I continue on my understanding of experience…
experience and values…
we have experiences of something…
and then we give it a value… for example,
that was an transformational experience…
the word transformational is a value…
we use value words to describe something…
that was a hopeful event, that was a lovely experience…
that was an angry meeting…with hopeful, lovely and angry being
value words…but how do we come up with those value words?
by experiences… what I may consider a lovely event/experience
another person may say “boring” as our ages and experiences are different,
we have a different understanding of experiences based on experience…
when we say someone is old is just another way of saying they have a lot
of experience behind them…a single event may have different interpretations
because of different experiences of people who viewed the event…
one might say, that was a transformational experience and I might say,
hay, I learned that lesson 40 years ago and so it wasn’t a transformational
event for me…our experiences create context for us and it is in context
that we use value words…to put something into context just means
to view something in light of prior experience…
how we use experience to understand experiences…
and it is in our experience that understands how value words
are used…the task of philosophy is to understand value words
and put them into context… experience…
now as I have mentioned, the enlightenment used values like
tolerance and not being superstitious to describe both the human being
and the society… the typical human being should be tolerant and not superstitious
and not dependent on authority and wary of the religious and they thought that society
should be the same way… they created the modern ideal of liberalism…
those who argue against the liberal vision of the modern world don’t offer
up an alternative vision of the human being… they criticize for sure,
“Liberalism is a proven mental illness” is certainly one example,
but the thread offers us no alternative vision… just ignorant
babbling…superstition as it were…and just as the right has
no vision of the human being, it has no vision of society…
how do we know? Look at the values that the right offers us…
greed, hate, violence, anger, intolerance… now we can use experience
to know that we cannot build any stable or functional society based
on those values… but we can build lives and a society based on positive
values… and it is philosophy job to discover those values and
promote them… to create stable people and a stable society…
and we use experience to understand those values…
because that is how we understand values, through experience…
look at your family experience… if you felt loved, you were more stable
then someone who didn’t feel love from their family…
positive values create stability in both individuals and in a society…
and it is philosophy job to find and promote those positive values
that make for a stable individual and society…
so why is the 20th century so different from the prior centuries
before it? because it embraced different values… not that that is bad,
but we still haven’t come to terms with the new values…
why? because we use experience to come to terms with values
and we have no experience to compare and contrast to the actions of the 20th century…
two world wars, the holocaust, the cold war, the rise of technology…
experience is how we understand experiences, that is how we compare and
contrast experiences, by experience…how do we compare or contrast
the new sciences of quantum physics. Which other experiences can we compare
or contrast the new science? we have no experiences with quantum physics or
the theory of relativity or any of the other new sciences and that is part of
our malaise of the 20th and 21 century… we cannot use experience to understand
the new sciences…we cannot use value words on the new sciences because
we don’t know the experience of say, quantum physics… which value word
would you use on quantum physics? I don’t have one either…because I
don’t have enough experiences to compare or contrast the new sciences…
and you don’t either…
so experience creates the value words we use in our world,
lovely or transformational or honorable or boldness or beauty,
or creativity or faith or fun or justice or loyalty…
we probably have hundreds of value words we use to
to describe events/experiences… and we must use that experience
to create those value words, to give those experiences some
meaningful understanding…and the crisis of our age is from
the nihilism of the state and of corporate America which denies
those value words and instead pursues profit over those value words…
when profit comes before justice or profits comes before love…
and indeed, profit crushes those values because they don’t create
profit… that is nihilism…you want to save America?
you want to be saved? find values before profits…
and which values? that is the point of philosophy…
and of experiences that help us decide which values are worth
keeping and maintaining…create and promote positive values
and not nihilistic values like profit, anger, hate, violence, …
Kropotkin