Reality: The Taboo Against Truth, Chapter 7

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Reality

and The Taboo Against Truth

Rights: The Individual and Society

Natural Rights and Rights by Agreement

Like ugagagas, God, and concepts like the “public interest,” the concept of a “right” as most people understand it will vary from person to person because the concept of rights is not a function of Universal Reality. Rights, generally understood to mean guarantees or entitlements in life, do not exist as physical entities and therefore cannot be described or measured. The entire legal profession has been built upon the discussion of rights and if it seems that the debate about rights is never-ending, there is a good reason for that. It is the same reason that the debate about God is never-ending; there is no evidence that rights exist except in the heads of those who want to believe that rights exist. Without an objective referent, it is impossible to determine who is right about rights.

There is only one guarantee that nature gives to an individual on the day that he is born and that is the absolute assurance that he will die. That is a “right” that derives from Universal Reality; it is an inevitable consequence of being a living thing and a direct result of the nature of being a living thing. There is no guarantee granted by nature that a child will survive, that it will be healthy, that it will be loved, that it be fed and clothed by its parents or anyone else. There is a guarantee that an individual’s genetic code will manifest itself as it develops but only as long as the individual lives. There is no guarantee that an individual’s life will continue after birth, however.

Other than the guarantee of death that the Universe has granted to all living things, there are rights and special privileges that some individuals and groups grant to themselves by making up laws. These “rights” are inevitably at the expense of other individuals or groups; they are always at the expense of free choice as they are attempt by one group to force its will upon others. These man-made laws are often in direct contradiction to the laws of Universal Reality as in the example of laws that make some men slaves to others. The concept of slavery, like the concept of rights, is unknown to the Universe. As far as the Universe is concerned, individuals are born and then they die. They are born with no restrictions on their lives other than those imposed by reality itself. For example, if an individual wants to live, he will have to obtain nourishment; he will have to do whatever is necessary to protect his health and his life.

Natural rights derive from an entity’s nature and identity. A rock has the “right” to be a rock because it cannot be anything other than a rock. It would be absurd and irrational for somebody to pass a law compelling a rock to be a fish. A tree has the “right” to be a tree because it is a tree with all the characteristics and properties of a tree; it cannot be anything else. It would be foolish for a legal system to pass a law or for cultural norms to dictate that a deciduous tree could not drop its leaves in the autumn; such a law would be a futile effort to violate the nature of the tree. A human being has the “right” to be a human being and manifest the characteristics and properties of a human being. In order to understand what rights nature grants to human beings, it is necessary to understand what characteristics are inherent in humans in general what characteristics are inherent in the unique individual. What characteristics are uniform across all human organisms? What about the individual comprises his essence and what about him cannot be changed?

Man is a living entity that eventually dies; therefore, he has a natural “right” to be a living entity that eventually dies. Man is also reason-capable, equipped with senses and a mind to process data collected by the senses; he has a natural right to use these faculties to make of his life what he believes to be rational as long as he doesn’t deprive his fellow man of the same right. The life of every individual was given to him not to anybody else; he is sovereign and unique with his own body with its own heart, his own arms and legs that respond to commands from his own brain. His body is designed to function independently from other bodies; he was born as an individual and will die as an individual. Every individual has his own brain for a purpose and that is to protect the body and the life that contains the life and the body. If one individual dies, other individuals don’t automatically die with him just as when he was born, the birth of others was not a function of his own. If all individuals were identical or dependent upon the life of another individual, then a disease or environmental condition that kills one individual would kill the entire species. Uniqueness is a fundamental property of all human organisms and therefore it is right that human beings should be unique, not identical. A law or social custom that seeks to make one individual like others is just as absurd as a regulation that seeks to turn rocks into fishes or force deciduous trees to keep the same leaves year after year. Such social norms are an assault on nature and Universal Reality; they are futile and irrational.

