JOHN DAVID GARCIA BOOKS
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click this link for the pdf book CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION BY JOHN DAVID GARCIA
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wikia.org page on John David Garcia
John David Garcia (ca. 1936 - November 23, 2001 in Springfield, Oregon, USA) - founder of the Society for Evolutionary Ethics (SEE), taught an enlightened vision of ethics and human purpose via four books, dozens of articles, lectures, seminars and attempts to found schools based on his ideas. He did these things mainly in the US, then in Chile and Mexico.
A self-described moral protagonist and scientific generalist, he sought to advance human evolution through increased moral awareness and creativity. (Creativity = Intelligence * ethics). He viewed the evolutionary ethic as a "rational alternative to death" and devoted his life to learning, teaching and creating. He once described his main intellectual contribution as having synthesized the ethical visions of Spinoza and Teilhard de Chardin.
His first book, The Moral Society (1971), presented the fundamental theories and scientific basis for the evolutionary ethic and then detailed alternative applications, the "Moral Society" being the rational alternative to death of the species. He re-structered his evolutionary ethic theories and re-applied them in his best-selling "PsychoFraud and Ethical Therapy", a condemnation of contemporary psychotherapy based upon its failure to begin with moral purpose.
Students and admirers of Garcia generally consider his third book, Creative Transformation (1991), his finest work; a logical extrapolation of evolution in general and autopoiesis in particular. After offering a review of human evolution and awareness, he offered a practical guide for those seeking to expand their creative potential. For Garcia, creativity was the measure of, the key process within, and the ultimate purpose for morality. He advocated creativity as a motivator of human action and a teachable process with the potential to increase forever (a Teilhardian idea). Garcia's work stands out as one of the great integrations of scientific and philosophical thought.
Garcia believed that specialization in one area of study was a mistake; a poor compromise made because most need to maximize their employability in the short term. He preferred to earn his living filing for and licensing patents, starting companies and offering his often stunning intellectual talents.
Garcia's formal education ended when he had earned his second master's degree because he felt that academia is generally comprised of people who are too specialized and who focus more on impressing others with their own mastery and intelligence rather than helping increase the mastery and intelligence of their students. As a teacher, Garcia was a master of the dialectic method and the scope and breadth of his knowledge never failed to impress.
According to Garcia, in the past people were seldom confronted by a need to choose between happiness and creativity because the environment that people found themselves in was "forgiving" enough that actions that maximized happiness tended also to increase creativity (e.g., as an unintended side-effect). As the human environment has changed (via, eg, progress in technology and communications and, eg, population growth), happiness has become less and less acceptable as a guide to human action, with the result that if most people continue to pursue happiness as their ultimate goal in life, the outcome is likely to be disaster for the human species.
Garcia's response to this observation was to spend the last 30 years of his life trying to persuade as many people as possible to devote their lives to maximizing creativity instead of happiness. Garcia defined creativity (Total creativity) as the ability to predict and control the "total environment" -- namely, the physical, biological and "psychosocial" (human mind and human culture) environments. In 1981 he organized the School of Experimental Ecology in Oregon and thereafter assembled various groups (favoring octets) to experiment with his creativity enhancement techniques.
Later, he subscribed to the theory that the human brain is a quantum device that can receive information from beyond spacetime, namely, from David Bohm's Implicate Order. He designed and experimented with a "Quantum Ark" to act as an interface between mind and "higher order information systems".
Garcia's inventions included the "Electronic Signature Lock" (and related biometric techniques) for security applications, a real-time computer system for expedited dispatch of taxis, and an automated electronic vehicle localizer (used extensively in cities and ports). He co-founded the Teknekron Corporation.
Garcia was fluent in English, Castilian, French, Portuguese, Italian, and German. He also spoke passable Chinese and read other languages, including Hebrew
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JOHN DAVID GARCIA AUDIO MP3 BOOKS
The Ethical State An Essay on Political Ethics By John David Garcia 267pgs
JDG The Ethical State CHAPTER ONE The Essential Background 60MIN MP3 10MG
JDGThe Ethical State CHAPTER TWO Keeping What Works 95min 16mg mp3
TEXT FOR ABOVE 95 MIN MP3 IS BELOW AS FOLLOWS:
The Ethical State:
An Essay on Political Ethics
by John David Garcia
CHAPTER TWO: Keeping What Works
The Evolutionary Ethic is a revolutionary new concept which leads directly to the political system to be developed in the next chapter. However, the essence of Judaeo-Christian ethics, as expressed in the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus, are implicit in the Evolutionary Ethic. The ethical essence and the practical reality of political ethics as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights together with the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution are also implicit in the Evolutionary Ethic, although no democratic constitution is intrinsically ethical if it leads to majority rule. Solely the concepts of self-government and maximum respect for the individual, are intrinsically ethical. In this chapter we will show how these more familiar ethical concepts of Judaeo-Christian ethics and the political ethics of the Declaration of Independence and parts of the Constitution of the United States relate to the Eight Ethical Principles, the Evolutionary Ethic, and the political principles and system to be developed in this book.
