Examining the possibilities for non ideological legislation

I certainly haven’t. You’re much like obe, FC – very deep yet sometimes unintelligible (probably because of your depth).

You seem to have defined value ontology as

So you seem to be defining a being (a conscious agent, I take it) as a set of capacities. Since this is what defines the being, this is where you get “ontology” from. Am I correct? And it is a set of capacities to “value”. To desire? To place importance upon? To dictate a kind of morality? As it is typically the case with organisms, this usually keeps the organism alive, thus he remains an autonomous entity, but I take it this is more than just a happenstance side effect–it seems to figure into your definition in a highly important way. Am I right?

I think these attempts at defining “humanity” only result in the distortion of true humanness. I think true human nature only shines through when we get a glimpse of the individual outside the influence of culture and state rule (and even then, we’d have to control for exceptions and outliers). We band together into clans, and these eventually grow into societies, out of which grows the state. Culture, religion, and art grow along side these. The direction in which these grow are typically a result of the idiosyncrasies of our environments, our unique histories (as a community), the personalities that dominate, the ideas that clever and prominent thinkers amongst the community voice, and so on. These are the variables that cause a community to diverge from that archetypical human being who exudes “true” human nature. What you get in the end is a diversity of different cultures and norms around the world, each mirroring a distorted or fragmented reflection of human nature. True human nature can be found somewhere within this mist, perhaps as an average, perhaps after all the cultural noise has been filtered out, perhaps by pinning down the common denominators among individuals spread throughout this quagmire.

I think modernity is an attempt to undo the distorting effects of several millennia of cultural evolution–perhaps not holy successfully–and I think this very thread is a testament to that.

I realize this doesn’t answer your question, but I hope it points in a direction that could get us started (in particular, in defining “human nature”).

FC’s communication skills fade in and out, at times unintelligible, at times supreme, always “deep”.

That’s right. For my first (public) expression of this idea, see http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2292083#p2292083.

[size=95]“All natural beings have a natural end, a natural destiny, which determines what kind of operation is good for them. In the case of man, reason is required for discerning these operations: reason determines what is by nature right with ultimate regard to man’s natural end.” (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, Introduction.)[/size]

The genuine philosopher as man’s end is not natural in that “the Vernatürlichung of man […] is by no means necessary but requires a free, creative act” (Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, page 189); it is natural in that the genuine philosopher is the vernatürlicht man—the man who is truly “an image of nature”.

I agree with this, but only in the sense that no genuine philosopher will grant himself the ownership of another genuine philosopher.

[size=95]“Genuine philosophers […] are commanders and lawgivers: they say ‘thus it shall be!’, they determine the Wherefore? and Whither? of man and possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical labourers [e.g., Kant and Hegel], of all those who have subdued the past,—they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer. Their ‘knowing’ is creating, their creating is a law‑giving, their will to truth is—will to power.” (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 211.)

“Not only is philosophy the supreme undertaking as inquiry into the truth about nature and humanity, that inquiry, carried far enough, invests the inquirer with responsibilities that can only be called imperial. His ambitions and his achievement make Bacon a ‘genuine philosopher’ in Nietzsche’s sense, a ‘commander and legislator’ who has determined ‘the Whither and For What of humanity’ (BGE 211).” (Lampert, Nietzsche and Modern Times, page 18.)

“Commanders and legislators must be understood here in its full Platonic pedigree as philosophical rulers who legislate for a whole age, the philosophical ruler as understood and embodied by Platonic philosophers of the rank of Alfarabi or Bacon[.]” (Lampert, Nietzsche’s Task, page 199.)[/size]

You know fixed…I like some of the things you’ve said in the OP. I can get along with the whole, “meaning and purpose of life” kind of philosophy thing if that’s what you’re into. The problem that I have with it is that the language you use isn’t exactly precise, and all the terms are totally loaded. When I read it I feel like I’m getting more about your psychology than about some actual information that you’ve stated. I mean you can’t just be so loose with your words and start throwing out new principles with so much ambiguity and room for debate and equivocation. When I see your post I think, “this guy is thinking and coming up with things and that’s nice, but any conversation started with so many loaded terms, worded so loosely is going to end up a shit storm of people talking past one another and in the end nothing will get accomplished.” I dunno man. Meaning and purpose of life kind of philosophy. That’s what I’m gonna start calling this stuff. Sometimes I just call it poetry and ask if there’s anything else to it, but I’m gonna go ahead and start calling it some kind of philosophy for you guys. I mean hell…not everyone is interested in logic and metaphysics and decision theory or game theory or constructing models or trying to understand the synthesis of all the branches of thought and the thinkers that took us there through history. I mean…some people just like to do the poetic stuff about the meaning of life and power and all that. So have at it buddy. I’ll keep looking at your thread and try and post some more advice if I have time.

