Hotu Matua

Going back to the original topic, "animal abuse laws", let me share with you this reflection:

We underestimate the power of social ostracism and economic boycott as tools to fight immoral people without violating their rights.
If you happen to know a neighbor wh tortures his pet, show your community what this son-of-a-bitch does.
Without trespassing, take photos or videos. Post them in Facebook and Youtube. Write a letter to the newspaper, to other neighbors, to his friends of family.
Do not buy from that person. Do not sell him goods.
Do all of this, of course, in accordance to the failure of his character and considering not to put yourself in danger.
Treat him with justice, which means, give him the treatment he deserves.

I see no fundamental disparity between your view and that of Objectivism.
Maybe it will be useful for you to remember that a thing that exists does not only exists, but it exists as something. It has an identity.
In this same sense, survival means survival as something. In the case of man, survival as a man, and as a particular man, a unique person. Survival means survival as a value-seeking being with volition and intelligence. A being who can produce, create, understand, learn, share, love and be loved.

Another dimension of the issue is that a person does not only exists. Persons become. Persons change themselves, sculpt their characters, write their biographies.

A horse is what a horse is. A horse cannot become more of a horse or less than a horse out of its own will.
Men, on the contrary, become. They do it out of their volitional and rational faculty. They can become more rational or less rational, more benevolent or cruel. They can select memories, culture emotions and preferences, achieve things, make money. They can even extend their lifespan and improve their bodies!
Survival qua man, in this context, also means becoming. Life means becoming.

People who choose not to think, become less human. That is possible only because they are human in the first place: because they chose.
That's why Ayn Rand uses strong terms (even "anthropoids") to show contempt for these people, and that's why she uses "hero" as the concept associated with man qua man.

So, survival in Objectivism is survival qua hero.

Dear fellows:

I have read some few articles on how children make concepts, and I am coming to the conclusion that babies are always actively building a conceptual conciousness and that the first basic concepts appear between 6 to 9 months of age.
A very important flaw in my reasoning is that, while small babies do not have the faculty for conceptual thinking, this faculty does not just arrive overnight. There is no clear threshold in which we could say "NOW the baby has arrived to his first concept". Indeed, babies start a process as soon as they are born, by means of which they form the concept of "self" versus "non-self" and quickly advance into separating objects in groups, performing the very first acts of differentiation and integration.

In conclusion, born babies do have a faculty in the making, and therefore have rights. It is not just a mere potentiality.
The difference between a potential faculty and a faculty in the making is that in the former there is no evidence of a process taking place.
Babies are feeding day after day their "operating system" (if we were to use computers as a metaphor of the mind) which is "processing" information. Even if the "screen" is still "blank", the computer is ALREADY working and soon will start "opening windows".
If I use my comparison with the faculty to run, I would say that a toddler that is giving his first steps is quickly developing the faculty to run. There is a clear process in place that will inevitably lead to the expected result. It doesnt happen overnight.

The fetuses, as far as I know, are not still building a self vs. non-self concept since they do not recognize themselves as beings different from their mother (their "environment"). Therefore, as they are not actively building a faculty of reason, they are out of the scope of rights.

Most people with neurological damage or dementia are able to form concepts at some level. Their computer is not in the OFF mode, but just working very slowly and very bad. And it is very likely that they have also a basic "self recognition" faculty. As a consquence, they have rights.

I don't know whether apes have a conceptual capacity. Information I've found is ambiguous.

Finally, I still need to gain a better understanding of the concept of stewardship. While babies may have SOME conceptual capacity, it is obvious that that level of thinking doesn't help them much in terms of survival. They depend on adults. When adult's stewardship should stop? When is it no longer moral to take decisions on behalf of our children?

I therefore abandon the model of "grights".
I thank you a lot for your patience, insight and feedback.
I will keep on sharing thoughts with you on the bioethics realm

The objectivist view of true self-interest follows this line:

I am a rational animal, master of my life-project.
A self-interested action is that which allows me to continue being what I am: a rational animal, owner of my life project.