We should note that having a partially ethical constitution does not necessarily produce an ethical government. The Government of the United States stopped even having a pretense of being ethical long ago. In fact, it has become increasingly unethical since the end of the Monroe Administration. But it is only in the last hundred years that each succeeding President has usually been significantly less ethical than the previous President, with the exception of Jimmy Carter, who was clearly an ethical, but ineffective, President. Without the short lived revulsion against the Nixon Administration, a man like Jimmy Carter would never have been elected President. Bill Clinton and Al Gore were as unethical, or worse, than Nixon ever was.
The Ten Commandments
Although there are 613 divinely ordained commandments in Judaism, some Orthodox Jews believe that all 613 commandments can be derived from the Ten Commandments. As was mentioned in the previous chapter, the Ten Commandments can be derived from the Evolutionary Ethic and the Eight Ethical Principles. From the Evolutionary Ethic, the Eight Ethical Principles, and the Ten Commandments all the ethical commandments of the Bible may be derived as well as the metaphorical ethical implications of the ritualistic commandments, but not, to the best of my knowledge, the ritual itself.
Therefore I reject Jewish ritual, but not its ethics, both explicit and metaphorically implicit. But along with Spinoza I believe we should be respectful of other people's rituals, if they are not overtly unethical, but merely trivial to our perceptions. That is how I feel about both Jewish and Christian ritual. I personally find most forms of ritual obnoxious. But the Ten Commandments are explicitly ethical, although they all require rational interpretation in order to apply them properly in our personal lives as well as in political ethical systems, such as in the ethical constitution to be developed later in this book. Later, practical methods to implement an ethical constitution will be suggested.
The Ten Commandments are common to both Judaism and Christianity and are the core of Judaeo-Christian ethics, although the early Catholic Church revised the Ten Commandments, as well as the teachings of Jesus, in order to make its form of idolatry acceptable, as well as to justify its bureaucratic structure. Most Protestant sects have translated the Ten Commandments more correctly, but also with errors. We shall use mostly the Revised American Standard Version of the King James translation to express the Ten Commandments.
The teachings of Jesus are extremely anti-bureaucratic and have added a new dimension to Jewish ethics. Jewish ethics are based on a universal sense of justice. Jesus' interpretation of Jewish ethics emphasizes universal love over justice, although universal love is also within Jewish ethics. Therefore purely Christian ethics will be discussed separately, after first analyzing the rational and political implications of the Ten Commandments, which we now consider.
First Commandment
First Part. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of Bondage.
Second Part. You shall have no other Gods before me.
Third Part. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or is in the earth beneath; you shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to those who keep my commandments.
Interpretation of the First Commandment
First Part. The concept of an emotional, personal God, as we saw in the previous chapter, is a metaphor for the impersonal quantum universe of infinite truth outside of our time and space. God is not an anthropomorphic being, but is rather the process of ever increasing creativity throughout the universe. Solely processes are infinite, never anthropomorphic beings. We are created in God's ethical image, not His physical image, which does not exist.
All creative changes in the universe, such as Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, occur solely through the intervention of God through His true messengers, e.g. Moses, or His angels. Anthropomorphic angels are metaphors for higher stages of evolution, for ethical beings who have become moral (Moral Societies), i.e. highly, but not yet irreversibly, ethical. Solely God is irreversibly ethical (6,7,8).
Second Part. We cannot put any person, principle, or thing before God. We must worship solely the one true God, i.e. the Quantum Universe beyond our time and space that is the root cause of all evolution and each creative act in the universe. We worship the one true God by learning, teaching, and creating objective truth to the limits of our capability, but without rejecting the subjective truth of true mysticism out of hand, but rather testing it scientifically. This is the Evolutionary Ethic.
Third Part. The one true God is a spirit, i.e. an infinite, non-local process of infinite complexity beyond our time and space, and cannot be represented by any graven, earthly, or finite image. If we hate the one true God, i.e. behave unethically, and decrease anyone's creativity including our own, we shall destroy our own creativity and that of our children unto the third or the fourth generation. Therefore, ethics are partly hereditary, and are not determined entirely by our environment, but our descendants can recover their ethics after several generations. If we follow the commandments of God, i.e. behave ethically, we shall be loved by God, i.e. we shall enhance our creativity and that of our children.
Second Commandment
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
Interpretation of the Second Commandment
The name of God is a description of an infinite process infinitely complex. Our knowledge is always finite. Therefore, we never know the true name of God, i.e. a finite being can never fully understand the infinite process that is God. To take the name of God in vain is to speak falsely in the name of God. Since all of nature and everything in it is a part of God, according to Spinoza and Bohm's holographic model of the universe, to say anything false about nature is as much a taking of the name of God in vain as is swearing an oath falsely. This is the ethics of science.
Since the universe is an interconnected whole, as in David Bohm's holographic model, we can never fully understand any part of the universe unless we understand all of it, and we will never understand all of it. But we can grow in knowledge and creativity forever, becoming ever closer to God by understanding Him and emulating Him, i.e. following the Evolutionary Ethic. Therefore, it is unethical to be certain about any aspect of nature, because our knowledge is always at best incomplete, and at worst false. We are believing falsely and speaking falsely when we are certain and express certainty. To be certain is to take the name of God in vain.
We must never say anything that is false under the name of God, i.e. swear an oath falsely, fake a scientific experiment, or express certainty about nature or anything in nature other than our own mind, which is the only thing in the universe about we have direct certain knowledge. We can be certain solely about having our thoughts and perceptions, but never about their causes, since all truth comes from God.
