Saturday, January 16, 2010

Question of Legitimacy

Legitimacy plays a major role in the determination of ethics, morality and rights. It is a method of knowing who is right/innocent in a certain situation. For example, in a situation where property is violated, the person who owns the property has legitimate authority (because of his rights) and the person violating it does not. The logical conclusion would be that the violator is guilty and should be punished. This sounds like a nice arrangement, but much like in their economic arguments, so-called legitimacists make up small scale situations and expect that this same situation can work as well with 6 billion people across the world as it does with 2 neighbours across the street. Such people include myself, communists, capitalists, socialists, democrats, constitutionalists, anarchists, and the list goes on. Especially democrats, but that is a story for another paragraph.

Legitimacy leads to a situation I call "The tragic mating between subjectivity and objectivity"; in this situation, either something made to find objective truths gives in to subjective opinions, or something that is subjective is used to find objective truths, or both. This is not to say that subjectivism is a bad thing in any way. Legitimacy is a fine example of this 'tragic mating': it gives in to subjectivism, and then legitimacists still try to use it to find objective truths. The state, a monopoly on the use of force, is, for instance, legitimate.
The masses project legitimacy onto the state (through being bought, reassured, censored, fooled and threatened) and this leads to anyone fighting against the state to be punished in one way or another. Being bought and reassured are two big factors here; people will always look for reassurance and an easy way to feed themselves, and these are two very easy ways to do it. Drawing conclusions here, when legitimacy is used to structure a human society, it will result in people seeking more security, paying that, which may now seem useless, but later we crave for it: our own freedom. "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" -Ben Franklin said it right.

Legitimacy leads to democracy; one can see this, as when legitimacy is projected onto some authority, those who challenge that authority will likely be met with violent force by the people who view it as legitimate. Democracy (specifically majoritarian democracy) works in a similar way, where a simple majority wanting something can force its will on any minority. This such democracy leads to oligarchy, which leads to plutocracy, which leads to fascism. By logical expansion, it can be said that legitimacy is not a reliable method of structuring society and/or basing one's philosophy on, as it boils down to nothning but mob rule. What is worse, in this mob rule, the mob isn't even ruling for its own benefit.

What, then, is a more reliable method? Reciprocalism is its name! Reciprocalism merely says that 'what goes around comes around'. That is, one person has the full right to do to another, as that specific other has attempted to do to said person. No legitimacy, no authority, full justice and full liberty. There is no 'I am right, you are wrong', for right and wrong cannot be known to us. There is 'he did it to me, I can do it to him'. Reciprocalism is the best and most reliable way to find objective truths, if any exist at all.

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