Philosophical Musings

‘Nowadays’, complained Mr K, ‘there are innumerable people who boast in public that they are able to write great books all by themselves, and this meets with general approval. When he was already in the prime of life the Chinese philosopher Chuang-tzu composed a book of one hundred thousand words, nine-tenths of which consisted of quotations. Such books can no longer be written here and now, because the wit is lacking. As a result, ideas are only produced in one’s own workshop, and anyone who does not manage enough of them thinks himself lazy. Admittedly, there is not then a single idea that could be adopted or a single formulation of an idea that could be quoted. How little all of them need for their activity! A pen and some paper are the only things they are able to show! And without any help, with only the scant material that anyone can carry in his hands, they erect their cottages! The largest buildings they know are those a single man is capable of constructing!’

Bertolt Brecht, ‘Originality’, Stories of Mr Keuner.

Each individual has his own particular ideal of man in general; these ideals are different in degree, though not in kind; each tries by his own ideal every being whom he recognizes as a man. By this fundamental impulse each is prompted to seek in others a likeness to his own ideal; he inquires, he observes on all sides, and when he finds men below this ideal, he strives to elevate them to it. In this struggle of mind with mind, he always triumphs who is the highest and best man;—and thus from the idea of Society arises that of the perfection of the race, and we have thus also discovered the ultimate purpose of all Society as such. When it appears as if the higher and better man had no influence on the low and uncultivated, we are partly deceived in our judgement, since we often expect to find the fruit already ripe, before the seed has had time to germinate and unfold;—and it may partly arise from this, that the better man perhaps stands at too high an elevation above the uncultivated,—that they have too few points of contact with each other, and hence cannot sufficiently act upon each other;—a state which retards civilization to an incredible extent, and the remedy for which we shall point out at the proper time. But on the whole, the ultimate triumph of the better man is certain:—a calming and consoling thought for the friend of humanity and of truth when he looks out upon the open war of light with darkness. The light shall surely triumph at last;—we cannot indeed predict the time,—but it is already a pledge of victory, of near victory, when darkness is compelled to come forth to an open encounter. She loves concealment,—she is already lost when forced out into the open day.

Fichte, The Vocation of the Scholar.

I know that this may be somewhat cheesy advice, but I genuinely believe that, in order to have a love for life, one MUST have a love for the living. It’s almost impossible to be happy without embracing the world around you. Of course, this wide world of ours is still worthy of fear and respect, but let that not divert us from our love for it. It seems as though modern living has forced into a more insular way of life, and into a certain state of self idolatry. Although I’m certain that these luddite arguments sound well wrung out to anyone who reads them, there’s no avoiding the relationship between our digital world and our ever increasing loneliness rates. And yet the wheel keeps turning. Although expecting any reversals in our technological growth, of course, is unreasonable, (and frankly, reactionary) our culture has yet to find a suitable response for this advancement. I believe, however, that this cultural progress is being stymied by certain forces in our society that thrive off of cultural regression: The same sort of organizations that thrive off exploitation. In a world of unfathomably quick progress, it seems unreasonable to be a capitalist. Why is this? Because capitalism, unfortunately, has a long history of muddying the waters of such things. The system thrives off of regression, because, in such a system, only the immoral can ascend. And these regressives, as we have taken to calling them, have not only stolen the autonomy of people. They have stolen the sanctity of the world which we love. And that, more than any other offense, is their greatest crime.

Although they are not explicitly connected, one must address the intimate connection between these "regressives" and faith. Although belief in a higher power is not, as many assume, inherently constraining, it becomes problematic when it is used as a basis for social and cultural development. Organized faith, through its unbreakable tenets, is often used to justify outdated practices. Personally, I’ve never really understood it, at least one particular aspect of it. How can it be that someone can be faithful, without being an environmentalist? How can one worship the creator, without worshipping the creation? It seems to me that, faithful or not, due reverence should guide one to a similar philosophy. Any other system, as I see it, is death worship.

@Nucleonimbus (@FoundAgain).

