SNaP_Ch 3: Roots of Nonaggression
Plotting Progress: The SNaPcube and the SNaPmap

Summary: This chapter develops a three-dimensional scheme for identifying human qualities conducive to a society based on the Sacred Nonaggression Principle… then advocates a popular movement in that direction. It is a rough condensation of the third chapter in my book, The Sacred Nonaggression Principle II, to be published in early March 2010. — bw

Chapter 1 begins with some self-evident truths—the Kindergarten Rules (don’t hit, don’t steal, don’t lie)—that most of us picked up from childhood. Then in Chapter 2, I formalized the Kindergarten Rules into a general nonaggression principle that applies with clear benefits to all of human society.

Even though Chapter 2: Nonaggression 101 represents a proof of the NaP… and showing it to be “sacred,” it doesn’t give a background psychologically for why many people are inclined to make exceptions for acts aggression (esp. if governing authorities engage in them). However, the SNaPstrip of Figure 3.1 below does point the way toward understanding. In this chapter, I’m going to describe the SNaPstrip in more detail, showing how it is an accurate predictor of progress of an individual consciousness (and individuals’ consciousnesses) toward the nonaggression ideal. 

SNaPstrip Plus

As we have seen, the SNaPstrip diagram contains three axes, each representing a property of an individual human psychology.

Figure 3.1: The SNaPstrip Diagram

The psychological-property axes are described as follows:

• Along the X-axis, we grow to discard blind obedience to authority and learn to think for ourselves. This is reflected in our overall psychological independence and interest in objective truth and reason.


• I conceived of the Y-axis as a measure of interest in ideas. At the bottom of the scale an individual takes no interest in the rest of the world at all. Slightly higher, he cares for his job, his family, or his local sports franchise. And so on. To the few at the top who, for example, passionately work for world peace and justice. [Or, for authoritarian opportunists, passionately work to control and manipulate others. So on this scale, unlike the other two axes, higher does not necessarily mean better.]


• Finally, the Z-axis describes the degree to which a person has proceeded toward spiritual enlightenment. At the lower end, he's insensitive to the suffering of other sentient beings, in the midrange shows respect for the political rights of others, and ultimately manifests a deeply felt connection and peace with Being.

Each of these axes I will describe more completely below, and provide figures to illustrate the quality.

X-Axis: The Independence Measure

In thinking about the SNaP, the correlation of the nonaggression principle to greater psychological independence occurred to me first. It’s very simple: the measure of progress toward a libertarian society—which is another way of saying a SNaP-based political-economic system—will be how readily men discard “social metaphysics.” Social metaphysics is a term from the Ayn Rand oeuvre that I believe Nathaniel Branden defined as follows:

Social Metaphysics: The psychological syndrome characterizing an individual who holds the consciousnesses of other men—not objective reality—as his ultimate psycho-epistemological frame of reference.[1]

From the footnote, thus, one understands that a social metaphysician regards other minds as his authority on what is true or false, right or wrong, not the judgment of his own mind. Let’s illustrate the property of psychological independence—the long, steady road humankind has traveled to free itself from the domination and manipulation by an “aggressor class”—in the Figure 3.2.

Figure 3.2: Psychological Independence

In general just as a person or a social system moves toward freedom as it moves toward greater psychological independence—shown as “Less Aggression” in Figure 3.2—so, too, it moves toward greater intellectual concern for the ideas affecting society. Not only one’s own society but others’.

Y-Axis: The Intellectual Measure

Candidly, the measure of intellectual concern is not easily illustrated in a figure, certainly not a figure that relates to progress toward the SNaP in society. Part of the reason for that is that being concerned with ideas doesn’t say anything about the nature of the ideas, themselves. If someone wants to dominate others in society, he will conspire to control what ideas are to be considered reasonable—for example the notion that government schools represent a positive development—and filter out those ideas that expose his designs.

Z-Axis: The Spiritual Measure

I am wholly convinced there is a one-to-one connection between spiritual fulfillment and the Sacred Nonaggression Principle. Each is the sine qua non of the other. If you've already achieved some degree of enlightenment, then by embracing the SNaP you assure that your light will be received by the maximum number of kindred souls. If you're beginning down the trail of freedom, then the SNaP will quickly provide the answer to the spiritual question "whatever do you want liberty for?".

Another look at the "human growth curve" from the SNaPstrip is shown here in Figure 3.3, which represents how I might arrange the categories along the growth curve as of this five minutes.

