Imagine hypothetically we could pluck 100 men and women at random from around the globe. You relate to them in great detail the experiences that you had over this period of time.
Imagine then, at their “core”, the many different reactions. Unlike you, some will fall back on their objective moralities, on their gods, on their political prejudices.
From my perspective, this so-called “core” is just an endlessly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed frame of mind – “I” – rooted in a particular lived life. And from the cradle to the grave. Except for the parts that we are all able to agree reflect what is in fact true for all mere mortals in what may or may not be a No God world.
Then we segue to a room filled with distinguished philosophers, ethicists, political scientists. They hear your story and the reactions of all the others.
What would they conclude? What could they conclude?
I was just reacting to the manner in which I construed your reaction to my search for an objective morality. As though I should just accept that there almost certainly isn’t one and move on to one or another more “pragmatic” agenda.
The context is you systematically using ‘objectivist’ as a pejorative term.
On the other hand, when I root much of the pain and suffering inflicted on “the masses” by those “show me the money” nihilists who own and operate the global economy, some will insist I am using “nihilist” here as a pejorative term.
What then can I do “for all practical purposes” but to draw certain conclusions about a world governed by either the moral objectivists or the moral nihilists?
Indeed, in the near future, the United States Supreme Court may well send the abortion wars back to the states. Or even outlaw it altogether as “unconstitutional”. The debate here will revolve around “the law”, but who is kidding who? The moral objectivists on the right see abortion as killing babies. The moral objectivists on the left see abortion as the right of women to choose.
So, when does the discussion and debate here become tangled up in alleged “pejoratives”?
If you simply were seeking to find an objectivist stance you felt was rational and demonstrable, I would not have the same reaction. But here you often present objectivists in a negative light. You see them as tending to use means you think are bad, (might makes right for example) In a context OF YOUR PRESENTING where what you seek you also in parallel mock, critique and present as negative, YUP, I wonder what you are up to.
For “I” out in the is/not world, both means and ends are deemed by me to be existential contraptions. And the manner in which “I” or “you” argue our points here does not make that go away. At least not for me.
And the bottom line [for me] is that if someone is able to convince me that morality can be grasped objectively [perhaps even universally], I’m up out of my hole. And then [on this thread] someone may in turn convince me that to the extent I embody this morality in my interactions with others, I will be judged favorably by God.
Instead, what is going on here [from my frame of mind] is you hearing me out and then making certain assumptions yourself about my motivation and intention.
Meanwhile I am more than willing to concede that even my own assessment here can never really be more than just an existential contraption that I have come to believe here and now “in my head”.
In relationship to what is “really true” here what are the odds that either one of us have come even close to an actual ontological or teleological assessment?
This is not some objectivist coming and telling you what you should be doing, this is me reacting to what you yourself write.
I couldn’t have put it better myself. We just react differently to what that means. Something, however, that makes perfect sense to me.
And beyond that, remember: there is always the possibility you will be convinced but IN ERROR. The current ‘you’ for some reason is seeking to join a club you judge negatively - while acknowledging you cannot be sure they are a problem - AND consider it possible that you might be convinced to join some objectivist club on fallible grounds. I don’t get why the current ‘you’, GIVEN YOUR CURRENT BELIEFS, heads in that direction and takes that risk.
So, how close to or far away from psycho-babble is this? You may well be considerably closer to the whole truth here than I am. But that doesn’t make the hole that “I” am in go away. Nothing substantive really changes for me given my reaction to all the shit “in the news” that yanks me ambivalently in different directions. All I know is that once my reactions were grounded in the “real me” in sync with the right way to think and to feel and to behave. And that was a great source of comfort and consolation.
And now that’s all gone. It’s just that this seems to bother me in a way that it no longer bothers you. Why? Well, that’s what we’re both groping here to understand.
Only, from my frame of mind, the “answer” is buried [perhaps inextricably] in dasein. In all of those countless experiences that I have had from the cradle to now that predisposed me to think this instead of that.
But: What IN FACT is true?
But one thing that is not happening is me saying you SHOULD react the way I do. Given how you view objectivists, however, I find the way you react really weird.
Weird in relationship to what other point of view? I was once an objectivist. It felt good. I’m not now. Except to those who insist that I am – at least to the extent I won’t change my mind and see things more the way they do.
Things here are weird only to the extent that a frame of mind can be concocted which is able to be demonstrated as not weird.
It’s you who keeps suggesting that I rank the narratives others here as either better or worse than mine.
Well, if you use objectivists as a perjorative term, it is implicit ranking. If you think moderation and compromise are the better means, then you are ranking.
Yes, you are not certain. You rank, but you are not certain about the ranking. But you rank.
As long as one chooses to interact with others, wants and needs will come into conflict. When on earth have they not? Given this, human communities have no choice but to rank behaviors. To assign rewards and punishments to particular sets of behaviors. That is simply the human condition.
Then it’s just a matter of being or not being down in the hole with me when it comes to be your turn to rank.
No, “in the moment” what works best for me is this capacity I have for sinking down into one or another “distraction”. “I” become wholly engaged in doing something – listening to music, watching a movie, doing anacrostics – that takes me away from a fractured self.
But given how certain I once felt that an objective morality – re God or Reason – was within reach, there’s no way I can make that part of “me” just “go away”. Psychologically, it’s locked inside my head. A true existential contraption. So, sure, why not go looking for it again? Really, what do I have to lose here compared to [however remote the chance of success] what I have to gain?
Well, from what I get here you have two activities: 1) distraction activities alone 2) seeking objective morals in your contact with others.
What you may or may not be losing would be what is gained by relating to others in a more diverse way, under both categories 1 and 2. And also what can be gained from activities that are not merely distractions, but where you have, in addition, goals.
I am not suggestion you should try these things, just wanting to make it clear, given the next statement, that your sense this is a no brainer may simply be an existential contraption based on poor induction and generalizations created by past experience and is of little relevance to others, even other nihilists - since those I know do not limit themselves to those two activities and do not present themselves or seem to me as fractured as you present yourself and as you seem. It may not even be a reasonable conclusion for you. But, again, let me stress, I have no idea what you need or could possibly hear from another human even if I did know what you needed. But when you say…
I react to this as yet another “general description” of human interactions. We would need to focus the beam on a particular context in which descriptively we noted that which we thought to be “poor induction”. We would need to exchange “experiences” in order gauge the extent to which another may or may not be able to grapple intelligently and insightfully with our own.
Having as the two primary activities distraction and seeking objective morals is not a no brainer choice. It seems like there are many other choices to fit many different individual nihilists.
Clearly, that which is deemed to be a no brainer for this nihilist may well not make much sense to another one. At least not necessarily. After all, nihilists are no less embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein.
And so much here revolves around perceived options. Not to mention actual ones.