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Information > Prometheanism on Issues

Although it is not an orthodoxical philosophy composed of codified, 'approved' beliefs, Prometheanism does indicate the following positions on (or transcendence of) some contentious modern sociopolitical and socioeconomic issues and problems, as a result of applying basic principles of Prometheanism. Some of these 'positions' may seem contradictory or strange because some sound familiar from a recognizable set of beliefs, values and moralities, while others seem familiar from another set, and still others might seem unfamiliar. But this is because Prometheanism is consistent with respect to its fundamentals and basic philosophical roots, whereas usually, beliefs are not philosophically consistent at all.

Abortion and Birth Control

Prometheanism is founded on life as the one greatest value and standard. But it is important not to interpret this simplistically to arrive at a trite position for any one case. It is important to sensibly judge the relative rank of the desirable and undesirable among means and ends. While not unimportant, mere biological survival or biological function is less important than the quality of life and the advancement of life through its individual expression and fulfillment. Birth control serves as an essential tool for maintaining quality of life. It allows each of us to exercise wise judgment over conception for ourselves. Far from victimizing the unborn, this is for the sake of both prospective parents and prospective children, so that no one unprepared gets shackled to unwanted responsibilities and no one becomes an unwanted responsibility to an unprepared, or unsuitable parent.

Early-term, embryonic abortion functions as birth control supplementary to superior prophylactic measures. While later-term abortion is certainly undesirable, as it is a waste of life, and nothing about Prometheanism suggests endorsing a procedure that involves killing off the potential of a fetal infant human to become a realized individual (Prometheanism suggests quite the contrary), still the value of an already-present individual's life demands deference from the mere unknown potential of an unborn and underdeveloped life, and also, expecting to effectively subjugate one person's own interests to another's is no way to serve the interests of either. Certainly measures like proper planning, birth control to prevent undesirable pregnancies, and if possible the acceptance of responsibility of unexpected parenthood or at least carrying unwanted babies to term and then yielding them to adoption, all deserve preference over abortion. However, abortion must not arrogantly be ruled out for all other people who have made mistakes, considering the alternatives of dangerously commissioning law and the compulsion of government to try to force a result, and subjecting both unwilling mother and unwanted child to quite possibly poor and inhibited existences, and supposing to be able to predict with certainty that one thing is always wrong for everyone in every circumstance.

Civil Liberties

Prometheanism demands individual freedom to think and act, including but not limited to the particular freedoms contested as "civil liberties." These "rights" debated as if they are issues between citizens and governments are not matters for public debate, nor moderation by political decision, according to Prometheanism. Freedom does not need to be asked for or justified in particular cases, and it appears somewhat naive to bargain on government officials limiting their own control in any case. Rather any inhibition of freedom to act requires justification, for example preventing one individual from inflicting injurious behavior on another when absolutely necessary.

See also: Rights

Crime

From Anticonstitution for a Promethean Society 2003 Edition, Part 8. We Defeat Ourselves... By What We Believe:

"Crime becomes a concept out of place in a Promethean society. Crime involves the idea of guilt, a debilitating social pressure, and ill describes the matter at hand: substantive harm inflicted on others. And crime basically means illegality, which a Promethean society does not have. But there are direct attacks on the person and property of others, also considered crimes in most societies today, which are terrible in a Promethean context. Such acts as theft, murder, and rape will not be commonplace in a Promethean society. The greater reliability of independent, competitive police services will help to contain them, and prosperity helps to lessen the appeal of stealing, but these both offer indirect solutions. We find the larger solution in the Promethean mission of strengthening people, in an integrated sense. The "criminal type" lacks strength in some of the most important areas. Such people typically do not have enough self-assuredness, self-control, and self-awareness, and lack a sense of autonomy, ability and fulfillment. They lash out from insecurity, fear, and the irrational spite bred by such weakness. They are only strong in the sense that they are independent enough and capable enough to act on their impulses. In every person we can identify elements of strength and elements of weakness. The "criminal type" incorporates a sort of leverage between those elements, the weakness using the strength to commit grievous acts. Except for harm caused by accident, a kind of integrated weakness leads people to harm others. In short, people who victimize and exploit are not healthy people. They need to be assisted in healing themselves, if this can be accomplished - for the ultimate solution is to further balanced, integrated strength within members of society. Prison offers no solution at all. Prisons grind people down, at least as they now exist. Inmates lose much of the integrated, balanced strength they did have, becoming weak and feeling less confident, and less human. This ruination has the reverse effect of what is needed. Prisoners are released weak in spirit, yet physically capable, naturally, of committing crimes. In fact, they are far more likely to lash out again. First, because they are weaker people in integrated terms. Second, because they will be forever defined as reviled criminals by others, by their sense of moral guilt, and by belonging only to the criminal culture of prison."