God is infinite; completely true information about any part of the infinite holographic process which is God is also infinite. We are finite, and all the information we will ever have will be finite. Therefore, we can never be certain about any aspect of nature, except our own thoughts and perceptions. This is the Sixth Ethical Principle, and it implies the Seventh Ethical Principle, that it is ethical to doubt. So long as we doubt, we are open to the truth that comes solely from God.
Third Commandment
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, your son, or your daughter, your manservant or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
Interpretation of the Third Commandment
The natural cycle of creativity for all ethical beings and processes is that of seven time periods. For humans a time period for creativity is twenty four hours. For God these time periods may be very different, since He exists outside of our time and space ( 377, 378).
In order to maximize our creativity we must always rest for a full time period after six consecutive creative time periods, as well as during every individual time period by sleeping. Therefore resting is not doing nothing. Rest is essential to maximize our creativity. We must sleep every day, and sleeping is a creative act necessary to maintain our intelligence and maximize our creativity. The most creative thing we do while sleeping is to dream.
After six creative time periods we rest for a full time period in order to maximize our overall creativity. While awake, the most creative way to rest is to contemplate the nature of God and God's ethics (the Evolutionary Ethic, the Eight Ethical Principles, the Ten Commandments, and other ethical principles tested by time, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.) Therefore on the Sabbath we do no remunerative work, and devote our day to contemplating God and His ethics, by ourselves if we must, but we are obligated to share these contemplations first with our families and second with our friends and neighbors. On the Sabbath we neither work nor cause anyone else to work. This is how we maximize creativity on the Sabbath.
Since we have an ethical obligation on the Sabbath to our family, friends, and neighbors, it is optimal for any creative society to have a consensus on which day of the week shall be the Sabbath. The Jews have for over 3,000 years chosen Saturday. The Christians for almost 2,000 years have chosen Sunday. The Moslems for about 1,300 years have chosen Friday. What is essential on our Sabbath is to contemplate the nature of God and His ethics without doing any directly or indirectly remunerative work, not to engage in some particular ritual. The more compulsively ritualistic a religion, the less ethical and creative its adherents will be.
Fourth Commandment
Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God gives you.
Interpretation of the Fourth Commandment
We have ethical obligations to all humanity, including our enemies. However, we must always behave ethically toward our parents and always treat them with love, respect, and honor. We do this by never doing or saying anything that will diminish their creativity, and by always seeking to increase their creativity, always speaking the truth to them in the most loving way possible. We must do this no matter how unethical or trivial we may perceive our parents to be, because we can never be certain about these things, and we should always treat all persons with love, respect, and honor. But we begin with our parents.
However, we are not obligated to stay in the household of our parents if they are destructive to us, and are, in fact, obligated to leave unethical parents. However, so long as we live in their household, we are ethically obligated to honor and obey them. We must always honor our parents.
If we do not honor our parents, our own creativity will be diminished, because we shall have behaved unethically. We owe our life, our intelligence, our ethics, and our original creativity to our parents. That is why we must always honor them as an ethical obligation. It is always unethical to display any form of disrespect toward our parents, and they should not tolerate it. If parents do tolerate disrespect from their children, then they are diminishing their own children's creativity, which is an unethical act. It is always unethical to tolerate destructive behavior (5th E.P.).
Fifth Commandment
You shall not kill.
Interpretation of the Fifth Commandment
The Fifth Commandment is more than an admonition to not murder. Neither shall we kill except when absolutely necessary to defend our creativity, that of our children, or of our friends and neighbors from unethical assault. Both Judaism and most forms of Christianity recognize the right to self-defense. But self-defense should not be lightly undertaken.
By the Fifth Ethical Principle, it is always unethical to allow our creativity or that of our children or other ethical persons to be diminished, and we are justified, if we are very careful, in using deadly force to defend the creativity of all ethical persons. This is the case because it is unethical to tolerate destructive behavior. But since it is also unethical to be certain, we must be extremely careful not to apply any kind of force to others unless it is to relieve immediate, unethical danger to someone's creativity. Therefore, it is unethical to impose the death penalty on deadly criminals who are already restrained and under control, but we also have the obligation to protect the creativity of society from such dangerous persons. Prison is an unethical way of doing this.
Prisons, as currently constituted in most parts of the world, degrade the prisoner and do not give him an adequate opportunity to rehabilitate himself. A more ethical alternative to deal with all criminals, not just murderers, is to exile them to a carefully guarded island with other prisoners of the same kind, where they will not be brutalized by unethical bureaucrats, but will be given an ethical opportunity to rehabilitate themselves if they wish it. If they do not choose to rehabilitate themselves, they should remain in exile until they do so choose. It is ethical to increase the ethics of criminals. How to rehabilitate criminals ethically is a topic beyond the scope of this book.
A final observation on the Fifth Commandment is that we cannot murder another even to protect, but not defend, our own life. This is to say that we cannot save our own life at the expense of another innocent life. We can take the life of someone solely when that person is in the act of unethically diminishing someone's creativity and he or she will not cease without the use of deadly force.
We cannot take the life of another, even to save our own life, if that person is innocent of any unethical action against our life. If we ever take another's life, we must never lose sight of the fact that we might be mistaken in our action, since we are never certain. We can take a life solely when absolutely necessary in defense of the ethical life of another. It is unethical to unnecessarily degrade the life of another.
