The following is a ten-minute interview where I lay-out my positions on things so you can get to know me a bit.
Q: Quick; What’s the meaning of life?
A: For you, it's whatever you want it to be. Meaning is a type of opinion, which is itself a type of thought. We can agree to share a meaning but that doesn’t make it something that exists outside of our minds. For example, we may agree that red means “stop” or “danger” but we could just as easily agree that it means “hurry” or “healthy” instead. We assign meaning to it because it’s otherwise meaningless.
Q: If there is no objective meaning to our lives, then why should we live? Why should we do anything at all?
A: If you desire meaning and purpose, you can intentionally choose them for yourself rather than having them spoon-fed to you by others. You could take the hedonistic path of living to experience as much pleasure as possible before you die, you could invest in the construction of a better environment for your children, or you could work on earning your way into some sort of afterlife. The posibilities are endless and you can adopt whatever purpose you find most satisfying.
Q: So what meaning or purpose have you adopted for yourself?
A: I treat life much like a role-playing videogame. The sort where you design a character and strike out in a wide open world to learn, grow, explore, develop an identity, and make your mark. I strive to develop my character, avoid death, level up, and live an interesting story.
Q: Does your worldview include any sort of deity or afterlife?
A: No. Unless it’s just for fun, I don’t see the point in wasting cognative resources on things that don’t exist.
Q: So you’re an atheist?
A: Yes. By definition, atheism is the absence of belief in God. That’s how we’re born. Everyone’s an atheist until they accept someone’s claim that a god exists. To be convinced of something, I require proof. The greater the claim, the greater the burden of proof and that burden necesserily lies with whomever is making the claim. There are countless gods scattered throughout the mythologies of our various cultures. Should we believe in each and every one of them until we’ve disproven their existence? No, if you’re claiming that something exists, it’s up to you to prove it and, of course, nobody has done so.
Q: Wouldn’t that just make you agnostic?
A: No, to be agnostic is to not have decided to accept or reject the claim of God’s existence. I’ve rejected it just as I would any other impossible claim.
Q: Why do you think it’s an impossible claim?
A: First, let’s be clear that we’re not referring to an advanced extra terrestrial or artificial intelligence, nor are we referring to any sort of abstraction like “the sum total of all energy in the universe.” We’re just talking about God, the almighty creator of the universe that’s described in The Bible as being omnicient, omnipresent, and omnipotent... and we can stop right there because those fundemental qualities already present irreconcilable logical contradictions, which render him impossible. Many appologists try to avoid the problem by saying that God exists outside of the universe and therefore isn’t subject to the laws of physics or even logic but that doesn’t work because the word “universe” literally means “all that exists.” To say that something is outside of the universe is just a sloppy way of saying that it doesn’t exist.
Q: So where did the universe come from?
A: I have no idea. Theories are fun but it’s dishonest to claim knowledge that you can’t possibly have.
Q: You don’t believe in the Big Bang either?
A: Right. The sooner we can accept our own ignorance, the better. There’s no shame in admitting that we don’t know something, especially when it’s something that can’t possibly be known.
Q: If not religious, are you at least spiritual in some other way?
A: No. I have yet to see anyone prove that spirits exist.
Q: Do you have faith in anything at all?
A: Yeah, I’d argue that all knowledge is really just a high degree of faith. We trust our own senses and we trust the words of others, especially authority figures. It’s all a matter of faith, subject to honest error and deliberate deception alike. To prove something is to achieve the highest degree of faith in its objective reality via the scientific method.
Q: Do you have faith in anything that you can’t prove scientifically?
A: Sure, but I treat such beleifs as heuristics; Useful but not necesserily factual. Theories in psychology make for good examples, like Freud’s unconsious mind and the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator.
Q: Where do you stand politically?
A: To me, the nation state, as we know it, is obsolete. I’d much rather see the world covered in a patchwork of thousands of independent nations, governed by sovereign individuals and corporations. New nations should pop in and out of existence just as new companies do and they should all have to compete for customers (citizens) in a global free market of service providers. This allows for all types of governments to co-exist, hence the term "panarchy."
Q: Wouldn’t that let horrible people establish new governments to get away with doing horrible things?
A: Sure, but no more than what's already happening. Just think of North Korea, China, Saudia Arabia, or any other country that conducts and allows activities we consider abhorent. It’s not our place to govern people outside of our own jurisdiction any more than it’s theirs to govern us. The alternative is a state of perpetual war. Besides, if you’re confident in the superiority of your own nation, you’ll trust it to prevail in the marketplace.
Q: So you’d be okay with a neighboring country that practices slavery or cannibalism, for instance?
A: Sure. I already live among people that regularly capture, imprison, rape, and kill other sentient beings for pleasure and profit.
Q: You’re referring to the treatment of livestock?
A: Right. Certain humans used to be considered livestock too because we discriminated by race. Now, we just discriminate by species instead and the practice continues on a much larger scale.
Q: So you're vegan?
A: Have been for the past decade, yes.
Q: No health issues?
A: None.
Q: I heard that the farming of plants kills more animals than farming animals directly does.
A: And what you didn't hear was that most of those plant crops are grown for the purpose of feeding to livestock. That means that the farming of a cow involves the killing of not only it but the smaller animals that were accidentally killed by the farmers growing its feed too.
Q: Okay but you admit that farming plants does indeed kill animals.
A: Most conventional farms do, yes. Veganic farms that don’t kill any animals are still quite rare and those of us who care about such things are still very much in the minority. In the current social operating system, we’re stuck having to live as guests in culturally incompatible host nations. In a panarchist world like the one I advocate, we'd just start a little micronation where all sentient individuals are respected regardless of their species.
Q: Wouldn’t small, ideologically-based countries like that just become echo chambers?
A: They’d have integrity, if that’s what you mean. They'd still interact with their neighbors though. Homogeneous societies preserve their unique attributes, which preserves global diversity. It’s the melting pots that eliminate diversity.
Q: So some societies flourish while others collapse. Isn’t that just social Darwinism?
A: Partially, sure. It’s better for everyone that bad ideas fail quickly so that their advocates can learn their lessons and adopt better ideas sooner rather than later.
Q: What if it's your ideas that are the bad ones?
A: Then I hope they fail as quickly as possible. If I'm wrong about something, I want to learn my lesson as soon as possible so that I don't waste more time than I have to on the wrong path. The beauty of the panarchist patchwork is that failed experiments are contained and need not affect anyone outside of the laboratory.
Q: And that's our ten minutes! I guess we covered the essentials well enough. What's the best way for people to contact you?
A: Just shoot me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can :)
Aaron Labossiere
Personality: INTP-A (Assertive Logician)
Policy: Interspecies Nonaggression
Politics: Panarchy (e/acc - NRx)
2024 - AaronLabossiere.com