Might makes right

Humans exist. Other animals exist. Let’s agree to that at least, that we are talking about real animals, not speculative animals, and that they live on a planet that rotates on an axis with an axial tilt of 23.44° as it travels in a near constant elliptical orbit around a star, but the argument should hold true in case you want to invent new parameters.

From The American Heritage Science Dictionary Copyright 2002.

animal (ān’ə-məl)
Any of the multicellular organisms belonging to the kingdom Animalia. All animals are eukaryotes, with each of their cells having a nucleus containing DNA. Most animals develop from a blastula and have a digestive tract, nervous system, the ability to move voluntarily, and specialized sensory organs for recognizing and responding to stimuli in the environment. Animals are heterotrophs, feeding on plants, other animals, or organic matter. The first animals probably evolved from protists and appeared during the Precambrian Era.

Now. Let’s start with the notion that there is no hierarchy among animals. All of them have responsibility only to their own self-preservation. If they see another as food or an existential threat, then insofar as they have the strength, speed and desire they may kill the other without compunction.

Since there is no distinction among the different types of animals, then the same rules would apply inter-species. Any animal that presents itself to any animal would be at the whim of the other.

Animals like this would not run in packs, and it would be equally likely that they would reproduce as kill any potential mates, since it does not fit with the singular, defensive stance.

If there were no preference in the mind any animal, then we would expect to see exactly random behavior among and between them. We could expect them to walk or fly or crawl regardless of the environment. They would put a foot or hoof in a hole and break their leg if they did not have an aversion to pain or loss of locomotion. They would stare into the sun and go blind. It would be natural to see creatures living in ways or in environs that did not suit them.

This would not only put them at risk for their existence, but circumvent the definition of an animal. ‘Responding to stimuli’ could mean that stimulus is recognized, and random action is taken. A fire is near and the chance ‘to move voluntarily’ into it is an outcome equally weighted with any other.

This does not happen.

The strength of anecdotal evidence is based on the ratio of sample size used in the example versus the total population one is trying to contradict.

‘This does not happen’ is an anecdotal statement based on the observation of every animal, of every type throughout the world. The use of anecdotal evidence weakens a logical argument. I hope that this does not prevent you from following me to the next logical step…

Since animals do not exhibit random behavior, the following corollaries will be taken as truth in the arguments to follow:

1. Animals prefer comfort to discomfort
2. Animals prefer safety to danger
3. Animals prefer life to death
4. Animals will use all of their facility to realize their preferences.

Since the intent of this screed is to prove the right to life among humans, and an effective rhetorical argument continues to narrow the scope until a single fact remains, I will now enter the following definitions for inclusion:

From The American Heritage Science Dictionary Copyright 2002.

mammal (mām’əl)
Any of various warm-blooded vertebrate animals of the class Mammalia, whose young feed on milk that is produced by the mother’s mammary glands. Unlike other vertebrates, mammals have a diaphragm that separates the heart and lungs from the other internal organs, red blood cells that lack a nucleus, and usually hair or fur. All mammals but the monotremes bear live young. Mammals include rodents, cats, dogs, ungulates, cetaceans, and apes.

primate (prī’māt’)
Any of various mammals of the order Primates, having a highly developed brain, eyes facing forward, a shortened nose and muzzle, and opposable thumbs. Primates usually live in groups with complex social systems, and their high intelligence allows them to adapt their behavior successfully to different environments. Lemurs, monkeys, apes, and humans are primates.

Due to the nature of the planet on which we live; the land where we stand is sometimes facing the sun, and is sometimes closer to the sun during the course of the orbit around our home star.

Observation and engagement with the environment, combined with higher brain function, allow us to notice and adapt to the changes that occur unbidden. Further along in development, we would give names to these phenomena: Day, Night, Seasons and Time.

The nervous system of a primate is complex and geared to the preservation of species.

