A2.1: Person is defined as a living creature possessing a unique DNA sequence corresponding to a species known to possess
Sapience,
defined as the ability to take in information, process it, and produce novel information from it. When a creature demonstrates this
quality, they are conferred Personhood.
- Sapience is a product of sufficiently complex cognition. Humans may
have been the first species to evolve and demonstrate it on this planet
but we will certainly not be the last. The very moment dogs are shown,
publicly and beyond the shadow of any doubt, to possess Sapience they are
immediately and automatically conferred Personhood without objection.
There is no strict threshold, to the dismay of myself and many others. There
seems to be something about language development and theory of mind that gives it away,
but I am not educated enough to comment on this.
Whales are close. Elephants are close. Prairie Dogs are close.
- When a Mommy human and a Daddy human love each other veeeeery much,
they have incredibly kinky sex until Mommy gets pregnant.
If you paid attention in your high school science class,
you'll remember that homo sapiens are diploid organisms,
meaning that our chromosomes come in sets of two. Meiosis,
the process through which gametes are produced in the testes
and ovaries, splits and recombinates each parent's DNA, meaning
an already unique sequence is given random alterations. What results
from the meeting of two matching gametes is the combination of two
somewhat scrambled unique sequences, making a new sequence that is
neither mother nor father.
This new sequence has never existed before, and can never exist
again.
This is the definition of an "individual"
A2.2: All organic matter possessing the DNA of an individual
Person and all cognitive derivatives produced by that organic matter is
Property
of that individual Person.
It constantly shocks me that there are people in this modern day
that do not believe you own your body and your thoughts. In most cases,
the fault is with the church, which peddles the particularly reprehensible
doctrine of slavery to extradimensional entities.
That which contains your DNA is your property, regardless of attachment.
As the owner of your body, you are ethically empowered to do with it as you
please, to include modification, monetization, and termination. This conception
of bodily autonomy is the foundation of libertarian ideals, and without it the
door to the most heinous kinds of tyrannies is left ajar.
This ownership logically extends to your mind, which is the product of your
brain activity, and all the thoughts it generates. They're all yours, pleasant
or distressful, and this acknowledgement serves both as defense of copyright and
defense against thought-policing.
- A2.3: Persons cannot be meaningfully subclassified.
Immutable characteristics, whether externally perceivable or internally sensed,
are of little if any consequence in matters of ethics.
The trend of categorizing Persons based on invented social concepts like race, ethnicity,
national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability is the single
longest-lived meme of human civilization, proliferated most extensively by the church
(ask your pastor why the Israelites were so desperate to pretend they were not ethnically Canaanite).
The death of phrenology in the mid-1800s revealed a basic fact to all people of sound mind:
only those who intend to benefit from being classified above advocate for classifying others below.
If Europeans had any reason to believe Africans might possess a superiority, they would not have
vocalized a desire for racial hierarchy. Thus, all tension regarding immutable characteristics
can be safely labeled as mere tribalism, framed through an external locus of control.
The death of bigoted culture begins with the birth of egalitarian culture, conceived by the
realization that all labels that modify “Person” are matters of mere vanity,
holding no meaningful insight on an individual's nature.
A2.4: What is conferred to one identifiable Person, is conferred to all identifiable Persons.
A2.5: Personhood confers the Transmissive Right, defined as the ability to freely broadcast possessed information.
A2.6: Personhood confers the Associative Right, defined as the ability to voluntarily interact or voluntarily not
interact with other Persons. Some interactions between Persons create Disputes, defined as any interactions that are not
mutually voluntary.
A2.7: Personhood confers the Defensive Right, defined as the ability to proportionally protect from imminent disputes.
A2.8: Personhood confers the Contractive Right, defined as the ability to voluntarily enter into binding agreements with other voluntary entities.
A2.9: Personhood confers the Possessive Right, defined as the ability to claim exclusive control over Property.
A2.10: Sufficiently complex groups of voluntarily associated Persons generate local instantiations of the Monster, and in so doing become Constituencies.
A2.11: Persons may choose to surrender their Personhood in exchange for Power as a part of the Monster. Doing so is a marker of an anti-social nature.