after several brutal days of work, I’m finally back……
I still have two more days of shit ahead of me… but what can you do?
as I am making this up as I go along, hang with me……
the question, perhaps the ultimate political and social question
is, what is the relationship between the individual and the society/state?
we see clowns walking around today without their mask, saying their
“rights” outweigh my right to being protected from the virus………
what height of stupidity are they reaching for?
but this brings to mind this question of the relationship between
the individual and the society/state?
perhaps we should start even more basic. Perhaps we should start
with the principles of philosophy…
for example, the Greeks thought the goal of life was to reach
“Arete”… which is excellence… everyone should attempt to
reach their excellence… and this was the driving goal of Greek
society for centuries…
The Chinese thought the goal was the “Dao” which is sometimes
thought of as a path, a guide, conduct or direction…
Follow the path of Dao and that lead to success, both individually
and collectively…Dao was thought of as an ethical/moral way……
the way to behave in society…
you hear another Chinese thought, which is harmony…
how do we achieve harmony, both as an individual and collectively…
we have another Chinese word, Ren… which can be translated as
humanity or benevolence…which is the Confucian virtue denoting the
good quality of a virtuous human when being altruistic. Ren can be thought
of as a normal adult’s protective feeling for children……
it is considered one of the means for a “good” king or leader to rule…
to achieve Ren, is the goal of a moral leader……
now each of these thoughts are not specific actions by themselves…
they are consider ideals or concepts in which people attempt to reach
to become moral people……
Perhaps we could rethink ethics and morality into terms similar
to Ren or harmony or arete or the Dao?
dinner is served, will write later…
and an excellent dinner it was…
as noted in an earlier post: there is no such thing as individual ethics,
ethics can only exists within the confines of a group, city, polis, family,
state or civilization…ethics… morality is based on a collective basis,
not an individual basis…
so in regards to ethics/morality, what is the relationship between
the individual and the society/state?
and another question: what is of greater value? the individual
engagement with their soul or the laws and institutions that we
know quite well here in America and the western world?
if one makes the argument that the society is ill and sick, what
are possible cures, more laws, more legislation, stricter adherence
to the legal and bureaucracies of the state or more engagement
with getting people to uphold the laws themselves?
and that is done by getting people to take the path of harmony
or Dao or Arete or Ren……….
you also have this question of science, of entropy…
everything is about entropy… which is the natural decay
everything piece of matter within the universe… everything
is in process and that process is going from order to disorder…
the final stage of entropy in a human being is by so much
disorder occurs that the body no longer functions and death occurs…
every question of morality and ethics must take into account
entropy and the movement, path of matter to go into decay/disorder…
as harmony and Dao and Ren bring energy into people and institutions,
the opposite of entropy… so, we can see how if we follow
a method, a path such as harmony or Dao, we can achieve
balance and keeping the equation equal…as I have argued for…
and this balance/harmony allows for the path of humans and
institutions and all things human, kept into balance which means
entropy cannot enter the equation…
the inflow of energy must equal the outflow of energy…….
keeping to the path or methods of the Chinese or the Greeks, Arete,
we can keep the equation equal, energy = loss of energy… the two must balance…
and I have defined equality as justice… the two are equal…
to have justice, we must treat everyone as equal………
think of money as energy… we must hold money in balance as we do
with energy…… to hold the equation…
too much money on one side of the equation sends the equation out of balance…
we have income inequality and that sends the balance of our equation out of control…
the equation of existence requires that we have just as much coming in as we
have going out… this is true of the body, this is true of justice, this is true
entropy and disorder, to hold balance means we must have equality of
going in as we do going out…………
being poor in America means you have less coming in then going out…
and that imbalance, disrupts and disturbs people…
if some/few are super wealthy, then most people are without wealth…
there is only so much wealth to go around……
the equation is off and by being off, we have entropy… more energy
going out then coming in…….
and all of this, is one, this is not a few separate thoughts,
but one thought about several different aspects of the same thing…
ethics, morality, income inequality, justice, entropy, the equations of life,
energy, matter, the way, Arete, Dao, they are not distinct and
separate entities… they are different aspects of the same idea…
human existence is a path, a journey… but where are we going to?
what is our destination?
we can have the same destination and still have different ways of
achieving those goals… some take their time when traveling
and some speed march when traveling and some take different approaches…
the path/journey is find our own path to the collective goal we have…….
I can bring in more energy into society and thus fight entropy…
I can find my own journey into bringing energy into the systems
we have…we don’t have to have the exact same method of bringing
energy into the system thus equalizing it… keeping the equation…
that is the path… how do we prevent entropy death of our society/ state/
civilization? many different possibilities exists… and we can mix and match
our findings…
ethics and morality is just another path, method of keeping energy into
the system… preventing entropy…
so in the end, we find our ultimate goal… preventing entropy from
destroying our society/state/ civilization. that is the goal…
how do we achieve it?
Kropotkin