One thing I find fascinating about humans is that we are all so much different, yet we take it so much for granted. We tend to forget that being different doesn't make us better or worse than others, however it leads to the suppression of others' perspectives in favor of narratives favored by the prevailing hegemon.
However we are also very much the same in that we are human, and being human comes with pro social factors. These factors are what have the potential to unite us. The ability for humans to be galvanized into action by convincing narratives. Many prefer a collective based approach to politics, while some are more concerned with the individual.
Focusing on only ourselves leads to problems because political decisions affect everyone. Therefor if people instead choose to act selfishly, we can't have a functioning society. Whether politics should be centered around individual liberties or collective welfare is one prevailing concern of politics.
When the question of democracy comes up, as an American it's typically seen as an axiomatic virtue. But I've noticed for many years now how people don't think about political issues very deeply, but instead seem to gravitate towards tribal warfare.
I don't even believe that most people have the slightest clue how to even live their own lives, let alone have the capacity to know how to best influence others' lives. Tasking us all to decide how a society with millions of citizens should operate sounds absurd to me.
According to the philosopher Walter Lippmann, public opinion should not be the driving force behind political action because people are ill equipped to decide what happens to their country. The reason for this is because voters aren't deeply attached to most political concerns, so their attitudes derive from ideology because it makes this process much easier.
Back during the days of our founding fathers voting was exclusionary. It was a time when only wealthy white landowners could vote. These voters had a vested interest in understanding their local communities. This is because the decisions made by political leaders would have a direct affect on their land. So the primary focus of citizens would be to support the immediate subcommunities they were beholden to.
Today we largely construct simple models to understand politics. Models which we construct based on our environment and its material conditions. Lippmann calls these models 'pseudo-environments.' To create one we observe our reality and construct a collection of stereotypes about political narratives which we then use to construct an uncompromising view on a subject matter.
So when we are faced with the complex, nuanced reality of a convoluted subject with a deep contextual history, we construct a simple mechanism to foster an immediate solution to an otherwise complex problem we are ill equipped to solve. This makes politics easier for us but also leads to many concerns.
To Lippmann, public opinion is just the "crystalized version" of everyone’s collective pseudo-stances on the world, based on stereotypes. But where do we even get these stereotypes from? Political media sources with a clear agenda, the entertainment industry, friends and family, schools, and so on.
To Lippmann, if you're interested in forming an opinion on a subject, you have to hear about events that you don’t experience, events which you have never seen, and events which are out of your field of choice, and yet somehow you're expected to form a non-emotional, unbiased response to these unrelatable issues. An example be.. maybe.. a fossil fuels advocate who doesn't care about climate change or experience the effects of heavily polluted environments because he lives far away from heavy emitters.
The events of the world are always filtered through this collection of stereotypes, so how would a person actually come to an informed opinion on subjects they don't naturally care about? We often expect thought leaders, people on our favorite team to help us solve many of these problems.
In our world, the media helps us create and shape our 'pseudo-environments'. These sources present us information through a very narrow medium, and they resort to sensationalism and mass hysteria because it tunes people in to their product.
For-profit political mediums only gain to benefit greatly from turning politics into a sports game, pitting working classes against one another while carefully refraining from any mention of who the true villains are, which are some of the most insidious political issues and how to combat them. People are kept ignorant and their priorities become very skewed.
All of these reasons are why democracy at times becomes questionable. There are simply too many issues and too few people have the knowledge to answer them. My belief is that social unification is the answer. For people to value one another to where all can come together to come to the best solutions, rather than individual people pretending to understand everything.
Police sirens, airplanes, fireworks, motorcycles, leaf blowers, railroads, highways, concerts, horns, jackhammers, loud children, barking dogs... what do these all have in common? These are all loud noises... some even worse in our advanced, highly developed societies.
Our society has grown used to these noises, so much to that we tend not to think about their peculiarity. We tend to avoid thinking about the hinderance that unwanted noise causes ourselves and other people, and if it bothers us at all we tend to avoid speaking out.
According to Arthur Schopenhauer, noise is the most pertinent of all interruptions.
He believes that the most sensible and intelligent of all nations in Europe abide by the rule to "never interrupt", which they hold in high regard as an 11th commandment.
Noise is not just an interruption, but a disruption of thought. But if there is nothing to disrupt, noise doesn't feel as burdensome. As such, Schopenhauer remarks that those not sensitive to loud noise are people who do not think. Schopenhauer fails to understand how any deep thinker could be okay with loud noises.
"Noise kills thought, causing a steady increase in the labor of thinking". It's similar to having to walk with a weight on your foot! It can completely disrupt thought to where one loses track of what they had been thinking about. Some thinkers use their imagination and apply it to the real world. Many profound thoughts are forcibly forgotten and abandoned because of noise.
