Getting somewhere? In what context? When human behaviors come into conflict over value judgments there are generally three options available to “get somewhere”.
1] might makes right: the “optimal” behaviors here revolving around whoever has the power to enforce his or her own perceived self-interest
2] right makes might: the “optimal” behaviors here revolving around whatever it is decided are the most rational and virtuous behaviors
3] moderation, negotiation and compromise: the “optimal” behaviors here revolving around a political give and take rooted in democracy and the rule of law.
Really, you pick the conflicting goods and we can explore these options more substantively.
Or, as with Communism, are the “sub-optimal” issues “resolved” only when others come to accept your own take on them?
Whereas my point is always that 1] both sides, in starting with conflicting sets of assumptions, are able to make reasonable arguments regarding immigration and national borders
Repeatedly you cannot distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable arguments and reasonable and unreasonable assumptions. IOW, if we go by your philosophy, any dumbass assumptions and arguments are just fine.
Sure, when you set the default at your own reasonable arguments and assumptions [about Communism, abortion or anything else], then those who don’t share them are “dumbasses”.
Really, I truly do get that part.
Thus the pros of Communism here – greengarageblog.org/10-chief-pr … -communism – are the opinions of dumbasses while the cons arguments reflect the opinions of the smart ones.
Yet each side makes arguments that the other side cannot just make go away. It merely revolves around commensing with a different set of assumptions about human interactions. For example, should social interaction revolve more around “I” or “we”.
And, of course, here too there are dumbass and smart answers.
And, it would seem, rational men and women can “think this through” such that whatever particular experiences they had with either Communism or capitalism is subsumed in their deduced moral obligations as rational men and women. Thus it is assumed that [as with Ayn Rand] to be rational is to be virtuous.
Let’s just say that “for all practical purposes” I see a very important distinction that you don’t.
I thought that you could not figure out what “for all practical purposes” means.
No, I speculated that renditions of this are rooted existentially in daseins confronting conflicting goods out in one or another actual political economy.
Not so much useless and ineffective as, for the objectivists, disturbing and discomfitting. My argument is they insist the most useful and the most effective approach to life is always the moral narrative and political agenda that is either not flawed at all or the least flawed: theirs.
It’s useless and ineffective for you. Leave “the objectivists” out of it and concentrate on yourself.
Just as they can speculate on what all of this is for me, I can speculate on what all of this is for them. It’s just that I clearly recognize that my own speculations here are no less existential contraptions than theirs.
It’s just that with respect to an actual existential context in which your own values come into conflict with others, I’m still rather fuzzy regarding the role that God and religion play in the construction of your own particular existential persona. In other words, I would need from you a trajectory similar to the one I note with regard to abortion above.
You don’t need that at all.
If you say so. Only why on earth wouldn’t I?
Ridiculous to you because you are not inside my head aware subjectively of all of the many experiences that I had that, no doubt, are far, far removed from the experiences that you had.
It’s a ridiculous expectation because since you see all arguments as contractions, then even if you accept an argument, you are simply substituting one contraption for another. It doesn’t get you out of your hole.
I can only get out of my hole when I come upon a new experience that succeeds in yanking me up out of it. Or when another relates an experience they had in which they convince me there is in fact a reasonable manner in which to make a demonstrable distinction between right and wrong, good and evil behavior.
What other option is there?
Well, God could manifest Himself and yank me up out of it. Sure, that’s not necessarily impossible.
If you had some criteria which establishes when an argument is not a contraption, then that type of argument may be your ticket out. But you don’t have such criteria, do you?
What criteria do you have other than “think like I do and you’re out of the hole”?
You are also unable to use your intellectual contractions as tools … dropping a useless one and picking up a useful one at will. I have suggested it to you and you responded that you could not control yourself in that way.
What on earth does this mean?! To you for example. Note a single context in which this has worked for you.