after several ugly days at work, I can finally post…
I am not ignoring you Meno… But I am going in a slightly
different way today…
our word today boys and girls is…
Teleology
is a reason or explanation for something in function of its end,
goal or purpose… It is derived from two greek words,
telos (end, goal, purpose) and logos (reason, explanation)
We humans understand things better when we can create a
story or a narrative about things…so we create stories
about how humans have their goal or purpose in reaching heaven
or avoid hell… that becomes the reason for or the explanation
of why we human exists…….god created us to serve him
and if we fail to obey, we go to hell… that an teleology
explanation for why humans exists, the final goal or purpose
of human beings is how we are to reach heaven or to avoid hell…….
everything is explained in terms of its final goal or purpose…
Before Darwin who published his “On the Origins of Species” in 1859,
it was easy to create a story, a narrative about humans goal or purpose…
and that goal, purpose was the creation story of the bible or the
Buddhist narrative or the Hindu narrative or the Muslim narrative about
the beginning or what was the goal or purpose of human beings…
that was the value of religion… it created an easy to understand
story or narrative about human purpose and human’s goals and purpose…
But then Darwin came along and we are unable to create a story,
a narrative about the goals and purpose of human beings because
Darwin’s evolution, his story or narrative doesn’t allow one to easily create a
a story about the goal or purpose of human beings……
In the last 160 years since Darwin’s book came out, what historically
has happened? You have the full bloom of the industrial revolution
and the events of the 20th century, the two world wars and the Holocaust
and the dropping of nuclear bombs and the Great Depression……
Now can you make a direct connection between the “One the origin
of Species” in 1859 and what has happened since then? Perhaps, but
more as bricks in the wall type of thing…… in other words, as
part of our overall action and understanding of the world and human beings…
This understanding of goal and purpose helps create a better story or
narrative about ourselves and what is our “meaning of life”.
Now Marx in his writings help create a goal or purpose in life
with his theory that the substructure of human beings was
economic in nature and that we are economic creatures…
and his theories was that as we pass through the various
economic phases, we shall reach the end phase which was
the worker paradise, the end of the class structure where
everyone was equal socially because everyone was equal
economically… remember, for Marx everything was
seen through the lens of economics and class structure…
so Marx, in his own way, created a goal, purpose for human beings……
It was Marx that brought about the term, “the end of history”…
that has been the topic of conversation over the last century
and half………
Now compare Marx’s vision with capitalism vision……. There is no
final goal or purpose in capitalism… you just keep buying stuff forever…
Capitalism is an economic theory, just like Marx, but without a goal
or purpose…….Capitalism is the understanding of human beings
through an economic lens… we are seen as economic beings,
just as Marx saw people…the only difference between communism
and capitalism is communism has a goal, a purpose which isn’t in
capitalism………
Let us put this into different context, what kind of story or
narrative would you need to describe capitalism?
No matter what story or narrative you use, at no point would
you be able to come up with a goal or purpose that worked………
Human beings want a story, a narrative about, well everything…
we work best when we have a story or narrative that we can
use to justify our actions or our beliefs…….
so what story or narrative about today, right now, that
you can use to create a goal or a purpose for human beings?
Today, right now, we don’t have a story or a narrative to tell…
we just have policy differences, build the wall vs don’t build the wall…
but those policies difference doesn’t lead us to any understanding
about what is our goal or our purpose as individuals, a people,
a culture, a society or as a nation………
so what story or narrative can we tell that will give
us some sense of not only who we are but what is our
goal, purpose?
It is not enough to say, we must increase our GDP by 10% every year,
we must say why, why do we need to do such a thing. If we were to
understand things in their why, we might be better able to
understand our goal, our purpose……………
Kropotkin