Okay. I guess. Looks like we’re stuck here.
That is not a hole for me. I have been places I consider holes – when my father was dying and had no country to live in – you read that right – for example. But the lack of objective morals is not a hole for me.
Then this, in fact, I am still not able to wrap my head around. Other than in imagining you just don’t give a shit about “I” being an existential contraption confronting values out of sync with yours in a world of conflicting goods. Your life has become what it is and as a result of that there are things you prefer and things you do not. You “struggle” to arrive at a solution able to sustain what “you” [here and now] deem to be the best of all possible worlds. That works for you.
I don’t know what you mean by ‘works’. You seem to be implying life is easy for me or something. I went through serious trauma as a child, and the specifics of it gave me insight into systemic problems - rather than individual perpetrator, bad apple theories of the world. I find life quite a struggle. I just do not find myself yearning to know or believing there are objective morals. So, not having them is not a hole for me. And when I look at the one’s with objective morals, I do not envy them. At least, not because of that. They, in the main, seem internally plagued by the same sort of battles they are waging in the outer world. And then, they still have to deal with the same kinds of shit life throws at me. But let me know what ‘works’ means to you.
From my own vantage point, there are generally four things that propel us through life in the is/ought world:
1] The circumstances that we are “thrown” into at birth; and then our childhood indoctrination
2] a particular set of experiences, relationships and access to information/knowledge, that predispose “I” to go in a particular direction
3] the actual options available to us in choosing particular behaviors
4] the manner in which as a “philosophy of life” “I” fit everything together “in my head” in order to make sense out of the existential relationship between “I” and “out in the world”. Philosophy being one possible tool here.
Something either works for you here in order to attain and then sustain some measure of comfort and consolation in your life or it doesn’t.
“I” can achieve a measure of comfort and consolation “in the momment”. In other words, embedded in one or another of my distractions. But in regards to morality on this side of the grave and immortality/salvation on the other side it’s beyond my reach.
Here and now.
The objectivists are always constrained by their “good behavior”, “bad behavior” mentality. Their options revolve around either doing or not doing the “right thing”. Or else they can be defamed as hypocrites.
A moral nihilist, on the other hand, can rationalize any behaviors. It’s just that for someone like me the price that one pays here is that fractured and fragmented identity.
For me, I have no need to rationalize a behavior, since this implies I must somehow explain it as OK in relation to objective morals. At the same time, there are all sorts of things I will not do because of empathy and likes and dislikes, etc. In terms of morals I might be free to do anything, but in terms of my emotional self - and of course in relation to practical consequences - there are many things I will not do.
All I note here is that this “works” for you and then you bump into others who do not approve of the behaviors that you choose. They insist that you stop doing them. Or that you choose their behaviors. You explain to them why you chose your own behaviors, and that may or may not be good enough. You work out some compromise. With me though, I would need to acknowledge to them that I may well have come to choose their own behaviors in turn. And that in any event either set of behaviors can be rationalized as the right thing to do given a conflicting sets of assumptions about the human condition.
It’s the part about the things you “will not do” that separates your “I” here from mine. For me, the things you once did, do now or will do are no less existential contraptions. From my frame of mind, you simply can’t know for certain what you might do in the future given all the times that you have changed the behaviors that you once did in the past. Given that you have no way of knowing for sure what new experiences, relationships and ideas you might come upon in the future.
And all of this often depends upon the extent to which your life unfolds in relatively stable times. Let something [or some things] of significance happen and the new turbulence can send “I” flying in any number of new directions.
Yet, again, this is all embedded abstractly in another general description of human interactions.
We need to focus in on an actual context in which objectivists, and subjectivists [yours and mine] attempt to convey what unfolds “in their head” as they choose one behavior rather than another. The objectivists seemingly would not be fractured and fragmented.
- I did go into a specific situation and described what I did and thought weeks ago
Again, you have devised a frame of mind relating to this situation that allows your “I” to escape the extent to which my own “I” is fractured and fragmented given contact with similar situations. And I have addressed how I react to that above. Then it can only come down to attempts to bridge that gap given how very different our life experiences no doubt have been.
- Every objectivist I have met is fractured. They don’t harp on it, perhaps many cannot admit it, even to themselves, but I see cognitive dissonance, guilt, shame, confusion, lying, denial, repression, hypocrisy, etc. in all objectivists I meet. And to be fair, I also see some who will be open about this and their fractured nature.
Sure, I spent nearly 25 years embedded in radical political organizations. I’ve met all manner of objectivists myself. My focus on this thread however is on those who attempt to connect the dots between the behaviors they choose on this side of the grave and that which they imagine their fate to be on the other side of it.