Schopenhauer especially disliked the sound of someone cracking a whip. This was common in 19th century Germany when horse carts were used as transportation. Whips would be needlessly used to control horses. According to Schopenhauer, the sound of a man cracking a whip both destroys thoughts and deprives life of peace.
It proves how senseless and thoughtlessness mankind must be to tolerate such sounds which "paralyzes the brain, destroys meditation, and murders thought."
Schopenhauer remarks "No one with anything like an idea in his head can avoid a feeling of actual pain of this sudden sharp crack, which destroys any quiet moment of pleasant thought." "How many great thoughts have been lost in the world by the cracking of a whip?"
But this "cursed" cracking a whip is not only a loud disruption that causes pain, but also near useless.
Its aim is to produce "intelligence" of the horse, but through the constant abuse of it, the animal becomes "habituated" to the sound that it "blunts his feelings" producing no effect at all. Animals actually perceive even the "faintest indications", hitting a horse with a whip actually achieves very little.
How many great thoughts are lost as a result? Arthur Schopenhauer also uses the slamming of doors as an example. "The general toleration of unnecessary noise—the slamming of doors, for instance, is direct evidence that the prevailing habit of mind is dullness and lack of thought."
I've always been plagued by misophonia - the most sensible phobia. I can related to Schopenhauer's suffering. Before every instance that I go outside I know that my concentration will be forcibly divided at various points during my adventure, and my dreams will be shattered.
What's worse is that my thoughts will be difficult to reconstruct because I won't be in flow. Noise doesn't just disrupt thought, it disrupts flow. It's similar to a basketball player who shoots a row of 3s and fails the 5th shot because he or she suddenly experienced a disruption in thought.
It's the consequence of living in the suburbs surrounded by many people.
Motorcyclists, ambulances, leaf blowers and vehicles give me the most trouble. But similar to the cracking of a whip, these noises are even less acceptable to me due to the fact that they seem largely unnecessary and senseless. Worst of all, when things get normalized they no longer seem problematic.
Why does an ambulance have to run at nearly 130 decibels instead of 80? Can people nearby really not hear 80? 130 decibels is enough to not only damage the hearing, but to cause pain. Why can't all motorcycles be designed to be quieter like those European models? Why can't people use rakes instead of leaf blowers?
You see, much of the noise we create can be easily reduced if we tried to. Think of all the amazing stories, songs, inventions, and much more that could have existed without the existence of loud noise and similar interruptions.
Noise carries with it health risks as well. Children in noisy areas lag behind peers in academic environment, and experience a greater risk of cardiovascular disease. Noise is also a major cause of stress, causing our bodies to release adrenaline and cortisol.
A 2014 economic assessment found that 3.9 billion dollars per year could be saved in health care costs just by lowering noise by 5 dB. The analyses suggested that a 5 dB noise reduction scenario would reduce the prevalence of hypertension by 1.4% and coronary heart disease by 1.8%.
I dream that I can live in a rural area, devoid of all unnecessary noise. A place where the only noise I hear comes from the world itself, the cosmos, and from animals. A place where one can be at peace, with nature, and no disruptions..
This is one reason I enjoy going outside late at night. It's lovely to be able to bask in nature when it's quiet, as intended. Why do humans have to disturb peace?
This blogpost was inspired by Jean Baudrillard's ideas about postmodernism. The reason I choose this topic for my fourth blog post is because it's one of my favorite philosophical insights. The world of philosophy is sort of like an ocean full of junk, with the occasional good fish to catch, and postmodernism is one of those philosophies that sticks with me. It offers valuable insight in a historiography that I feel is cluttered with nonsense. ;)
Note: This entry is unfinished
"Postmodernism refers to the state of culture where media is produced in such staggering quantitates that it has crossed the boundaries into reality itself and hyperreality prevails."
So postmodernism refers to a state of culture. What is culture? Culture consists of arts, ideas, intellectual expressions of society and more. Traditional culture included art, poetry architecture and but contemporary culture also includes TV, advertisements, Youtube videos, Music videos, Social media, popular foods, and so on.
Culture is how we interpret and give meaning to reality around us, and it answers big life philosophy questions such as "what does it mean to be human?" "How should we live?" "What is love"? Our culture sends questionable messages to society. Culture creates meta narratives: which are totalizing conceptions of the world around us, truths which which modernists may suggest would tie up what's wrong with the world and the paths around fixing them.
Some of these influences could negatively impact people's life choices, teaching values such as materialism and hedonism, as can be seen watching certain reality TV shows for example. Because of the plethora of subcultural influences, there are many different directions culture can take us in, rather than one uniformed culture attitude. Because there are so many different social and cultural attitudes, this can sometimes lead to confusing situations.
