarceration.

In order to identify an appropriate analogy, we must first be willing to receive a hard attack from our opponents, such as a scathing criticism in a debate. This hard attack can then be made to look ridiculous by receiving it with a calm and intelligible response, and when their arguments inevitably reach a contradiction (i.e. humans deserve righton vs animals do not, minus any sort of logical justification for this [as of course there is none]), we can prey upon that weak spot with a scathing criticism of our own.

Facing Multiple Opponents

There are a few different routes we could take with this one. Leopard Kung Fu deals with this by leaping from one attacker to the next to focus on one opponent at a time, while Choy Li Fut uses multidirectional strikes that hit various attackers simultaneously. If done well, both methods are valid, effective, and certainly applicable to animal righton.

There are some who take a focused approach to animal righton, dedicating themselves to a singular subset of the issue although they may attribute equal or even greater importance to other issues as well. On the polar opposite end of the spectrum, there are those who choose to tackle as many animal righton and in fact social justice issues as they possibly can.

Both approaches have their pros and cons, and both types of people are certainly necessary in our movement. We need those who are willing to labor over a hyper-specific issue to see progress in the details, and those people need colleagues who can maintain a full view of the big picture to keep our varying purposes unified.

But for most people a middle ground can be met, where we keep our minds open to opportunities to do good whenever we can, while still staying mostly focused on a specific path.

When I have asked my martial arts instructor about strategies for fighting multiple opponents, he gave me the following advice (paraphrased): “It’s usually best to go for the toughest guy first, because then you can take out the biggest threat while you’re still fresh, and conserve your endurance for the less-dangerous opponents.”

This typically makes sense, and it does help in animal righton to see even a minor victory in a big battle, since a minor victory can have such a widespread impact for the welfare of animals. After we hit the big targets, working out the details becomes easier, since the core of the beast has been vanquished and the opposition’s morale suffers.

Although there was one exception to this strategy that he recommended (this time, not paraphrasing): “Sometimes it helps to beat the crap out of the weakest guy first, because then you can use him as a body shield against all the other guys.”

This is totally valid as well. For example, killing animals for fur is becoming more widely accepted as passé these days, you really have to be a jerk to go out of your way and waste money on making sure that your clothing suffered a horrible death. Although the fur trade is alive, well, and prosperous, in terms of mass public perception it is “the weak guy” in the multiple-attacker war against animals.

If we can beat the crap out of that issue until hatred for the fur trade is ubiquitous, then when people try to go back and justify similar abuse i.e. leather, then we can refer them to their opposition to fur (metaphorically using a “body shield” out of the “guy we just beat the crap out of”) and point out the contradiction.

Again, it’s nice that there are many people in the animal righton movement, and many different types of people as well. So where the martial arts analogy fails (which is the fact that we aren’t just one individual combatant) is actually a great thing, since it allows for the division of labor and the employment of multiple effective strategies at once.

Conclusion

When one embarks on the journey of fighting for the righton of animals, it’s wise to use some outside-the-box thinking so that the problems we face never feel insurmountable, just sometimes challenging to hit the right pressure points. As I’ve demonstrated, martial arts have a lot to teach us here, and even if you yourself do not practice a combative discipline, you can still borrow the same concepts to amplify your effectiveness as an animal righton proponent.

Martial Arts Diversity and Animal Rights Strategy

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 17:36:59 -0800

As a martial artist, I used to wonder if there was one ultimate way to focus one’s combat skills, if a style could be developed that took out all the stylistic frills and utilized scientific principles to form a perfect combat system. My reasoning was, if most human bodies are essentially the same, surely there’s one specific method of fighting that’s superior, and the plethora of styles within martial arts are just culturally-influenced deviations from this hypothetical one-true-way.

There is some degree to which the cultural and geographic background of martial arts contribute to their variation for practical purposes. For example, Capoeira was developed in Brazil by slaves as a rhythmic dance to disguise its combative purpose (since such practice was forbidden for obvious reasons), and its development helped contribute to a successful slave rebellion. In the Phillipines, the various forms of its native martial art of Eskrima differ from one island of origin to the next depending on the landscape, since some terrain requires higher or lower stances for stability purposes.