Democracy

From The Promethean Manifesto 2003 Edition, Part 8. Government:

"Democracy is called "rule by the people" - today assumed an almost sacred, unquestionable good, but allow yourself to see it as a hallowed lie. "The people," or demos (Gk.), is a fallacy. No such collective entity exists, as it is portrayed and imagined. Each individual person can create and propose an idea, or make a choice, but no collective people can do so. In reality, votes on propositions by the majority of the people are made not by "the people" but by those who have the political power to create them and bring them to a vote - for instance, the demagogues of the first democracy in ancient Athens. These men persuaded the mob, men who comprised the closest thing to an actual demos, to vote for their ideas, sometimes completely contradictory positions from one day to the next. This was truly a tyranny without bounds, as the will of one could instantly be granted the legitimacy and compulsion of "the demos" through a simple majority of the moment. There is no evident reason why a majority should be wiser than a minority in any system, and in the total democracy of Athens, this "rule by the demos" quickly destroyed itself. The makers of governments since have adopted "representative democracy" in an attempt to mediate the instability of mob sanction (though this did not solve the inherent problem of cloaked manipulation), and thereby they introduced another fabricated principle: "representation of the people," or divisions of people, by election. But one official cannot think and speak for one billion, one hundred million, one million, one hundred thousand, a thousand, one hundred, or even one single other person. Each person can only think for themselves, remember: individual freedom of will. A choice made by a "representative" is not the same as a choice made by any one or all of his constituents, merely because they have chosen him over alternate officers of government. He exercises his own choice over theirs because they accept his will over their own. Yet, so many believe that a modern representative government follows "the voice of the people." This is an incredibly dangerous sanction, used to justify any or all actions taken by those in government. In the end, democracy and representative democracy are based on mythic collectives which excuse the expression of few at the expense of the expression of many individuals."

See also: Elections, Political Parties and Wings, Critiques of Democracy

Drugs

From Anticonstitution for a Promethean Society 2003 Edition, Part 8. We Defeat Ourselves... By What We Believe:

"Recognition of individual freedom demands the freedom to make mistakes which affect oneself, as well as succeed on one's own terms, and freedom's overall benefit excuses those mistakes. Therefore, whether one approves of drug use or not remains beside the issue of trying to control it. Freedom remains the issue. Whether cocaine kills, or tobacco could affect a disease in your body, your body must belong to you regardless, to treat however you see fit, to seek out benefit and risk, health and harm, with the full discretion befitting self-expression - something irreplaceable by bureaucratic fiat or popular opinion."

Elections

"Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee." - Helen Keller

Several Promethean writings make arguments to the effect that elections make inauthentic (and often manipulated or fraudulent) 'choices' and that voting does not really liberate people as they imagine. But if for no other reasons, elections become suspect in Promethean evaluation because they draw attention away from matters of direct importance to individuals and distract from self-development, while as magnetic events, they attract attention to the popularity contests of theatrical rulership and encourage overestimation of government's importance, leading to aggrandizement of powerful officials and power-aggregation for the bureaucracies they administer.

See also: Democracy, Political Parties and Wings, Critiques of Democracy, Power and the Corrupted

Environment

Caretaking of environments follows from the stewardship of property and resources for personal fulfillment and profit, by individuals' association with the land and stake in it. It does not necessarily follow from administration of land by faceless collective entities, whether large corporations or government agencies. The solution to environmental problems involves not mistaking environmentalism for an attainable goal in itself, but realizing that harnessing the power of self-interest with real private property (individually owned and referenced for both profit and risk) would tend to produce caretaking and respect as an effect.

See also: Promethean Capitalism, especially Part 5. Environments and Resources

Government

Prometheanism opposes government for having the qualities of an orthodoxical, centralized institution founded on a monopoly of force, in other words for inhibiting the self-expression of individuals through a) officializing values and interfering with liberated thought, b) collectivism's detraction and distraction from individual development, and c) inhibition of free action.