Figure 3.3: Human Growth Curve

Thus perhaps the greatest benefit of the Sacred Nonaggression Principle is a society in which large numbers of individuals are free to "come alive," to reach their own constellation of understanding of themselves in the cosmos. Note: I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but, as pointed out by Sam Harris in The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, spiritual enlightenment is not obtainable through primitive, authoritarian methods or mass hysteria about the supernatural. Indeed, enlightenment is solely the handmaiden of natural reason and knowledge.

The SNaPcube and SNaPmap
Constructing a 3D “Nolan Chart”

From the general descriptions above for the three axes or dimensions one may see the seeds of quantifying just how far along the Nonaggression Vector one is located at a particular time. So I came up with a series of categories and questions for that purpose, and constructed a three-dimensional SNaPcube. To create the SNaPcube, and for ease of plotting, I’ve tipped the SNaPstrip Diagram forward, so we’re looking as from the top of Figure 3.1. The unadorned SNaPcube is shown below in Figure 3.4. With the sample plot of X=50, Y=50, and Z=40 shown.

Figure 3-4: The SNaPmap Plot

The specific 3-D location of an individual’s characteristics on the SNaPstrip may be considered somewhat a predictor of where he’ll wind up on the Nolan Chart. Interestingly, the Nonaggression Vector viewed without the 3D perspective on Figure 3.1 is very close to the upward, right-pointing vector of the Nolan Chart.

Tables 3.1 thru 3.3 are version 1 of my SNaPmap exercise, consisting of the World’s Smallest MetaPolitical Quiz and a graphical tool for locating a quiz taker’s position along the ideal path of the Nonaggression Vector.

In the normal taking of the quiz, each person can simply write his or her own illustrative example questions for the main questions. Or not. The short form of the quiz simply lays out the fundamental question for each category. The short form of the quiz will be assembled and provided in due course at the Scribd locations to be noted.[2] What you’re seeing in the tables below are my own example questions, that I feel are good indicators of how I might measure my development in each of the categories.

Note: I’m giving arbitrary Y/M/N answers to create a middle range score for plotting of 50, 50, and 40. (I would be close to 90, 90, 90 for real.)

Table 3.1: X-Axis: Psychological Independence

Table 3.2: Y-Axis: Intellectual Concern

Table 3.3: Z-Axis: Spiritual Development

The scores on this sample test are X = 50, Y = 50, and Z = 40. So please refer to the general SNaPmap of Figure 3.4 where these example points are illustrated.

Before going any further, I need to caution readers, again, that by writing such tables as the above I am not suggesting the dimensional framework, the categories of behavior, general and specific questions, and meaning or ranking of answers are in any way “scientific.” Any more so than the questions of the Nolan Chart represent an exact map of whether someone is a libertarian.

Rather, let’s look at this quiz and mapping of characteristics as a tool self- discovery, especially as our characteristics tend toward a social system based on the nonaggression principle. The SNaPmap is one method for measuring the progress of humanity toward that idea.

The SNaPmap Elaborated

Let me make a few comments on each of the elements in the forgoing political mapping idea. Under each of the psychological property axes (psychological independence, intellectual concern, and spiritual development), I have created a “category” for a kind of human behavior. Then for each of the categories, I describe what I mean by the category and I compose a sample question that seems to illustrate the presence or absence of that category/characteristic in the person responding.

The sample questions—and to some extent the categories and their meanings—are intended to illustrate the behavior. I make no claim of special brilliance in the construction of these questions, and many, probably more fitting, sample questions are conceivable. Indeed, exploring some other behavior questions will be part of the descriptions below. Looking forward, I anticipate that most quizzers will simply fill out the short form (which will be available from the Scribd locations below[2]) and ride on.

But as a "standardized quiz" I envision quizzers making up their own sample illustrative questions—or choosing from a menu of samples that have been created by a user community.

Table 3.1: Psychological Independence

This category relates to a person’s ability and inclination to face the world first hand.

1.1 Mental Conviction

Do you hold your intellectual convictions above external authority? Example: I imagine myself as an astronomer in the Middle Ages. My logic and observations say Earth revolves around Sun. Church ‘scientists’ say no. Do I keep my conviction, albeit quietly?

What I am trying to indicate with this category is the willingness to adhere to one’s own private conclusions—whether or not you consider it prudent to act on them—esp. when someone claiming superior authority has different conclusions. It’s easy for me to pick on the Christian religious dogma, e.g. geocentrism or “creationism,”[3] but adhering to one’s own convictions is equally relevant to nonreligious mysticism, such as the Communism—remember how the Soviets imposed Lysenkoism (the belief that environmentally acquired characteristics can be passed on genetically) on their scientific community.