For instance, a person who's used to goofing off with their friends who's suddenly surprised when they goof off towards the wrong person because they're met with a bitter scornful reaction. This has quite a lot to due with the dissonance of personality, influenced by differing social or cultural attitudes.
Post modernism also refers to a skepticism of grand narratives, a skepticism of totalizing truth. This may sound extreme, but take for example the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings in the 1950s. He had his own notion called language games, explaining how language games explore how language can legitimate power.
For example, in case and common law. Common law is set by precedent, so when a judge makes a decision that decision informs a decision another judge makes in the future. In 1991 the court of appeals and house of lords ruled in R vs R, making it inadmissible for someone to cite their married status as an excuse to commit rape.
Roe vs Wade in the u.s made it illegal to deny women abortion rights prior to third trimester. But judges making these decisions didn't establish them on the basis of moral grounds. Instead, to decide what's legal or not they looked at previously existing law and ruled based upon that precedent, setting precedent for future judges who will then make decisions in similar cases.
This goes to show how high culture and popular culture bare no real differences, and are both socially constructed. One can look at the bolero at the opera in the same way as finding nemo. The skepticism of meta narratives comes from the growing distance language games place between truth (defined to the real world) and truth (defined solely in relationship to pre-existing language). The legal system can be seen as a representation of morality.
The judge stands in the place of morality, but a judge becomes more distant from the thing they're representing. They don't look to the referent (morality) to make decisions, but they look for a representation of that representation. The growing gap between the representation and referent becomes greater with each landmark decision.
Donald Trump could be viewed as a post modernist president. He's a millionaire while most of his followers are working class, but because he talks like a working class person and tells his supporters what they want to hear, many of society embrace him as one of their own. He also ignores science, favoring his own hunches and alternative facts.
There are three distinct stages of culture that he outlined and those are as follows:
Pre-modern culture (before the 20th century)
There was a lot of art, theater, music. These are high arts. Painter sculpturers and writers looked at reality and represented it within their understanding of it, which at the time was religion. Christianity drove the arts and architecture mapped out how to live, and these things answered important philosophical questions. Jean Baudrillard calls this a grand narrative: an overarching ideology or meaning applied to reality through culture. High art gave a consistent message, a message of the church.
Next came the industrial revolution stage, where culture saw rapid advancement with increased technology. The modern movement was born of the age of reason and logic, where institutions used science to provide reason. The improvement of technology made it easier for people to learn about more abstract concepts, so the monarchs and religious figures took a backseat, and had been replaced by the intellectual arts and progressive beliefs that challenged previous ones, the separation of church and state, science, and new forms of media became more widespread.
People began to identify with concepts such as patriotism, capitalists, communists, fascists. Art began to challenge conventions. When it comes to media such as film, characters and writing are used to portray actual real life concepts. Concepts that are representations of something real. Baudrillard called these representations of reality 'simulations' adding a new layer of believability to the concept in question.
During the middle of the 20th century
Particularly after world war 2, after witnessing the horrors of that period, people became more skeptical towards the culture they understood. There no longer became a unified system of ideals and people were then left to find meaning their own meaning and purpose. All of the dictators during during world war 2 were legitimized by their own meta narratives, which interpreted the world through a truth they used to legitimize their power, and society became more skeptical towards these notions.
A new generation is brought up surrounded by mass produced images. This is the era of post modernism, where structure is replaced with endless choice, leaving people to find their own identity and philosophy. Ads are ubiquitous, inescapable, on television, on the internet, on billboards outside, on the radio, and so on. Post modernism affects all of the media around us.
In this world, reality is made up of cultural representations everywhere, so new culture products reference to other pieces of culture, meaning we're creating copies of copies. Culture is then no longer based on its original reference, but instead based on cultural products we experience in the world around us (simulacra) - a simulation of a simulation.
Look at the image of a burger king burger and compare it to the real thing. The 'fake' burger tends to look attractive, delicious and symmetrical. The real burger in contrast looks sloppy and unappetizing. This is an example of hyper-reality, when your vision of something is a fictitious copy of reality.
For another example, ask someone to draw an image of a princess, and they would very likely draw an image of a princess from a Disney movie because people are more familiar, or more connected to simulated princesses with hyper conventional features than to real life princesses. Thus you have a drawing of a copy of a copy, taking inspiration from something merely inspired by reality.
Even the very image of a real life princess hasn't always been the same, but has been polished and refined over centuries with different cultural expressions. A European princesses today bares little resemblance to her 14th century counterpart. Take a look at the below for instance:
Pictured below is Anne (Of Brittany), a 14th century duchess.