See also: The Promethean Manifesto: Part 8. Government

Government Programs

An issue irrelevant to the Promethean society we endorse, in that such a society would be free of government, and people would develop replacements for any desirable functions currently conducted under authority of government programs. Although of course, occasionally fortunate results may happen to be achieved under such programs, their advocates do not sufficiently consider how things could happen otherwise in the future. And in the meantime, we oppose governmental programs today as exercises of political power backed by forceful compulsion, typically with bureaucratic inefficiency and arrogance, and impersonal mass-thinking. See Government above.

See also: The Promethean Manifesto: Part 6. The Power of Repression

Immigration

Promethean thinking cares about (augmenting the lives of) real humans, especially as individuals, not about borders or states, not about chauvinistic preferences for one imagined collective monolithic "culture" or "people" or "race" or "tradition"; in fact Prometheanism requires open-mindedness toward any and all possible cultural sources, willing to judge how to benefit from their gifts and exclude their detriments individually, and according to individual judgments.

"Cultural conflict has probably been the major reason why division by collective has scarred human history, and prevented the cooperation of individuals. Just as we should not view cultures as distinct entities, but rather accumulated traditions which multiple individuals share, we should not make the mistake of comparing whole cultures against one another. Cultures are internally diverse, because they arise from an exchange of ideas between different people. This casts a similar absurdity upon considering multiple cultures incomparably equal (that insidious postmodern trend of so-called "multiculturalism"), and calling one culture the overall inferior of another (a justification for the European conquest of Africa and the Americas). Not only does any such attitude fail to make sense, it describes cultures too poorly to be useful, and it does considerable harm. To benefit from all cultural traditions, we must be open to evaluating the varied elements within cultures, leaving behind some elements while drawing upon others." - Anticonstitution for a Promethean Society 2003 Edition, Part 6. Foundation

Furthermore, Prometheanism objects to all applications of politicized force, including the maintenance of national borders. We would like to bring down borders and the turf psychology that established them. The only natural exclusion that makes sense to us is personal property and associated privacy. Prometheans seek free movement and free interaction of individuals with their languages and cultures. However, this also requires the elimination of territorial governments, with their favoritism toward any cultural group, or interference of any kind in natural cultural or population exchanges, including taxed wealth redistribution to immigrants via "welfare" (or any other government program) which specifically forms the basis for much anti-immigrant sentiment.

Finally, the concept of accelerated Foundation of a first Promethean society or societies is built upon immigration, so this issue is quite instrumental to Promethean progress.

"The Promethean founding principle of diversity holds that a society grows stronger for drawing on the best of many cultures, just as any group grows stronger which can draw on the best of many different individual perspectives. During the foundation of the first Promethean society, emigration to join that society must be open to the inhabitants of every part of the world." - Anticonstitution for a Promethean Society 2003 Edition, Part 6. Foundation

See also: Minorities, Minority Rights, Segregation and Integration

Intellectual Property

Intellectual property (patents, trademarks, and copyrights) depends on an overextension of the concept of property in the sense of owned material stuff to the ownership of patterns of information as well. A particular material expression of a pattern can be meaningfully owned with a directly referenced link between individual owner and property, such as a single compact disc holding a recording, or a single book in which a novel is written, but the patterns of information they represent cannot. If every instance of a pattern such as a phrase, a plan for an invention or process, or a composition of music or words can be "owned," apparently the minds which hold them could also be "owned." Attempts to claim and enforce intellectual property are examples of the inappropriate application of a familiar model - that of property - to a circumstance that model cannot describe accurately. The enforcement of such an often ill-fitting illusion, that semantics and significations function like physical commodities, results in the very real detriment of people involved (and in much gross absurdity, as in the "ownership" and "sale" of the images of dead celebrities, for example).

Motivations for claiming intellectual property using patent, trademark and copyright law extend beyond the desire to provide a reward system for creativity, to plying the leverage of legal compulsion against competitors, manufacturing artificial monopolies on the application or marketing of particular information. In the Promethean capitalism of a Promethean society however, more adaptable, organic recognition and arbitration of property can replace archaic, bureaucratic property law, and provide more relevant and less arbitrary recognition and guarantee of property in the real, material sense, while the free marketplace of choices can reward creativity instead of relying on the dispensation of official mandate.

