OVO

The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays
by L. A. Rollins
Charleston: Nine-Banded Books 2008
8vo, paperbound, perfect binding, gatefold cover, 304p.
$13 (on sale $5 post paid in the USA as of Sept 2010)
ISBN 9-780615-192987
Nine-Banded Books

The above illustration is not from The Myth of Natural Rights. It’s a poster I made when I was twenty years old in 1986. My self-importance began much earlier but this poster was the first time I put it on paper. When I made the poster it didn’t make sense, and it didn’t have to. That’s the funny thing about egoism. It doesn’t always make sense, and it doesn’t always (or ever) have to. When you sign on to Team Me, truth and consistency are only two more wheels in the head that can be entertained but are never captains. Egoism starts and ends with me, of course, but you might think it has something to do with authors from the past. Come, the royal we offers an introduction to the me-nut gallery…

Start anywhere. Perhaps with that prince of books, The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince was circulated as a plagiarized manuscript until 1537, five years after the death of its author. It was hated enough to earn an unfavorable mention in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Pygmalion. While The Prince is interested in the health of the State, Machiavelli was interested in Machiavelli and wrote what he did to earn favor for himself. Serving the State is off the table at the egoist banquet, but in the case of a Prince the self and the State are one. “Time brings with it all things, and may produce indifferently either good or evil. [...] How laudable it is for a prince to keep good faith and live with integrity, and not with astuteness, every one knows. Still the experience of our times shows those princes to have done great things who have had little regard for good faith, and have been able by astuteness to confuse men’s brains, and who have ultimately overcome those who have made loyalty their foundation.”

Consider the Marquis de Sade, who used the 1791 fiction Justine to write “Every strong and healthy individual, endowed with an energetically organized mind, who preferring himself to others, as he must, will know how to weigh their interests in the balance against his own, will laugh God and mankind to the devil, will brave death and mock the law, fully aware that it is to himself he must be faithful, that by himself all must be measured.”

And then, the egoist wellspring: Max Stirner’s 1845 book The Ego and Its Own. One Friedrich Engles said “this work is important” to his comrade Karl Marx, but upon a scolding by Mr. Marx young Freddy recanted his praise. K&F made a killing selling the bait-and-switch of material conditions both changing with the times at the individual level (no human nature) and leading inevitably to specifically defined conflicts (human nature). The two also collaborated on The German Ideology, a multi-hundred page attack on Stirner and his ideas. Ideas such as these: “Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my own concern! You think at least the ‘good cause’ must be my concern? What’s good, what’s bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me. The divine is God’s concern; the human, man’s. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is – unique, as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!”

Friedrich Nietzche did stare into the void, but only while holding the guardrails of ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ A superman that ought to be instead of is. But when he spoke of the Will, ah… “Man is something which is to be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883) “He who must be a creator in good and evil, he must first be a destroyer and break values into pieces.” (Ecce Homo, 1911) “That which does not destroy me, makes me stronger.” (Twilight of the Idols, 1899) Trevor Blake’s addendum: that which I do not destroy becomes stronger.

Max Stirner’s wellspring is well navigated by Ragnar Redbeard’s 1896 book Might is Right. Redbeard has a Shatner-like punctuation style employed by Stirner-in-translation that can make reading the book – difficult. Other times… “Freemen should never regulate their conduct by the suggestion or dicta of others, for when they do so, they are no longer free. [...] The freeman is born free, lives free, and dies free. He is (even though living in an artificial civilization) above all laws, all constitutions, all theories of right and wrong. He supports and defends them of course, as long as they suit his own end, but if they don’t, then he annihilates them by the easiest and most direct method.” The Myth of Natural Rights does not mention Redbeard’s Might is Right (although the introduction by TGGP does). Redbeard claims that ‘nature’s law is tooth and claw,’ that there is a natural right and the prone bodies of the vanquished point to those who possess it. But isn’t it convenient that title holders of natural rights are only known after the final bell? Might is the law of all life, yet some groups are more might than others. Every individual must struggle for existence, yet that ghost of might-right inside them takes a vacation once in a while and eventually moves out of town for good. What good to me is a natural right that I can’t know about until after I’ve used it, and which may leave me when I need it most, and which someone else might have more of than me? Lex talonis is the projection of matter-of-fact outcomes of conflict onto a cave wall and calling that shadow a natural right. To the victor goes the spoil – sure, but no need to get all wheelly about it. That’s what I got out of Rollins’ statement that “a bullet-proof vest may protect a person against being shot, but a natural right has never stopped a single slug.” ‘The mighty win’ is true but it is a mistake to say ‘the mighty ought to win.’ Evolution is the failure of the non-adaptive to survive, not the survival of the fittest. The former is how things seem to be, the later is the mistake of intelligent design. Not only is might is right a mistake, but kind of whiney, too. ‘But I was supposed to win… whaaa…’

The Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley “lays down a simple Code of Conduct. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Crowley credited a deity named Aiwass as the author of this 1904 book, but as far as my field agents have determined it was Crowley who cashed the checks. Read on, seeker. “Thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.”  How close to egoism Crowley was with the Law, with the notion all events are equally lawful. But then the black skies are filled with wheels of stars. Flickering fairy lamps of nature, the law of our growth, lawful acts and right events. Why would the Beast not step boldly into the chaos? As Aiwass saying, close but no cigar.