Princess Diana, Princess of Wales (20th Century)
Disney Princesses
Drawing of a princess
As you can clearly see, Anne wears a strikingly different headdress and dress to the one worn by Princess Diana. However Diana's refreshed image bares a more familiar resemblance. The princesses we've come to know by animated films resemble contemporary princesses while still embodying different characteristics altogether as well, and most drawings of princesses model that simulation.
Culture according to Baudrillard no longer becomes based on the original referent (reality), but rather cultural products become simulations of simulations themselves (simulacra) - a big mess of intertext, where culture is inspired by culture. We borrow from culture to make meaning.
For instance, in the new John Lewis Christmas advert, the same narrative of a boy befriending an alien is used as in that of the 1980s film ET. This is indirect intertextuality. We reference media when we make new products.
Hyperreality is when we are unable to distinguish between simulation and reality. Ask someone from Europe or Asia a questions about how much they know of for example, American culture, and there's a good chance their entire understanding of American living comes from movies and TV.
Our image of many things comes out of movies, accepting simulation as fact. We see simulations on TV and social media websites and are often unable to distinguish between what's real and what's fiction. A model on Instagram who uses apps to alter their appearance to look more attractive according to society's beauty standards would be another example of hyperreality, because an untrained eye wouldn't be able to tell that the image has been modified to be more inline with the socially constructed idea of what's considered attractive.
Because hyperreality causes us to no longer be able to distinguish between what's real and what's fiction, it could harm us in ways that we don't realize. Social media sends us many different interpretations of reality, it can even sometimes cause us to believe that the unattainable in the norm. There are so many conflicting messages it can be difficult to tell what's truth or fiction.
So many competing voices (conservatives and liberals, religious and areligious, an eye for an eye and peace, materialism vs modesty etc) that many people become lost in the sea of disconnected cultural signifiers.
This blog post is a summary that was inspired by Alain de button's 1 hour lecture on emotional intelligence, interpreted by me with a few direct quotes from the lecture. The reason this lesson inspired me is because mental health, sociology and psychology are important crucial aspects of our world and very underappreciated. I hope that people who decide to read this find it inciteful and useful and can take something from it to improve their own lives. c: If you enjoy this, you should check out some of Alain de button's lectures on Youtube, or you can purchase his books. If this is too long, at least read the tl;dr in bold!
In the 19th century, commitment to the Christian faith saw a decline in the west. Fewer people maintained a strong connection with "God" as an engine to guide them through life, and as the famous saying by renowned philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche goes "God is dead". This may have lead to a gradual decline of slave morality (doctrine following suppression of will), but it also lead to a decline in spiritual morale. Culture began to replace scripture. There saw a boom in the development of the humanities; libraries, theaters, social arts courses in universities and so on.. but if we look at ourselves and the connection we have with our world, there is still a lot to be desired, an empty void left unsatiated.
We put on a feigned visage that we are happy, when we are not. To some extent, we barely know what happiness is, we only think we do. Fleeting senses of happiness pervade in the collective mind. Complacency is mistaken as contentment. We go to work, and we may enjoy parts of it but at the end of the day there's no magic, no true fulfillment for most of us. We seek others for that fulfillment. We find partners, and after a short time we grow apart from those we thought we'd cherish forever. Love is often used as a drug to help us find something higher in life.
Maybe one of the reasons this social dynamic persists is because society encourages us to wear a mask and keep it on nearly at all times, and as a result we have lost the ability to socialize with people in meaningful ways. Normal relationships are almost treated as shallow transactional encounters. We don't care what people have to say if it takes up too much time, we just want to get on with our business. We also tend to allow a small handful of people to really enter our lives, so it's no wonder many people struggle with loneliness, when everyone's 'friend slots' are used up.
But because we have this very surface level way of communicating with most of the people we encounter, this leads to all sorts of negative outcomes, like judgment. We know ourselves from the inside, but we know others only by what they tell us. We hold ourselves to a much lower standard than the people we talk to. We take issue with small aspects of people's personalities and use that to reach rigid, non-negotiable verdicts on who they are. We don't care what their unique challenges are and it doesn't even cross our minds most of the time.
If we could treat others with the same level of understanding that a mother treats her son or daughter, we wouldn't judge people nearly as harshly as we tend to. We would be able to understand their flaws and see them similar to how we see ourselves. We are of course able to excuse our own flaws so easily, but when it comes to others we set that principle aside and judge. But part of the problem comes back to our inability to even allow ourselves to understand others.
In our society people are keen on presenting themselves in the best light they can, especially on social media. Website like Instagram and Facebook present people at their best, their most successful and most attractive, always having the time of their lives. People usually keep the negativity out. You would think people are perfect, but some are struggling to find happiness and hide it. As such, many people who browse social media only to see people at their best may feel mixed emotions. Excitement and awe, mixed with a sense of shame, loneliness, envy, and other negative unwarranted emotions because their life is nowhere close to this image.