We walk through the world as the spectator walks through a great factory: he does not see the details of machines and working operations, or the comprehensive connections between the different departments which determine the working processes on a large scale….We see the polished surface of our table as a smooth plane; but we know that it is a network of atoms with interstices much larger than the mass particles, and the microscope already shows not the atoms but the fact that the apparent smoothness is not better than the “smoothness” of the peel of a shriveled apple. We see the iron stove before us as a model of rigidity, solidity, immovability; but we know that its particles perform a violent dance, and that it resembles a swarm of dancing gnats more than the picture of solidity we attribute to it. We see the moon as a silvery disk in the celestial vault, but we know it is an enormous ball suspended in open space. We hear the voice coming from the mouth of a singing girl as a soft and continuous tone, but we know that this sound is composed of hundreds of impacts a second bombarding our ears like a machine gun….We do not see the things, not even the concreta, as they are but in a distorted form; we see a substitute world—not the world as it is, objectively speaking.

Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction.

Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. For if one portion of the earth’s surface may justly become the possession of an individual, and may be held by him for his sole use and benefit, as a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then other portions of the earth’s surface may be so held; and eventually the whole of the earth’s surface may be so held; and our planet may thus lapse altogether into private hands. Observe now the dilemma to which this leads. Supposing the entire habitable globe to be so enclosed, it follows that if the landowners have a valid right to its surface, all who are not landowners, have no right at all to its surface. Hence, such can exist on the earth by sufferance only. They are all trespassers. Save by the permission of the lords of the soil, they can have no room for the soles of their feet. Nay, should the others think fit to deny them a ­resting-place, these landless men might equitably be expelled from the earth altogether. If, then, the assumption that land can be held as property, involves that the whole globe may become the private domain of a part of its inhabitants; and if, by consequence, the rest of its inhabitants can then exercise their faculties—can then exist even—only by consent of the landowners; it is manifest, that an exclusive possession of the soil necessitates an infringement of the law of equal freedom. For, men who cannot “live and move and have their being” without the leave of others, cannot be equally free with those others.

Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, or The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed.

Even if you could overthrow the Government tomorrow and establish Anarchism, the same system would soon grow up again.

This objection is quite true, except that we do not propose to overthrow the Government tomorrow. If I (or we as a group of anarchists) came to the conclusion that I was to be the liberator of humanity, and if by some means I could manage to blow up the King, the Houses of Lords and Commons, the police force, and, in a word, all persons and institutions which make up the Government—if I were successful in all this, and expected to see the people enjoying freedom ever afterwards as a result, then, no doubt, I should find myself greatly mistaken.

The chief results of my action would be to arouse an immense indignation on the part of the majority of the people, and a reorganisation by them of all the forces of government. The reason why this method would fail is very easy to understand. It is because the strength of the Government rests not with itself, but with the people. A great tyrant may be a fool, and not a superman. His strength lies not in himself, but in the superstition of the people who think that it is right to obey him. So long as that superstition exists it is useless for some liberator to cut off the head of tyranny; the people will create another, for they have grown accustomed to rely on something outside themselves.

Suppose, however, that the people develop, and become strong in their love of liberty, and self-reliant, then the foremost of its rebels will overthrow tyranny, and backed by the general sentiment of their age their action will never be undone. Tyranny will never be raised from the dead. A landmark in the progress of humanity will have been passed and put behind for ever.

So the Anarchist rebel when he strikes his blow at Governments understands that he is no liberator with a divine mission to free humanity, but he is a part of that humanity struggling onwards towards liberty.

If, then, by some external means an Anarchist Revolution could be, so to speak, supplied ready-made and thrust upon the people, it is true that they would reject it and rebuild the old society. If, on the other hand, the people develop their ideas of freedom, and then themselves get rid of the last stronghold of tyranny—the Government—then indeed the Revolution will be permanently accomplished.

George Barrett, Objections to Anarchism.

But today's society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual's value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler's program, that is to say, 'mercy' killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch.

Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.

Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World.

Between the serf, the farmer, the tenant, and the mortgagee, the difference is rather one of form than of substance. Whether the peasant belongs to me, or the land on which he has to get a living; whether the bird is mine, or its food, the tree or its fruit, is a matter of little moment; for, as Shakespeare makes Shylock say:

You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live.

Slavery and poverty, then, are only two forms, I might almost say only two names, of the same thing, the essence of which is that a man's physical powers are employed, in the main, not for himself but for others; and this leads partly to his being over-loaded with work, and partly to his getting a scanty satisfaction for his needs. For Nature has given a man only as much physical power as will suffice, if he exerts it in moderation, to gain a sustenance from the earth. No great superfluity of power is his. If, then, a not inconsiderable number of men are relieved from the common burden of sustaining the existence of the human race, the burden of the remainder is augmented, and they suffer.