And, here, no doubt about it, some are more adament about the righteous path that they are on than others.
Same with the secular objectivists. Some are fiercely commited to one or another moral font in a No God world. Others wobble considerably more.
All we can do is to take them on at a time.
These are just words defining and defending other words. They have to be taken out into the world where the objectivists and subjectivists attempt to describe their frames of mind as they engage an actual context in which conflicting goods are being confronted.
I am trying to remain calm when I say this: do you not see how incredibly abstract your posts are?
Over and over and over again, I ask the objectivists to choose a particular set of conflicting behaviors out in a particular context. Abortion? Immigration policy? Gun control? Animal rights?
Let them note for us the manner in which their thinking does unfold in regards to these actual interactions with others. And then I will note the manner in which my own moral narrative/political agenda is fractured and fragmented.
Again: How are they not fractured and fragmented? Or considerably less so than I am?
Take for example Trump’s immigration policy. There are liberal and conservative objectivists here who appear to argue as though there is in fact the right and the wrong thing to do. Whereas “I” am drawn and quartered by reasonable arguments from both side. “I” recognizing in turn that “I” am in fact an existential contraption here predisposed to certain political prejudices.
An objectivist could be torn here also.
Sure. But all I can do in a forum like this is to react to any one particular objectivist at a time in discussing these issues.
How about you? Someone asks your opinion. What do you tell him? From my frame of mind your frame of mind seems to revolve around just accepting the fact that the past predisposed you to embrace one rather than another value judgment and you will do whatever it is you think that “here and now” is [for all practical puropose] what is perceived to be in your own best interest.
I don’t feel like I have the answer in relation to my desires or my empathy in relation to immigration, so I often react to the arguments and prejudices I am facing in the other person. Neither pro or con people are very happy with my responses.
Well, they are often considerably perturbed by my own frame of mind. Why? Because I am suggesting to them that had their own lives been different they might actually be embracing the opposite point of view. And that no matter which side you’re on there are reasonable arguments able to be to sustain either end of the conflicting goods.
I am in a different country than you. Here I think that a number of things are happening at once. Industry is very pro immigration because it will crack the unions. The proletariat is against immigration - more than the other classes - I think in part because they sense that down the line they will be weakened, but certainly racial prejudices and even more strongly cultural ones play a role. When I felt very financially vulnerable, a couple of years ago, the immigration rates terrified me because I need to take care of a family and need the present buffers - ones you do not have in your country. I feel stronger now, so that is less of an issue. I do feel like the West is being weakened and intentionally. Or better put, corporate power in relation to citizen power is going up and I see immigration as part of this or refugees espeically since those numbers went up. I often say that no one mentions that the US, Britain and FRance have openly planned, thought not especially loudly, to change the regime in Syria - and all the other countries they have and will try this with. I would be much happier with the influx, if it was acknowledged that this situation is not, oh, there was a civil war and a nasty government in Syria, but rather something much more like the situation where the US funded the Contras in Nicaragua. If there is no responsibility taking or demanding in relation to the proxy war in Syria powered by corporate and military interests in the US and elsewhere, then the influx is tainted. On the other hand I feel empathy for fleeing refugees and am friends with several.
I have no pat answer or position. On some things I do, but not that one. Here we are dealing with an incredibly complex situation as it unfolds on the ground, and one with an incredibly complex set of agents and agencies who have been causal in relation to it. Then it is being used by many agents, and most of whom aim propaganda and oversimplifications at any feeling or thought any of us might have. I could react to any or all parts of this in a variety of ways. It is also a global issue. And fuck, I have just had the decks cleared on all of my family being diagnosed with a terminal illness, one having made it out of that diagnosis after a period of ten years. I am not in a position to fix even one other mind on the issue of immigration. I try to put my energy where it does something, or I fucking lie around because I am burned out. But when I sti with someone in some situation and they throw something pat at me, I do often come back with a reaction. I do disagree. And I am a pain the ass. I doubt I change anyone’s mind even about the specific cliche they have flung at me, but sometimes they do shut up, and not because I am screaming, but because they are suddenly confused. I am sure they work out their proper comeback later at home. Maybe someone has gone off and really mulled, but I ain’t holding my breath. Humility is the order of the day regarding my effects on immigration issues.
From my frame of mind though this is all in sync with my argument that we generally encounter conflicting political prejudices rooted in particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts. Genes and menes tugging each particular individual in any number of different directions.
And that philosophers [ethicists, political scientists] can just as easily be all over the political spectrum here.