I was sent to the corner once as a boy, I decided I liked it there. It’s all been a function of that since then.

Anyway- you want to criticize the existence of authority itself, as a concept, on the grounds of what is and is not natural to mankind. But history and anthropology seem to suggest that authority is as natural to mankind as is value-forming. This seems like a problem.

Never.

I don’t know if I completely understand VO, having not read much of what you’ve written on it. But, from reading one of your major essays on VO on BTL, it seemed to make since, in fact it seemed, perhaps, elusively simple.

I understand and agree with that completely, I do consider myself to be an actual entity, and I’m involved in the exact same struggle.

In fact these issues are exactly what I’ve been talking about the last few months. Perhaps it’s just that I use different terminology and the ideas influencing my views have a different background, despite leading to some of the same conclusions.

Now with that said, I’ve read the OP and the quoted essay of Humanarchy. I find what was written to be somewhat obvious; that is it’s obvious due to the limited degree it has pushed the issue. Of course it’s obvious what it’s leading up; actual drafts as to how society can be improved with those ideas as it’s bases (yes, I understand the irony, but then I also realize that your using the term “ideology” as it has been reinterpreted by hundreds of years of actual use, I know it no longer just means “the study of ideas”).

I’ll give all involved credit in that you and them seemed to have created as good a foundation as any, but I’m extremely pessimistic of any ideas to improve society as a whole.

To me it seems you’re moving at a very slow pace, but that may just be so that all involved are on the same page. But, if you can take my word that I understand the bases of VO and the way it’s related to the idea of human rights, then perhaps you can give me some links to the essays that actual go as far forward as any of you have gone. I honestly just can’t be mired in commenting much on the small details of what seems to only be the barest introductory work.

By Pallas Athena, this is encouragement. Everyone seems to understand it except Smears, but he doesn’t need to because he is already being an example of how to effectively self-value. Smears, I will gladly make use of your vital advices. It’s funny to me but I mean that, like with the Capitals. You know what, I am going to write your name in capitals from now on.

I agree. And VO is as elusively simple as Stuart suspects it to be. And this accounts for it’s depth as well as its frequent unintelligibility. It’s simply always referring to what is going on, no matter how you look at it.

A self-valuing, which I have taken as the ontological standard of the observable universe, is simply an “independent something”. It is dependent on the fact of existence, but the fact of existence is also dependent on it. It is how existence exists. It must be ultra-simple, applicable to literally every proper entity == everything that can be said to exist without being created to suit a purpose by another entity. In such a case it would not exist because it values reality (consciously and/or unconsciously selects its responses to reality) in terms of itself, of what perpetuates itself, but because another entity values it in terms of itself.

So one use-value that VO produces is an irrefutable distinction between entity and tool. We can know with absolute certainty that, if man employs himself in the service of a purpose that he has no or negative benefit from (negative self-value), regardless if this brings him money, he is participating in his ontological undoing.

Precisely, we band together based on what we are used to interpreting as “ours” “what we have and they don’t.” Or in case of more reactionary morality, “what they have and we don’t”.

But in every great society there are strong contrasts and contradiction opinions. This is because what has become common is a derivative of relatively similar self-valuings connected and concentrated throughout time. But because of the fact that culture is a pre-existing derivative, a self-valuing born into a culture will always be at odds with it, as it discovers its own physiological being, its drives - its real values become apparent to it, and it must in many cases break free. Whether it can or can’t break free when it wants to determines whether it will be an entity or a sub-entity, a thing that operates purely as a derived function of a family or a culture.

Don’t get so close and then casually say the thing you know is wrong. No. Not an average. That is looking at it the wrong way. You will derive the human nature from that which is the derivative of many human natures.