The subjectivist view of self-interest follows this line:

I am a whimsical animal, mastered by obscure forces.
A self-interested action allows me to continue being what I am: a whimsical animal mastered by obscure forces.
However, since whims come and go unpredicted, and obscure forces are... well... obscure, I can never determine if any particular action is in my self interest or not.
So, I cannot determine the morality of any of my actions. Therefore, ethics is bullshit.

Thank you, Jaskn. The only problem I see has to do with a potential misintrepatation with Ayn Rand's statements about the falsehood and evil of mind-body dichotomy.

Let's review this text from "The New Intellectual"



" They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth—and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that glorious jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave.
They have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two elements, both symbols of death. A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost—yet such is their image of man’s nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost, a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is non-existent, that only the unknowable."


It is not in my agenda to loss my memory, to get my bones broken out of osteoporosis, to die because of a ruptured appendix or an auto-immune attack against my own cells.
Yet all those things happen. We get sick. We die.
These are things that happen because of the nature of things: for my cells being what they are; for viruses being what they are and acting according to their nature.

However, once we understand ("obey") nature, then we seek to command it. We design medicines and treatments and enhancements.

The only way I do not see a contradiction here is to consider that the real agenda of the integrated self is to survive qua man as long as a life qua man is possible.
I mean, to consider my cells as a system working with the shared goal of sustaining a particular kind of brain which underpins a particular kind of mind which seeks its own survival.
The real and only agenda of the integrated man is to seek immortality qua man.

Medicine and related sciences are, therefore, an essential activity of an Objectivist Society, as much as philosophy, for the simple reason that thinking cannot occur out of a body that underpins that thinking.

Thank you, Jaskn. The only problem I see has to do with a potential misintrepatation with Ayn Rand's statements about the falsehood and evil of mind-body dichotomy.

Let's review this text from "The New Intellectual"



" They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth—and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that glorious jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave.
They have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two elements, both symbols of death. A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost—yet such is their image of man’s nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost, a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is non-existent, that only the unknowable."


It is not in my agenda to loss my memory, to get my bones broken out of osteoporosis, to die because of a ruptured appendix or an auto-immune attack against my own cells.
Yet all those things happen. We get sick. We die.
These are things that happen because of the nature of things: for my cells being what they are; for viruses being what they are and acting according to their nature.

However, once we understand ("obey") nature, then we seek to command it. We design medicines and treatments and enhancements.

The only way I do not see a contradiction here is to consider that the real agenda of the integrated self is to survive qua man as long as a life qua man is possible.
I mean, to consider my cells as a system working with the shared goal of sustaining a particular kind of brain which underpins a particular kind of mind which seeks its own survival.
The real and only agenda of the integrated man is to seek immortality qua man.

Medicine and related sciences are, therefore, an essential activity of an Objectivist Society, as much as philosophy, for the simple reason that thinking cannot occur out of a body that underpins that thinking.

There are interesting parallels between religious devotion and devotion to reality.
In these parallelism, pantheism perhaps could help previously religious people to transfer their zeal to reality.
I was also a deeply religious man in the past, and I find interesting to tell mayself that I am now a missionary of reality.

Look: emotionally, the axiomatic nature of "Existence exists and I am concious of it" evokes a sense of awe, deeper but nevertheless similar to the emotions caused by the belief "God exists and He loves me".
Both theists and Objectivists seek purpose in their lives.
For the theist, the quest goes in this direction: "God will help me to discover the purpose of my life"
For the Objectivist, it goes in these lines: "Understanding reality will make me discover the purpose of my life".
In both cases, there is the recognition of an intimate self ("conciousness", "soul") making connection to something "bigger" ("God" for the theist, "existence" for the Objectivist). The great difference is that while the method of cognition of the Objectivist is logic and introspection, the method of the theist is a kind of evasion (faith).

Faith will produce in the theist a false link to reality. A false sense of connection and purpose. It will eventually impair his ability to think and be happy.
Pantheism extolls reality, and promotes a search for reality through reason. Understanding the pantheist's God is an effort to understand reality, which can be understood only in logical terms and introspection, the methods of Objectivism. So the result, in terms of a lucid, bountiful life, should be similar for the pantheist than for the Objectivist.