Sixth Commandment
You shall not commit adultery.
Interpretation of the Sixth Commandment
Among Orthodox Jews, the Sixth Commandment is interpreted to prohibit all illicit sexual relationships which, in addition to adultery, include rape, incest, homosexuality, and bestiality. Given that the ancient Jews were polygynous, the concept of adultery is quite complex in Judaism, and involves primarily married women and men who have sexual relationships with persons who are married to someone other than themselves. The concept of incest is equally complex. There are many conflicting schools on exactly what is an illicit sexual act.
According to the Second Ethical Principle, to never decrease anyone's creativity including our own, the Sixth Commandment means never having a sexual relationship that will lead to the decrease of anyone's creativity, including our own, even at the cost of our own life.
In Orthodox Judaism there are only three sins which we must always avoid, even at the cost of own life; these are: idolatry (superstition), murder, and illicit sexual relationships. Public idolatry is considered the worst kind of idolatry because it may contribute to the ethical degradation of another. We should, at all costs, avoid communicating superstition or the illusions of certainty to others.
The Evolutionary Ethic says we should die before deliberately reducing anyone's creativity, including our own. It is unethical to allow anyone to degrade another human being, which can be done sexually. According to the Evolutionary Ethic, the most creative form of sexuality is ethically committed, heterosexual monogamy. The Evolutionary Ethic is somewhat more rigorous in regard to sexual ethics than is the Sixth Commandment, but they are similar.
Seventh Commandment
You shall not steal.
Interpretation of the Seventh Commandment
The Evolutionary Ethic and the Fifth and Seventh Commandments say that a person's life and property belong entirely to him or herself. Furthermore, no one has a right to any part of another person's life or property without his or her consent. Therefore, taxes imposed on minorities by majorities are inherently unethical. They are a form of theft. Taxes, to be ethical, must be fair and must not favor one group over another. We shall see how this can be made practical within the concept of an Ethical State.
A person's life and property are a part of his intelligence, i.e. ability to predict and control the total environment, and as a consequence part of his creativity. Therefore, stealing any part of someone's life or property diminishes his or her creativity and should never be done.
The Eighth Commandment
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Interpretation of the Eighth Commandment
In Judaism the notion of "neighbor" refers to a fellow Jew. Recall we use this notion differently to refer to any ethical person. The Commandments still apply with our broader notion of "neighbor." The worst lie we can tell is a lie that leads to the false conviction of another. The Evolutionary Ethic says we should never tell a lie to anyone about anything, because that will diminish truth for them and as a consequence diminish their intelligence and their creativity. Therefore, a lie of any kind is always unethical, but the worst lie is knowingly and falsely to convict another of a crime he or she did not commit. This does not mean we always have to speak the truth to everyone.
We should always speak the truth, or not speak at all. To persons we believe to be engaged in unethical activity, we should not lie, but remain uncommunicative, except as to ethics. The general principle is that we should increase the intelligence solely of ethical persons; it is unethical to increase the intelligence of unethical persons because C=IE, and increasing the intelligence of people with negative ethics will only increase their destructiveness. As it is unethical to be certain about who is ethical or unethical, we should always begin our communication with the communication of true ethics. This is always ethical, whether our audience is ethical or unethical. As Patanjali said, we should begin every new conversation by speaking about God (298).
Persons who are not interested in true ethics should not have their intelligence increased. However, when in doubt, in an emergency, we should always assume that they are ethical and communicate the information that is necessary to save a life or preserve an intelligence, without going through a test of ethics. We should always be very careful in not going beyond this limit in communicating truth to others.
When persons ask us to teach truth, of any kind, to them, we may carefully assume that they are truth seekers, and as a consequence ethical, if we have no evidence that they are systematically destructive to themselves and/or others. The safest course, to avoid engaging in a destructive act, is to always begin our communications with a brief discussion of ethics, and to stop discussion if there is no interest. This is one reason why many great spiritual teachers end up living as hermits.
Ninth and Tenth Commandments
You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's.
Ninth Commandment
You shall not covet any part of your neighbor's life or property.
Interpretation of the Ninth Commandment
Recall, our broader use of "neighbor." It is not sufficient merely not to steal your neighbor's goods, because that diminishes his creativity. Neither must you even covet his property, or any part of his life or of his property rights, for that diminishes your own creativity, and may induce you to steal or even to kill. All that we have in life should come from our creative actions; it diminishes our creativity to value the fruits of our creativity more than the creativity itself. It diminishes our creativity even more to value the fruits of someone else's creativity more than we value our own creativity.
In order to maximize our creativity, we must cease valuing the fruits of anyone's creativity, including our own, and learn to take creative action as in end in itself, without expectation of external reward or fear of any punishment.
It is an ethical duty to seek creativity as an end in itself. It is at best trivial to behave ethically in exchange for external rewards. Both trivial and unethical behavior are destructive to our creativity. Therefore, we are behaving destructively and unethically when we covet our neighbor's property or any of his or her rights to his or her own life and property.