1.2 Mental Action

Do you assert your intellectual convictions above external authority? Example: Same situation as #1. I know Earth revolves around Sun; Church says no way. Pope is coming for dinner tonight. Do I tell Mr. Pope what I think (probably only risking social shunning)?

Choosing to publicly assert one’s intellectual convictions is much more difficult—indeed, not such a good idea if the state actually prohibits freedom of thought. I think for the sake of the table we have to assume that the harshest penalty for asserting politically incorrect opinions is ostracism from the in crowd.

1.3 Ethical Conviction

Do you hold your moral values above external authority? Example: Framers held that direct taxes on men were repugnant, and Constitutionally banned them.[4] Most feds apply ‘income’ tax as direct tax on ordinary earnings. I hold firmly this is wrong.

In this category we’re talking about whether or not you hold that a particular action is right or wrong, irrespective of the conclusions of external authorities. As a conviction, it does not necessarily entail action. For example, you may be absolutely convinced that federal taxes on normal, nonprivileged earnings—such as assembling automobiles, writing books, or any other activity that humans have the natural right to perform so they may acquire property required for survival—are not subject to direct federal tax. But, you are not going to challenge the conventional practice of the tax collection process… which is to treat everything that “comes in” as privileged earnings subject to the tax.

1.4 Ethical Action

Do you practice your values above external authority? Example: Same situation as #3. I learn that fed “income” tax does not legally apply to me; income means privileged earnings, and I have none. Thus, I am not a Taxpayer, and ignore April 15.

I kinda-sorta apologize for making my example questions on 1.3 and 1.4 pertain to the US federal direct tax issue. But this is one of the most important issues of the day, because the law properly understood means exactly opposite to what the great body of the US central government represents as true.[5] Moreover, the feds have been misapplying the law to destroy the lives of innocent people.

The end of the so-called income tax, or, more precisely, the lawful application of the so-called income tax is a milestone for the restoration of the Republic. We will not reach that milestone until sufficient numbers of individuals have taken moral action in accordance with their knowledge. And that’s a fair generalization for what is required to achieve freedom in any social context.

1.5 Social Pressure

On general social matters are you at peace with your own choices? Example: I have found that wearing sandals with socks is comfortable. J Most women recoil, my guy friends say it’s gay. Do I wear socks with sandals anyway? (Probably a bad example.)

Small humor to be sure. The point is that our psychological independence depends partly on what we’re willing to accept in terms of social opprobrium.

Table 3.2: Intellectual Concern

When I first was thinking of this category, the focus was on an individual’s “concern with universals,” meaning whether he or she cared about general concepts affecting society: reason vs. faith, individualism vs. collectivism, liberty vs. the state, and so on. Hence the name, which relates to the nonaggression ideal through the interest or uninterest of one’s mind in the affairs of the world. 

2.1 “Psychological Domain”

Do you care what happens in the rest of the world? Example: During the recent Mideast wars, more than 2,000 tons of depleted uranium munitions were used, causing a long-term humanitarian catastrophe. Will I look into this issue, find truth?

Depleted uranium is one of many horrific actions inflicted upon large swaths of humanity by governments and governments’ big financial clients. Like other issues more remote from American soil—including war, or human suffering unconnected to state coercion—few Americans today care. These matters are outside their “psychological domain” (a term used by professionals in psychology to denote the range of what an individual thinks or feels about). A wide psychological domain tends to characterize people who wish to see a world of freedom and abundance for their species.

2.2 Reason vs. Emotion

Do you resist following your emotions, instead preferring to think out an issue? Example: I’m a baseball fan who idolizes the greats. Modern players used steroids and eclipsed old records. I feel they should go to jail. But I stop, reconsider, decide government should butt out.

Not trying to claim reason and emotions are inherently at odds, only that a measure of genuine intellectual concern lies in being mature and honest about one’s feelings. It’s easy to fly off the handle in a world full of addictions, especially when one’s addictions are attacked. A “real man” takes charge of the situation and figures out an issue impartially, fairly, in connection with objective facts. There are thousands of examples where it is vital to face up to one’s responsibility as a thinking human being when one’s feelings are pulling one down a destructive path.