All Objectivist Politics, Ethics and Epistemology are in the end derived from a devotion to Reason and Reality. "Devotion" cannot be overemphasized. Devotion means full integration of reality into your daily life. The religious man is well acquainted to the concept of integrating God into daily life.

"It is not me who lives anymore. It is Christ who lives in me", says Paul in the New Testament.
"It is not me who lives anymore. It is reality (from which I am part) who lives in me" would say an Objectivist, meaning that he doesn't live out of whims and fantasies, but that every single thought and action is guided by reality. This is honesty, integrity. Do you want to be a saint? Live a life of unbreached integrity.

The sense of "community of the faithful" is something a pantheists with a theist background could bring to Objectivist circles.
As Objectivists we recognize the value of living among rational people. People devoted to reason and reality are still few, and we should strive to build up a strong world community of rational, self-interested men, for the single reason that each member would benefit from it. Why not organizing "Objetivist Parties" at home, and inviting over our friends to have dinner, read philosophy or literature, listen to music, dance, discuss films and art? Why not organizing a local version of Ayn Rand's "The Collective" in each community?

Missionary zeal is another strong point that people like dmasst could bring, helped by his pantheism.
What role did other people play in our "conversion" to Objectivism? Could we help other people that we care about to discover it? Wouldn't it be in our self-interest? What about developing easy-to-understand pamphlets in multiple languages? What about a version of The Fountainhead for children? What about a set of stories for Children? Songs? Illustrations? Sport and recreational activities? Ayn Rand suggested we should teach Capitalism to African nations, if we really wanted to help them. How are we teaching it?

There are interesting parallels between religious devotion and devotion to reality.
In these parallelism, pantheism perhaps could help previously religious people to transfer their zeal to reality.
I was also a deeply religious man in the past, and I find interesting to tell mayself that I am now a missionary of reality.

Look: emotionally, the axiomatic nature of "Existence exists and I am concious of it" evokes a sense of awe, deeper but nevertheless similar to the emotions caused by the belief "God exists and He loves me".
Both theists and Objectivists seek purpose in their lives.
For the theist, the quest goes in this direction: "God will help me to discover the purpose of my life"
For the Objectivist, it goes in these lines: "Understanding reality will make me discover the purpose of my life".
In both cases, there is the recognition of an intimate self ("conciousness", "soul") making connection to something "bigger" ("God" for the theist, "existence" for the Objectivist). The great difference is that while the method of cognition of the Objectivist is logic and introspection, the method of the theist is a kind of evasion (faith).

Faith will produce in the theist a false link to reality. A false sense of connection and purpose. It will eventually impair his ability to think and be happy.
Pantheism extolls reality, and promotes a search for reality through reason. Understanding the pantheist's God is an effort to understand reality, which can be understood only in logical terms and introspection, the methods of Objectivism. So the result, in terms of a lucid, bountiful life, should be similar for the pantheist than for the Objectivist.

All Objectivist Politics, Ethics and Epistemology are in the end derived from a devotion to Reason and Reality. "Devotion" cannot be overemphasized. Devotion means full integration of reality into your daily life. The religious man is well acquainted to the concept of integrating God into daily life.

"It is not me who lives anymore. It is Christ who lives in me", says Paul in the New Testament.
"It is not me who lives anymore. It is reality (from which I am part) who lives in me" would say an Objectivist, meaning that he doesn't live out of whims and fantasies, but that every single thought and action is guided by reality. This is honesty, integrity. Do you want to be a saint? Live a life of unbreached integrity.

The sense of "community of the faithful" is something a pantheists with a theist background could bring to Objectivist circles.
As Objectivists we recognize the value of living among rational people. People devoted to reason and reality are still few, and we should strive to build up a strong world community of rational, self-interested men, for the single reason that each member would benefit from it. Why not organizing "Objetivist Parties" at home, and inviting over our friends to have dinner, read philosophy or literature, listen to music, dance, discuss films and art? Why not organizing a local version of Ayn Rand's "The Collective" in each community?

