who or what is ‘responsible’ for some state of affairs is a question less important than the gravity of the deed, why it happened, and what can be changed to prevent it from happening again. a freewillist looks for a meager individual and quibbles over stupid moral questions like ‘didn’t you know better?’ a determinist proper is above this arbitrary pettiness and places his inquisition elsewhere; he looks at the entire age, or the systemic political, economic and social structures in place… he doesn’t ask ‘omg how could this asshole have done this’, because that’s an amateur question. rather he asks, what about this person, what he believes, his environment, his education, etc., would contribute to him thinking what he did was the rational thing to do. the freewillist, on the other hand, needs to significantly narrow the scope of investigation so that he can comfortably grasp what he is intellectually unable to approach, much less accept. he must be able to simplify the problem so that he can comprehend it. he does these things like this; first he tells himself he knows what is ‘right’. then he tells himself that everybody else is able to understand, and know, how what he tells himself is right, is right. finally he blames someone when they don’t do what he thinks they think is the right thing to do. then comes the moral culpability, the blame, the guilt, and the shame. now it is much, much easier to do it this way then it would be to establish these facts first and foremost and proceed from there:
a) there is no imperative ‘right’ in this universe.
b) even if there was, you can’t be sure you’d be able to discover what this ‘right’ was.
c) even if you did discover what this ‘right’ was, you can’t be sure anybody else should be able to discover it as you have.
once this is understood, the entire approach to morality changes. the determinist recognizes that the impetus of every action is for the good - this means, a maximization of benefit in a particular context according to the person’s understanding of things. a man steals a loaf of bread. no no no you shouldn’t have done that, it’s illegal! but is it therefore wrong? is ‘wrong’ and ‘illegal’ necessarily synonymous? if no, then there is no more substance to his guilt than there is to the asshats who try to shame him for doing it. ah but see it would be far more difficult to challenge the whole system for putting into place the circumstances that made that theft possible then it would be to just call the thief a bad guy and put him away. the pretense needed for this series of deceptions is freewill and objective morality. and so far, our leaders have been just such liars and imbeciles. in fact i couldn’t really call them liars, because they actually believe in this nonsense.
what seems to boggle the minds of amateur freewillists is how a determinist could hold any entity responsible if there is no cartesian agency behind the wheel. this very question itself, that they would ask such a thing and scratch their heads over it, betrays the simplicity of their intellect and how tedious their discourse with men and state must be. these people are entirely oblivious to the world and lack the vision for looking deeper into the forces that move things. but what am i saying? the most difficult moral quandary these dummies have ever faced was an argument over who used the car last and left the gas tank empty. here, i suppose it is as easy as ‘it’s your fault, dude!’ these folks can’t help but extend this simple understanding into contexts which require a much more critical examination of the premises of the freewill argument… but most importantly, the veracity of the consequences if they’re wrong.
now then. on the matter of ‘holding responsible’. does one need to know what the cause of a deed is before they can make the judgement; ‘this is wrong’? if a p-zombie shot a dude in the parking lot, and i later discovered this culprit to be a robot, would i be any less offended by the deed? do i need to know there was a ‘free causative agent’ responsible for making it happen, to be able to be repulsed by it? what does it matter if there are one or twenty people inside his head that made the choice to shoot this guy? i’m not looking to blame anyone. i’m not looking to hold anyone responsible. and i’m not doing these things because a) they can’t be done philosophically, and b) i couldn’t care less, anyway. what i’m trying to do is change and/or modify the circumstances that brought about this event, and i do this by examining the causes at work… one of which is not some ghost in the machine that has the magical ability to know what is objectively right… and then deliberately make the decision to do what is wrong, instead. none of this nonsense is in any way relevant to the determinist. to the freewillist, sure, because his head is not only occupied by a ghost in the machine, but also full of pancake batter as well.
so what does the determinist do to rectify a situation in which he has made the judgement; this is wrong. he sets out to change and/or eliminate factors and forces without paying any attention to the entity through which these things have manifested in the commission of the deed. the ‘person’ is almost infinitely less important than the structures in place making such an event possible. example. a lying, opportunistic prosecutor who charges a man with a crime he didn’t commit. is what he did his fault? that’s a cool question, but what the fuck does that matter? what matters is that this was even possible, and that this happens all the time all over the world. so… what makes this possible is our question. what allows lying, opportunistic prosecutors to exist, and how do we stop them from popping up all over the place? well, for one thing we don’t waste our time shaking our finger at any one of them because we don’t believe in freewill. this guy is a symptom, not a cause. get that straight first. next, ask what can be done with him, or to him, to contribute to preventing others like him from happening. we don’t waste our time arguing with this piece of shit over such things as ‘you shoulda known better’ and ‘what you did was wrong’. why? because who are we to say he shoulda known better, or that what he did was wrong? this kind of argument is for philosophers and amateur freewillists. what we determinists look for is consistency in structure between state and practice, between personal moral conviction and action, and we find circumstances that are producing conflicts between these things. we don’t demand ‘do the right thing’, but rather ‘do what you say and say what you do’. first criteria for establishing the social contract between state and citizen. later we can examine whether or not what is said and done is effective in producing optimal conditions for the improvement of life. but until you get this shit taken care of, you’re still at level one. playing the stupid blame game because you are wholly ignorant of the mechanics of causality.
i’m beginning to feel like freewillists envy the determinist… like they feel impotent in the presence of such great architects. i understand some of this, and some of it i do not. i do understand the envy one experiences in the presence of a superior thinker (i experienced this in my adolescence), and the anguish of being forlorn and forgotten by someone you’ve always wanted to impress… but i don’t understand the sense of panic these people experience at the thought of not having freewill. well wait. that’s not what they panic about. the panic is over someone else not having freewill… because then they are unable to resent and hate. these miserable weaklings need such privilege more than anything else. a catharsis, as it were, to expunge one’s impotence of action. but this psychosis runs so deep that even they aren’t aware of it, and can even pass off as decent, regular folk. and yet this is what is so dangerous about what philosophy/religion has done covertly over the last few thousand years. a meme so powerful that it almost becomes genetic… almost an intrinsic feature of a certain type of person who can’t be anything but a bad apple. you’d damn near have to perform a lobotomy to get rid of it, and i even believe that despite the triumph of science and the revolution of our future educational systems to follow, there will still be that type of person who can’t get past this profoundest of errors (the belief in freewill). maybe one day they’ll identify the gene(s) responsible for this psychosis.
but i personally have never been less forceful because i knew i had no freewill. it never bothered me in the least, because i never felt less in control without it. if anything, the range of my power has expanded. whole zeitgeists speak and work through me. what matters the little cartesian ‘I’ in this grand economy? but enough. i’ve spent another twenty minutes i could have spent rearranging my sock drawer.