few days ago i wrote an essay in which i introduced and explained the concept of immoralism or amoralism - originally nietzschean attitude of opposition towards traditional morals and ethics. i also mentioned that i am basically unable to grasp the concept of morality, hence why i as a teenager very happily embraced nietzsche, whose philosophy speaks to my values even outside of this aspect. i have my own points of disagreement and divergent applications of things, but an essay titled "where does kotte diverge with nietzsche philosophically" would be very long and very boring. i have a rough plan of my manifesto i'm going to write which will elaborate in more detail on my stances. my philosophy is very focused around the individual and their potential and autonomy, the concept of deconstructing "society" as is and replacing it with small communities based on free association, transhumanism and the idea of homo deus, and also criticism of morals and ethics, though not as the only point of focus.
a wonderful woman told me i was the first self declared immoralist she encountered who didn't support or endorse csa. however surprised by that, i was shown cliques online who use this label and indeed pursue abolishing the age of consent and similar things, although appear very against legalisation of physical violence, murder et cetera. i suppose the basic difference between me and them it's that i'm a nietzschean, not a pedophile, so i'm coming from a different point, but i decided to elaborate on my stances on this topic in light of the whole rejection of morality thing, and discuss the holes in these people's reasoning, and also introduce my own stance on legality.
i've expressed that the only area where i have something similar to moral feelings is sex crime and sexual violence, especially csa. these feelings are traumagenic - funnily enough, it's probably a very normal thing, but in someone who doesn't have negative responses to other kinds of "immoral" things it's atypical and has a cause. i've come to the conclusion that these feelings are irrational and traumagenic, and i ought to separate them from my opinions on the topic. i'm not saying being repulsed by csa is "irrational" in general - i'll get to that - i'm saying in my case, where i don't normally have feelings of something being arbitrarily "wrong", it is to do with my trauma, and therefore a result of bias. thus i've decided to subject these feelings to very meticulous criticism and analysis, because i would dislike basing my opinions on personal biases, and would rather go against my own prejudices and make more sense in my own eyes.
spoiler alert: i've not come to any conclusion that would justify or condone csa or other sex crime, for these worried i'm going to start being a foucault about this now (toast to these who understood this joke). rather the opposite, but please let me elaborate.
i reserve it to myself that i'm allowed to feel negatively about pedophilia in the irrational way, i'm allowed to have traumagenic responses and dislike whatever, but disliking something on the personal ground isn't enough for a developed opinion. i've questioned the status of these things and "devil's advocated" myself repeatedly to make sure that wasn't the case. i've eventually landed with two approaches to the topic which i consider to be sensible.
the first of them i called the economic (destruction based) approach.
in my last essay i included a section which discussed my approach to sex crime, and why i consider it generally "worse" - or of more unique negative character - than most other kinds of violence. i base this in the idea of destruction in general - intended or not - being a negative; it doesn't go into moral thinking since it takes away the element of intent, and just acknowledges that most of us want to live in a world that's developing and growing rather than being destroyed, and most of us note it as a negative when things produced by humanity or indiviudal people, or individual humans and their bodies, are destroyed or harmed. most of us attach value to humans and the things they make, more or less of that. destruction, however, isn't avoidable. most of it isn't even down to humanity - i.e. natural disasters - some is, but is unintended, and then some is and has an intent behind it. these intents should be considered individually.
as i pointed out, morality is contextual, and things such as murder are considered more or less immoral depending on who and why. killing a human can be good or neutral - murder in self defence, mercy killing on the battlefield, murder of someone who hurt your loved ones. it can be bad but acceptable - like murder in war, euthanasia, death penalty... here opinions will vary, then some kinds of it are considered unquestionably bad, especially if it's murder purely for fun, or sexual sadism, or murder of a child, or murder for financial gain. it's all contextual, with a variety of possible intents, and it can be judged in two categories, one being of how much destruction the act caused, and one being whether the intent was "noble" or not.