Tenth Commandment
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
Interpretation of the Tenth Commandment
Recall, that for us "neighbor" is any ethical person. Not only is adultery unethical because it is destructive to you and to your neighbor's marriage and, as a consequence, to society, but the coveting of your neighbor's wife is also unethical, because it shall also diminish your creativity, and put you in peril of committing adultery. Although your neighbor's wife is not his property, a committed relationship between two people, whether it has been formalized by marriage or is less formal, is a holy relationship, and you should not even lust in your heart after your neighbor's spouse, for when you do you are behaving unethically, diminishing your creativity, and putting your neighbor's marriage in peril.
We should seek our sexual partners solely from unattached persons who truly love us for our creativity, and whom we in turn truly love and value for their creativity. There is never any true or ethical love without a commitment to the creativity of our partner.
If you should ever feel lust for your neighbor's spouse, you should meditate on this and do your best to overcome it, and discreetly avoid your neighbor's spouse until you have overcome this lust. Otherwise, you are heading down the path of destructive behavior. By the Fifth Ethical Principal you are ethically obligated to be intolerant of destructive behavior or its precursors in yourself as well as in others. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
Christian Ethics
Although the Sermon On The Mount is normally considered the best summary of Christian ethics, as distinct from purely Jewish ethics, the simplest, clearest, and most concise summary of Christian ethics is in the Gospel of John. When Jesus is about to be led away to be crucified, the Apostles ask him, "Master, what commandment do you leave us." Jesus immediately replies, "My sole commandment is that you love one another, as I have loved you." Then almost immediately Jesus repeats himself, for the sole time in the Gospels, and says, "My sole commandment is that you love one another." This is the essence of Christian ethics as distinct from Jewish ethics.
In the Sermon On The Mount, Jesus went so far as to say the we should also love our enemies, in contradiction to the Jewish admonition to hate our enemies. Therefore the essence of Christian ethics is that we must try to maximize the creativity of everyone, including our enemies. Note that neither Jesus' sole commandment, nor the Sermon On The Mount, nor the Ten Commandments have anything to do with ritual.
An enemy is any unethical person who systematically decreases the creativity of anyone, including himself. However, we can never be certain about who is an enemy. Therefore, the sole way to behave ethically toward a potential enemy, who appears systematically destructive, is to communicate true ethics to this possible enemy in the most loving way possible.
By "love" Jesus clearly did not mean sexual love, which the Greeks called "eros." Saint Paul, used another Greek word to denote the notion of Christian love. The word he used was "agape." This is a spiritual notion of love which does not involve sexuality, although it may exist in conjunction with sexuality. Sexual attraction can easily exist without love. Sex without love is unethical.
The definition of love which emerges from the Evolutionary Ethic and the Eight Ethical Principles is that love is the desire to maximize, and the act of maximizing, the creativity of another. This is the meaning of true love or ethical love.
Self love is maximizing our own creativity.
There is also a perverse love based upon the desire to maximize, and the act of maximizing, the happiness of another. Children whose parents sacrifice their creativity in order to maximize their happiness, have their ethics destroyed, without having their happiness increased.
The Evolutionary Ethic says that we should treat all persons with true love. The minimum love we should express toward every person we meet is to do our best to communicate true ethics to that person. But we are ethically constrained not to increase the intelligence of unethical persons, because if their ethics are negative, we only increase their destructiveness by increasing their intelligence. Remember, C = IE. But we can never be certain about who is ethical or unethical. We can only do the best we can, by beginning all our communication with true ethics. And this is ethically sufficient.
It is not a legitimate function of government to try to increase anyone's creativity. The maximization of creativity must be an act of individual ethics, not of government intervention. The sole legitimate function of any ethical government is the protection of people from having their creativity involuntarily diminished. No government in history has been more successful in this latter function than the Government of the United States of America, but this is a rapidly diminishing truth.
The Ethical Foundations of the United States of America
The ethical foundations of America are in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments to the Constitution. The rest of the Constitution is at best an ethical mistake, at worst it is an overtly unethical act, although the basic principles of American Government, such as the system of checks and balances, equal protection under the law for all citizens, and maximum respect for the individual, are completely ethical. The Government of the United States has been straying ever further from these ethical principles, almost from its inception.
All the considerable evil that has been done by the U.S. Government has been allegedly done to do good for someone. The problem is that since governments are inherently uncreative, they can never increase anyone's creativity without decreasing someone else's creativity. Governments usually do this by confiscating the fruits of the creativity of their most creative citizens, and then redistributing them to their least creative citizens. This is done through forced taxation, which, as we have seen, is a form of stealing. Solely taxation by consensus is ethical taxation.
No government should ever try to do good, other than protecting the civil rights of its citizens, for it shall always fail by doing evil instead, i.e. decrease the creativity of its most creative citizens and, at best, merely increase the intelligence of its least creative citizens. Remember that, according to the Third Ethical Principle, unethical means can never produce ethical ends.
Therefore an ethical government must never decrease the creativity of a single human being, no matter how many other human beings might, allegedly, be benefitted by this "sacrifice." However, an ethical government will never try to prevent its citizens from doing evil to themselves, since evil must be allowed to destroy itself, as Jesus taught. That is why Jesus taught that we should love our enemies and suffer evil.