Missionary zeal is another strong point that people like dmasst could bring, helped by his pantheism.
What role did other people play in our "conversion" to Objectivism? Could we help other people that we care about to discover it? Wouldn't it be in our self-interest? What about developing easy-to-understand pamphlets in multiple languages? What about a version of The Fountainhead for children? What about a set of stories for Children? Songs? Illustrations? Sport and recreational activities? Ayn Rand suggested we should teach Capitalism to African nations, if we really wanted to help them. How are we teaching it?

Easy, almost instant access to genital satisfaction may affect man's ability of enjoying sex as an achivement.
Ayn Rand visualizes sex as an achivement. You earn sex, by being vituous enough, valuable enough for another person.
I agree with this, and I can appreciate how a man who regularly hires prostitutes for instant satisfaction of sexual urges may lose sight of the wonder of an earned sex, or can give up entirely such a quest.

I suppose, though, that this is a discovery to be made by each individual over the course of his life. You can hardly expect a 18-years-old male to refrain from all sexual activity until he finds his heroine. The teenager is still in the process of discovering what a heroine does, what she looks like, and more importantly, what is the effect of the values she incarnates on his emotions, including his sexual arousal. In the meantime, this teenageer will feel aroused by a wide variety of persons over a wide range of values.
We have to remember that sexual urges exist. We cannot deny them. We should not repress them. We must just understand them and make the best use of them. How to "Make the best use" of your sexual appetites is something to be learned.

Now, deliberate, planned indulgence of adult rational people in specific circumstances would not be immoral per se.
For example, adults who are in situations in which no access to heroines are feasible over long periodos of time.

In the same sense that masturbation (an instant, easy, non-earned way to access sexual pleasure) does not preclude a lucid rational man to pursue real sex with a heroine in the future, deliberate sex with a non-heroine as an isolated action does not prevent a man from continuing his quest for a higher value. Adapting yourself to what is available to you is also part of a rational life. Of course, it is up to you to realize whether you are betraying your quest or not, taking as standard the facts of reality.

There was a time where Howard Roark realized he needed an income to survive, to remain in the field of architecture, even when he could not undertake his dreamed projects. He accepted a modest job, a modest income, and tasks that were not the ones he wanted the most. But he understood he was a temporal detour from his path, which indeed could help him in some ways to come back stronger to the main path. He never gave up his values.

I can imagine Howard Roark engaging ocasionally in sexual activity with women he did not consider his ideal reflection of chosen values. I don't envision him being a virgin by the time he seized Dominique at her bedroom. However, whatever the sexual encounters he might have had, he kept a clear understanding of the type of woman he wanted to sleep with, permanently.

I consider Black Swan as one of the most visually attractive anti-man films I've seen in more than a year.
It depicts a girl with a psychotic problem who destroys herself gradually as she seeks perfection in her job (a ballet dancer).
There is no plot, no struggle, no desire to trascend her problems.
She is just trapped in a spiral of madness from which no escape is attempted.
The message I seem to perceive is "Do not aim at perfection, excellence, beauty, uniqueness, because that will bring you tragedy"

The film is in sharp contrast with, say, A Beautiful Mind, which represents the struggle and final victory of a brilliant man (John Ash) against his schizophrenia.

Since I am a student of Objectivism and still discovering my life-loving sense of life, I would like to hear your opinions about the film and my interpretation of it.

The moral thing is to treat people for what they are: human beings.
Treating people as animals or stones or machines is faking reality, irrational, and therefore immoral.

Now, "treating people like people" means, essentially, respecting their freedom, their rights.
It does NOT necessarily mean to get interesed in their personal affairs or well-being.
If a model voluntarily chooses to pose nude for Playboy, there is no coercion involved and she is not being treated as an object. We don't need to get interested in her intellectual or emotional life to show her respect as a human being. She is not being treated as a " sexual object".
In an act of rape, or in child pornography, the victim is treated as a sexual object and therefore the act is immoral.
By the same token, attending an Opera house for the sole purpose of being delighted with the voice of the actors, without getting involved in their personal well-being, does not mean that we are treating the singers as "esthetical objects". On e other hand, forcing a film maker or artist to work for Kim Il Sung in North Korea implies treating them as objects or robots.

