still on vacation and sick as a dog… so I will call this late
night thoughts under the influence of Nyquil…
we have, what has been called the “Human condition”
but I think it should be rightly called the “Modern condition”…
what is the Modern condition?
if you think about the past, the choices or options for people
were less, far less then we have today… less choices in the values,
less choices in jobs, less choices in having a say in the society you lived in…
less choices all the way around…
for example, the Greeks believed in Arete which is excellence, that
was their value of choice…that comes from Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey”
Think of the Romans, their values called, Mos maiorum, or “ancestral custom”
or “the way of the ancestors”… and I wrote about those values in an earlier post…
and the values of the middle ages… are the Christian values we know today,
of humility and meekness and knowing one’s place… Religious values
in these three examples, there was no chance for the average person to escape
the values of the society, be it Greek or Roman or medieval…you lived
under a small number of values and you were expected to obey these values…
because you had no choice…
from the enlightenment comes a new awareness of values… and how society
was driven by a small number of values… remove myths and habits
and prejudices and superstitions comes the call of the enlightenment thinkers…
remove those values and become an independent thinker, a free human being…
and look about you today, America had a set value system which has been destroyed
by actions taken over the last 40 years and especially over the last 18 years…
what values have been driven over the last few years?
well after 9/11, when asked what the average American can do to support
America, bush Jr said, well go shopping… that was the value the president of the
united states thought was important after 9/11…
the problem for these men/women of limited thought is that the genie has
been released from the bottle… we see a multitude of values that are possible…
we have far more choices then the average Greek or Roman or man of the Medieval
period…choices in jobs, choices in values, choices in sexuality…
the human condition is about choices and we have many choices which
is why I say the human condition is really the modern condition…
we have conflict today between the modern/scientific values
and the religious values and between various religious values
have conflict and we don’t have a means of resolving these values
conflicts… whereas in the ancient world, they had means to resolve
values conflicts, the church and/or the state would resolved value
conflicts…when we see the church or state attacking a group of
people, for example the Medieval church would attack and or destroy
a movement I can’t think of their names right now, but the church destroyed
several groups of people who espoused different values then the official church
values…
but we don’t do that today… we celebrate all values, as we should…
but the modern condition makes us wonder which values are the values
we should be holding…
and how should we decide?
Kropotkin