to continue where I left off last night…….
iambiguous: That’s the ironic part. Moral and political judgments are deemed by me to be subjective/subjunctive existential contraptions. But those who embrace them as though the world really could be divided up between “one of us” [the good guys] and “one of them” [the bad guys] often act as though their own judgments are not arbitrary at all. They come to espouse their own narratives/agendas as objectivists.
K: I had to look up subjunctive: subjunctive: is a grammatical mood (that is, a way of
speaking that allows people to express their attitude toward what they are saying)
it is found in many different languages… Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used
to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion,
obligation or action that have not yet occurred… the subjunctive is an irrealis mood,
(one that does not refer directly to what is necessarily real)
good guy, bad guy… the exact same argument can be made for the exact same person
doing the exactly same thing… good/bad are simply made up words depending on
whether we approve of what they are doing or don’t approve…your traitor is my
freedom fighter…….and who is right? as far as I can tell, history is written by
the winners…if IQ45 side wins, they get to write what a great leader he was, a
great man and if the side opposing him wins, they get to write what a traitor he
was and the worst president in American history and what is IQ45 doing? the exact
same thing and both sides judge his actions, the exact same actions, differently
depending on where you stand on the political fence…and I am not saying that my side
the side opposing IQ45 is right or wrong, I am saying from where my POV is, he is wrong,
it says nothing about the other side, it simply says, from my POV, he is wrong…
there is no objective POV here… it is all subjective… from both sides
I: And that’s when I suggest that they are intent here on embodying a psychological contraption that allows them to sustain some measure of comfort and consolation by embedding “I” in the “real me” in sync with the “right thing to do”.
One or another rendition of this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296
Only I admit right from the start that this can be no more than my own intellectual contaption. Something that seems reasonable to me “in my head” here and now…but something that may well reconfigure into something else given new experiences, relationships and access to new information and knowledge.
I just speculate in turn that this may well be true for everyone else.
K: perhaps I will get mugged today by an immigrant and I change my mind
about illegal immigration… it has been said that a conservative is a liberal who
has been mugged……………
Peter Kropotkin: Here we run into one of Kant’s old questions, how do I know?
the very means upon which we judge such things as abortion
or anything else is subjective………… it is not possible for me to ask
“objective” questions that even get me close to an answer about abortion
because the very questions we use to understand the matter are laced with
subjectivity…….so above when I said, let us create a list of pro and cons,
the very list itself is a biased, subjective list……. there is no way I can reach
an unbiased list about abortion because of the very bias that I have, that I
have had since childhood…………
I: Still, there are facts embedded in each context in which abortion becomes an issue. Biological facts about the devolopment of the unborn in the uterus. Empirical facts regarding the circumstances of the unwanted pregnancy. Consequential facts that can be ascertained if in choosing abortion others [including the legal system] react in an actual manner.
K: or one can simply be a conservative and hold on to my position regardless of the facts
because of my emotional investment in my position…for many people, facts means less
then the idea of faith… faith is more important then any facts…there is a god… regardless
of the facts one might present, that is faith above facts… and many people, far too many,
put faith/belief as more important then any facts… that is the true definition of a
conservative… putting faith above facts…………my ideas about abortion comes from
my life… my experience……… my life is a witness to this/my idea of abortion…….
I have no facts to support my position… just a life, mine…….
I am a liberal… I believe in facts and I believe in following facts………
I don’t put faith above facts… but I cannot escape the realities of my life…
the emotional reality…and because of the emotional reality of my life,
I must, must defend a woman’s right of choice… her body, her choice……
one may think that my defense of freedom begins here… we have choice as
to what one may do with one’s body… what you do in the privacy of your house
is your problem, not mine… as long as it is consensual and over 18, rock on……
let your freak flag fly…until it interferes with my space… and the show is over…
and I believe in letting my freak flag fly until it interferes with your space and
then the show is over…….
you have an abortion, that fact doesn’t interfere with me in any way, shape or form…
rock on……… for a wide variety of reasons, I believe abortion should be legal……
but I do so knowing full well, that your reasons for not allowing abortions are equally
valid…for you………. but in the end, as a principle, freedom of choice is the bedrock
of my understanding of the universe……… but freedom is not unlimited, it has its limits…
one might argue in abortion, that the fetus has no choice… the choice is made for the
fetus and thus making abortion wrong… I was not given a choice either… quite
often, we don’t have a choice… I didn’t choose to get old and I didn’t choose to
go through puberty and I sure the hell am not choosing to die… but I have no choice…
I have no freedom or say in the matter………………one might say, but that is arbitrary…
yep, yes it is…
I: There are many things that we can know objectively. But can any particular individual know for certain how to judge abortion as a moral and political issue?
Everyone has their own “personal story” in regard to the circumstances surrounding their own birth. But that’s my point.
K: no, there are not many things we can “know objectively”… in fact, there is very little we
can know objectively……….for there is no “objective POV”…Descartes is famous for
declaring all we can know “objectively” is “cogito ergo sum”………I think therefor I am……
and from one POV he is right, and from another POV he is wrong…………personally,
I think he is wrong…….but then, I never did like questions about certainty…
being certain is way, way, way overrated…the fact is, we can never be certain
about anything, including our own death………… and I am ok with that………
I like a little chaos in my life… it seems to match the universe which is certainly
filled with chaos and uncertainty…….
Peter Kropotkin: we all are witnesses to our past and that past influences our understanding
of matters like abortion…………………. so when you speak of dasein or competing
goods or political economy, it doesn’t matter to me because my story is different
and has nothing to do with dasein or competing goods… my story, my relationship
to abortions is too personal to compare to dasein or competing goods which to my
mind is to impersonal for something that has directly influenced my life…………"
I: I don’t think that is true for the individaul. Not if he or she chooses to interact with others socially, politically and economically.