2.3 Conceptual vs. Perceptual

You prefer activities of consciousness requiring critical, creative thinking? Example: Larry McMurtry’s latest book has just become available in the library, and I love his writing. Also, I love video games: XBox Doom has arrived in the stores. I read the book first.

Granted, different strokes for different folks. My sample question isn’t meant to disdain those who enjoy video games. But these games are emotional-perceptual eye-candy, or rather hand-and-eye candy… and terribly addictive, especially to testosterone-stoked boys and young men. I wanted to suggest the life-saving, planet-saving humanity of facing the world primarily via one’s rational conceptual faculty. The emotional-perceptual mode of consciousness is a primitive- or mid-brain (limbic system) vestige.

The human race cannot achieve freedom, cannot realize the nonaggression principle, without integrated conceptual functioning—mainly evidenced through a comprehensive clarity of writing and reading activity. Indeed, the reason we stand poised, as Nietzsche stated, “on a rope over an abyss,” is because we (well, so many of us) are reluctant to let go of the comforting stimulus-response automata we grew up with. Functioning on the lower levels also makes us susceptible to parasitic infection and domination by those who would live at productive-class expense.

2.4 Disorders

Are you largely free from psychological disorders, whether genetic or other? Example: A woman I’ve met is connected to wealth and power; I do not like her, but she worships me, and I can use her. Do I eschew a false relationship that can aid my career?

To be sure, one cannot do much about a genuine psychological disorder, except possibly to have some limited awareness of it. Unfortunately, if one does suffer such an affliction, one’s ability to achieve the higher states of consciousness that attend a fully functioning, free society is severely constrained. The disorder of the example is actually an ASL analog, in which power over others is an addiction and the willingness to manipulate others impedes actualization—certainly antithetical to the full flowering of the SNaP.

2.5 Primitive Brain

Do you habitually judge critical information by your own mind’s authority?  Example: Researchers discover that X-Rays of JFK have been doctored by government hirelings to display an intact rear skull (an intact rear skull would deny head shots from the front). Do I consider the validity of this new evidence and, if valid, do I discard the official story?

As I will describe the next chapter, the limbic system, also known as the paleo-mammalian brain, is a transitional human mental structure that still contains powerful disincentives to rational thought—in brain structure terms, acts as a closed loop preventing access to critical thinking in the cerebral cortex. The “limboidally challenged” are all around us, indeed, they are the norm. Without overcoming what I have named the Arrested Limbic System syndrome, en masse, it will be difficult to achieve an aggression-free world.

Table 3.3: Spiritual Development

Although the idea of a “spiritual” scale or dimension to the development of the NaP was a later idea in my thinking about mapping progress toward the nonaggression ideal, it’s probably the most important. At the lower levels of spiritual development on the scale of human history—starting with compassion—one can see how precocious spiritual sensitivity to other beings might yield distortions on the other scales… leading persons to accept aggression by the authorities for the alleged benefit of those less fortunate.

But in general the spiritual dimension drives the other dimensions, leading the enlightened to a live and let live philosophy and a firm conviction in the value of the individual and his/her reasoning, life-giving mind.

3.1 Compassion

Is there a feeling of connection with and sensitivity to other beings? Example: I put out this mousetrap, later hear a racket. The trap has caught a mouse partially; it’s writhing in agony. I put the mouse out, knowing it will die, and I feel awful about it for a week.

I decided to lead off with the compassion quality, and then within that quality propose an example question concerning other sentient creatures. There are any number of stories about man’s inhumanity to man, in fact the stories are inexhaustible and probably more representative. There’s a story I read from Sam Harris having to do with human consciousness and compassion, a custom in Paris, France, only a few hundred years ago where cats were publicly tormented and, shrieking in pain, killed to peals of laughter and delight of assembled “people.” Not meaning to pick on the French, but until one has the most rudimentary sensitivity to the suffering of fellow creatures, one won’t have much care or respect for your own species, or for yourself. Without a universal compassion there is no such thing as a free and benevolent society.

3.2 Tolerance and Reason

Do you accept how other people live so long as they leave you be? Example: In 1200 I’m a low-level priest in a 99% Catholic village; some nonbelievers have arrived. My superiors invoke the Bible wanting to massacre them. I argue with the bosses to let them be.

You can see how the Tolerance and Reason category follows from the Compassion category. When one acquires a degree of feeling for others—for their suffering, from their similarities to one’s own humanity—it’s not a big step to understanding, to realizing that as humans we’re all in this together. Let’s not beat each other up, not kill one another, not fight holy wars for some superstitious faith-based phantasm.