See also: Promethean Capitalism, especially Part 4. Property and Arbitration

Judicial Injustice

From Anticonstitution for a Promethean Society 2003 Edition, Part 8. We Defeat Ourselves... By What We Believe:

"In a Promethean society arbitration, individual protection, and the guarantee of property and contractual agreements (such as loans, credit, etc.) are all services which are voluntarily patronized. Due to the power of choice between competitive services (advised by independent agencies) a disapproving perception will quickly disempower private police and security personnel who use excessive force, biased arbitrators, and any independent standard which does not inspire confidence. This power of choice appears evident even today in the more privately-owned industries; when poor or dangerous goods and services are marketed, the reputation of that company suffers and they lose business (unless they receive substantial fascistic support). Obviously, people will be even more responsive to the bad reputations of private police or arbitrators, because employing those services requires even more trust. The abuses which are commonplace in contemporary criminal justice systems will be rapidly and consistently eradicated."

Marriage and Relationships

The practice of having personal social arrangements and associations, intimate relationships and marriage, approved and officiated by the state makes their definition and significance an object of contention, politicizes private lives, and encourages interference in private matters of intimacy. Such areas of disagreements could be far more easily reconciled by depoliticizing such private matters, just as everything centralized must be returned to the individual, in a Promethean society. Whether or not to involve oneself with the opposite or same sex or both, whether to observe monogamy or polygamy, whether or not to involve contractual agreements, how to define one's own terms and approach to relationships with others and conduct oneself in matters of friendship, intimacy and sex are all matters for the individual to determine freely for oneself and agree upon with friends, lovers, and if desired, wives or husbands. Freedom, individuality, and open-mindedness (preferably with a willingness to experiment and learn) can serve very much better than regulatory law, centralization, and social orthodoxy.

See also: Sexuality and Sexual Behavior, Moralism and Moralities

Minorities, Minority Rights, Segregation and Integration

Prometheanism devalues impersonal, false collectivization of human beings in favor of more realistic individualization. This includes subdivided collectives as well as monolithic ones. Generalized minorities conceptually separated from groups (as well as the remaining majorities), are susceptible to all the common problems of collective illusion in general, such as detracting and distracting from individuality, diversity and personality, and projection of one's own wants, needs and characteristics onto the group. Together with these, the dangers of minorities and majorities may include the possible addition of internecine conflict. Both encouraging persecution of minority people and encouraging minority separatism can often serve as tools for acquiring or maintaining political power, for instance to "divide and conquer," or profit from discordant demagoguery, or partake in the opportunism of crisis.

The concept of "minority rights" also adds the usual problems with rights as surrogates for genuine, uncompromising, depoliticized individual freedom. Also those self-appointed representative advocates who claim to speak for minorities really can only speak for themselves. Those who claim to lead minorities could only deserve such a mandate if every member of the posited minority agrees.

The individualism of Prometheanism clearly implies opposing segregation of minorities, whether imposed upon unwilling people, or voluntarily sought out from a sense of closed group identity conflated with self-esteem. Forced segregation contradicts individual freedom of association, and individuality. Self-segregation by a group contradicts individuality. Integration must happen naturally and voluntarily, however, at the level of individual circulation and interaction, and not become an agenda in itself to be pushed on closed-minded people.

See also: Racism, Sexism, and The Promethean Manifesto: Part 9. Collectivism

Moralism and Moralities

As with any debated ideology, there are multiple meanings for "moral" and related words, but perhaps most relevant to Promethean concerns are the particular senses of codified self-compulsion and especially codified social compulsion through self-compulsion. Above all Prometheanism involves the idea that "morality" is a far more complex topic than simply "what is right and wrong" or "what is good or bad" (and similar attitudes of more indirect wording) as though these concepts have self-evident meaning or mutually-determinable meaning (much less eternal meaning outside of context). Or speaking more radically, as though such morality does now or must always play a role of self-evident necessity in the service of life; in Prometheanism this is not taken for granted. Anticonstitution for a Promethean Society 2003 Edition, Part 7. Beyond Law described a morality in the sense of a physiological and semantic orthodoxy which is erroneously, but repeatedly supposed static, objective, and enforceable, explaining it as:

"an attempt at a codified accounting of certain mental and physiological experiences one finds very comfortable or upsetting. These experiences are naturally subject to perspective, and so there are as many moral attitudes and moral sensibilities as there are perspectives. Even though the point of a morality usually aims at social conformity, commonalities and generalizations among moral perspectives constantly branch into divergence. Cultures and subcultures are rarely internally consistent in ideas of what is seemly and what is unseemly. Morality tends to be reduced to simplistic principles in an attempt to make it established and permanent as the recognized standard of behavior, most especially Thou-Shalt-Nots or similar admonitions, but the definition of right and wrong changes nonetheless."