What VO implicitly proposes (that’s why it is of value to me), is that cultures begin to slightly adapt to their human nature, to their being derivatives, and not active functions. Sometimes, when a culture has become so sweeping and stimulating to be born into, the name of the town or land will take on a mythical sound and people will be happy to value themselves as a Roman or an American. When that is voluntary, it is the greatest thing in the world. But then the sun sets and the state becomes an absolute rather than a freedom… and that’s where we are. There is no way out. There’s just a way deeper in.

But this suggests that the end is already implicit in the beginning. I don’t think that this is the case unless one has the power to calculate with the whole of existence to which the subject is subjugated in his battle to remain self-valuing.

Or, because of the scope of the philosophers valuing, it is necessary for him to act freely of what already exists - to create the conditions in which he honestly and affirm what he sees.

The ultimate environment of man is his ‘a-priori intuitions’ - changing these is the only real revolution, revaluation of values, self-creating.

Yes, this is the case with the honest and discerning man who has the power to remain affirming. Schopenhauer is a strange case, he seemed to still be bound by a remnant of morality and was unable to see the beauty of what he discovered for a higher value than the meaning he had destroyed. But in general a philosopher will revel in opening the skies, it will be his only real resolution to self-valuing.

Undoubtably, the philosophy that comes to rule is the fabric of which kings and countries are made.

My background is largely Nietzsche, oriental martial mediations and the western mystery schools.

I found that stating the obvious among the slightly less obvious was unavoidable. Value ontology points to something that is so obviously true that humans normally don’t think about it at all. They are far more alike to atoms and molecules than they think. Their evaluations are not made because they are conscious beings, they are conscious because they have attained and gotten uses to values that require them to think.

Consciousness is vastly overrated as a decision making agent. It only facilitates the action that is decided upon by the physiology.

Can you give an indication of the direction in which you want to look? VO is itself too simple to make it very complicated - but its implications become complex very quickly - but they also become extremely diverse.

IOW, you have no problem with ‘owning’ people.

Yes. Consider my efforts me attacking that problem. Authority is necessary, but it needs to be properly verifiable as authority. At least, our capacity to verify the value of a particular authority needs to drastically increase.

What fundamental difference do you have in mind?

You must be quite the psychologist. I mean that.

You are such a beautiful person SMEARS.

I know. At least you ride snowmobiles.

Not very clever. You know, there was some substance to what I wrote there, and I think that it could be taken as good advice but I can’t make you.

Keep on talking about the meaning of life and about power and all that. I don’t see how you haven’t exhausted yourself on these subjects.

What I got from this was - let’s come up with something… let’s come up with something… let’s come up with something. If we click our heels together three times, maybe we’ll come up with something.

Just come up with something already, and stop trying to please everyone. Be a little more divisive… in fact, be a lot more divisive, and let the chips fall where they may! Take a fucking chance!

First there was GrecoRomanism, then there was JudeoChristianity, then there was GrecoRoman JudeoChristianity (medievalism), then there was JudeoChristian GrecoRomanism (modernism), then there was postmodernism, (drum roll) and now what we need is… (blank). God, you guys are such teases! it’s like you work us up with so much hype and hyperbole, but fail to finish us off. I mean what is it, are we egoistic, altruistic, somewhere in the middle, closer to egoistic or altruistic? Pick a spot and stay there, for fucks sake.

Darwin, Lamarck, Alien Human Hybrids… Jesus?

Here’s where we are, modernism is failing, there’s global warming, peak oil, overpopulation, materialism, corruption, corporatism, what we need is…? How 'bout less work… yeah, that’s right, less work. I say we give into our innate slothfulness and tell everyone to go fuck themselves, the politicians, our employers, everyone. Consume and produce nothing, absolutely nothing, or next to nothing, that’s a start. Maybe progress isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, material, social or technological. We started valuing all these behaviors and institutions - education, greed, free markets hard work. Obviously we overvalued them. You could say hard work is responsible for many, if not all our woes. If we worked less, were more dependent on serfdom/slavery, mouched off of others and the system more, demanded our necessities for less, we wouldn’t be in this predicament now would we, with the stress, the materialism?

I mean we started valuing human life, and look where it got us - overpopulation, pollution, etcetera, so maybe human life isn’t as valuable as we thought it was, which is not to say it has no value… just less, so maybe some of those things protecting it like human rights, advanced medical technology and shit, have to go. You can overvalue and undervalue things, life is about balance, no? Nothing is sacred, everyone and thing must continually prove themselves worthy. People, places and things fluctuate, and so do their value, accordingly, respectively.

