thanks meno…
The question remains… where are we going to find
our meaning or purpose or goal in life?
do we find it in religion? do we find it in the values of
the state? do we find meaning in Art or aesthetics?
do we find meaning/goal in hedonism? or in stoicism?
or in some other ism or ideology like communism or
capitalism or catholicism, or Buddhism?
where will we find our meaning, our purpose in existence…
where will we find our goal in life?
or perhaps we find our meaning/purpose in the nihilism, the negation of
man in our modern age?
perhaps we might find our meaning/purpose in life by the values
we live by and maintain in our lives…
so that means we don’t just study or think about our values…
no, we actually live our lives based on our values…
couldn’t that be our meaning or purpose in life?
to have values as our way of life…
so, as the Christian is supposed, supposed to live their lives
by Christian values…actually live their lives by the values
and decrees of god…
we live our lives by the values we ourselves have found for ourselves…
this is actually the point of being autonomous…
create our own values and then live by those values…
live our life by the values we have created for ourselves…
that is exactly what being autonomous means…
so let us say, we choose freedom as our value that we have created
and now live our lives by?
so, we engage in freedom as the value we live our life by…
it isn’t speculation nor is it something we study and then forget while
we live our lives…no… a thousand times, no…
how do we determine what values should we live our life by?
are these values individual values? or are these values collective values,
values that everyone must engage in?
can we have individual values which we alone can engage in and still
have collective values that we all live by?
how do we have morality when we are individually autonomous?
when morality is about our collective being, our collective actions or
behavior…
seeking that by which we can live our life by isn’t easy…
how do we select how, by what values we are to live our life by?
individually or collectively?
do we select the declaration of independence as our guide of
actions, the way to live our life’s or do we select the communist
manifesto as our guide for the way we live our life?
do we select anarchism or do we select democracy or do
we select some other political systems such as dictatorship?
or do we select some economic system such as Marxism or
capitalism or even the hunter-gatherer economic system…
as the values we live by?
do we use instinct which means we select that which matches
our own feelings or emotional understanding of what it means of
being human?
or are we to choose our values via rationality or logic?
so, who, what, when, where, why and how becomes the question
of why or why we don’t pick any given, specific value system or
the values themselves?
so many possibilities… and that is kinda the point… we must seek out
our possibilities and explore all of them… even if they are on the icky side…
and yes, icky is the technical term for it…
we can’t be afraid to explore that which is not existence, human existence
at our best… sometimes humans are greedy and full of lust and hate and violence,
that is part of the human experience and the only way we are going to overcome that
is by acknowledging our less glories side of human existence…
we have to understand human existence in both the good and in the
evil side of what is possible for us…
why did ordinary people agree to work with and indeed operate the
Nazi’s death chambers? were they inherently evil? or were they
ordinary people who convinced themselves that what they did wasn’t
really evil but simple kindness? we know, know that by rationalizations,
people can convince themselves of anything, including that operating
a death chamber wasn’t really evil…
what made the holocaust possible?
what in the mind and hearts of human beings allowed themselves
to be part of Nazi evil?
and clearly millions of people became involved in it…
so why?
so, not only must we be able to explain the good in human beings,
but we must be able to explain evil at the same time…
and do we find that in religion or in the political or in the values or
in the aesthetics of existence?
if we can find the source of evil as well as the source of good, we
might find a way to overcome evil and even a way to overcome good?
so we not only need to find out our meaning and purpose but
we need to find out why evil is a possible choice for human beings?
what allows us to be good as well as evil?
so, meaning and purpose and goal and finding out what makes us
good as well as evil… dam, we have a whole to find out about
what is, or what makes us human… what does it mean to be human?
does being human mean we are good or that we are evil or are we something
else altogether?
Kropotkin