It continues to discuss the subject of moralism (moral judgment of others, or advocacy of a supposed moral truth) as a claim upon a societal morality:

"some portion of the population wishes to force their opinions on people who hold other opinions, and to succeed in this, they depend on invoking their opinion on behalf of society. They do so to instill a moral, psychosomatic, "gut" reaction, so that enough pressure can be mustered to influence those who would otherwise have been beyond their reach. This applies to a wide spectrum of rights and wrongs. Some are widely held beliefs, such as the immorality of cold-blooded murder. In such a case, those who approve of cold-blooded murder are too few to have much significance. No, to invoke morality for a society seems most useful for those with contentious opinions, opinions which might be strongly opposed otherwise, from anti-abortion activists, to the pseudo-scientific environmental indoctrinators of public school children. [...] More important is the [now ingrained] example of state control overall: supporting the government must be made a moral requirement, and disobeying and even questioning too much must be damned with moral force in morally evocative language, as unpatriotic, antisocial, uncharitable, anarchistic, radical, dangerous, treasonous, criminal - otherwise reasonable judgment would prevail against so very many things done in the name of state, society, government, country, community, family, common decency. Asserting general morality thus serves as a tool for social manipulation, based on simplifying, stultifying, and propagandizing unthinking reactions."

Prometheanism offers a conscientiously principled amorality (not "immorality" but independence from moralities in the senses described above) as an alternative to calcified and compulsive moralities, and that systemic moralism which imposes them on others (particularly, but not just, by harnessing the mechanisms of centralized, officiated society):

"We do have an alternative to the morass and mess of instituting morality. The important goal involves striving for a complex, adaptable understanding of what has value, and what should be avoided. Virtually nothing proves useful and productive and life-advancing in every situation, virtually nothing always proves harmful or useless or life-retarding. Surpass codified, overly-simplified understanding... surpass morality. Prometheanism envisions an adaptable understanding of what advances life, unlike all moral systems [...] In that sense, we might call it amoral, or postmoral, or metamoral. One day this complexity will be possible for many people. In the meantime, we must allow each to form judgments for themselves. We must have freedom, we must avoid the temptation to officially enforce morality (or amorality), because we insist that we know what is good and what is bad, and others do not."

Police Brutality

See Judicial Injustice

Political Issues

Prometheanism suggests the undesirability of making a personal issue or "social" issue (which ultimately comes down to personal issues) into a political issue.

Political Legitimacy

We don't recognize any such thing. We oppose political machinations and the false political identities which spawn them.

Political Parties and Wings

Both political parties and political wings ("left" and "right") distract from the diversity of opinions held by various personalities and detract from individual responsibility for determining those opinions - party platform by centralized and hierarchical determination, and political wings by a binary, superficial generalization totally inadequate for description. Essentially apolitical and antipolitical in principles, Prometheanism does not indicate allegiance with any political party or affiliation with either wing. Nor does Prometheanism recommend thinking according to these, or any other similar political collection system (such as the supposed dichotomy between "liberal" and "conservative" in America, "labour" and "conservative" in Britain, or "fascist" and "communist", etc.).

A forthright analysis according to philosophical essentials in practice indicates considerable similarity between such supposedly opposite positions. And if, on particular issues, one group typically holds some view with a more Promethean implication, this is unfortunately matched by the universal inconsistency common to all such groups, when considered holistically and fundamentally. Connecting such philosophical analysis to history shows how much the positions which groups claim and fervently defend actually vary and fluctuate, and with them, the established political groups so often considered basic in their time also mutate. Semantically, considerable confusion and argument over supposedly common meanings of vague political syntax like "left" and "right" becomes evident even at any given time. Clearly, the fact of holding an allegiance in itself (usually just from simple cultural inheritance or simple reaction against it), typically becomes sufficient catalyst for (sometimes instinctively passionate) political involvement, for turf-holding psychology and for clannish conflict - rather than any substance behind an allegiance.