The moral thing is to treat people for what they are: human beings.
Treating people as animals or stones or machines is faking reality, irrational, and therefore immoral.

Now, "treating people like people" means, essentially, respecting their freedom, their rights.
It does NOT necessarily mean to get interesed in their personal affairs or well-being.
If a model voluntarily chooses to pose nude for Playboy, there is no coercion involved and she is not being treated as an object. We don't need to get interested in her intellectual or emotional life to show her respect as a human being. She is not being treated as a " sexual object".
In an act of rape, or in child pornography, the victim is treated as a sexual object and therefore the act is immoral.
By the same token, attending an Opera house for the sole purpose of being delighted with the voice of the actors, without getting involved in their personal well-being, does not mean that we are treating the singers as "esthetical objects". On e other hand, forcing a film maker or artist to work for Kim Il Sung in North Korea implies treating them as objects or robots.

Dear fellows:

I have read some few articles on how children make concepts, and I am coming to the conclusion that babies are always actively building a conceptual conciousness and that the first basic concepts appear between 6 to 9 months of age.
A very important flaw in my reasoning is that, while small babies do not have the faculty for conceptual thinking, this faculty does not just arrive overnight. There is no clear threshold in which we could say "NOW the baby has arrived to his first concept". Indeed, babies start a process as soon as they are born, by means of which they form the concept of "self" versus "non-self" and quickly advance into separating objects in groups, performing the very first acts of differentiation and integration.

In conclusion, born babies do have a faculty in the making, and therefore have rights. It is not just a mere potentiality.
The difference between a potential faculty and a faculty in the making is that in the former there is no evidence of a process taking place.
Babies are feeding day after day their "operating system" (if we were to use computers as a metaphor of the mind) which is "processing" information. Even if the "screen" is still "blank", the computer is ALREADY working and soon will start "opening windows".
If I use my comparison with the faculty to run, I would say that a toddler that is giving his first steps is quickly developing the faculty to run. There is a clear process in place that will inevitably lead to the expected result. It doesnt happen overnight.

The fetuses, as far as I know, are not still building a self vs. non-self concept since they do not recognize themselves as beings different from their mother (their "environment"). Therefore, as they are not actively building a faculty of reason, they are out of the scope of rights.

Most people with neurological damage or dementia are able to form concepts at some level. Their computer is not in the OFF mode, but just working very slowly and very bad. And it is very likely that they have also a basic "self recognition" faculty. As a consquence, they have rights.

I don't know whether apes have a conceptual capacity. Information I've found is ambiguous.

Finally, I still need to gain a better understanding of the concept of stewardship. While babies may have SOME conceptual capacity, it is obvious that that level of thinking doesn't help them much in terms of survival. They depend on adults. When adult's stewardship should stop? When is it no longer moral to take decisions on behalf of our children?

I therefore abandon the model of "grights".
I thank you a lot for your patience, insight and feedback.
I will keep on sharing thoughts with you on the bioethics realm

I say yes, assisted suicide is moral, if and when there is objective evidence of the fact that a rational being wants to end his life and cannot do it himself.
The crux of the matter is to have that objective evidence.

Most prejudices around assisted suicide lie on the belief that the immorality of killing hinges on the mere interruption of the vital functions of other person.
In reality, the immorality of a murder lies on violating the mind of other person, acting against his consent, denying his capacity for reason and choice.
Murder is immoral because we act as if the other person didn't exist qua man. We deny reality and by doing so we deny our own mind. That's what makes murder immoral.

In a proper act of assisted suicide (meaning, one in which there is no doubt of the intentions of the subject and his mental capacity), nobody is faking reality.
Indeed, we are honouring each one's reality of being rational, volitional beings.
"I am injecting this high dose of medication into your veins because I recognize you as the owner of your own life, and by doing this I am honouring that fact."