Hunger is discomfort and compels us to eat, thereby allowing us to live. Pain reminds us not to damage our bodies, and teaches us to avoid the thing that causes pain. Actions that produce sensations interpreted as pleasure encourage perpetuation of that action; including copulation or eating fruit that tastes good and/or brings about other noticeable advantages.

Simple observation would allow an individual to notice that when another eats a pear or falls out of a tree it does not cause the individual pleasure or pain.

Therefore humans have:

1. The ability to imagine a moment that is not now, and has not yet happened we will call foresight.
2. The ability to adapt to changes expected, but not yet realized, we will call planning.
3. The ability to recognize that another’s sensation is separate from your own we will call the realization of self.

In a condition where resources do not limit the number of humans in any given range there is no effect to the existence of one human on any other human. With the capability to move voluntarily toward the comforts of preference humans will tend toward plenty.

The self-interest of any one person will be served best by weighing the risks of one setting versus the benefits to be found there. A natural bias away from interaction with hostile animals capable of doing harm will prevent lingering in the areas they populate, no distinction to be made here between humans and any other animal.

This is the biological mandate of man. Any individual that transcends this imperative imposes himself on the natural order of things. Without the addition of an arbiter to judge the ingenerate worth of each, it is necessary to deem them to be of equal value.

It is by this standard I say that any human has the right to life.

This is not to be confused with an imagined right to live. Nature is full of dangers, many of them insurmountable. Living is the logical exercise of the right to life. The guaranteed survival of any individual subverts the role of nature. Nature behaves without regard to man, and never at random. Any creature without the tools needed to understand and prevail will be crushed beneath it.

The right to life dictates that humans may face these dangers on his own strengths to succeed or fail on the merits of his fortitude without the interference of judgment by fellow humans who only survive by way of these same rules, administered equally to every individual. This serves the species by separating the weak and leaving the fittest to create another generation to try again.

Life has a beginning and an end. It is an unknown, but finite span of days and seasons. The quantities of this whole, when divided, still represent the product of them combined. Each portion belongs to the individual. Any moments traded to gather food, create shelter, or avoid danger are bartered to the advantage of the right to life. Application of preferences in the service of life will be unique to each individual. Nature alone will again be the judge. A set of preferences that succeed in prolonging life can be said to be superior to one that does not.

It is by this standard I say that any human has the right to liberty.

A natural right to liberty does not forestall the right to life, as it is derived from same. To seize the liberty of an equal abnegates the life of self.

Expression of the right to life will be subject to preference, and will be realized through the right to liberty in the way that seems best the individual. Climate, terrain and availability of desired food will steer the individual to one place over another.

Assiduous conservation of the energy required to make life possible leads to a careful selection of living conditions insofar as the individual is able. It is unlikely, but not impossible, to propose that when faced with the choice of ease over difficulty a thinking animal would choose extra work, and even in the limited cases where this is true, an offset in some other area must be assumed. Proximity of water overrides potential harm caused by falling rocks. An avocado tree in an area patrolled by bears might seem like a fair trade.

The individual alone can make this distinction, and nature the only judge of virtue in course. Energy, either in the form of physical work or psychological exertion, is finite, and the liberty to use it in the manner preferred allows for a surplus that need not be allocated for life itself.

It is by this standard I say that any human has the right to the pursuit of happiness.
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In whatever state you choose, that is where stage one begins. You may decide to drop your creatures into a world that they do not understand. They may not be aware of the world, the dangers or even the feeling in the pit of their stomach that we know as hunger. You may choose any number you like, it does not matter for the sake of Stage 1. All of your creatures arrive together, with equal knowledge, and equal ability relative to their size and gender. There is no slave or master class. They are free of any important distinction.

For my Humans; their Stage begins in relative few numbers, less than twenty. They have a back-story, a Stage Zero, not worth going into, but suffice to say that they are aware of their own bodies, what they need to live, they know of comfort and discomfort. They have preferences, formed of trial and error, for food, coverings for their bodies, safe places to sleep. They know what animals are best left alone, which can be allowed to approach, and those from which they must hide.