The main function of ethical government is to avoid doing evil, and to prevent evil from being done to its unwilling citizens. Therefore, the sole legitimate function of government is to protect its citizens from having their creativity diminished without their consent by the evil actions of others or by ecological or natural catastrophes. Therefore, the public health functions of government to prevent the spread of infectious diseases or the pollution of the natural environment are ethical methods for preventing ecological catastrophe. An ethical government may also evacuate and render emergency assistance to its citizens when they are ravaged by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and other natural catastrophes. But ethical governments must not go beyond these limits, and attempt to do good for some of their citizens by doing evil to other citizens. Any government that acts beyond these limits is unethical.
Two of the most evil governments of modern times, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, justified their existence and all their horrendously evil acts by claiming they were doing good for their citizens, as do all the tyrannies of today, such as all the remaining Islamic and Communist governments, some of which were, and still are, just as evil as the Nazis. The same can be said for all the other tyrannies, including some of the democracies, which claim to do good for some by doing evil to others. As the Third Ethical Principle tells us, the ends never justify the means. Unethical means can never produce ethical ends.
For reasons given in the previous chapter, the Founding Fathers did the best they could with what they had and knew. Not even Jefferson could foresee the bureaucratic structure and the tyranny that would emerge from Majority Rule. But Jefferson knew about the foundations of ethical government. He expressed these in the Declaration of Independence, which he wrote, and the Bill of Rights, which he inspired.
The Declaration of Independence went through several drafts, primarily to delete Jefferson's caustic references to slavery, but also to delete another very important passage. In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence Jefferson had said "...all men are created equal and separate (229)." By "separate" Jefferson meant that no one had a right to any part of another person's life or property, as implied by the Ten Commandments, without that person's consent.
The separate reference was deleted at the insistence of John Adams, who was terrified of anarchy, as were many of the other Founding Fathers. The compromise that was finally reached was to delete "separate" and create a representative republic where the representatives were elected democratically, although suffrage was far from universal.
For example, solely property owners could vote at first, because solely they paid taxes. However, the democratic basis of government was to spread until today there is universal suffrage for all citizens of the United States, with minimal requirements for citizenship; the sole requirements are to be 18 years of age and not to have been convicted of a felony. They do not even have to pretend that they are dedicated to the ethical principles upon which the United States was founded.
This gave the United States a truly democratic Government, which claimed that its main function was to do good for its citizens, thereby violating a fundamental principle of ethical government. The citizens, in turn, became largely ethically corrupt, expecting nothing from the Government, but that it do good for them, and tolerating the most egregious ethical behavior from the elected leaders, so long as they believed that Government was doing material good for them.
The violation of the principle not to diminish the creativity, or violate the basic human and civil rights, of a single human in order to benefit other humans is among the greatest evils that is done today by the Government of the United States. All the evil that government does is done in the name of doing good for its citizens.
A Declaration of Independence
In order to put the Declaration of Independence in a modern, evolutionary, ethical context, it will now be rewritten in terms of the Evolutionary Ethic, with the advantage of two-hundred and thirty years of successful and failed experimentation with democratic government. This is what I believe Jefferson would say if he were alive today, although he would clearly say it better; wherever possible I have kept and/or used the original words of Jefferson.
Any group of people, no matter how small, who jointly choose to live by the ethical principles of the Second Declaration of Independence have created an ethical government for themselves. They are living in, and are citizens of, an Ethical State. An Ethical State evolves and becomes a Moral Society and then goes on evolving forever (115,116,117). An angel is a metaphor for a Moral Society.
A Second Declaration of Independence
Inspired by Thomas Jefferson
Unanimously Agreed to by All Citizens of an Ethical State
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the Earth, the separate and sovereign station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humanity requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that humanity is equal, but separate, before God in being endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable individual rights; that among these are life, liberty, property, privacy, and the maximization of creativity according to the dictates of one's own conscience. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among humanity, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such forms, that creativity shall be maximized.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that persons are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under any form of despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future creativity.
Such has been the patient sufferance of the subjects of this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former system of government. The history of the Government of the United States is one of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of tyranny over these once-free people. Let the facts be submitted to a candid world.
The Government of the United States, in collusion with the vassal governments of states, counties, and municipalities, have usurped the power originally granted by God and the Constitution of the United States to the people, and imposed destructive taxation, an inequitable legal system, an oppressive, compulsory educational system, the theft of property rights, and insufferable interference in their private lives.
The elected officials have repeatedly lied to and misled the public in order to obtain its support in further reducing its liberty. A majority of the electorate has repeatedly shown itself willing and anxious to be deceived by voting for the most deceitful of the political candidates before them. A majority of the electorate has repeatedly rejected ethical candidates who refused to lie to them. The Government of the United States and a majority of the voters have shown that the United States' system of Government by Majority Rule is a failed ideology which leads to the concentration of power in the hands of the most destructive liars that the society can produce. The possibility that all other systems of government have, in the past, been even worse, does not justify any form of destructive tyranny. We seek the best possible form of Government, and not merely the lesser of popular evils.
The Government of the United States has shown its moral bankruptcy in recent times by squandering the wealth of its people in supporting some of the most corrupt, destructive, evil tyrannies in history. Among these have been the governments of the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1945, the Republic of China (now in Taiwan) since 1941, the regime of the Shah of Iran from 1953 to 1978, South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975, the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua from 1933 until 1979, the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines from 1966 to 1986, many despotic Islamic states in the Middle East and other parts of the world from 1948 to the present, plus many evil, destructive dictatorships in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, whenever it seemed politically expedient.