considering legality, i am opposed to the idea of state as is so any consideration within the bounds of state law will be flawed; and i suggest it be replaced with smaller communities based on free association which would each function according to their own rules, so i can say that on this level i believe it should be case-by-case basis; the communities should consider whether the act impacted the community negatively, whether the reason plays into their values or not, whatever these values are, and make decisions according to that - resulting in ostracism, vendetta, resocialisation program or nothing, or whatever they pick. murder is destructive, but it can serve preventing something even more destructive or fixing something that has been broken. in these cases people will often excuse it. thus there isn't any inherent negative to the deed or action, but it's found solely in the contexts it happens in.
meanwhile when i approach sex crime in similar ways, i don't really see any contexts where it would be taken as positive or generate any positives. i can think of multiple reasons to kill, but no reasons to rape. there's only one reason to rape, which is sexual desire, fetish or whatever else it is, and taking one's own pleasure over another's wellbeing, and i've never heard nor can imagine an explanation of a rapist which wouldn't boil down to victim blaming and would explain the act as anything productive, creative or otherwise beneficial; rape always only causes further destruction - in the victim's body, the victim's psyche, the community, and whatever trauma responses the victim will develop that may harm other people long term - and the only benefit seems to be short-lasting pleasure of the rapist. i don't really see reasons that would get excused by humans who try to minimise damage that they and their infrastructure sustain. it's harmful and it's harmful for nothing. the same concerns, of course, csa and other kinds of sexual abuse. there isn't as much space to play with contexts and invent exceptions, and there isn't a context where the negatives wouldn't outweigh the positives, therefore indicating there's an inherent negative, at very least pointlessly destructive character to it.
i would, based on my personal approach, endorse murder and physical assault before i would endorse rape or csa, based solely on the fact that i would endorse something that has benefits at least sometimes over something that's pure destruction in all cases.
i am a fan of the idea of outlaws - the wild west style - i.e. the community agreeing that killing an individual, or even doing anything to them, would go without consequences for the members of the community - coming to an agreement on not protecting them. i consider it the best way to go about pedophiles and rapists. why? death penalty is questionable because of giving the state monopoly on killing, and all the risks it poses due to it; letting them live is allowing further destructive activity and also wasting resources that could be invested into something else; then resocialisation and rehabilitation is typically impossible, but even had it been possible it would go with pressure on the victim to forgive them now that they're a "good citizen", keep on sharing the community with them, and risk running into them on their ways. it would put the responsibility for avoiding the rapist on the victim to avoid further harm - the victim would have to watch out, observe, take measures to avoid them, and live with paranoia. it goes with lasting, prolonged damage that would uphold years after the rape itself. that's not necessary. confirmed sex criminals should be executed by the victims and/or their loved ones.
this can sound insane, bear with me, but i believe it would have healing properties; as much as we try to pretend revenge doesn't heal grudges, it typically does; i myself am much more inclined to forgive or at least let go of people who hurt me when i see it backfired at them and get to also see their suffering. it would be an act of catharsis, it goes with the safety of knowing they're gone forever and enables healing, and i believe it would certainly bring nothing but relief to the victim in a world where societally imposed moral guilt isn't a thing, a world where people aren't afraid to kill when necessary. i want to live in a world of mentally strong people who avoid killing as a destructive activity, but have the capability for it and can approach it rationally. i believe in value of human life, but not in its sanctity; that's arbitrary and grounded in religious reasoning for me.
fun fact: i also support dueling, i would probably not duel but i don't think banning it for willing participants was necessary. i keep saying i support autonomy of the individual above anything else, and i don't want a culture of forced safety; i support free range stupid people, if we have to have any. not a fan of forbidding people from being stupid; i think if anything having to handle consequences of one's stupidity like an adult would encourage more mature approaches in people.
anyway, my conclusion on this part is: sex crime is uniquely undesirable from the pov of "pragmatic morality".
this is one approach, but not one i'm fully uncritical of, since it still positions the harm done to the victim and their community as above the benefit the rapist reaps, which is semi arbitrary given it can't be measured and compared; it also positions destruction as a negative, where i'm pretty sure there's people out there for whom humanity poses no value and who are ok with destruction - that was me in worse periods of my life, when i was more misanthropic. therefore this approach could be criticised as not fully coherent with immoralism, and closer very minimal and selective criteria of morality, and as impacted by my individual biases which make me inclined to attach more negativity to it. therefore i figured out a second approach, which is fully in line with line with "complete" immoralism.