But the more remote cause of [evil] is luxury. In order, it may be said, that some few persons may have what is unnecessary, superfluous, and the product of refinement—nay, in order that they may satisfy artificial needs—a great part of the existing powers of mankind has to be devoted to this object, and therefore withdrawn from the production of what is necessary and indispensable. Instead of building cottages for themselves, thousands of men build mansions for a few. Instead of weaving coarse materials for themselves and their families, they make fine cloths, silk, or even lace, for the rich, and in general manufacture a thousand objects of luxury for their pleasure. A great part of the urban population consists of workmen who make these articles of luxury; and for them and those who give them work the peasants have to plough and sow and look after the flocks as well as for themselves, and thus have more labour than Nature originally imposed upon them. Moreover, the urban population devotes a great deal of physical strength, and a great deal of land, to such things as wine, silk, tobacco, hops, asparagus and so on, instead of to corn, potatoes and cattle-breeding. Further, a number of men are withdrawn from agriculture and employed in ship-building and seafaring, in order that sugar, coffee, tea and other goods may be imported. In short, a large part of the powers of the human race is taken away from the production of what is necessary, in order to bring what is superfluous and unnecessary within the reach of a few. As long therefore as luxury exists, there must be a corresponding amount of over-work and misery, whether it takes the name of poverty or of slavery. The fundamental difference between the two is that slavery originates in violence, and poverty in craft. The whole unnatural condition of society—the universal struggle to escape from misery, the sea-trade attended with so much loss of life, the complicated interests of commerce, and finally the wars to which it all gives rise—is due, only and alone, to luxury, which gives no happiness even to those who enjoy it, nay, makes them ill and bad-tempered.

Arthur Schopenhauer, Government.

Cultures have tried to teach a malign and apparently persuasive lie: that the most important metric of a good life is wealth and the luxury and power it brings. The rich think they live better when they are even richer. In America and many other places they use their wealth politically, to persuade the public to elect or accept leaders who will do that for them. They say that the justice we have imagined is socialism that threatens our freedom. Not everyone is gullible: many people lead contented lives without wealth. But many others are persuaded; they vote for low taxes to keep the jackpot full in case they too can win it, even though that is a lottery they are almost bound to lose. Nothing better illustrates the tragedy of an unexamined life: there are no winners in this macabre dance of greed and delusion. No respectable or even intelligible theory of value supposes that making and spending money has any value or importance in itself and almost everything people buy with that money lacks any importance as well. The ridiculous dream of a princely life is kept alive by ethical sleepwalkers. And they in turn keep injustice alive because their self-contempt breeds a politics of contempt for others. Dignity is indivisible.

Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs.

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict. In these pages it is our open political purpose to cooperate with the great law of change; to want otherwise would be like King Canute's commanding the tides and waves to cease.

A word about my personal philosophy. It is anchored in optimism. It must be, for optimism brings with it hope, a future with a purpose, and therefore, a will to fight for a better world. Without this optimism, there is no reason to carry on. If we think of the struggle as a climb up a mountain, then we must visualize a mountain with no top. We see a top, but when we finally reach it, the overcast rises and we find ourselves merely on a bluff. The mountain continues on up. Now we see the 'real' top ahead of us, and strive for it, only to find we've reached another bluff, the top still above us. And so it goes on, interminably.

Knowing that the mountain has no top, that it is a perpetual quest from plateau to plateau, the question arises, 'Why the struggle, the conflict, the heartbreak, the danger, the sacrifice. Why the constant climb?' Our answer is the same as that which a real mountain climber gives when he is asked why he does what he does. 'Because it's there.' Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys in a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of an illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the unknown. Paradoxically, they give up the dream of what may lie ahead on the heights of tomorrow for a perpetual nightmare—an endless succession of days fearing the loss of a tenuous security.

Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals.

Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spake thus:

‘Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.

‘A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.

‘What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.

‘I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.

‘I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.

‘I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.

‘I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.

‘I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh he his own down-going.

‘I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.

‘I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge.

‘I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny: thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more.

‘I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one’s destiny to cling to.

‘I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.