Ayn Rand went to great lengths to describe a moral and ethical basis for individual rights:

The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.[i]

She further stated by quoting from Atlas Shrugged:

“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational.” (Atlas Shrugged)[ii]

In spite of the passion of Rand’s argument, which is far more detailed and complex than can be reproduced here, “rights” that are not directly a function of the physical reality of an entity do not exist in nature. While she may believe that there is a moral, ethical or logical basis for such “rights,” such rights are only a product of agreements where two individuals agree to provide certain guarantees to each other. Rights that are agreed upon in a contract by two free individuals are an extension of Man’s instinct for judgment and his instinct for survival. Individuals make such agreements in order to work more efficiently with each person trading the product of his labor for the product of another man’s labor. Once two individuals have agreed to such a trade, each has the right to expect that the agreement will be kept. Such “rights” are not guaranteed by nature, however, as they are still dependent upon the willingness of each party to keep his agreement.

Even a right to life is conditional; it depends upon an individual’s desire and ability to provide for his biological needs. To suggest that individuals have an innate, natural right to stay alive without working implies that others have an innate obligation to sacrifice their own lives and the products of their labor to support others who are not working. There is no innate obligation for any individual to sacrifice his life for another and the mystical belief in such an obligation is the foundation for religion, slavery and every form of dictatorship. The act of taking care of others must be voluntary and to the mutual benefit of all parties involved.

A right to life is predicated upon the right to preserve and protect one’s life by work and self-defense. Self-defense and self-sacrifice are a binary circumstance and mutually exclusive; they cannot exist at the same time. An individual who claims an unconditional right to life is by default demanding mandatory self-sacrifice from his fellow man; he is a parasite. It would be comical if it were not so pathetic to listen to politicians and mystics who proclaim the existence of some unconditional right to life as a requirement for the protecting the dignity of mankind; what they are implying is that forcing some men into slavery somehow protects the dignity of man.

All human beings are living entities and therefore have a right protect their lives. There is tremendous variation, however, in levels of intelligence, ambition, and ability from one individual to the next. It may be inherent in the nature of a mentally retarded individual to do stupid things, but inherent in the nature of an intelligent man to do intelligent things. Some individuals are better equipped to protect their own lives than others. What are the rights of each of these individuals if they enter into a contract with each other given the very different nature of their respective intellects, ambition and ability?

Mystics, who believe in the existence of some innate, natural right to life and its corollary of forced servitude, attempt to rewrite reality by forcing anyone with a biological advantage to subsidize the life of those with biological flaws. Such an approach is an assault on the basic purpose of evolution which is to build successful adaptation into the genetic code of a species to enhance its chances for survival. In direct opposition to nature, these individuals seek to penalize those who are best adapted to cope with the realities of life in order to help those who are least adapted to cope with the realities of life. Any legislated or forced support of certain individuals makes it impossible to determine who is best adapted and who is least adapted for survival. In such a society, survival advantage is conferred on those with the ability to convince others that one’s life should be subsidized while it is taken away from those who are the most productive, gifted individuals.

A subsidy is a subsidy; it is a way of forcing certain individuals into servitude to others. It makes no difference if it is forced taxation which dictates that productive workers subsidize a population of noncompetitive government employees, or restrictions on free trade that force consumers to buy from certain preferred individuals, or corporate executives who are showered with multi-billion dollar government contracts, or a crippled welfare mother who lives off of money taken from others. Any individual whose income comes from the forced transfer of money from others has been given an advantage that they would not have in nature. The success of such individuals is artificial, and probably an indicator that they could not exist in a free market. Gifted individuals have nothing to fear from free markets, unlike social parasites who can only survive through the destruction of free markets.

A society of free individuals is made up of free traders. Ayn Rand provided a concise description of traders in a free society:

A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange—an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgments. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others.[iii]

Since individuals are unique in many ways, the kinds of contracts and the rights that derive from them that individuals grant to each other will not be uniform. Only the individual can judge if a particular agreement will be to his benefit or detriment; only individuals have the capacity for making agreements and only the individuals who made the judgment to enter into the agreement can be held accountable for the outcome of that agreement.

An agreement made by one individual cannot automatically force another individual to accept the same agreement; since the person forced into the agreement did not make the contract he cannot be bound by it. Binding individuals to contracts that they did not agree to would make them slaves to the will of others.