I think, however, but I am not sure, you feel you should have one and are tormented by the lack of one. A little Christlike. And look I am not saying that nastily. I can feel a tug there, but I have worked a long time on getting the Christian take up that cross thing out of my system. This may not be a difference between us, but sometimes I get the feeling you wrestle a lot with coming up with the answer, and I no longer do.
Well, here’s the thing. To the extent that you “follow the news” and find yourself confronting the staggering human pain and suffering embedded in these turbulent political conflicts, is [often] the extent to which you might long for an objective moral foundation that all reasonable and virtuous men and women can embrace.
But somehow given the constellation of existential variables that came to embody your own particular “I” here, you have somehow managed to be less inclined to “wrestle” with it.
But, really, how to explain that given the extent to which none of us are probably ever really able to understand the mental, emotional and psychological parameters of “I” here.
It just comes down to how much comfort and consolation your own “philosophy of life” is able to provide you here and now.
My answer might have been based on my preferences/empathy rather than morals, but still I know what feeling like I must take a clear stand feels like. On some things I do not have much desire/guilt compelling me to find that single answer. I also notice how much change I can enact and it is, as far as I can tell, primarily quite local.
All I can note here is that, from my frame of mind, this sort of “self-analysis” is no less an “existential contratption”. You think what you do here largely because it is what your actual lived life predisposed you to think. And, when you bump into others who think differently, there does not appear to be a way in which, using the tools of philosophy, one can determine how one ought to think.
This part basically:
I am still grappling to imagine what it might be like to be inside your head when you are actually eyeball to eyeball with a context in which someone openly challenges your behaviors. In other words, while you may both share your own “general description” of human interaction, one or the other of you is going to have to change your behaviors to keep the conflict from spinning out of control.
Well, sure. I don’t know if I have given the impression I boldly stride through the world, never bowing before another, or that my life is easy or whatever. But that’s not the case. So sure, I back down in the face of beauracracies fairly often. And better put I do thing so that the confrontation between their values or preferences and mine do not occur. I am not superman. I have swallowed my anger at a driver when I saw two big young men get out of the back of the car the other day. I hated the way they drove, risking my life and the driver’s licence. But hey, I ain’t no spring chicken, I headed home and did some primal screaming.
Yeah, basically me too. A clash among pragmatists. But somehow there are those able to convince themselves that in any particular context there is the right thing and the wrong thing to do. And then to the extent that they don’t opt to do the right thing, they are cowards or hypocrites. And, for some on this thread, they risk the wrath of God. And even Hell itsaelf.
I did not at any point think, damn if only I was an objectivist that situation would have gone much better.
On the other hand, for someone like me, I am able to think back on all those years when I was in fact an objectivist. So I can still recall how much better “I” did feel back then.
From my frame of mind this “unity” is no less an existential contraption in a No God world.
For me it is a rather concrete experience. I walk into a room, thinking about myself, looking at the woman and imagining how she might see me, feeling guilty for not complimenting her, second guessing my actions, the food I ordered, thinking the whole time, suppressing the attraction I feel, at least from being obvious, checking each sentence before it comes out and son, AND
after having worked on the roots of guilt around sexual feelings, reality checking with other people, expressing strong emotions with people who care about me (and therapists), openly talking about fears with other men who are comfortable with fear, strong emotions AND rage, savvy guys and a whole lot of other often intentionally choses processes aimed at not being so split
I do not second guess so much, I let much more spontaneous reactions be expressed, do not view myself through the eyes and judgments of the other (that I hallucinated in the past or even correctly guessed). I feel more unified, rather than a jailer and a jailed, judge and defendent, priest and sinner. Not two or more people sitting in the chair opposite the woman, but one.
About as concrete an experience as I can have. As palpable as a chair - you should really dive into the phenomenology of feeling a chair if you think that should be experienced as more concrete.
We’ll just have acknowledge here that in relationship to experiences such as this we understand “I” in different ways. In any experience there is always going to be all of the variables that came to constitute “I” nudging [or propelling or even seemingly compelling] you to do one thing rather than another. Then it comes down to the extent to which “I” wrestles with the option of doing something else instead. And, in particular, the extent to which “I” comes to wrestle with what one ought to do.
Ever and always from my point of view here and now, some will become more fractured and fragmented than others.
Sure, there will always only be “degrees of communication” in exchanges of this sort. But, then, that bascially revolves around my whole point about “I” here. There are things about the lives that we live rooted in particular facts. Things that are true about us for everyone.
For me, though, however much “effort, time and expertise” one puts into grappling with these relationships, there are just far too many variables either beyond our understanding or control. And, many times, both.