‘I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then asketh: “Am I a dishonest player?”—for he is willing to succumb.

‘I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going.

‘I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.

‘I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God.

‘I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.

‘I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.

‘I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.

‘I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and succumb as heralds.

‘Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.—

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody.

Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and was amazed. Then he spoke thus:

‘The human is a rope, fastened between beast and Overhuman—a rope over an abyss.

‘A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous shuddering and standing still.

‘What is great in the human is that it is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in the human is that it is a going-over and a going-under.

‘I love those who do not know how to live except by going under, for they are those who go over and across.

‘I love the great despisers, for they are the great reverers and arrows of yearning for the other shore.

‘I love those who do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be sacrifices, but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to the Overhuman.

‘I love him who lives in order to understand, and who wants to understand so that one day the Overhuman may live. And thus he wills his going-under.

‘I love him who works and invents, that he may build a house for the Overhuman and prepare earth and animal and plant for its sake: for thus he wills his going-under.

‘I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to go under and an arrow of yearning.

‘I love him who holds back not one drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus he strides as spirit across the bridge.

‘I love him who makes of his virtue his addiction and his undoing: thus he wills for his virtue’s sake to live on and to live no more.

‘I love him who would not have too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it has more knots for one’s undoing to latch on to.

‘I love him whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and does not give back again: for he always bestows and would not preserve himself.

‘I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then asks: Have I been playing falsely then?—for he wills his own perishing.

‘I love him who casts golden words before his deeds and always keeps even more than he promises: for he wills his going-under.

‘I love him who justifies those to come in the future and redeems those gone in the past: for he wants to perish by those in the present.

‘I love him who chastens his God because he loves his God: for the wrath of his God must be his perishing.

‘I love him whose soul is deep even in being wounded, and who can perish from the smallest experience: thus he goes gladly over the bridge.

‘I love him whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his going-under.

‘I love him who has a free spirit and a free heart: then his head is simply the entrails of his heart, yet his heart drives him to his going-under.

‘I love all those who are as heavy drops, falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over the human: they herald the coming of the lightning, and as heralds they also perish.

‘Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Overhuman.’—

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody.

Myself, I wonder: Couldn't that really be the point? Perhaps what the authors of the Brahmanas were really demonstrating was that, in the final analysis, our relation with the cosmos is ultimately nothing like a commercial transaction, nor could it be. That is because commercial transactions imply both equality and separation. These examples are all about overcoming separation: you are free from your debt to your ancestors when you become an ancestor; you are free from your debt to the sages when you become a sage, you are free from your debt to humanity when you act with humanity. All the more so if one is speaking of the universe. If you cannot bargain with the gods because they already have everything, then you certainly cannot bargain with the universe, because the universe is everything—and that everything necessarily includes yourself. One could in fact interpret this list as a subtle way of saying that the only way of "freeing oneself" from the debt was not literally repaying debts, but rather showing that these debts do not exist because one is not in fact separate to begin with, and hence that the very notion of canceling the debt and achieving a separate, autonomous existence was ridiculous from the start. Or even that the very presumption of positing oneself as separate from humanity or the cosmos, so much so that one can enter into one-to-one dealings with it, is itself the crime that can be answered only by death. Our guilt is not due to the fact that we cannot repay our debt to the universe. Our guilt is our presumption in thinking of ourselves as being in any sense an equivalent to Everything Else that Exists or Has Ever Existed, so as to be able to conceive of such a debt in the first place.

Or let us look at the other side of the equation. Even if it is possible to imagine ourselves as standing in a position of absolute debt to the cosmos, or to humanity, the next question becomes: Who exactly has a right to speak for the cosmos, or humanity, to tell us how that debt must be repaid? If there's anything more preposterous than claiming to stand apart from the entire universe so as to enter into negotiations with it, it is claiming to speak for the other side.

If one were looking for the ethos for an individualistic society such as our own, one way to do it might well be to say: we all owe an infinite debt to humanity, society, nature, or the cosmos (however one prefers to frame it), but no one else could possibly tell us how we are to pay it. This at least would be intellectually consistent. If so, it would actually be possible to see almost all systems of established authority—religion, morality, politics, economics, and the criminal-justice system—as so many different fraudulent ways to presume to calculate what cannot be calculated, to claim the authority to tell us how some aspect of that unlimited debt ought to be repaid. Human freedom would then be our ability to decide for ourselves how we want to do so.

