Non-human animals cannot (as far as we know) understand the theory of survival of the fittest any more than they can understand the principles of natural law. It's a good thing for humans living in San Francisco as well as for other animals, that our rights as living beings are natural and inherent (I'm with you there), and not contingent upon whether or not we have a sound understanding of the law or its premises! I'm certainly not up to speed on understanding all the government regulations that might theoretically apply to me, and am not sure that I would be capable of understanding them all even if I had a few hundred years to read them in their entirety.
If you come to David's next dinner gathering, I feel safe in extending my personal guarantee that you will not be eaten. 8) If you don't eat, the worst that would be likely to happen is that you would leave hungry.
P.S. - David, I'd like to attend the dinner tomorrow night; can you send me the details again?
Dear David,
While your survival of the fittest, eat or be eaten definition of "law" is quite old (prehistoric)...believe it or not; it's been improved upon through centuries of great human thinkers in the Aristotelian-Lockean tradition.
Plato defined natural law as defending "the rational dignity of the human individual and his right and duty to criticize by word and deed any existent institution or social structure in terms of those universal moral principles which can be apprehended by the individual intellect alone."
I'm afraid "eat or be eaten" doesn't hold a candle to this kind of thinking from a social, human dignity perspective. Survival of the fittest can be understood by mere animals (apologies to Starchild). Natural law principals cannot. You are free to pick the crowd you want to run with.
See Murray Rothbard's writing on natural law below....
I think I'll steer clear of gatherings where large numbers of vegetarian "eat or be eaten"; "survival of the fittest" folks gather. It sounds kind of dangerous and more than a little contradictory.
Best
Mike
Six Myths About Libertarianism - LewRockwell
Libertarians believe that liberty is a natural right embedded in a natural law of what is proper for mankind, in accordance with man's nature. Where this set of natural laws comes from, whether it is purely natural or originated by a creator, is an important ontological question but is irrelevant to social or political philosophy. As Father Thomas Davitt declares: "If the word 'natural' means anything at all, it refers to the nature of a man, and when used with 'law,' 'natural' must refer to an ordering that is manifested in the inclinations of a man's nature and to nothing else. Hence, taken in itself, there is nothing religious or theological in the 'Natural Law' of Aquinas."5 Or, as D'Entrèves writes of the seventeenth century Dutch Protestant jurist Hugo Grotius:
[Grotius'] definition of natural law has nothing revolutionary. When he maintains that natural law is that body of rule which Man is able to discover by the use of his reason, he does nothing but restate the Scholastic notion of a rational foundation of ethics. Indeed, his aim is rather to restore that notion which had been shaken by the extreme Augustinianism of certain Protestant currents of thought. When he declares that these rules are valid in themselves, independently of the fact that God willed them, he repeats an assertion which had already been made by some of the school-men...6
Libertarianism has been accused of ignoring man's spiritual nature. But one can easily arrive at libertarianism from a religious or Christian position: emphasizing the importance of the individual, of his freedom of will, of natural rights and private property. Yet one can also arrive at all these self-same positions by a secular, natural law approach, through a belief that man can arrive at a rational apprehension of the natural law.
From: lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com [mailto:lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Dave GOGGIN
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 4:21 PM
To: lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [lpsf-discuss] RE: election results.
>As a parent who would never concede the natural law authority over my
>dependent children to the state (as you apparently would)
Sorry, there is no such thing as "natural law authority." The only laws in
nature are survival of the fittest and eat or be eaten.
Domestic relations are socially constructed norms and vary between cultures.
The very age of majority (18th birthday) is itself arbitrary, folkloric,
and unscientific.
Our goal as libertarians is to discover and promote the proper balance
between the sometimes conflicting rights of parents and children so as to
maximize the happiness of both. Children, after all, do not choose to be
born nor have an opportunity to select their parents!
I also know that not all parents are paragons of wisdom and virtue. For
many a teen, 73 would have forced them to choose between going to some judge
-- a scary and confusing bureaucratic maze with uncertain outcome, or
letting their parents know of the preganacy and risk getting a severe
punishment, or worse. How either of those outcomes could contribute to
developing into a happy well-adjusted adult one is hard pressed to figure.
>Personally I'm writing to those who
>put it on the ballot to advise them so it will pass next time.
OK. Well they'd have to change it in a pretty major way to ever get my
endorsement.
To me it is obvious what 73 was about: intimidating teens to coerce them to
have a child against their own and the child's best interests. This is the
usual trick of anti-abortion types: they can't outlaw it directly (yet..
we'll see what Judge Alito does), so they add as many burdensome, expensive,
and obnoxious restrictions as possible. If they would have gotten 73 passed
they would have been emboldened next time around with parental consent,
husband's consent, mandatory counseling, waiting periods, ultrasound, etc,
etc.
>Can I collect on the appetizers at another event? I can't make this one.
Yes. December's dinner party will include not one but two presentations. I
plan to really publicize that event and get a big turnout.
-DG
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