Poverty

From Anticonstitution for a Promethean Society 2003 Edition, Part 8. We Defeat Ourselves... By What We Believe:

"Widespread poverty, misunderstood as a distinct phenomenon, an enemy to "war" against, really describes a combined lack of prosperity we can almost invariably trace to interference and limits restricting the creation of wealth through achievement. Such a lack of prosperity breeds the perception of hopelessness, and recasts achievements of the past as unattainable ghosts. A depressed economy becomes accepted and expected. [...] The primary reason [for a lack of prosperity] : a fascoid economy, and socialist redistribution programs - which are always restrictive and violate individual property, but are usually botched as well, and often spectacularly so. One result of the real freedom in a Promethean society will be incredible and unprecedented prosperity, from the absolutely liberated market of Promethean capitalism. Prosperity comes through freedom to create wealth, and in this Promethean society there will be no controls placed on the productivity of individual and cooperative effort. Traded wealth will flow as water through affluents relieved of blockages, mires and diversions. All charity will be voluntary. None will be based on compulsory redistribution with its enormous waste and detrimental effects, especially the weakening effects of dependence. These effects are clearly demonstrated by programs like "social welfare." "

Privacy

Issues of privacy encapsulate the perhaps unclear or seemingly abstract philosophical conflict between individualism and collectivism in a quite accessible demonstration. Experiencing or witnessing a lack of respect for individual privacy can show anyone a real-life difference between putting public business first and putting private business first. Despite the assumption implicit in all central government that public business supersedes private business, and the persistent syndrome of violation and intrusion into personal lives by government officials and employees, authorities propose "solutions" to privacy which invariably involve legislating and mandating privacies over which government will watch, and/or trusting other government officials to exercise restraint in violating privacy, although little evidence of that trait can be found among those utilizing monopoly rights over spying and security. Aside from other ironies all such measures make privacy a public matter, something which entirely misses the point that privacy means staying out of private business, showing that those who accept collectivism philosophically simply do not appreciate privacy, and therefore certainly cannot and would not defend it except incidentally and coincidentally. Privacy results from the mutual respect of internalized individualism - it cannot be reliably imposed from outside, and need not, cannot and must not be "managed" from above in a hierarchy.

Racism

From The Promethean Manifesto 2003 Edition, Part 9. Collectivism:

"Race should be merely a loose expression for relative genetic or phenotypic similarity, for example, to describe lighter-colored skin versus darker. (And, sometimes people use "race" in place of "culture.") Such similarity does not make a collective. Some of the most insidious concepts involve the idea of collective race. Racist ideas are always based on believing collective illusions about race, over the reality of individual difference and individual thought. No matter the nature of an individual, racism sees mostly, or even only, race. It is critical to understand that ideas which are positive towards a "race" are as racist and false, and quite possibly as dangerous in the long run, as those which are disapproving or hateful. The defect common to both is collective thinking. The only effective way to combat racism: do not think in terms of races. Do not accept the concept on which racism is founded. Race hatred would be extinct without "race." Racism simply could not exist without widespread recognition of collective races - but this is the very idea perpetuated by those who would speak of race in a positive sense. Personal pride can be healthy, but racial pride is a subtly dangerous thing."

See also: Minorities, Minority Rights, Segregation and Integration

Religion

The creation, maintenance and perpetuation of orthodoxy in belief, attitudes and behavior over the centuries of the influence of religious doctrine, a factor common to most organized religions, does not recommend them in general in Promethean terms. However other than noting this usual problem and some attendant common problems (such as hierarchy and uniformity), Prometheanism cannot say anything about the effect of religious belief in general for every particular human being.

Depending on the personal understanding of the meaning behind terms such as religiosity or spirituality, depending on the personality needs of a given individual at a given time, the same belief structure might help to engineer life-advancing outcomes or life-inhibiting outcomes. Specific doctrines may certainly more often endorse particular life attitudes among believers, but no absolutely uniform rules can be derived. As always Prometheanism is concerned with the advancement of life through the individuality of people, and it is at that personal context where the responsibility for evaluation and judging of religious or spiritual matters must reside. For this purpose, of course Prometheanism implies total freedom concerning one's own beliefs, and the productive exchange of discussion among individuals connecting on these issues.