Egoism, anarchism and communism all went to the ball, but we know which wicked stepsister got to dance for the next half century. We don’t see much of egoism again until Ayn Rand’s Objectivism (The Fountainhead 1943, Atlas Shrugged 1957, and so very etc.). Dame Rand had a decent egoist rookie season, what with her admiration of murderer William Edward Hickman (“Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should. [He had] no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a conscious all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”), her ‘rational self-interest,’ her railing against self-destruction while being a chain-smoker, her insistence on loyalty while having affairs. Truth and consistency be damned, hoist the dollar flag! But having dislodged the great catherine wheel of altruism from her head, she let it fill with sand to make a perfect impression of liberty. While Ayn Rand could have served Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand instead served Objectivism. How many more steps away from freedom then are those intellectual heir brains who splinter from her fossilized remains. It was a no-fault divorce, egoism and Objectivism. “Egoism, in the Objectivist interpretation, does not mean the policy of violating the rights, moral or political, of others in order to satisfy one’s own needs or desires. It does not mean the policy of a brute, a con man or a beggar.” So said Leonard Peikoff in the revealingly-named Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (le objectivism, ce moi). Objectivism put the vocabulary of egoism back into circulation. But instead of the dead-end of egoism (all roads lead to ME), Objectivism is an endless journey into ever-tighter circles of servitude.

Rudy Ray Moore may have been quoting an unknown homeless man from 1960 when he performed his ‘Dolemite’ skit, but the results are me-tastic. Thus Spoke Dolemite: “Why the day he was dropped from his mammy’s ass, he slapped his pappy’s face and said from now on, I’m running this place. Dolemite said, bitch I had a job in Africa kicking lions in the ass to stay in shape. I got run out of South America for fucking steers. I fucked the she-elephant until she broke down in tears. I’ve swimmed across muddy rivers and ain’t never got wet. Mountains fell on me and I ain’t dead yet. I rode across the ocean on the head of my dick, ate nine tons of cat shit and ain’t never got sick.” Atlas may have shrugged, but Dolemite stuck his dick in the ground and turned the whole world around.

Anton LaVey published The Satanic Bible in 1969. LaVey built on Might is Right by the easiest and most direct method: plagiarism. Most of the chapter titled “The Book of Satan” is jot and tittle from Redbeard’s work. Elsewhere LaVey wrote: “Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.” Let’s say altruist Anton was just helping Redbeard by helping himself. Not that LaVey couldn’t deliver the goods on his own: “The Satanist believes in complete gratification of his ego. Satanism, in fact, is the only religion which advocates the intensification or encouragement of the ego. [...] Life is the one great indulgence; death the one great abstinence. To a person who is satisfied with his earthly existence, life is like a party; and no one likes to leave a good party.” LaVey did put on a good party, and current Magister Peter Gilmore has done a fine job as well. It it perhaps eternally tempting to resolve the contradictions of orchestrating an organization for individualists, but the Church of Satan has kept its claw clean.

Loompanics Unlimited was founded in 1975. Until founder Michael Hoy closed shop in 2006, Loompanics published and distributed after the egoist fashion. Far left? Far right? Humor? Sex? Drugs? Parapsychology? And even some straight-up egoist titles and authors such as those mentioned above? Loompanics had it all, just no gods and no masters. In 2010 I can read most anything I like on a phone I carry in my pocket. In decades past, more ideas still had the stink of heresy on them and finding them in a book mattered. The Myth of Natural Rights and Lucifer’s Lexicon were first published by Loompanics. Loompanics was the last egoist monster movie shot on film before everything went digital. Most important of all, it was through Loompanics that egoism had the privilege of meeting me.

It takes someone like me to review the 2008 edition of The Myth of Natural Rights. A host of Great and Powerful Oz’s petition an audience with Scarecrow Rollins, notably Ayn Rand, George Smith and Murray Rothbard. Each offers their defense or examples of natural rights, and each one is sent home wizened from the encounter. It’s a real treat to watch the natural rights peddle by and Rollins spoke them one by one. Rollins’ explanation of why there is no contradiction in acting one way and advocating others act differently was also a pleasant read.