An individual who judges rationally will choose to keep the product of his labor and to dispose of it in a way that brings him the most happiness and pleasure in life. He knows that there are no laws in nature that allow others to control his life or take property that he has earned. He will only choose to make contracts with others who respect his freedom and his right to keep the product of his labor. The alternative is that he would contract with individuals allowing them to take his product to satisfy their own needs. Why would any individual make such an agreement? There is only one logical answer: because he was bullied, brainwashed, threatened, coerced or forced. There is no rational basis to make such an agreement voluntarily; rational individuals do not give up their freedom and the product of their labor voluntarily in exchange for the opportunity to be slaves.

In contrast to individual rights, society which is a collection of human beings does not possess the rational faculties of the individuals who comprise the society. Because it is not a rational, judging entity, society cannot enter into contracts with individuals and therefore cannot have any rights associated with contracts. Society, as most individuals see it, is a personified, irrational, non-existent Super-human entity like God. The rights that so many individuals believe belong to society are mystical and without foundation in the physical Universe. Society is not a living thing, but a collection of living things. Society cannot have rights that derive from having a life or a mind because life and mind are not properties belonging to a collection; such rights can only belong to living individuals with minds.

Forcing rational individuals to sacrifice their judgment to an irrational, non-living entity like “society” is so patently absurd that it is clear evidence of the collective insanity of most cultures that so many individuals believe there is a rational, moral or ethical basis for such a social structure. Like individuals who leave the most important decisions of their lives to crystal balls, the positions of the planets, or unseen Gods, individuals who let “society” determine the course of their lives might as well flip a coin when deciding whom to marry, what career to choose, or how many children to have. Society has no more intelligence than a block of concrete and it is a violent assault on the nature of reality and human dignity to expect that rational, free individuals who embody the greatest natural resource in the known Universe should sacrifice their lives for it.

As in all things, rights either exist or they don’t. If they do not exist, they cannot possibly be described or rationally discussed. Any effort to discuss them will only produce an irrational debate that is totally divorced from reality because there is no reality to things that do not exist. Since society does not exist as a rational, living entity, it is not possible to rationally discuss things like choices made by society or benefits to society. To make choices or judge something to be beneficial, society would need to have a mind and there is no evidence that a collection of human beings possesses a mind. Since society is not rational or living, it cannot have rights. All rights in society belong to individuals.

The Evolution of Man and Society

Every individual is a unique experiment in adaptation to the current environment. If uniformity benefited the survival of the human species, evolution would have created a species of genetically identical organisms. The fact that every individual is genetically unique is evidence that diversity and genetic variation from person to person is adaptive and necessary for the survival of the species. Efforts to drown uniqueness in a swamp of uniformity are contrary to evolution’s experiment. Restrictions on individual expression undermine the evolutionary experiment, skewing the results in favor of those who have no respect for uniqueness or nature’s process of experimentation and problem solving.

Different social structures and relationships are also experiments; it is likely that the predisposition to try these different social structures is rooted in the genetic uniqueness of each individual. By allowing these free associations to manifest themselves, it will become clear which social organizations are best adapted to living successfully in the universe. Nobody has a crystal ball that can predict the future of the environment, so it is not really feasible to predict what individuals and what societies will be the best at adaptation. The only thing that is clear across all species is that genetic variation is the key to surviving and thriving and any society that wants to survive is well-advised to allow natural variation to manifest itself. Evolution finds solutions to the problem of adaptation when it is allowed to experiment.

This process of experimentation selected in favor of higher intelligence over a period of millions of years. Why has evolution moved toward higher intelligence over time? The most reasonable explanation is because the capacity to understand and manipulate the environment has survival value. In lower forms of life, without intelligence, the survival of the species occurs through very high reproductive rates and short-life spans. In higher life forms, organisms reproduce at much slower rates with much effort devoted to nurturing the offspring, socialization and education.