Dear fellows:

I have read some few articles on how children make concepts, and I am coming to the conclusion that babies are always actively building a conceptual conciousness and that the first basic concepts appear between 6 to 9 months of age.
A very important flaw in my reasoning is that, while small babies do not have the faculty for conceptual thinking, this faculty does not just arrive overnight. There is no clear threshold in which we could say "NOW the baby has arrived to his first concept". Indeed, babies start a process as soon as they are born, by means of which they form the concept of "self" versus "non-self" and quickly advance into separating objects in groups, performing the very first acts of differentiation and integration.

In conclusion, born babies do have a faculty in the making, and therefore have rights. It is not just a mere potentiality.
The difference between a potential faculty and a faculty in the making is that in the former there is no evidence of a process taking place.
Babies are feeding day after day their "operating system" (if we were to use computers as a metaphor of the mind) which is "processing" information. Even if the "screen" is still "blank", the computer is ALREADY working and soon will start "opening windows".
If I use my comparison with the faculty to run, I would say that a toddler that is giving his first steps is quickly developing the faculty to run. There is a clear process in place that will inevitably lead to the expected result. It doesnt happen overnight.

The fetuses, as far as I know, are not still building a self vs. non-self concept since they do not recognize themselves as beings different from their mother (their "environment"). Therefore, as they are not actively building a faculty of reason, they are out of the scope of rights.

Most people with neurological damage or dementia are able to form concepts at some level. Their computer is not in the OFF mode, but just working very slowly and very bad. And it is very likely that they have also a basic "self recognition" faculty. As a consquence, they have rights.

I don't know whether apes have a conceptual capacity. Information I've found is ambiguous.

Finally, I still need to gain a better understanding of the concept of stewardship. While babies may have SOME conceptual capacity, it is obvious that that level of thinking doesn't help them much in terms of survival. They depend on adults. When adult's stewardship should stop? When is it no longer moral to take decisions on behalf of our children?

I therefore abandon the model of "grights".
I thank you a lot for your patience, insight and feedback.
I will keep on sharing thoughts with you on the bioethics realm

Dear fellows:

I have read some few articles on how children make concepts, and I am coming to the conclusion that babies are always actively building a conceptual conciousness and that the first basic concepts appear between 6 to 9 months of age.
A very important flaw in my reasoning is that, while small babies do not have the faculty for conceptual thinking, this faculty does not just arrive overnight. There is no clear threshold in which we could say "NOW the baby has arrived to his first concept". Indeed, babies start a process as soon as they are born, by means of which they form the concept of "self" versus "non-self" and quickly advance into separating objects in groups, performing the very first acts of differentiation and integration.

In conclusion, born babies do have a faculty in the making, and therefore have rights. It is not just a mere potentiality.
The difference between a potential faculty and a faculty in the making is that in the former there is no evidence of a process taking place.
Babies are feeding day after day their "operating system" (if we were to use computers as a metaphor of the mind) which is "processing" information. Even if the "screen" is still "blank", the computer is ALREADY working and soon will start "opening windows".
If I use my comparison with the faculty to run, I would say that a toddler that is giving his first steps is quickly developing the faculty to run. There is a clear process in place that will inevitably lead to the expected result. It doesnt happen overnight.

The fetuses, as far as I know, are not still building a self vs. non-self concept since they do not recognize themselves as beings different from their mother (their "environment"). Therefore, as they are not actively building a faculty of reason, they are out of the scope of rights.

Most people with neurological damage or dementia are able to form concepts at some level. Their computer is not in the OFF mode, but just working very slowly and very bad. And it is very likely that they have also a basic "self recognition" faculty. As a consquence, they have rights.

I don't know whether apes have a conceptual capacity. Information I've found is ambiguous.

Finally, I still need to gain a better understanding of the concept of stewardship. While babies may have SOME conceptual capacity, it is obvious that that level of thinking doesn't help them much in terms of survival. They depend on adults. When adult's stewardship should stop? When is it no longer moral to take decisions on behalf of our children?