it's the approach of mutual non-aggression pact.
i've expressed before, in my first essay, that i perceive morality as a conflict of interests - i believe humans do have destructive instincts and will not stop having them, and i am against the idea of repressing and self-conditioning out of them because that results on feelings of guilt, insecurity and so on which are exploited by predatory ideologies, systems and politics and allow oppression to exist. therefore, i do think humans should accept their destructive instincts, and be self-aware about it. however, none of us wants to fall victim to destructive instincts and actions of another, and none of us wants that for our loved ones, and things we have a stake in; all of us feel the desire to beat someone up for bullshit sometimes because we're having a bad day, but none of us would want to be beaten up for no reason. thus what occurs is a mutual conflict of interest - both sides have desires to harm and both sides don't want to be harmed. both or more, however many are involved. humans have historically agreed not to harm the members of the same community and to channel it otherwise - nietzsche believes war often served this purpose; i have my own opinion about that, but i'm not a fan of war, because it wastes resources and with modern technology of mass destruction wouldn't even provide an opportunity for an individual to satisfy their destructive drives. i believe they have to be channeled otherwise; it's a challenge of the future to figure out how, but i believe in indirect methods that utilise art, sport and technology.
i do firmly agree with the first point of it, however, which is that due to conflict of interest the natural solution is to make a non-aggression pact, which obligates both (or more) sides to rein in their destructive instincts in exchange for the other doing the same and thus them and their loved ones avoiding harm. this approach would say a community should appropriately deal with harm towards another as a negative, even if not holding moral standards and considering the action "wrong" in isolation - it breaks the pact, and denying the pact means all individuals involved are at threat from the other ones, and thus it must be navigated. pretty much how one would believe morality originated on the "common sense" ground, although historic and psychological theories deny these rational origins of humanity; humans rarely reason pragmatically when it comes to emotionally charged things.
regardless, if according to this approach the other members of the community will oppose harming each other, the community will oppose things such as physical assault or murder, given they want to stay alive and not be stabbed in a dark alley, and will oppose things such as rape and csa, given they don't want their children or children of their loved ones to be sexually abused, and given they themselves don't want to be raped. both these things are a kind of harm that threatens the interest of the other party.
edition: a friend brought to my attention that i accidentally used an anarcho-capitalist ideological term i obviously didn't mean, i'm not apologising for it in the "problematic" way, i just don't like ancaps and don't want to be read as hinting at that. i did also know the term, but somehow didn't associate it; i even remember telling some teenage ancap to "take a nap, you're like 14" a few years ago and getting a fuckton of likes for it (low of me, i know, and hardly a brag, but undoubtly proof i do know). allow me to blame this on my memory issues, which can get pretty severe and unironically disabling due to dissociation and all the medications i'm on, so you have to accept muh disability card on this, my apologies. in light of that and learning how it can be misinterpreted i decided to leave this note clarifying what i meant.
what i called the "non-aggression pact" here is not a political principle, but rather my observation or hypothesis on how a community that rejected morals would still have to deem some acts undesirable and condemnable, therefore recreating some sort of pragmatic morality, and it's hadly avoidable because it's the only way to manage conflict of interest. even if they disregarded the idea of inherent, arbitrary wrong of any act, they'd still have to consider some acts undesirable because they wouldn't want it to happen to them, so the idea of a community deeming something "wrong to do" couldn't disappear entirely, it's just that it wouldn't be arbitrary, inherent, but down to these things harming the community, pragmatic. i doubt that can be avoided completely.
to put it in a more descriptive way: if i'm part of a community where x murders y and i don't care about x or y nor consider murder a "wrong" act inherently, i likely would have to take some kind of action and contribute to isolation of x or else x could murder me next time, or someone else would see that x murdered someone and got no consequences, and could murder me. therefore i have to play into to make it an enforced rule, marking it undesirable for my own interest. if x has a daughter who gets raped by joe, y may not feel much about the whole event, but as he also has a daughter who may be targeted next time, he will probably participate in the lynch or ostracism.