Indeed, anthropologically, the step toward tolerance and reason is the beginning of the idea of liberty: the nonaggression principle.

3.3 Courage and Character

Do you feel humans should live without aggression and act to create a free world? Example: Early 1770s, I run a brewery/tavern in Nashua, NH. My ancestors came here to escape tyranny. British king sends soldiers. I fund and/or join the militia to challenge the Redcoat goons.

Can you see the natural historical progression of spiritual development in these categories. As indicated under the Tolerance and Reason category, it’s at this stage—where we generally feel some species identification, acquire some tolerance and natural understanding—that freedom becomes systematic knowledge. (Consider John Locke and his Treatise on Civil Government, which virtually all the Founders had read.) Moreover, qualities of character move front and center. For it’s one thing to have compassion and tolerance, to seek a world based on benevolence and the concept of individual rights, and another to achieve it. This is where you gotta walk the walk. Talk is cheap. “Verbal Libertarianism Ain’t S**t!” You must act. You have honor, you keep your promises, and you face down—hopefully with other civilized individuals—the primordial oppressors and their bullies.

3.4 Spirit (or Passion)

Do you have a fire in your belly to see your dreams come true? Example: As a boy scraping by in London during the WW2 bombings, I see a business man who leads the rebuilding. He’s confident, well-dressed, w/ladies on his arm. That image serves as a motivating “burning desire” in my life to achieve supreme success and well being.

Kind of a late addition, but it occurred to me that “lust for life” or some other phrase connoting a “burning desire” for achievement or success—whether in the material world or in the world of creative art—was a needed category. So that’s what I mean by the Passion category. Read your Napoleon Hill, read your Ayn Rand, however you come to your passion for own excellence in life, recognize that it’s a penultimate step toward enlightenment and fairly represented in the SNaPcube along the Nonaggression Vector.

3.5 Oneness

Have you found a oneness with being, a deep inner peace? Example: It is said that the greater part of enlightenment proceeds from giving up attachments. Mine are wine, women, and golf. If I let go of addiction to all three: 20, two or one: 10, none: 0.

Closing the analysis with small humor again. In my own experience, I’ve found the work of Eckhart Tolle[6] to be at once exhilarating and unburdening. So many of the words of the Buddha, Lao Tzu, the prophet Jesus, Thoreau, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Li Hongzhi (Master Teacher of Falun Dafa) ring out with the fundamental truths of the universe. We, the human species, stand at the threshold of becoming Spiritual Machines—the Singularity of Ray Kurzweil is right around the corner. As Tolle puts it, all the spiritual teachings are basically one grand message: realizing our oneness with the cosmos, which is the Now.

The movement along the Nonaggression Vector is a useful representation of what the physical world will become to us—a place of freedom and abundance—as humanity reaches its spiritual destiny. [If, in the grand scheme of the cosmos it doesn’t matter whether one is materially well off, you might as well be materially well off. :)]

Summary

In this chapter we have looked at a method for representing progress toward the ideal of the SNaP in social reality. The SNaPcube and the SNaPmap are solely tools of self-discovery, yet as such one sees they offer helping hands to resolving the myriad social problems we encounter in the world today. These social problems are universally caused by systematic aggression. The Nonaggression Vector diagram shows the natural progress of humankind is to overcome the aggression.

If you consider intellectual and spiritual history of the human species, you can see how spiritual development along what I’ve designated the Z-axis is a driver for both psychological independence along the X-axis and intellectual “concern” along the Y-axis. By each of us understanding who we are in terms of these three categories, we can more readily “reach for the stars” of that ideal society. The remaining chapters show practical means for accomplishing that goal.

[1] Darn, I’ve done it again. Another word, epistemology, needs to be defined. For all practical purposes it means “the science or study of how humans know things."

[2] Scribd locations: tbd

[3] Creationism = “The-World-Was-Built-by-an-Anthropomorphic-Ghost-in-Six-Days”-ism. Note: anthropomorphic means “’of or like’ man.”

[4] Except for emergencies when they must be apportioned among the states. Art. 1, section 9.

[5] The (naturally) authoritative book on the subject of the federal “income” tax is Pete Hendrickson’s Cracking the Code: The fascinating truth about taxation in America.

[6] The Power of Now.

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2010 February 08
Copyright © Brian Wright | The Coffee Coaster™
Roots of Nonaggression | SNaPmap | SNaPcube | Plotting Progress | Liberty

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