If there are no natural rights, then is everyone free to do everything? I’m able to do a great deal, and from what I can do I do only some of it. Rollins writes “My life is of supreme value to me.” And regarding an argument for natural rights by Murray Rothbard: “If I can advance my life with violent interference to Murray Rothbard, why should I care about Murray Rothbard’s needs? [...] Again, if I violently interfere with Murray Rothbard’s freedom, this may violate the ‘natural law’ of Murray Rothbard needs, but it doesn’t violate the ‘natural law’ of my needs.” Turns out that while no natural right prevents me from visiting the greatest misfortune on my fellows, simple man-made law (or laziness) does the trick. Rollins wrote “Real rights are those conferred and enforced by the laws of a State or the customs of a social group” and that’s the gospel truth. If man-made law claims to be based on the ‘inalienable’ or divinity, so much the worse for man-made law. It’s the guns and jails, taxes and soldiers that get the job done. Some guns and jails are preferable to others: “To deny that there are ethical differences between governments is not to deny that there are other kinds of differences between governments, differences which can be of great practical importance.”

It entertains me to note contradictions in Rollins’ work. On page 45 he writes: “There are no unconditional ‘musts’ or ‘oughts,’ no categorical imperatives [...] That is why, although I am an egoist of sorts, I nevertheless reject what Brian Medlin calls the principle of ‘universal categorical egoism,’ to whit, ‘that we all ought to observe our own interests, because that is what we ought to do.’ I say, to the contrary, that it is up to each individual, insofar as he has freedom of choice in the matter, to decide for himself whether or not to pursue his own interests.” This statement is worthy of me. But on page 85 Rollins writes: “For an egoist, the only ‘justification’ for one’s actions is that those actions benefit oneself. If, by means of reason, A concludes that he will benefit from living at the involuntary expense of B, then an egoist would agree that A is ‘rationally justified’ in doing so.” Squeak squeak little wheel. What need do I have for justification, rational or otherwise? How can I include inevitably unpredictable outcomes in my rational conclusions? What of indifference or humor as motivators? And what of doing something even to my own detriment for the purpose of keeping another from advancing toward his goals?

Another funny thing about egoism is that it’s funny. I’m experimenting with a new delineator between the political left and the political right. The left can tell a joke and the right can take a joke. It holds in the corollary too. The left gets bent about certain words and images that aren’t funny and the right rolls with it. Meanwhile, the best comedians tend to be lefty while the best comedians on the right are… who? The excesses of de Sade bring on exasperation and disbelief, companion emotions to laughter. Even in translation The Ego and Its Own is funny. There are some rough chuckles in Might is Right and The Satanic Bible. Rudy Ray Moore made his living as a comedian. Rand proves my point by having a little light in her for interviewers but in her pursuit of natural law she locked out the grins. Why do egoism and humor go hand in hand? Think about yourself enough and you’ll realize what an ignorant fool you are, that your problems are petty and your triumphs are trivial. The choice then is to laugh or to wish you’d never been born. Perhaps instead of looking for vindication or truth or beauty or justice or equality, we should have been looking for laughs. Or perhaps when you get rid of the wheels in your head, you get a little funny in your head. Left and right are as pliable as any other shibboleth and share bed partners more often than polite conversation can allow. Do you call it ‘eugenics’ or ‘family planning’ depending on what it is or depending on whether your enemy supports it? Splitting sides based on humor is a good one. In my political nyuk nyuk spectrum, egoism is more of the left than the right.

What is it like to live without natural rights, without human nature? Kind of like now but crabbier or funnier, depending. The lives of the egoist authors are generally mundane, while the lives of those who lived as egoists and didn’t write about it are often full of fireworks (note to self…). See the world as an egoist with this simple thought experiment. Lift your wet eyes from my words just for a moment and look at something. You’re seeing something, yes? Were you to count that something, you would count one of that something. Where is the “one” in that thing? When you look at two of something, where is the “two?” You already knew that numbers aren’t in things, even if you’ve never seen it put into words before. There is no number-essence. And even though you know numbers aren’t in things, you continue to use numbers. The convention of numbers is like the convention of natural rights or human nature. They aren’t really there but people keep talking about them as if they were. I’m fine with that (and that’s the opinion that matters here) until the smoke and mirror crew sets up for another production of It’s Natural to Do As I Say.

