From page 42:
"To be enlightened is to put people first, things next, and dogmatic ideas last. It is to live by the Hierarchy of Value discovered by Robert S. Hartman, the wise philosopher-scientist. "
Hartman is no longer with us. What I would need then is for someone who shares his frame of mind to discuss this given a particular set of circumstances in which there are conflicting assessments of what it means to put people first, things second and dogmatic ideas last.
In other words, without their own moral and political value judgments becoming dogmatic in turn. After all, to propose a “hierarchy of value” would certainly seem to suggest [to me] going in that direction. Imagine, for example, the hierarchies proposed by a libertarian and a socialist. Or a hedonist and an ascetic.
That is why, as a moral nihilist, I still subscribe to moderation, negotiation and compromise as, for all practical purposes, the best of all possible world. Only, even here, “I” am no less fractured and fragmented. Pulled ambivalently in conflicting directions down in my “hole”.
The embodiment of this intellectual contraption:
“If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.”
And here all I can do is to take these words out into the world and describe how they are implicated in my own day to day interactions with others.