Sure, I can relate to that. There were always misgivings on my part regarding the extent to which my mentors [sacred or profane] reflected the Whole Truth about right and wrong, good and bad behaviors. But to the best of my recollection that revolved more around perfecting “one of us” rather than in critiquing “one of them”.
But that simply reflects the manner in which I construe your “I” and my “I” here – re moral and political value judgments – as profoundly problematic identities embedded existentially in experiences that might have overlapped in some respect but were entirely different in other ways.
In other words, dasein as I understand it on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
But, most crucially of all, I recall that either through God or political ideology, I felt this strong psychological sense of being grounded in a narrative/agenda that gave my life a true sense of meaning and purpose.
But: it was the wholly unique experience I had with John and Mary, coupled with my immersion, intellectually, in existentialism, that set into motion a frame of mind that began to crumble/crumple more and more with each passing year.
You, apparently, were never quite as embedded in that sort of “comfort and consolation”.
I, on the other hand, managed, to the best of my recollection, to buy into objectivism hook, line and sinker back then. The flavor mattered less than the fact that one way or another I was hooked. And, let me tell you, when you lose that feeling by tumbling down into the hole that I’m in now, it is still always there to remind you of what you no longer have access to. At least not here and now.
So, sure, there is always the possibility that this “psychological bent” is still propelling me. I’m no less “hooked” on nihilism derived [perhaps subconsciously] from the manner in which I have hooked myself on being in the hole I’m in.
It’s all [still] just a way to convince myself that I understand the world around me “better” than others who don’t think like me.
I would never deny that.
My focus has then been for a long time unification in myself and finding people who I do not experience I must actively hide much from. Always a matter of degree, but I have found people where there is such a degree of acceptance between us that it is qualitatively different.
Well, the “degree” to which you have accomplished this seems beyond my reach here and now. I can never really be certain that any particular thing that I think [re the is/ought world] is not somehow just embedded in the constellation of existential variables that predisposed me to believe this instead of that. Only those who are down in this hole with me might come to grips with the ambiguity, the ambivalence and the sheer uncertainty in which “I” is now fractured and fragmented.
And yet somehow in this way…
I follow anomolies, things that do not fit what experts tell us is the good and the real. I see no mainstream paradigm that adequately explains what I can repeatedly experience, not all of it.
And all the various major belief systems out there tell me, in one way or other, to not have the feelings I have. I decided to test whether they were right, treat their judgments of the limbic system as falsifiable. I think they are wrong. Though this is more lived than asserted. I stopped trying not to feel what I feel in all the ways everyone from the scientific community to the various religions to pharmapsychiatry to the new age to the business world to folk beliefs to ‘common sense’ say that one must. It is amazing how much these seemingly different groups have overlapping, often nearly the same judgments of the limbic system. Going in precisely the opposite direction to all their objectivisms about emotions, I find myself less crazy, quite grounded, not violent, able to be rational and more able to make the life I want, at least around those parts I can affect. IOW their judgements do not seem to be grounded in reality and the people I am intimate with have, over a long period of time decided not to accept these actually not supported by research judgments to lock emotions down.
I can imagine this sounding like an objectivism, but I see it as a decision not to listen to all these ‘truths’ about how I am suppose to judge, lock down, eliminate, suppress as a rule my emotions.
…your own particular “I” has landed on more stable ground. But how could I ever really even begin to grasp how you accomplished this given [no doubt] the extent to which your own experiences simply do not overlap mine.
From an earlier post, here is my own “history” in a nutshell:
I grew up in the belly of the working class beast. I worked in shipyards and steel mills. I was drafted into the Army and spent a calamitous year in Vietnam. After being discharged I matriculated into college [in the tumultuous 70s] and for the next 6 years there was practically nothing I did not try at least once. I then spent nearly 25 years in a veritable alphabet soup of radical political organizations. I was married, divorced and raised my daughter as a single parent.
How many other folks here even come close to this? So, of course the manner in which they construe “I” out in the is/ought world will no doubt be very, very different from mine.
Something can be calculated to work if everyone can agree on what it is that constitutes “working”?
I don’t think that is the case. I can’t figure out what works for me via everyone. Shit most people thought slavery was working.