So in summary:
Religion has declined in the west for quite some time, and old values and their functions haven't been fully replaced by new ones. We struggle to live our lives to the fullest, and don't have any clear guide for how to do so. Society expects us to put on a mask, live our lives day to day striving to be happy in a world that seems to be pretty devoid of any true answers. While some people may generally believe that they're happy, many are also struggling. The way we communicate with one another is flawed, almost asocial and restricts our ability to fully understand others and develop deeper relationships. We need relief.
We need to put down our phones and give ourselves time to really think all this through and find answers.
We need to be more connected with others, and with nature. Nature doesn't judge us. Nature is always there for us when we need it. Animals don't judge us either, they just want someone who will play with them and make them happy. Human babies under 2 are the same. Judgment is for the most part the result of a sick society.
Our childhoods may have had a strong part to do with how we are the way we are. Many of us have suppressed traumas that we are often unaware exist. We have an inner 'true' self that we bury deep within our subconscious, and a false self that is more concerned with appearing 'normal'.
Say you're an employee and your boss writes a report. Your boss tells you that although you did a good job, you could improve in a few areas. You respond defensively with: "Why are you always trying to bring me down?" Something from your childhood is coming up to a place that doesn't belong there (unworthiness, a defense structure).
This can happen to all of us in different forms, with different circumstances. We're never as adult as we like to think we are.
This philosophical interpretation is based on philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson's views on nature, with paraphrased text of the narration by Philosophize This (Steven West)
Human beings have always been at war over relatively trivial differences in beliefs, all competing for cultural hegemony. This can be easily observed just by clicking on any Youtube video dealing with controversial topics like politics and religion. We never run out of ways to create conflict when we ourselves barely understand the true complexity of life. It almost seems like humans thrive off of conflict. Why?
There are many reasons for this. Feelings of inadequacy, setting off on the wrong path in life, a lack of inner peace, unhealthy lifestyle habits and so on can absolutely contribute to people's capricious behavior and disdain towards each other. One other cause may be related to how we adopt narratives about the world beginning from a young age, imbued into us by our surroundings.
These cultural narratives compete against other narratives in a ceaseless war of subculture vs subculture. According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, this never ending conflict remains because we have been using the wrong method to analyze the world. We put too much emphasis on old ideas, and not enough on new ideas. We attach ourselves to concepts and those concepts become part of our identity.
Humans limit their scope of reality by using cultural and historical abstractions to make sense of the world while ignoring or constraining their own intuition. Our society teaches us to memorize and recite ideas and narratives that others created for us, both in past and present. By absorbing these narratives (think for example conservative values, liberal values, left wing values, religious values, green values and so on), we are forfeiting our ability to think independently, allotting the responsibility to others.
Could it be that we've been trained to act this way? (More on that further in this post). Funny enough, this way of thinking that involves mindlessly following others is step 1 to authoritarian thinking, a system of government which a large portion of people are fervidly against. :p
Each and every part of the universe is connected to each and every other part of it, so maybe we could connect spiritually to "oversoul" that permeates every aspect of life, but how? According to Emerson the answer is an intense, intentional, judgment-free relationship with the nature world. Go outside and travel far and wide and explore the depths of nature, and pay it a special kind of attention, devoid of distractions.
But observing nature undistracted is not enough, you must free yourself of pre-existing judgment. Remove the thought of all historical narratives you may have held about it, unlearning all of it to view nature with a more mature lens. We understand our relationship with nature through a filter, a filter which has been cultivated and engrained in us over the years and years we've been alive. A filter we began to see the world through before we became mature, and for many the damage has been done.
The best approach to connect with this "oversoul" is to experience nature completely undistracted, and without an old narrative attached to it. A new narrative will emerge, one with much greater meaning. This could be the key that allows you us experience a worldview more in line with the true permeation of reality, and less in line with society and its fictional narratives.
You begin to realize how small all these petty disagreements are, and how preventable all of this pointless conflict is, how we are harming each other for the most banal reasons, and perhaps even how lost we ourselves are when we believe the cause of all our problems are related to other people and develop a sense of self righteous indignation and nihilistic dread. I believe inner happiness can be achieved even in an imperfect society, and part of how one can reach this state is through spirituality and the acquisition of skills and responsibility.
We tend to take for granted how mesmerizing nature is. Take for instance stars in the night sky. Imagine these stars were to only appear to us once every 15,000 years? Experiencing the phenomenon of stars for the first time would cause a social uproar. There would be wild theories as to what it signifies, some would think it's a sign of God's return. These stars are available every night so we don't pay them any mind.
