First Principles: Necessary Evil

As a matter of principle, I believe that telling someone what they must do, or what they may not do, is an evil act. I believe that forcing the course of someones life to a path someone else has chosen for them is evil.

I am, however, a believer in the concept of necessary evil.

Some acts, which would be entirely unacceptable in a perfect world, must be taken in the real world, to prevent a greater evil.

I think that this is an essentially unarguable point, except from the mental gymnastics crowd, who will talk themselves into believing anything (these people really creep me out). Of course, this leaves the door wide open to do anything, and claim it is 'necessary' by one justification or another. To provide extreme examples, the Nazi's talked themselves into believing that wholesale murder was right, the Soviets just talked themselves into believing it was needed; the difference is pretty academic to the people in the mass graves. And whilst the extremes are overused so much that it is hard not to just dismiss arguments based on them out of hand, it is worthwhile to look at what the extreme results of a philosophy are, to determine both whether it is a usable philosophy, and perhaps what steps are needed to keep it from moving to the extreme.

In the course of thinking about this, I have come up with a basic test to determine where an otherwise wrong act is acceptable.

1. Is there a real, provable need for action? Not something that can only be shown by complex verbal judo or double speak or emotional maneuvering, but something directly and plainly provable.

2. Will the act correct the need? No bait-and-switch fancy footwork.

3. What will be the other consequences of the act? There are always other consequences, it must be known that they are less damaging than what we are trying to fix. Certainly, the secondary consequences should be as minimal as possible.

4. Is this the least wrong solution available? This is not a simple decision, and absolute certainty is generally is usually not available, but it can often be seen that some responses are drastically worse than others.

First Principles: Responsibility

Not all that long ago (in a cosmic sense), in my rambling philosophical musings, I came across a notion that changed a great deal about how I view... well, everything. I cannot imagine that this hasn't been stated before by someone smarter and more eloquent than me, but I have never heard it put directly into these terms before.

Power is responsibility. Responsibility is power. They are not related concepts, they are two ways of looking that the exact same thing. They cannot in any sense be separated. If you have power over something, you are responsible for it. If you do not, you cannot be responsible for it. You can be blamed for it, but that is not in any way the same thing.

This likely seems to most to be self-evident, but few people I have raised the subject with have really considered the ramifications.


If you take responsibility for your life, you will inevitably develop control over it. And control is just another word for power. If you look at your actions and their consequence, and know them as your own, you will learn from them and improve.

If you deny responsibility for your life, you cannot control it. How can you learn from the consequences of your actions when you deny that they are related to your actions?

If you hold someone else responsible for your life, you are inevitably giving then control over your life. How can they be responsible for it if they do not control it?

Viewing the world through the lens of this philosophy has lead me to revise many thoughts and beliefs I once held, and added much clarity to others.



A final thought : Expecting someone to fix your life is making them responsible for it. Making them responsible for it requires that they control it. Consider this carefully before you expect the government to fix your life.