David Graeber, Debt. (Part 3 of 3)

It's significant that their answer did not make any mention either of "society" or states (though kings and governments certainly existed in early India). Instead, they fixed on debts to gods, to sages, to fathers, and to "men." It wouldn't be at all difficult to translate their formulation into more contemporary language. We could put it this way. We owe our existence above all:

1. To the universe, cosmic forces, as we would put it now, to Nature. The ground of our existence. To be repaid through ritual: ritual being an act of respect and recognition towards all that beside which we are small.

2. To those who have created the knowledge and cultural accomplishments that we value most, that give our existence its form, its meaning, but also its shape. Here we would include not only the philosophers and scientists who created our intellectual tradition but everyone from William Shakespeare to that long-since-forgotten woman, somewhere in the Middle East, who created leavened bread. We repay them by becoming learned ourselves and contributing to human knowledge and human culture.

3. To our parents, and their parents—our ancestors. We repay them by becoming ancestors.

4. To humanity as a whole. We repay them by generosity to strangers, by maintaining that basic communistic ground of sociality that makes human relations, and hence life, possible.

Set out this way, though, the argument begins to undermine its very premise. These are nothing like commercial debts. After all, one might repay one's parents by having children, but one is not generally thought to have repaid one's creditors if one lends the cash to someone else.

David Graeber, Debt. (Part 2 of 3)

What makes the concept of society so deceptive is that we assume the world is organized into a series of compact, modular units called "societies," and that all people know which one they're in. Historically, this is very rarely the case. Imagine I am a Christian Armenian merchant living under the reign of Genghis Khan. What is "society" for me? Is it the city where I grew up, the society of international merchants (with its own elaborate codes of conduct) within which I conduct my daily affairs, other speakers of Armenian, Christendom (or maybe just Orthodox Christendom), or the inhabitants of the Mongol empire itself, which stretched from the Mediterranean to Korea? Historically, kingdoms and empires have rarely been the most important reference points in people's lives. Kingdoms rise and fall; they also strengthen and weaken; governments may make their presence known in people's lives quite sporadically, and for many people in history, it was not at all clear whose government they were actually in. Even until quite recently, many of the world's inhabitants were not quite sure of what country they were citizens, or why it should matter.

However, if we are born with an infinite debt to all those people who made our existence possible, but there is no natural unit called "society"—then who or what exactly do we really owe it to? Everyone? Everything? Some people or things more than others? And how do we pay a debt to something so diffuse? Or, perhaps more to the point, who exactly can claim the authority to tell us how we can repay it, and on what grounds?

If we frame the problem that way, the authors of the Brahmanas are offering a quite sophisticated reflection on a moral question that no one has really ever been able to answer any better before or since. As I say, we can't know much about the conditions under which those texts were composed, but such evidence as we do have suggests that the crucial documents date from sometime between 500 and 400 BC—that is, roughly the time of Socrates—which in India appears to have been just around the time that a commercial economy and institutions like coined money and interest-bearing loans were beginning to become features of everyday life. The intellectual classes of the time were, much as they were in Greece and China, grappling with the implications. In their case, this meant asking: What does it mean to imagine our responsibilities as debts? To whom do we owe our existence?

David Graeber, Debt. (Part 1 of 3)

There is no single thing so like another, so closely corresponding to it, as are all of us to one another.

Consequently, to take something away from someone else — to profit by another's loss — is more unnatural than death, or destitution, or pain, or any other physical or external blow. To begin with, this strikes at the roots of human society and fellowship. For if we each of us propose to rob or injure one another for our personal gain, then we are clearly going to demolish what is more emphatically nature's creation than anything else in the whole world: namely, the link that unites every human being with every other. … Nature's law promotes and coincides with the common interest. … If people claim (as they sometimes do) that they have no intention of robbing their parents or brothers for their own gain, but that robbing their compatriots is a different matter, they are not talking sense. For that is the same as denying their common interest with their fellow-countrymen, and all the legal or social obligations that follow there-from: a denial which shatters the whole fabric of national life. Another objection urges that one ought to take account of compatriots but not of foreigners. But people who put forward these arguments subvert the whole foundation of the human community — and its removal means the annihilation of all kindness, generosity, goodness and justice.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Good Life.