It could be that maybe when you first saw stars as a child you were mesmerized, but that feeling disappears with familiarity and exposure. We live in a world where we're so familiar with nature that we hardly consider it special. Natural landscapes just fade into the background of our minds, as something to marvel in once in a while only to neglect all over again as we continue perpetuating the same daily routine as yesterday, and the day prior.
We owe a lot to nature, it provides us with almost everything we depend upon day to day. However nature consists of contrasting forces. It can be relaxing and serene one day, and capricious and cataclysmic the next. This contrasting duality closely resembles the life experience of life as a sentient beings - a balance with extremes on both ends.
Nature also does not judge those who are deemed by society as "immoral". Storm clouds don't hover over the heads of "bad people" and there is no real "karma". There is no balancing act that puts "bad people" in their place. This is a defense and a coping mechanism we have made up to feel better in the face of wickedness, because we feel we must balance pain to move through it quicker.
It is only ourselves who cast moral judgment, as a mechanism to prevent harm. But judgment of evil can often go too far and give rise to its own harms as a result of excess. We build our own rules of right and wrong and judge those who choose not to live by our standards, leading to a unique host of negative outcomes. How ironic is it that we believe in harming those who betray our moral values?
Once we reconnect with the natural world, we may begin to realize that we are all in this together, and despite our differences we are more alike than we are not because we are all human. This can create a deeper understanding for others, even those much different from us who deviate from our moral standards.
We can study nature in two ways; analytical, which is concerned with a scientific material understanding, and intuitive, which gives access to the transcendent, immaterial aspects of the universe that flow through the material. A true teacher would know history and science, but would be aware of the limitations of both.
"Science can help us break things down to their core, weigh things, measure things, but you can't weight and measure a moral or spiritual lesson given to you by nature. You can't isolate substances and dissect them down to their most minute detail while at the same time understanding how they fit into the unified process of nature, and that is something that comes through intuition." - Philosophize This! (Paraphrased)
Science asks "what" and "how", but not "why".
People are so concerned with science they often take spirituality for granted. By spirituality I don't necessarily mean a literal spirit. I'm referring to a deeply introspective, emotional, intuitive based connection with something rather than a purely analytical one. We forget neglect or hinder our spirituality, something we cultivate not just through religion but through spending time in nature, meditating, reading spiritual texts, using psychedelics (responsibly and in moderation), and so on.
It is something we are all capable of, but we neglect this side of consciousness so much that it's no wonder we often feel lost in this world, depressed, and fall down paths of cynicism, pessimism, and nihilism.
Books (Education) pose a unique threat to a thinking person because a person can endlessly learn but fail to create anything meaningful using to knowledge they spent all that time acquiring. Education can be harmful when it only leads to the mindless recitation of 'facts', that makes it so you don't have to ever think for yourself and interpret those 'facts' and establish new perspectives and connections.
Many of us have essentially lost touch with our visionary side. We fall down the trap of thinking knowledge automatically makes someone intelligent, when we don't place equal value on the ability to develop new ways of thinking from that knowledge.
Ask the average person what they wish to do after they retire, and a common answer is to travel the world. But it is interesting that we choose to spend our time and money to travel far and wide just to bask in the the cultural contributions of others, without the thought of using those experiences to create new meanings and interpretations of those experiences to contribute to our own culture.
The way we educate people from grade school onwards could be where a large chunk of the problem stems from. We don't teach children how to be introspective, but instead we teach them empty facts without attaching much meaning to those facts. We tell students to sit still in a classroom for hours, and memorize information, and memorize contributions to society made by people in history. But reading does little to a person if it fails to stimulate creative thinking.
We can feel this information if we truly allow ourselves to, and explore new meanings in text. (I recommend learning about post structuralism by Derrida, which I may write a full blog post about later.)
"Society has given us a narrative and with it the narrow parameters for which we navigate the world, society has given us not only the building blocks for every thought we will ever think, but every thought you we will ever possibly think." - Philosophize This!
"Sure there are thoughts outside of what we think but we won't think about them because of the culturally ingrained limitations placed on us since birth by society. "
With this blog I am hoping to not only share my thoughts on various philosophical and political topics, but I'd also like to use this as a platform to compartmentalize my thoughts and better understand myself in the process. (:
Today I had a conversation with my friend Ryam about morality! The conversation took place on Discord and in real time so my responses were a bit disorderly and not very well articulated. In this blog post I'm going to summarize my beliefs in a way that's more coherent and compact.
So I basically subscribe to moral fictionism. I don't believe that morality is subjective, but more that morality doesn't exist in the first place. This is because moral statements have no substantial truth conditions and are influenced by the subject's goals and desires.