This destructive expediency has been allegedly practiced to inhibit the deleterious spread of even greater evils, particularly communism. But it is self-evident that unethical means can never achieve ethical ends. Confiscatory socialism and other evils have steadily spread and become worse through the unethical acts of the United States Government. This Government now gives aid and support to the largest communist tyranny in the world, the People's Republic of China. Humanity is now closer to self-annihilation than at any time in history.
The Government in its alleged attempt to benefit its people has taken away their liberties and has almost succeeded in destroying them along with the rest of the world.
The Government and a majority of the electorate of the United States have engaged in gross fiscal mismanagement. They have produced a huge national debt of many trillions of dollars. At the same time, they have impoverished the most creative people of the United States by confiscating their wealth and redistributing it to the most destructive persons in the nation, thereby spawning a new parasitical class of politicians, bureaucrats, corporate monopolies, oligopolies, and their clients, who further destroy the creativity of the nation.
The Government of the United States has constantly expanded its police powers, through the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and other bureaucracies, to spy upon and harass its ethical citizens with police-state methods, while selectively aiding and abetting the ever more destructive organized crime syndicates at home and the tyrannies abroad (511-526).
In gross violation of their civil and human rights, the Government has made it increasingly difficult for ethical citizens to arm and defend themselves, while simultaneously contributing to the proliferation of vicious criminals by supporting and expanding a legal system that punishes the ethical and rewards the unethical. These destructive practices are exacerbated by the rulings of the Supreme Court which constantly take away individual liberty for the benefit of the police bureaucracies and for political expediency, by catering to popular fear and prejudice while protecting criminals at the expense of the innocent.
The legal system itself is dominated by parasitical lawyers who corrupt the law to serve solely their own power-seeking and money-making purposes by constantly eliminating all vestiges of truth and justice from the legal process and replacing them with legal technicalities, bureaucratic procedures, and the deception and manipulation of ignorant, fearful jurors. In the current legal system, a combination of money, deceit, and/or a clever, unscrupulous lawyer can almost always prevail over truth and justice.
The Government of the United States, with the criminally negligent acquiescence of an electoral majority, has plundered the wealth of its citizens, imposed upon them an ever growing oppressive government, exacerbated the pollution and destruction of the environment, destroyed the creativity of its youth through a malignant educational bureaucracy, and made it ever more difficult for individual creativity to express itself. The Government has greatly endangered the very survival of humanity and life on earth. The political leaders of the United States, and those who vote for or in any way support them, have shown themselves unwilling to provide for the common welfare and to prevent the destruction of the people's God-given creativity.
In spite of all its faults, we recognize that the Government of the Unites States is among the least evil governments on earth. But just as the United States was originally created when an ethical minority of its inhabitants revolted against what was then the least evil and most powerful government on earth in order not to be forced to accept the lesser of evils, so now must a new ethical minority revolt against the least evil and most powerful government of today. For evil in any form, no matter how powerful, must not be tolerated. We recognize, along with those who signed the original Declaration of Independence, that all current governments are inherently evil; only that government which governs least, governs best. We have used the remaining liberty in the United States to warn our American brethren of these dangers through our words and our actions; we have given alternatives. They have chosen to continue on the path of self-destruction.
We, the People of the Ethical State, choose life over death. We choose creation over destruction. In ethical self-defense, we declare ourselves a free and sovereign people, no longer bound by ties to any government other than our own. We welcome those who choose to join us in a creative, free society. The Ethical State begins. We shall create a Moral Society.
Before the world and the God who created all, we declare ourselves an Ethical State dedicated to the maximization of creativity and bound by no other law. We declare the inviolate liberty of every human being to do and say what he or she pleases, as long as he or she does not impose undeserved harm on others. We declare that harm to another is deserved solely when necessary, in defense against an aggressor who intends to harm an innocent person.
A person's life, liberty, property, and privacy belong entirely to him or herself; no one has a right to any part of another person's life, liberty, property, or privacy. Solely mutually voluntary transactions by 100% consensus can ever be ethical or creative. The tyranny of any majority over any individual is hereby denounced. We, the People of the Ethical State, swear eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of any ethical being. We declare all persons ethical until proven otherwise.
Upon these principles we shall henceforth govern ourselves and interact with others. We shall do our best to maximize creativity. Toward this God-inspired end, we, and all future citizens of the Ethical State, pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Citizenship
Anyone who understands the Evolutionary Ethic well, and sincerely commits to implement it by living in accordance with the ethical principles expressed in the Second Declaration of Independence, is a citizen of an Ethical State. It is not necessary to agree with any of the criticisms of American political history to be a citizen of an Ethical State. However, all citizens of an Ethical State must be fully committed to its ethical principles.
The ethical principles of an Ethical State are further clarified by seeing the correspondence between the Evolutionary Ethic and the Bill of Rights together with the other ethical amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America. The following interpretations relate these amendments to citizenship in an Ethical State.
The Ethical Amendments
First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Interpretation of the First Amendment
Religion is a question of personal, private morality, and, as we have seen, this should not be a concern of the Government. It is clear that there exist destructive religions; however, so long as these are freely chosen by their adherents for themselves and are privately practiced, and do not impose any undeserved harm upon any other citizens, the Government should remain entirely neutral in questions of religion and other aspects of personal, private morality. This is supported by the Ten Commandments, the Second Declaration of Independence, the Evolutionary Ethic, and the Eight Ethical Principles. Unethical people should be allowed to destroy themselves.