I therefore abandon the model of "grights".
I thank you a lot for your patience, insight and feedback.
I will keep on sharing thoughts with you on the bioethics realm

I invite you to do this mental experiment:

Drop 50 babies in an inhabited island.
Be generous: leave them some matches, lanterns, bows and arrows, some bottles of purified water and a first-aid kit.
Leave them alone and come back one year later.
Tell me how many of them will be alive.

Do the same experiment with 50 people with severe dementia.

No, it is not.
If it were, individualists living in San Francisco would not be so concerned about Obama's health care reform, as it would be a problem for The citizens of, say, Chicago. Nowadays, if Obama has a spooky plan in mind, you get the creeps, whether you live in Honolulu or Anchorage.

Do not misunderstand me.
I believe the USA has the best federal system on earth.
But I also believe it is just not good enough. What worked well for 13 young, unexperienced, vulnerable, rural ex-colonies will not necesssarily work well for a constellation of wealthy, sophisticated, investment-hungry cities with a diversity of appetites.

I agree with you that the ultimate check for governments to avoid tyranny is people. But how? How people achieve that?

Let's examine some methods

1) Revolution. Mmmm.... It has not worked. It is bloody and expensive. it is to be used as a last resort, when a full-fledged dictatorship is already at the corner, or already established.
2) Voting in the ballots. Mmmmm... It has worked for short period of time, but made no difference in the long term. Democratic elections brought Hitler to power.
3) Nationwide cultural change. It will take many decades. It had a chance with the Founding Fathers and the impetum did not last mlre than a century, and was never totally embraced. It had a chance with Ayn Rand, but her followers spent more time building a cult around her than helping her, despite herself, in reaching the average man and building alliances with libertarians, rothbardians and individualists outside the USA. Ayn was not fortunate enough or wise enough to find an intellectual companion of her stature, who could stare at her and criticize her bluntly and without remorse. Who knows, maybe she lost her chance to Murray Rothbard. It is my belief that a more tactful Rand and a less touchy Rothbard could have represented a tremendous intellectual force to accelerate change.
4) Local cultural change + Migration. That is the method I propose. Evolve to city-States, win some of them over for laissez-faire capitalism, and let them overperform semi-free neighbouring cities.

The advantages of political union or disunion should be examined according to the changing reality of world affairs, as well as the grounds and purposes of why such union or disunion is being advocated.

For example, an extraordinary novelty of civilization these days is the rise of cities, specifically megacities.
Mankind was rural for most of its history. A critical mass of specialized producers, traders and teachers could not be found in smaller territories. Size conferred advantages. For example, more land to raise crops or cattle. And, very importantly, more tax payers, as population density was so low.

Cities nowadays comprise universes in themselves. More than 90% of all exchange of information and goods happens within the tiny areas of cities. Armies do not need large number of soldiers as much as high technology, which is created at the cities. All innovation comes from cities, and all risks (included terrorist attacks or natural disasters) are feared inasmuch as cities are involved. It should be no surprise that presidents or presidential candidates in most countries were first majors of their largest cities.

Nowadays, Houstonians cannot decide whether they should send or not their young citizens to fight in Irak. In the future, as I see it, they will be able to do so. But this entails a big cultural change which, by the way, is underway, but need to be put in perspective by Objectivists all over the world: the consideration of patriotism as a byproduct and not a driver of civic action.

Let me use a Gospel story here (gosh! An atheist resorting to a Bible tale!). Jesus was preaching in a house and he was told to stop and take care of his mother and brothers who were outside awaiting. He answered: "My mother and brothers? I'm gonna tell ya who my mother and brothers are. All of those who follow my doctrine are indeed my mother and my brothers."

One day, when the last government at Washington asks you to assist your fellow American countymen, you will reply: "My American countrymen? I'm gonna tell ya who my American countrymen are: those who live rational lives, wherever they happen to live."

People with schizophrenia show certain level of consistency in their behaviour, related to irreal goals. For example, if I have a paranoid delusion about being observed by extraterrestrial beings who can see through brick walls but not through metal, I might build for me a room with iron walls to secure my privacy. My behaviour would be consistent to my goals and beliefs, but not consistent to reality as a whole.
The Rationality of values and actions, therefore, has to be judged all things considered.