To the degree that acculturation and socialization equip individuals to live in sync with Universal Reality, they can only strengthen individuals and the group of individuals as a whole. Conversely, when acculturation and socialization place a priority on conforming to a collective identity or delusion, they will work against the survival of individuals and the group as a whole. No collection of individuals can survive if it preys upon the individuals that make up the collection; nor can the collection survive if it undermines its own natural diversity in favor of conformity. Once a group has destroyed the uniqueness of its individuals by forcing them to subscribe to a belief in a nonexistent collective identity and consciousness, the individuals in the group must prey upon other groups and individuals in order to sustain themselves. Be default, collectivism is mindless because the individuals have sacrificed their unique perspective to a nonexistent, personified, universal perspective. Once the mind has been sacrificed, force is the only way that survival can be achieved. Collectivism is inherently predatory as it requires self-sacrifice of all individuals and all uniqueness.

Humans evolved to understand and manipulate their physical environment, but collectivist societies foster a population of people who conform to social norms and see their basic purpose in life as sacrificial lambs. A collectivist culture is creating dependency and fostering a society more akin to an ant society than a society worthy of humans, rewarding those who do as they are told and performing their assigned function as expected.

Once society stands between Man and Universal Reality, the natural selective forces of nature are mitigated and replaced by selective forces that are an extension of collective social conventions. Humans begin to evolve in response to the selective pressures of society and collectivism. When the society collapses, and all the great civilizations of the past have collapsed at some point, the population is ill-equipped to live once again harmony with Universal Reality. The individuals will be genetically predisposed to create another collectivist culture that subverts the diversity that is required to healthy, effective adaptation of the species and the cycle will repeat itself once again.

The Origin of Conflict

A conflict between two people occurs when their subjective realities are not in agreement with each other. Universal Reality, however, is the peacemaker. It is the common ground upon which all reason, knowledge and truth are built. There is no room for conflict once both parties understand and are in sync with Universal Reality. The taboo against Universal Reality lays the foundation for all conflict. If individuals cannot use reason to obtain objective knowledge about existence then there can never be a common ground, and consequently there can never be agreement and peace between observers.

There is only room for conflict in the world of the unknown. All conflict is built upon mysticism and conflicting subjective realities. Universal Reality is the only reality that is common to all men. All consciousnesses were created from it and are part of it.

When two people or two groups are both working in opposition to Universal Reality they will be in conflict with each other and also doomed to failure in whatever they try. They will blame each other, or even blame others not directly engaged in their conflict, but the root of the conflict lies in the fact that both of them have substituted delusion and mysticism for an active search for knowledge of Universal Reality. Once all rational parties know Universal Reality, there is no more room for conflict. There is only room for agreement.

The delusions that result from rejecting Universal Reality will bring an individual into conflict with any other individuals whose beliefs are consistent with Universal Reality as well as individuals who engage in others forms of mysticism contrary to his own.

Universal Reality is the total of all that exists whether individual consciousnesses choose to accept it or not. It is Universal Reality that unites everything and every individual consciousness in the Universe together. It is the denial of Universal Reality and the failure of individual minds to frame Reality correctly that destroys that unity; inevitably producing confusion, conflict, violence, suffering and unnecessary death.

There are many people who live long lives who have little respect for Universal Reality. If an individual knows enough to eat, clothe himself and keep himself sheltered from the elements, he knows enough to get by. He leaves the hard work of discovery and invention, of medicine and technological advances to others. He is a parasite and his survives largely because of the efforts of others. His standard of living is much higher than it would be if he was not able to use others to his advantage.

It can be true that many people agree about something, and also true that their agreement is based on a collective delusion. The fact that they all think a certain way means nothing except that they all think the same way. There is no direct correlation between the number of people who believe something and whether it is true or not. That is the only guarantee in such agreement; their agreement is not sufficient proof that something is true. The scientific fields of discovery that use reason and logic as their foundation are the only means discover Universal Reality. The physical universe is measurable and testable and science is the best method discovered so far to do the testing.

Universal Reality is an absolute. There is no compromise with Universal Reality. It is what it is. Compromise is a way of avoiding a conflict between two or more parties involved in a disagreement. It results from an abdication of the responsibility to learn about Universal Reality. If all parties were in sync with Universal Reality, there would be no conflict and no need for compromise. Compromise is a way for two people to arrive at a mongrel view of reality or to “agree to disagree.”