consequently, if i become part of a community agreement on not hurting each other in order to prevent myself being hurt, i have to give up on my desires of hurting them as well. it's somewhat akin to the prisoner's dilemma, if both of you agree not to kill then neither of you gets killed, and it's only beneficial to eliminate these who don't abide because if everyone does the things to each other, there's no possibility of creating a community; so it goes with giving up one's own destructive desires.
if asked what's the point of immoralism then, it's arguably that removing the inherent, arbitrary "wrong" character of acts and replacing it with pragmatic rules allows adaptation to changing conditions, as rules can be changed if they have a pragmatic character, and still eliminates the element of guilt and aiming for moral superiority, which is what fuels predatory ideologies; plus, of course, i would not like to limit people and anyone could join a community where it's fine to kill each other and they're just all on alert all the time, hypothetically. it's a scenario where people may remain self aware and not ashamed of their destructive desires, but making a willing concession.
it is somewhat akin to freud's concept of development of social instinct, where inability to get exclusive attention of caretakers causes the child to desire fairness as the next best thing, since if they don't get it, no one else would and they all have to receive it equally. many would believe what i called the "non aggression pact" was the actual origin story of morality, but it wasn't; to my knowledge, morality originated from much more symbolic and magical thinking, not pragmatism. however, it is probably what would happen in communities that successfully rejected the concept of inherent good and evil of either acts or people, and/or "good" and "evil" and moral qualifiers at all.
it has, nevertheless, nothing to do with ancaps.
i've been wondering why do internet "immoralists" hesistate even about late abortion - which they do - let alone physical violence, but are very keen on normalising and enabling paraphilias and various kinds of nonconsensual sexual activity, which is known to cause mental harm called also trauma; this mental harm is also physical - neurological, as all mental phenomena have a biological reflection in the brain as an organ. there's no reason to consider it different to other kinds of bodily harm, and hold it in different categories; especially since these attitudes are often exhibited by people who complain about holding sex crimes to special standards - then which one is it? why are you so unwilling to put it on par with normal violence as something undesirable within communities? why so unwilling to see it as a kind of destruction, or else a kind of breaking the non-aggression pact?
simultaneously i observe holding moral sentiments regarding killing, and so on.
i've figured these people have not actually deconstructed critically the idea of morality and moralism in their heads, and pretty much just want to fuck kids, and come up with logically inconsistent theories on why it should be accepted that they want to fuck kids, or they deconstructed it very selectively, only where it benefits them i.e. enables them, and they either don't consider sex crime to cause lasting harm in the victim or want to pretend that it doesn't. i will not respect any similar stances unless one of them has the guts to just say all kinds of harming other people should be accepted - which is unrealistic due to the conflict of interest aspects, and for the same reason stupid, but which i would respect more as at least coherent.
i have no strong feelings on necrophilia and zoophilia, i honestly think former is a matter of bodily autonomy i.e. acceptable if the person, while still alive, consented to their body being utilised in that way after they die, and otherwise it can arguably be approached as negative due to "retrospective" violation of autonomy, i can't be bothered to care about it given it's in some ways victimless but i would not want to participate in it and i think the motivations for it are probably kinda creepy; and i lean negative on the latter since there's convincing research stating and animals are damaged by it - plus it's of course inherently not consensual due to the power imbalance, but i don't know how much the concept of consent can be applied to animals, i on a level see it as a human concept. however trauma of the animal is not questionable, and that lets me categorise it with all other kinds of animal cruelty, which i overall oppose.
i also have to say though these aren't the first things i approach when i discuss immoralism or think about it, and i think the weird focus combined with selective enabling is definitely proof of ulterior motive. conclusion: when it comes to philosophy go hard or go home, nietzsche didn't say being a kiddie fiddler on the roof is the best way to utilise one's existence, and i as a self respecting nietzschean immoralist ask that i am not grouped in with these weirdos. thank you very much.