Now, regarding values higher than life, it is worth remembering that in Objectivist ethics, life does not refer merely to biological life (keep breathing and metabolically active) but to the rich, lucid, flourishing life characteristic of beings with volitional conciousness who use their minds to understand and command nature and shape their own character. We call this life "life qua man" and it is this life what constitutes the standard of value. It presuposes biological life, but not ANY kind or level of biological life. Life deprived from the possibility of rational choices is no more precious than the value of the life of a chimpanzee, or a tree.

Therefore, in those unusual circumstances where a person cannot make rational choices or pursue rational values any longer, biological life loses its role as source of life qua man and hence loses much of its value.
A man could then say: "Give me a life qua man or give me death."

It is up to any man to recognize whether a big loss represents an irreversable deterioration of the buman quality of his life.
Not all persons who lose a spouse would have to commit suicide for the sake of consistency.
Each person has his own hierarchy of values and will have to asses his own circumstances.

People with schizophrenia show certain level of consistency in their behaviour, related to irreal goals. For example, if I have a paranoid delusion about being observed by extraterrestrial beings who can see through brick walls but not through metal, I might build for me a room with iron walls to secure my privacy. My behaviour would be consistent to my goals and beliefs, but not consistent to reality as a whole.
The Rationality of values and actions, therefore, has to be judged all things considered.

Now, regarding values higher than life, it is worth remembering that in Objectivist ethics, life does not refer merely to biological life (keep breathing and metabolically active) but to the rich, lucid, flourishing life characteristic of beings with volitional conciousness who use their minds to understand and command nature and shape their own character. We call this life "life qua man" and it is this life what constitutes the standard of value. It presuposes biological life, but not ANY kind or level of biological life. Life deprived from the possibility of rational choices is no more precious than the value of the life of a chimpanzee, or a tree.

Therefore, in those unusual circumstances where a person cannot make rational choices or pursue rational values any longer, biological life loses its role as source of life qua man and hence loses much of its value.
A man could then say: "Give me a life qua man or give me death."

It is up to any man to recognize whether a big loss represents an irreversable deterioration of the buman quality of his life.
Not all persons who lose a spouse would have to commit suicide for the sake of consistency.
Each person has his own hierarchy of values and will have to asses his own circumstances.

Thank you, Rockefeller.
I believe things usually get more complicated than that in practice.
It is often hard to say which side is right and which one is wrong. Even for rational people, official propaganda and genuine misunderstandings fueled by patriotic zeal make almost impossible to tell between agression and retaliation.

Take First World War, for example. An example of how nationalisms blew up a world of relatively free trade and prosperity. Who was the agressor?

Sometimes thinks get complicated when the freer country is the one attacking the less free country.
Take the Mexican-American war, for example. The US was at that time the closest a country has been to a laissez-faire economy, Mexico was a mild, very mild dictatorship, yet this was clearly a war of territorial conquest by the US.

Or take the war between Russia and Japan at the start of XX century. Or the Boers war in South Africa between the British and the Dutch colonists. Or the War of the Pacific by which Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia. Chile was the agressor, yet slightly freer and richer.

I am pleased to see how nationalistic zeal is going out-of-fashion, but it is still dangerous.
Should Muslim Chechenia secede from authoritarian Russia? Malasia is also Muslim, but far better than Russia in terms of freedom and cooperation with countries with Western values.

My point is that citizens are expected to rally behind their armies or be considered traitors, and that most wars bwtween nation-States are ( and have been) irrational, not related to defending justice but to expanding power and influence over the lives of men.

In my ideal world, people would easily move among micro-states, showing more loyalty to reason than to motherlands, and showing no mystical attachments to any country in particular. If microstate A attacks microstate B, or if it is hard to distinguish agressor from victim, rational citizens could easily move (or move their savings) to microstate C. Wars would be a bad business most of the time and governments would have to appeal to reason and present clear proofs, validated, perhaps, by third parties and courts.