I’d say what you people should do is jot down all the problems you have with modernity, and then come up with realistic solutions to those problems. Do the hard intellectual labor, one or two problems at a time, rather than have your heads in the clouds. You don’t even need to come up with one solution, come up with several if need be, even if they contradict one another, then decide which are more feasible. You don’t have to agree on everything, allow divisions to form, so long as everyone agrees modernity is a problem we need to solve, or so long as we agree we need new values, whatever they may be.

Keep in mind you already have a lot of these values, you shouldn’t be continually starting from scratch, wiping the slate clean, you probably already have some values, unless you’re five, so build on them, rather than continuously discarding and beginning anew, wiping the slate clean every month or two.

I mean where do you stand, FC, are you a Darwinist or not? I am, more/less, I have a few reservations, but Darwinism explains human origins to my satisfaction, which is not to say I’m not the least bit interested in alternative theories. It’s a damn fine theory, so if human beings are fundamentally selfish, at the end of the day, one world government (be it Jewish, Christian, Muslim or secular humanist), peace on earth and good will toward men, seems unlikely, does it not? I see life as a continual war, there’s never, ever going to be perfect peace, or perfect harmony, they’ll always be power struggles. I do not believe history is linearly progressing but cyclical, there’s no beginning or end of time. My primary responsibility is myself, number one, humanity is of secondary importance. Now where do you stand, are we in agreement?

Yes. It’s Aristotelian teleology in a nutshell. But I’ve transferred it (with Strauss) to Nietzsche.

Yes. Only then is it necessary—fate.

Yup. It might comfort you, though, to know that the genuine philosopher is concerned with the actualisation of other genuine philosophers—i.e, of the only truly free men.

I’m sure you thought there was. But all it made me think is how can this guy be so extremely wide off the mark when it concerns philosophy, when he’s so clever in many respects?

Keep talking to your imaginary colleague-poster. Or just finally read something with some care.

DP

Everything on Red then!

…

Did I win?

What? You set these terms, I don’t have anything to do with that. Altruist and egoist is a false dichotomy as far as I’m concerned. No one is ever altruist without implicitly acting on his values. We can not thrive in totally barren surroundings, we need life around us.

Zorba the Greek, Medusa, Toranaga… Wainamoinen?
There are so many teachers and examples. But all they teach us is that we should not follow examples.

Yes, we did.
We did something graver even - we attributed to them the standards that we are biologically wired to set for ourselves. So we allow them to annihilate our structural integrity as entities. “We” here not meaning actually “you and me” but “us silly humans”.

I’m not personally a big fan of serfdom.

Human Life is not valuable to anyone except the human who lives it and his compadre’s and family.
To think that I should care about a disaster over in Thailand is to be unrealistic. I care as soon as I can identify. I value the idea of the human, in principle, if this human is not a rotten piece of trash like very many humans are in my eyes.

Humanarchy is not about giving all humans what they want, it’s about deleting a lot of what is ugly and stupid and slothful about humans. It’s basically an attempt to see how we can improve humanity without actually tampering with DNA.

I’ve been at this for quite a while. I’ve seen a lot of political parties do what you propose and fail. We need to start from the ground up and I happen to have found the way to do that. If that is too slow for you, then I understand - it will take take more than a couple of years for all this to come into full effect.

I was blindly having faith that you had at least understood the first principle.
Values are implicit in being. You can not be five years old and have no values.

What does that even mean to you? I hope you don’t mean “survival of the fittest” - as that is not Darwin.

Darwin saw that the most exuberant, spendthrift species and specimens procreate and evolve.

It was some simpleminded fucker that made it into “survival of the fittest”. Fit to do what? Survive?
Headpalm.

So what kind of Darwinist are you?

Not to my satisfaction, nor to his own. He did not think his theory sufficed to do away with the concept God. And that is what we need to be able to do to be properly rational. VO does that.

Yes. The entity is grounded locally and subjectively, not as representing a member of a set of abstractions.
Thats why I am against the term “humanity” and prefer “humanarchy”, which isn’t as objective, but implies the actions of a powerful selection of real-life humans overcoming the feeble blubbering mass of the Average Man times seven billion.