Argument and debate will not determine the truth about Universal Reality. Universal reality is not dependent on the outcome of any arguments or debate, though they can be constructive in the process of discovery. They fact that one party “wins” an argument is not proof that his position is correct; the truth must be validated through an objective method of testing. Universal Reality exists outside the realm of argument or debate; it is what it is regardless of any discussion about it. Man does not create the rules of the Universe, he can only strive to understand them and use them to his advantage by living in harmony with them. Time spent arguing about reality would be much better spent doing research and conducting experiments.

Attempts to force agreement are inevitably attempts to universalize a unique view of reality. An understanding of Universal Reality cannot be forced; either a mind understands it or it doesn’t. That can only be a function of active thought and choice, not force. A mind cannot really accept and fully integrate something that it doesn’t believe; it can only pretend to believe it.

Artificial or forced agreement violates the inherent connection between freedom and Universal Reality. If individuals are forced to agree to something that they don’t believe, then every individual’s view becomes distorted. Everybody believes that people believe things that they don’t really believe. Force is anti-reality because only freedom will allow every individual to reveal who he really is. In addition, each individual is no longer free to be unique. The Universal Reality is that each individual is unique and that uniqueness is essential for the continued evolution and development of consciousness in the Universe.

Self-esteem and Collectivism

Self-esteem and collectivism are incompatible with each other. Collectivism is built on the assumption that individual identity derives from some collective identity. This is the basis for racism and sexism and any other type of prejudice that assigns characteristics to individuals based on fabricated characteristics of collections of individuals. For example, a race cannot be stupid because a race does not have a mind or an intellect. If there a lot of individuals in a race that are not very intelligent, that only means that there are a lot of individuals in the race who are not very intelligent. The race does not assume an intellect from the individuals who comprise the race, not do individuals of a particular race inherit a IQ from the race which cannot possible have an IQ.

A collection cannot have self-esteem because it cannot possible have a self or an individual identity. Therefore individuals cannot get their self-esteem from a collection they can only lose their self-esteem as they seek to model themselves after an entity that does not have a self and therefore cannot have self-esteem. Any person who believes that his life is so worthless that other individuals, the state or a collective should control it, is a person with no genuine concept of self and consequently no self-esteem. It is impossible to love or value a self that does not exist. It is irrational for an individual to value himself more as he sacrifices more of himself to a collective identity. A self that is sacrificed cannot have value because it no longer exists.

Being an individual is a lonely business. By accepting our uniqueness and our inherent individuality, we must accept that we are separate from others. For many people the reality of being alone as an individual is more than they can bear. They want to belong to a group and feel connected to others. Ironically, we are united in our uniqueness but separated from our selves by uniformity. Individuals are united by Universal Reality which exists independently of each self and each consciousness. The opportunity for unity comes from conformity to the common ground provided by the laws of existence. Conformity to each other would be a violation of the laws of existence because all individuals are unique.

Adults like to talk about how adolescents are subject to peer group pressure. Why wouldn't they be? Succumbing to peer-group pressure is behavior that children observe in their parents from they day they are born. What is culture but a manifestation of peer pressure? What are elections and government but a way to force individuals to conform to group standards? Children will observe their fathers conforming in dress and behavior to other males and their mothers conforming in dress and behavior to other females. The way that men and women dress and behave is largely socialized, however, and not a function of Universal Reality. It is a function of peer group pressure. Whenever an individual is pressured, coerced, or forced to sacrifice his own individual, rational judgment and values to a group of individuals, that is peer group pressure.

If an individual does not conform to a law which is a codification of peer pressure, he could be thrown in jail, be fined, have his property seized and even worse, be killed by the police. If a man or woman does not conform to accepted sex roles, he or she will face social ostracism and most likely discrimination in housing, employment and the other necessities of life. What of the terror of an individual who is a member of a fundamentalist religious organization? He will most likely be taught that his punishment for no conforming will extend into eternity. Is the terror of adolescents any different from the terror of adults who know that they will pay a price through for refusing to give in to social pressure to conform? The peer group pressure that fundamentalist religious people suffer is far worse than anything a teenager could face in high school. High school only lasts for four years. Eternity has no end.