If [when] they stumble into a context in which the issue of abortion is front and center, their reaction [in my view] will be embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here. That they insist it will not be doesn’t make the actual life that they have lived go away. The sequence of experiences, relationships and ideas they came to embody existentially did in fact predispose them toward one rather than another set of moral and political prejudices.
K: you say tomato, I say tahmato……
I: And if they find themselves on one side of the pregnancy rather than another, the other side’s arguments just don’t vanish into thin air. And eventually what will count is the extent to which one side has the power to enforce one set of behaviors rather than another.
How is this not the case with you?
K: I cannot nor should I force my set of behavior on anyone… and they shouldn’t force
their set of behavior on me………… one of my objections to faith based politics…
it is continuously trying to force me into behavior that works for them, not for me…
I must have the freedom to do my thing, be it “sinful” or not… and I give you the same
expectation… I must not force you into behavior that doesn’t work for you……
as long as you leave me alone, I will leave you alone… until one of us,
interferes with the space of the other and then all bets are off…
I am not saying, don’t smoke ciggies, I am saying I don’t want to breathe that crap…
keep it away from me………… don’t interfere with my space…… and ciggies smoke does
interfere with my ability to breathe and thus verboten… which means I also cannot smoke
in your space…a local city has one of the toughest cigarettes laws in the country…
you can’t even smoke in an private apartment or condo… the smoke of cigarettes
doesn’t just stay in the apartment or condo, it does expand into other spaces, my space
and thus under the right to maintain my health, I agree with this law…if the cigarette
smoke were to just remain in your apartment or condo, I would disagree with this law…
BTW, cigarette smoke really, really bothers me… I can’t breathe and have physical
problems when around cigarette smoke…… which is weird given how much time
I spent in bars around cigarette smoke…….now from a cigarette smokers POV, I
am being very unreasonable and Nazi like……. depends on your POV, doesn’t it?
Peter Kropotkin: I don’t pretend to be a impartial or objective observer to abortions…
I am not…………"
I: But [from my point of view] what your “I” here wishes to sustain is the conviction [or what I deem to be the rationalization] that your frame of mind regarding abortion is still somehow more reflective of “the right thing to do” when the issue precipitates conflict.
Otherwise you have to admit that had your life been very different you might well have been predisposed to argue for just the opposite political narrative/agenda.
And your current arguments don’t make the points that the other side raise go away.
K: my currents arguments aren’t meant to make the other side go away, they won’t
and I don’t expect them to…experiences make the convictions, not convictions make
the experience…… because of my experiences, I have certain convictions/beliefs…
in another life or different life, I could have easily a different set of convictions…
I never claimed otherwise… my experiences have lead me to my convictions/beliefs
and different experiences can lead one to different convictions/beliefs…and still
the other side won’t go away and I don’t expect the other side to go away…
I: You just somehow manage to crumple all of it up into a political conviction that allows you to sustain more rather than less psychological comfort and consolation than someone like me. Just as I have managed to think myself down into the hole I’m in, you have managed to think your way up out of it.
And that may well be as far as we will be able to go here. Unless one of us has a “breakthrough” moment and manages to nudge the other more in his own direction.
K: I don’t believe that my convictions are “set in stone”… experiences can and very well might
change them… at the moment, I am in the process of rethinking my political convictions…
a change in how I view political matters…my POV as it were in regards to political matters…
there was no “breakthrough” per se, just a reaction to current events………
Peter Kropotkin: but my sole saving grace is this, I am aware of my bias toward abortions
so, when I make some statement about abortions, my past is always on
my mind and influences my judgement………….no matter how impartial or
objective I try to be………"
I: Fair enough.
But then there’s the future. You can’t know [anymore than I can] what new experiences, relationships, ideas etc., might come along and reconfigure “I” in another direction.
K: yep, but I don’t worry about or think about that… I just exist in the moment…
I: “I” [mine yours theirs] remains this “existential contraption” from the cradle to the grave.
Unless, of course, there is a God.
K: from cradle to grave, I continuously change and adapt to new idea’s and
experiences… my “existential contraption” changes, sometimes hourly…
I don’t sweat that part too much… I am not afraid of change or of experiences
that might change my “existential contraption”… a POV is supposed to change
to adapt to the ever changing conditions of life… to every change in the environment,
I must change and adapt… if you don’t, you are a dinosaur and you know what
happened to the dinosaurs, right?
I: Or: Unless, of course, someone comes along able to convince us [re philosophy, ideology, science or nature] that there is in fact a frame of mind regarding issues like abortion that all rational and virtuous men and women are in fact obligated to share.
Then it becomes the extent to which this is actually able to be demonstrated.
[/quote]
K: my POV is that the universe is uncertain, chaotic, during Zen where mountains
are dancing and the sea is boiling and churning and the rivers overflow their banks…
there is no place where I can set my POV and say, this is absolutely certainty…
no, there is no such place, no such certainty, no set POV…
all is in flux and changing and always must I adapt and change to match
the ever changing universe… or said another way… the theory relativity as understood
by Einstein deals with two moving objects, I have my own theory of relativity…
we have two moving object, me and the universe…and we both are constantly moving
in reaction to the other… in a moving universe, one cannot have a set, constant
POV… only a moving POV can change and adapt to an everchanging universe…
and so, what is right and correct today, maybe wrong tomorrow… I must change
and adapt to match that everchanging universe…
Kropotkin