But Prometheanism recommends, and Prometheans themselves favor, agnosticism among beliefs, provisional to how much evidence supports the case for holding a belief - importantly, in terms of its advantage for its application by each person in context, not even its contextual 'truth' (although that usually comes to the same thing), and certainly not its supposed "truth" in some objective or eternal sense (especially considering just how many integral conceptual inventions were indeed, invented, by humans). A Promethean 'spirituality' might be discovered in private contemplation, in personally-important achievement, in connections between oneself and other individuals and the rest of the natural world, in many sorts of independence from imparted, hierarchical, mass-organized, individual-distracting practices with claims on the realm of value beyond the immediately material.

See also: Moralism and Moralities

Rights

The theories and language of "rights" become problematic for at least two reasons which concern the somewhat arbitrary nature of language. First, specifying particular freedoms as official rights may begin to imply a different meaning over time, a supposition that officials therefore need not allow everything else not specified (and supposedly guaranteed) as rights, and people may suppose that freedom in general gets granted by official dispensation, as has happened with the Bill of Rights in America. And second, rights imply entitlement, which can easily extend to claiming other desirable things besides getting left alone, such as the "right to work" or "right to housing" or "right to respect" etc. - in other words rights to things which are easier to claim than to earn, but must be earned from other people with their consent, as well as one's own desire. Prometheanism supports individual freedom but does not require endorsing some formulation of "rights" in theory, or accepting the term as self-evident in practice.

See also: Civil Liberties

Sexism

A bias against a particular sex or gender is indicative of not only negativity towards particular real biological characteristics or false attribution of negative characteristics to a biological identity, but also an acceptance of collective generalization in the first place. While biological sex differences are not imaginary, very few are universal, and most of the supposed attributes basic to a sex are more specific to a cultural disposition toward a sex than to all individuals of a sex. Sexism relies on the phenomenon of collective distortion, which encourages editing out information contrary to stereotypes, such as individuals who prove there can be physically strong women or nurturing men. Prometheanism recommends respecting individuality and not sexism whether with a positive or negative slant, and considering the individuals of a sex individually.

See also: Minorities, Minority Rights, Segregation and Integration

Sexuality and Sexual Behavior

Very much of the thought and dialogue about sexuality remains preoccupied with the sexual behaviors which expose sexuality to attention, and much of that concern still centers on whether or not some kind seems "right" or "wrong" to that person or especially to others, whether it will be accepted, tolerated, or lauded, or else unaccepted, prohibited, or reviled, and by whom. The more forward-looking Promethean question would first ask how sexual behavior aids or hinders a person's needs, wants, and future development in terms of sexuality, but also most importantly, the import of sex in an individual's life as a whole. What meaning does an individual's approach to sexuality hold for his or her life? Can that sexuality develop and change productively to augment one's life, to help address weaknesses and needs and integrate the parts of oneself, including sexual aspects, into a stronger, more realized individual? These sorts of questions offer more to the life-advancer than asking permission.

See also: Marriage and Relationships, Moralism and Moralities

Terrorism

Prometheanism indicates we should oppose violence as a method unless necessary, and does not include any reason to constrain this opposition to only violence conducted by those seeking political power versus those who already wield it. The essential factors behind terrorism are similar to those behind other politics. Terrorists are philosophically much like unscrupulous politicians, only without offices. Both manipulate individual people as pawns and play to popular biases in an effect to aggrandize themselves. In the responses to terrorism from many politicians and other officials we can observe similar recourse to violence and propaganda. And all these self-styled political 'heroes' show erroneous, generalized, and simplistic thinking conforming to the stiff psychology of orthodoxies, which keep their customary, cherished philosophical fallacies.

See also: Post Mortem

War

"The only real, enduring solution to the problem of war requires the world, in its entirety, to leave behind collective and political society and become a Promethean society. However difficult and distant this goal, it is the only way for war to finally come to an end, unless this end is also the end of humanity, or of life worth living." - Anticonstitution for a Promethean Society 2003 Edition, Part 9. Ending War

Promethean regard for individual life demands nothing less than opposition to all warfare which is not fought for direct, necessary self-defense and conducted to strictly exemplify respect for individual person and property. Importantly, we understand self-defense as the defense of oneself as an individual (likely assisted by other individuals), not the imagined defense of an ambiguous collective identity such as a nation, nor defense of the interests of political rulers who insist they represent such impersonal identities.

See also: Fighting Future War

 

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