On Liberty
There's a question: If the universe is deterministic, that is, every effect has
a cause that determines it to happen with no alternative, how can humans have
free will? Surely the rapist is but a product of his upbringing, yadda yadda
yadda. It is a false question.
You observe yourself decide. You know you could have decided differently.
You were free to. But why did you decide what you did? Because of reasons. What
is a reason to act but a cause of an effect by two different names?
This is the subject/object dichotomy. It is not a dichotomy, but two
viewpoints of the same thing. You want a child — your reproductive
instincts are using you as a breeding cow. A machine turns on because you
pushed a button — it chooses to start because you gave it a reason to.
All is mind and all is matter, and you cannot have one without the other. The
reason for having the reason, and so on, is just because that's who you are.
The rapist rapes because he's a rapist, and so he must hang.
Man points gun at your head, tells you to rape. Not your fault, you were an
object, “had no choice”. You therefore don't deserve to hang. So surely it is a
useful fiction, but we can do better. What is the purpose of society? The same
as everything alive: itself. You excise the cancer to preserve
life — society kills the rapist to preserve the proper social function of
sex.
TV spews porno, you masturbate. You want to because it feels good or you become
a slave to carnal sin, who cares. Society shames you and kills the pornographer
to preserve the proper social function of sex, or society will die. Society
burns the books, purges the heretics, breeds its folk, indoctrinates its
children, or society will die. “Muh freedum!” No. “We live in a society.”
Though care must be taken: A social purpose of a cultural practice is shrouded
in time.
We are not all born equal, because there is no “us” that exists isolated from
all that is extremely obviously unequal. It's a fiction to not excise the
cancer.