Let us use the example of a pro-life subject whose moral judgment is that abortion is wrong. While the subject may believe their opinion is correct, in reality they are simply adherent to a pro-natalist worldview using hypothetical reasoning (reasons relative to the subject).
To the mind of the pro-lifer, the belief that abortion is wrong is more than just their opinion, but an objective fact. Thus the moral realist casts a judgment where right and wrong cannot be questioned.
I am against such arrogant ways of thinking.
Moral judgments are not grounded in reason and are instead the result of ego driven delusion.
Believe me ,I acknowledge that right and wrong can exist to an extent because some behaviors and actions are desirable and some are not. To deny this would be to rail against my own philosophical beliefs.
1. I accept that morality exists to the extent that some behaviors are clearly good or bad.
2. I reject judgment and view it as a flaw that stems from egotistical thinking.
Some questions I'd have to ask moral objectivists would be:
1: What moral properties exist in a physical or concrete form?
2: Why are there no cosmic consequences to a moral failing?
3: If humans are influenced by personal feelings and have a limited scope of reality, how can a subject be sure to know what's right or wrong?
4: Moral judgments oversimplifies complexity and often fails to adequately answer moral dilemmas.
5: Humans can't agree on a moral code (Duty, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, etc).
Argument 1 suggests that there is no physical moral form. Facts requires knowledge of something, and none are present.
Argument 2 is basically my appeal to religion. How do we prove there is an all powerful being who has made morality objective?
Argument 3 is my appeal to ignorance. How do we know we possess the very capability to understand what's moral?
Argument 4 is my favorite argument as a psychedelic user! This is the argument of oversimplicity. Humans resort to dichotomous thinking while ignoring the true complexities of situations.
Argument 5 speaks for itself. There are countless ethical systems but none can prove to be superior to the others.
πππΆπΉππ ✩
i'm a moral moral fictionalist, do any of you know what that means? lol
Moral fictionalism is the doctrine that the moral claims we accept should be treated as convenient fictions. One standard kind of moral fictionalism maintains that many of the moral claims we ordinarily accept are in fact false, but these claims are still useful to produce and accept, despite this falsehood.
1
Good to know stuff :p
Had a lot of fun with this lecture on moral error theory!
@RyamNaje
too many people can see the ramblings of my insanity when its in a big discord like this lol
Stellar Cascade
I like insanity
1
πππΆπΉππ ✩
i like geeks hahaha
RyamNaje
I think it would be an assertion that morals exist as an ideal, but are not innately manifested into the real world. They cannot be truths, because there is no compelling force to oblige to morals. Further, the moral truths an individual holds and not consistent with those of other individuals
Stellar Cascade
I like insanity
RyamNaje
You haven’t had my flavor of insanity
@RyamNaje
You haven’t had my flavor of insanity
Stellar Cascade
Guess I have to fix that then!
πππΆπΉππ ✩
instead of using moral language to express false propositions we should use it to express attitudes
Stellar Cascade
Attitudes?
πππΆπΉππ ✩
for me it's about taking out the judgment and replacing it with a good faith approach to answer problems
the abortion debate is a big example where people make moral judgments
noncogntiive attitudes don't express moral truths so i prefer that
RyamNaje
Eh, the issue with the abortion debate is moral inconsistencies, not any actual moral stance
πππΆπΉππ ✩
i think we're talking about different things but yeah
i think that people's feelings precede moral judgment
morality is just an excuse for ppl to defend whatever they like
RyamNaje
I mean, moral inconsistencies are what I take the above quote to be getting at. The inconsistencies morals take between people or within a person prevents there from being moral fact, and thus it is only moral fiction can exist
πππΆπΉππ ✩
i don't believe moral facts are possible regardless of inconsistencies
RyamNaje
I mean, contractualism is a belief system that would exert that moral fact can exist, albeit it would need to be codified (implicitly or explicitly) and enforced - but it creates a system in which all must adhere to some moral code. In a society based upon contractualism, moral could be codified into fact
πππΆπΉππ ✩
is that your moral system?
RyamNaje
I mean, I havent put enough thought into it to have a moral system I adhere to. I'm much more of the type to just try to drift through innoffensively. Although, if I had to put a label on things I would say I'm more of an absolutist.
πππΆπΉππ ✩
why?
RyamNaje
meaning, I think there are absolute facets of morality one must adhere to, or else they are amoral
Because if morals can change from person to person, an act that does good could be taken as both good and bad depending on who you ask. There is no way to reconcile such, but the act either performed good deeds or was a selfish action (selfishness being the basis of evil). I believe acts that enable the autonomy of a person are inherently good, and acts that detract from the autonomy of other people are inherently bad
πππΆπΉππ ✩
isn't that dichotomous thinking?
what if an action performs both good and bad?