Slavery working or not working depends on what can be calculated. If you employ slaves in order to prosper and then through slavery you do in fact prosper how has it not worked for you?
And back then there were any number of folks able to make what they construed to be reasonable arguments [moral arguments] for embracing slavery. Some even rooted in God and religion.
My point here revolves around the assumption – and that’s all it is – that while my own political prejudices here and now are embedded in the personal belief that enslaving other human beings is wrong [as a political prejudice] I have no way in which to demonstrate philosophically that slavery is necessarily wrong; and that all rational and virtuous men and women are therefore obligated to reject it.
Same with fascism. Same with all other conflicting goods.
Does the technology/methodolgy employed by penal institutions to execute prisoners work? Well, yes or no, right?
Do the arguments employed by those on either side of the political spectrum work to establish the most rational policy here…or a policy said to embody the “best of all possible worlds”?
You tell me.
I thought when you said ‘it works for you’ referring to me, you meant somethign more personal. You can’t have meant that everyone thinks it works. Nearly everyone is quite ignorant of what I do, think, feel and how I approach making things better. When I returned the question, I mean, t does what you do work for you?
No, my point here always involves making a distinction between whatever any particular individual might think about capital punishment [as an existential contraption, as a political prejudice] and that which philosophers are able to establish as the moral obligation of all rational human beings.
If philosophy is thought by many to be the search for wisdom, what then are the wise men and the wise women to make of capital punishment as a moral issue? What argument, analysis, assessment etc., works best here?
As opposed to those who are hired to create a device that actually will work successfully in executing the prisoner.
How are these different things?
I gotta make choices when I wake up in the morning. I can’t wait for everyone, especially since I don’t respect many of everyone.
Then we are back once again to the fact that in this regard, you have somehow managed to feel less fractured and fragmented than I have. Still, on the other hand, with respect to the hardcore moral and political objectivists among us, you seem closer to me than to them.
Then maybe we are just “stuck” here. How can I make it any clearer then to note the historical facts that everyone can agree on regarding fascism, and the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no philosophers, ethicists or political scientists have yet been able to establish definitively that fascism works better than all other governing bodies.
Does it? How would this be demonstrated? And how would the anti-fascists demonstrate that it reflects instead the worst of all possible governing bodies?
As for “I” in all of this, I was raised in a truly reactionary community. I was a racist, a sexist, a homophobe. The folks I lived around constituted precisely the sort of white working class demographic that flock to Trump today. I don’t recall the word fascism coming up in my neighborhood but I suspect I would have embraced it.
Then the Army. Then Vietnam. Then Mac and John and Steve and all the folks that reconfigured “I” from a right wing fanatic into a radical leftist. Then John and Mary and Barrett and “rival goods”. Then existentialism, deconstruction, semiotics. Then nihilsm.
Then the fucking hole.
Sure, I get that. I am asking if your approach to life is working for you.
It works, sure. But only to the extent that I am still able to find some measure of fulfillment [pleasure, satisfaction] in the food I eat, the music I listen to, the movies I watch, the exchanges I sustain etc.
But all of that unfolds in a world construed by me to be essentially meaningless on this side of the grave; and with the grave itself [oblivion] getting closer and closer and closer.
As for this…
The seeking to find a way to resolve conflicting goods via rational argument. That in combination with distraction. And then if it seems like it will work, maybe some day. Looking at it as a choice. You respond with the world’s experts not being able to prove or disprove the bestness of fascism.
…I can only take it one day at a time. As an existentialist. As someone still able to assume that each day can bring a new experience, relationship and source of information and knowledge.
Assuming of course that any of this is not only what it ever could have been in a wholly determine universe.
But you want someone to give you the tool that will convince everyone how to choose objectively between two moral positions on any issue.
No, I want someone to describe to me how, out in the world of conflicting goods, their own experiences have allowed them to create a sense of self less fragmented and fractured than my own experiences have left me.
You have made that attempt and I appreciate it. As have others.
And, sure, who knows: Down the road I might come upon a frame of mind that startles me such that I actually begin to imagine it as a path up out of the hole I’m in now.
After all, what else is there here but to keep on keeping on?