There are rewards for conformity. A corporate executive who laughs at his boss’s racist or sexually-explicit jokes even if he doesn’t think they are funny is probably more like to be promoted than the executive who says that he is offended by them. A woman who wears a conservative black dress to a funeral is more likely to win approval than a woman who wears a yellow polka-dot dress. A child in the ghetto who buys into the defeatism of ghetto life will probably have more friends than the child who excels in school and hopes to have a better future. A man who is strong and masculine will be more quickly accepted by other men than a man who is skinny and effeminate.

It is a common belief that acceptance by peers builds self-esteem. This is only true if one can be one’s self and also be accepted by peers. If an individual has to hide his true nature and feelings in order to gain acceptance by others he is learning to hate himself and hate others for not accepting him. Collectivism is not a pathway to self-acceptance or self-esteem. It is self-destruction in violation of one of Man’s most basic instincts—self-defense.

People who expect their friends to conform to social norms are not worth having as friends for the same reason that people who expect their friends to sacrifice their lives for others are not worth having as friends. People who expect their friends to sacrifice their lives are poison. They are telling those closest to them that life has its highest value when it is gone; that a dead, nonexistent person is worth more than a living, person. Whether it is a man who is being told by his girlfriend that he would be a hero for dying in a war or individuals who pressure their friends into self-sacrifice for some collectivist notion, the principle is the same. A self that exists has value; one that does not exist cannot possibly have value.

The Individual and Society

The individual is the building block of society. Individual human organisms are born into this physical world, they have a mind that organizes information collected by their senses, they make judgments and from those judgments they make choices. Whenever two living organisms interact, some form of society has been born. The roots of human society can be observed in species that existed before man; but man, given his capacity for reason, communication and action has carried the concept of social relations to new levels that cannot be observed in other species. Society has evolved as a reflection of human consciousness.

Religion and tyranny have a common goal: to bring uniformity, control, and predictability to human society. But just as genetic variation is essential to the survival of the human species, variation and social diversity are essential to the survival of the species. Just as the human species cannot adapt to new selective forces if all humans have the same genes, society must be able to change and grow to accommodate those evolutionary advances.

Society is built by man and will reflect and reinforce the views of those who design it. It will reinforce and reward individuals who work to defeat the instinct for survival in themselves and others. A society that is built by self-sacrificing individuals will institutionalize self-predation as a social value. A society that is built by men who believe they are evil will reinforce that belief. A society that is built by men who believe that pleasure is evil will give man all the pain the can endure. A society that is built by mystics who believe that society is a rational, living super-human entity with rights will use the concept of the social good to subjugate individuals and deprive them of their individual rights.

Anything that works against man’s desire to survive, to think and have pleasure, will work against the formation of a healthy society; it will produce a society that works against the instincts that have made humans the most advanced species on earth. Some will argue that man is inherently aggressive and needs society to keep him peaceful. All men are not identical and evidence would seem to support the notion that some men are aggressive against their fellow man but others are not. It is more apparent that society is a cultural, “civilized,” form of aggression against the individual. It allows individuals to get away with aggression against others as long as the aggression is socially-acceptable or seen as beneficial to a majority of the members of society.

When society, which is a collection of individuals, deprives an individual of his liberty and encourages him to sacrifice himself for the good of the collective, the individual’s instinct for survival will kick in. This instinct is fundamental to the existence of all higher forms of life on earth. For this reason, social organizations must be voluntary; if they are not, they are a form of aggression that will trigger the individual’s instinct for self-defense. Man was not born in a cage and if he is mentally and physically healthy, he will become aggressive and defensive in response to any efforts by his fellow man to put him in a cage.

Man owes his survival to his ability to use his mind to access reality. The more he understands about the physical world, the more he can manipulate it to his advantage. Any effort to cage man’s mind or thwart his instinct for judgment will be perceived as an assault on his survival. His instinct for self-preservation will kick in and he will become aggressive.

If socialization is to achieve its often-stated goal of peaceful coexistence between individuals, then the norms of society must incorporate Man’s natural instincts. If some individuals use social order as an excuse to aggress against the natural instincts and uniqueness of others, the end result will be more aggression. That is the kind of result that would be expected and the kind of result that should be rewarded by any individuals who value human nature and the dignity and majesty that derive from it.