RyamNaje
eh, I used person too loosely. My definition of person would be "a sentient and sapient being capable of acting independently and making their own decisions"
πππΆπΉππ ✩
what about moral dillemas like the double effect doctrine?
RyamNaje
In my opinion intent does not have any bearing on the morality of an action
πππΆπΉππ ✩
oh
are you a consequentialist?
RyamNaje
If I tried to do CPR to save someone, but that instead results in their death - my intent is irrelevant. A person died as a result of my actions, therefore the action for me to perform CPR was amoral
@πππΆπΉππ ✩
are you a consequentialist?
RyamNaje
yes but not an "ends justify the means" consequentialist either
πππΆπΉππ ✩
then what kind
Stellar Cascade
RyamNaje
I dont have a good word to describe it. More of a tempered consequentialist - if I can coin the term - in which I hold that one has an obligation to act in a moral way, but it is the responsibility of that person to act morally in the context of their own autonomy
πππΆπΉππ ✩
my only issue w that is that i see morality as subjective
or rather:
maybe not purely subjective
but fiction
RyamNaje
im getting dangerously close to utilitarianism as I think, which I have gripes with. But honestly, I'm the type who thinks that there are expressions of morality and expressions of amorality. An expression of morality does not define a person as moral, but an expression of amorality would cast a person as amoral - because a moral person couldnt take an amoral action
πππΆπΉππ ✩
i see it as a preference rather than a real thing
RyamNaje
And for that reason, morality becomes a sort of "paradox of tolerance" - in which moral people cannot tolerate amoral actions, or else they become amoral themselves
πππΆπΉππ ✩
my issue with morality is that it's attached to judgment
Stellar Cascade
Preference might be a good word for it
πππΆπΉππ ✩
yes i mostly agree 100% with what ur saying
my problem is more the concept of morality itself
the concept of morality makes decision making more difficult and makes less room for compromise
and i use abortion as an example bc it shows how moral judgments affect people's rights
RyamNaje
My food just arrived so imma go eat, but think of it like this - I think it was plato who had the "theory of forms" (or something like that). Morality exists as a monolith outside of our perception, but we can only see the shadows of it projected upon our world. We cannot percieve or replicate the actual form of morality, so we act in ways influenced by its projection upon our world. That doesnt mean morality is subjective - it means our perception of morality is subjective.
πππΆπΉππ ✩
oooo
share
ook well that's an interesting view of it
but i don't believe in the conventional concept of morality
at all lol
i see it mostly as an excuse to cast judgment
but that's just my opinion
this is how i see people use it, as a form of judgment and people very often argue that their moral beliefs are axiomatic and can't be challenged
and that's my issue with morality
it makes reasoning with people become impossible
@πππΆπΉππ ✩
i see it mostly as an excuse to cast judgment
RyamNaje
Morality must be used to cast judgement on amorality, or the amoral will consume the moral. In a moral world, amoralities cannot exist or be allowed to flourish
πππΆπΉππ ✩
well sure, but that's why i believe in my approach to morality
RyamNaje
That’s what I was trying to get at with the paradox of tolerance analogy
πππΆπΉππ ✩
which i mentioned before
Moral fictionalism
it's a mediation of some sort
the idea is that we should accept moral claims but also treat them as convenient fictions
this takes away the weird holistic judgment out of it
1
but still accepts that moral values are a benefit to society
RyamNaje
See, I think morality has to be holistic.
πππΆπΉππ ✩
that's the problem
RyamNaje
In fact as I was eating I considered a previous statement which id revise
πππΆπΉππ ✩
people are too irrational and emotion driven
and their moral judgments are often very misguided
i just don't trust people to judge matters holistically
and i generally dislike unnuanced approaches to ethical questions
RyamNaje
Well, I'd agree that the evaluation of morality cannot be done holistically because all people are in fact amoral
πππΆπΉππ ✩
ahhhh
replace amoral with illogical and that's how i feel more or less xD
1
RyamNaje
I mean, amoral == illogical insofar as people will uphold morals as long as its convenient for them
πππΆπΉππ ✩
i also think people's ego makes them incredibly difficult to reason
how do you reason with bias?
how do you reason with people who think they understand something that they don't?
@RyamNaje
I mean, amoral == illogical insofar as people will uphold morals as long as its convenient for them
πππΆπΉππ ✩
oh ok
i agree
@πππΆπΉππ ✩
how do you reason with bias?
RyamNaje
irrefutable data and claims counter to the basis of their bias
πππΆπΉππ ✩
people don't care about data
RyamNaje
if such cannot free someone of bias, they are not biased, they are deluded, actively lying to themselves
πππΆπΉππ ✩
you can present all the data in the world to someone who disagrees with you and they won't c are
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