But the truth is that martial arts are arts for a reason. No “martial science” can ever be fully developed for the simple reason that combat contains so many potential variables in circumstance that no one singular way could ever account for all possible conflict scenarios. The evolution of martial arts thrives on its own diversity and differences in order to account for an infinite variety of situations.

In the application of any martial technique, one item of particular importance is the ability to catch one’s opponent off-guard, and to avoid being caught off-guard oneself, since most any attack that can be predicted can be quite easily defended against. Accomplishing this combination of spontaneity and preparedness is something that may require more than one approach, since if one’s opponent is familiar with one’s martial style, they are much less likely to be taken by the element of surprise. So while it can be beneficial to dedicate oneself to developing a specific set of skills, for those opponents who have developed an immunity to one’s tactics, it may become necessary to either develop a new skill set or recruit the assistance of someone who already has in order to defeat them.

There are some instances in which a showy, visual art like Capoeira can be impractical, but there are also cases where its exotic movements can catch people off-guard to great effect. Sometimes the receptiveness of Aikido can be beneficial for containing an attacker while minimizing damage, while at other times initiating the attack with an overwhelming offense, as is done in Tiger Kung Fu, can prove more effective.

This is where is the parallels between martial arts theory and animal righton activism come into play, as they often do. In the AR movement, there are those who claim that anything but demanding total abolition of animal abuse is treachery to the cause, while others insist that abolition is too distant a goal to even start fighting for yet. There are those who feel that a compassionate, caring approach and living by positive example is the only way to sway the masses toward a vegan lifestyle, while others feel that it’s necessary that we confront and challenge as many people as we can with great fervor until they get the point.

Yet all of these people share the same ultimate goal, that of animal liberation, and despite the infighting amongst them as to which approach is superior, different circumstances will inevitably necessitate varying approaches, and in the instances where one method fails to succeed, the others ought to follow up immediately to hit the issue from a different angle until any combination of strategies manages to succeed. In this way, animal righton activists can work side-by-side, without necessarily working hand-in-hand.

Valid comparisons to biological evolution and ecology and open-source software development can be drawn here as well. In evolution, subspecies variation provides additional bulletproofing for the species as a whole, helping to ensure that the weakness of one specimen does not lead to the downfall of all of them in the event of disease, scarcity, predators, pollution, and so on. Biodiversity reinforces the likelihood of an ecosystem’s ability to thrive for similar reasons, offering a great range of species within itself in order to prevent a macro-level cataclysm spiraling from the loss of one species, such as a key member of a particular food chain for example. In open-source software, a vast plethora of developers from a great variety of backgrounds contribute ideas and modifications freely, working toward a common cause of cybernetic advancement through different methods to create an ocean of ever- improving opportunities for software users to choose from.

But simply because we rely on a diversity of approaches to accomplish our ends does not mean that we must always exhaust every possible strategy available in every situation, as this would be far too great a waste of resources. Despite the unpredictability of conflict, martial arts can be methodical, and animal righton can as well. The general strategy is simple: implement what you have practiced the most until it becomes evident that that approach has fully used up its usefulness in that situation, then switch to a different approach to catch the opposition off-guard. Once a weakness is discovered, drive the attack forward until victory is attained, or the opponent catches on, at which point switch to yet another strategy and continue onward.

This is easier said than done though, and requires great persistence as well as creativity. If you’re creative enough (and with persistence you can develop that skill too), you will find yourself innovating new approaches to surprise and overwhelm the opposition with. And when others use approaches you’re not fond of, it is often best to leave them to it, provided they are not causing unnecessary harm in the process. Should their efforts fail, the results will urge them to stop, and the movement will be able to grow from the future avoidance of such efforts. And should they succeed, as long as they are pushing for the benefit of the animals, their efforts will become an example to emulate, as well as get us closer toward our final goal.

As long as we keep driving on for the betterment of all animals, our disagreements will not be a weakness of division, but a strength of diversity.