Natural rights are in the same category of sleight of hand as Plato’s theory of forms. Plato said that when we see a thing, we see only an imperfect echo of the thing. If we could but see it there is an ideal form of a thing behind the thing we see. That ideal form is the nature of the thing. Sounds good if you’re arguing for the existence of human rights. We’re all different and imperfect people, but there’s a natural human right somewhere that is in the real us, and we all get a share of it. Everything has a cause, and those causes have causes, and those causes in turn go back and back and back until you get to a primal cause, a prime mover, an ideal form, a human right. Did you see the trick? Everything has a cause – except that which doesn’t have a cause. The logic that takes you to an ideal form doesn’t end with that ideal form, it takes you to a super-duper ideal form behind it, and so on. There’s no particular reason to say our human natures are similar but not identical and not shared, in the same way that our human bodies are similar but not identical and not shared. Human nature is a strange sort of nature that isn’t natural to everyone. Since ‘natural’ was supposed to mean just that – natural to everyone – it’s no sort of nature at all.

Bridging the divide between what is and what ought to be has yielded some spectacular Tacoma Narrows over the centuries. Kant be done, friend. But build those is / ought bridges must needs be done, it seems. No other way to get those donkeys across the void, and each one of those donkeys has a satchel full of wheels to set spinning in the heads of would-be eager egoists. Take this wheel, for instance: natural rights. Somehow, the is (nature) brings us to the ought (rights). Is there any way to divine what ought to be from what is? Or is it all ‘because I said so’ in the end? Egoism has naught for ought. Things happen, and they are what I prefer or attempted, or they aren’t. But these ‘things,’ and even more so what you prefer or attempted? They are not-me, not-yet-me or was-me and thus a secondary concern if a concern at all. SUX 2 B U. Egoism is calling it like I see it. My way writ large. Not even ‘my best interests’ sits on the throne above me. That would suggest a difference between me and my interests, making ‘my interests’ a wheel in my head. That would also suggest a knowledge of what my best interests are, which is fine to pretend but can you write down your exact complete individual nutritional needs at this second? How about now? Nature is the Nuremberg defense on the cosmic scale. I vas only followink orders! It vas my nature! Well, it’s my nature to call BS when I see it.

From The Myth of Natural Rights:

If there are no unconditional “musts” or “oughts,” then there are no “duties” or “moral obligations.” Which means there is no “morality,” no “system of the principles and duties of right and wrong conduct.” Morality (like natural law and natural rights, which are specific examples of “moral” ideas) is a myth invented to promote the interests / desires / purposes of the inventors. Morality is a device for controlling the gullible with words. “You ‘must not’ commit murder!” Why not? “Because murder is ‘wrong!’ Murder is ‘immoral!’” Bunk! Murder may be impractical or excessively risky or just not worth the trouble. There are all sorts of reasons why I might refrain from committing murder even if I would like to do so. But murder is not “wrong.” Murder is not “immoral.” And the same goes for rape, robbery, assault, battery, burglary, buggery, bestiality, incest, treason, torturing children, suicide, canibalism, cannabisism, etc.”

But you don’t care about that cream puff stuff – let’s have some real controversy! The Other Essays forming the center section of The Myth of Natural Rights concern holocaust revisionism. Where does Rollins stand in 1983 on page 94? “It so happens that I am a skeptic regarding the Holocaust in general and the six million Jews supposedly killed by the Nazis in particular.” Rollins devotes twenty-eight pages to “The Holocaust as Sacred Cow.” And where does Rollins stand in 2008 on page 160? “As of now, I am a skeptic regarding both the Holocaust and Holocaust revisionism.” Rollins devotes forty-six pages to “Revising Holocaust Revisionism.”

Third up in The Myth of Natural Rights is an updated abridgment of another former Loompanics title by Rollins, Lucifer’s Lexicon. Revealing my own bias, let me draw out some of my favorite zingers…

Belief, n.: A fig leaf used to cover up one’s ignorance.
Born-again Christian, n.: One who has been brainwashed in the blood of the Lamb.
Catholicism, n.: Christian Pharaseeism.
Christ, Jesus, n.: The Meshugah.
Crusade, n.: A jihad for Jesus.
God-fearing, adj.: Afraid of nothing.
Gospel, n.: The Tallest Tale Ever Told. The Cruci-fiction.
Miracle, n.: A disaster that you are lucky enough to survive while fifty million other people die.
Religion, n.: A cult with clout.
Sacred Cow, n.: Food for freethought.
Salvation, n.: God’s merciful act of saving you from Himself.
Soul, n.: An invisible, intangible, inaudible, tasteless and odorless – but marketable – entity.

… and one more…

Cui Bono? Latin for, “Who can I blame?”

Hurry hurry, step right up, there’s a barb for your backside in Lucifer’s Lexicon. The concluding critical essays on Islam make sure nobody is left out of the fun.

The Myth of Natural Rights is good, you ought to buy it.