In a free society ethical children will often reject the unethical religion and behavior of their parents, without Government intervention. However, the Government has a certain obligation to protect dependent children from unethical parents; some religions are very destructive to children. How to ethically protect dependent children, without having Government unethically interfering with parental rights, is discussed in the next chapter within the context of a constitution for an Ethical State.
Freedom of speech is also a question of private morality. All truth should clearly be allowed to be spoken, written, and otherwise communicated by everyone, but so should also lies that are private, and do not have to be believed, be allowed to be communicated without any Government intervention. It is solely lies that are fraudulent, libelous, or slanderous that are a concern of an ethical government, since the main task of an ethical government is not to allow its citizens' creativity to be diminished involuntarily.
Therefore, false advertisements which induce anyone to harm themselves financially, physically, or otherwise are fraudulent and subject to criminal prosecution, if they are deliberate, or to civil action if they are accidental or unintentional. Deliberate lies are sometimes considered civil, rather than criminal, fraud, but within an Ethical State any intentional harming of another is a crime. Solely unintentional harm is a non-criminal civil harm. The lies of some religions border on the criminal, but are difficult to prove in a court of law so long as there is no criminal coercion.
Slander is destructive to a person's reputation, and may therefore diminish creativity. Slander damages the creative potential of a person. Therefore, slander should be subject to criminal prosecution if it is deliberate, or to civil action if it is unintentional or accidental.
Peaceful assembly of any group of any size is clearly a basic human right which should not be infringed, so long as this assembly is voluntary among all of the people involved and it is on private land voluntarily provided for this purpose, or on public land set aside for this purpose and for which permission is given or implied by the branch of Government responsible for the use of this public land. Such permission should not be unreasonably withheld or denied by an ethical government. The people cannot maximize their creativity unless they are allowed to assemble peacefully according to the dictates of their own consciences. However they must not impose any undeserved harm on any non-consenting person.
Therefore, the Government cannot ethically infringe on the right of any voluntary assembly for any purpose, unless it can prove that this assembly is harming someone without his or her consent. Therefore, the Government cannot ethically control schools, theaters, sports arenas, or other places of voluntary assembly, or for that matter any voluntary gatherings for any purpose such as in hospitals or businesses. The people so assembled or gathered do so at their own risk.
The same applies for any use of private property for any purpose by the property owner. The burden of proof is on the Government to show that someone is being harmed after the fact. No prior restraint can ethically exist on religion, speech, assembly, or private use of private land. Otherwise creativity shall not be maximized, and the Government shall become destructive. However, the Government is ethically bound to intervene after the fact if someone is being damaged or is recklessly endangered by any of these acts.
As consequence of the ethics of the First Amendment, anyone may petition the Government for a redress of grievances, and the Government is ethically and legally obligated to respond to these complaints in a timely matter, and answer the petitioner as to what action is being taken, and why. Otherwise, the Government is not ethical, and it shall be destructive, thereby violating the Evolutionary Ethic.
Second Amendment
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Interpretation of the Second Amendment
The right of self-defense is a basic human right. It is our ethical duty to keep anyone from diminishing our creativity, or the creativity of those we love, even by the use of deadly force, so long as we can prove that deadly force was necessary. Therefore, it is unethical to infringe on the right of anyone who is an ethical citizen to arm and defend him or herself. To do so shall be an unethical act of the Government, in violation of the Evolutionary Ethic and most of the Eight Ethical Principles, as well as the Ten Commandments and the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
A militia is a voluntary group of citizens who have joined together for mutual self-defense. Since peaceful assembly and self-defense are basic human rights, it is unethical to prevent any group of people joining together for mutual self-defense. To do so shall diminish their creativity. No prior restraint may ethically exist on the formation of a militia or on the arming of the citizens of an Ethical State for self-defense. Citizens and a militia may be disarmed solely when it is proved that they have caused undeserved harm to someone, or they are about to do so, by intent or reckless endangerment.
The purpose of the Second Amendment was, when it was originally passed, to permit citizens to defend themselves against criminals and other hostile aggressors, as well as the Government itself if the latter ever became destructive to the human rights and freedoms of its citizens. The Government of the United States has long passed this threshold of not harming its citizens.
Patrick Henry stated that an armed citizenry was absolutely necessary for a people to maintain their freedom, otherwise the Government would infringe upon their freedoms a little at a time, until the people were no longer free. This has now been going on for almost 200 years.
Third Amendment
No soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in war, but in a manner prescribed by law.
Interpretation of the Third Amendment
Maintaining the peace and defending its citizens in time of war are the primary ethical responsibilities of an ethical government. But even these responsibilities take second place to the basic human rights of its citizens. These rights are summarized by the Second Declaration of Independence and the Evolutionary Ethic by the statement that "A person's life, liberty, property, and privacy belong entirely to that person and may not be involuntarily appropriated or infringed upon by the Government, even when it is necessary for the public good." This is in harmony with the Fifth and the Seventh of the Ten Commandments, as well as the Third Amendment. Therefore a government may never ethically take any part of any citizen's life, liberty, property, or privacy for any public purpose without that citizen's consent, except when necessary in self-defense against aggression by that citizen.
Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.