All sentient creatures will go through Stage 1 in their development. Acclimation to the world in which they live, understanding and mastery of their environs. It is also natural that the parents would take a protective role over the offspring, as this is a part of being a mammal. Offspring would need to be protected from the dangers of the land, and provided food until the time when they could get their own.

Emotions develop as a function of their needs. Happiness comes through the ease felt when they are well fed, and safe. Anger arrives by way of fear of not having the things that bring them happiness. Jealousy, sadness and loss are felt after the separation of self from those same things. Compassion is not a corollary of happiness, but self-preservation. The will to live is transferred to the child, and any other thing that has the qualities of self.

Observation of the world nets a sense that things can be easier, or more difficult. The preference seems to be for the shortest distance to happiness. Cooperation and community need not be forced upon this population, all the things that make up the individual obviate this outcome. It will be easier to do certain things that bring about happiness when there are more than one’s self to work to that end. Individuals may find some activities preferable as a means to serve themselves, as a part of the whole, based on their skills or strength. The community prospers when everything needed is provided, by whatever means.

The ability to form opinions will lead to disagreements about the best way to preserve the self, as a part of the community, and these will be solved by contest in the mode that is held in greatest esteem by the community in question. Some may choose strength, or wits, or luck, or the patterns made by chicken bones. Whatever means may seem best to the community will continue to be applied to future contentions, and eventually the whole will defer to the consistent winner. Continued infighting will sap the collective of energy best used elsewhere to bring the happiness sought by each member, and voluntary separation or expulsion is the natural outcome.

In this way we see that the logical outcome of a strong individual, bent on self-preservation, is not just one community but more, as well as a strong leader measured by the de rigueur standard. The strong individual is the quantum of community.

Let’s make a world. No need to rush, we’ve got all the time in the…well, don’t rush it.

Now let’s make inhabitants for this world, suited for the environment. Again, no hurry, we are working on a geological time scale. Just for fun, let’s make them out of billions of invisible cells, but not tell them, it will be interesting to see when they notice, and what they make of this fact. This serves our thought experiment in the following way: Since they are made out of so many tiny things we can, from a statistical point of view, say that there are an infinite number of interchangeable variations. Two sexes for reproduction; no inviable drones or workers, no single mother that populates this world, instead an equal potential for any pairing of the genders to produce offspring that is different by degrees from both of their parents and any other inhabitant of our world.

Each of these creatures is unique unto itself; physiologically by virtue of the complexity of their structure and reproduction, psychologically because of their nervous system. Each is born with the instinct to suckle, and very little else. At birth they are completely dependent on their parents, and all that they learn is directed by those parents’ hand.

For a variety of reasons, some of which may be tied to the suckling instinct, a palette of emotion develops. Not a broad, but very deep variety of feeling comes to bear. These emotions color experience, and become useful to communicate very complicated ideas. Experiencing the world with emotion and ability to communicate, preferences would naturally develop for one over another non-life-threatening options.

As a final benevolent act, let us endow these creatures with the following three rights only: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. More fully: the right to interact with the world and expect their natural life span not be cut short by another’s hand, the right to do as they choose where it does not interfere with the aforementioned right of others, and finally the right to explore their preference of emotion where it does not impede another from the previous two rights.

We do these things by whatever means you care to use, and by those same means, for whatever reason you care to invent, we colonize this world with a dizzying variety of other animals and plants, all equally suited for inhabitance of this world, but without the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For the sake of discussion let’s say that any of the animals in this world [except for the first described, among themselves] may be killed by any of the others, bound to any of the others, and unable to enforce a pursuit of happiness in whatever form it takes for them. They are, in fact, unburdened by any thought process at all except an ingrained instinct to feed themselves and to propagate their own kind.

For ease of communication I will call the first creatures Human, and leave the rest unnamed. You may do as you choose.

That was easy. We made a world, now let’ wind it up and watch it go.