''all hail'' is a theme for existence

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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People want to seek out universals, one size fits all mentality…
and yet, when push comes to shove, they in fact celebrate
particulars within those universals…

All hail the tribe… this was the call back in the day before
cities and nations and thoughts were of the one, not the many…
the call was tribe first…
and then when cities were founded, the cry was ‘‘all hail the city’’
and at this step we moved from a small social unit to a larger
social unit… for cities are a bigger step than tribes…
and a little bit closer to being universal…

and then came the ‘‘all hail the city/state’’ as in Athens…
again, a little bit bigger social unit than the city… a little
bit closer to being a universal… but clearly not being one…

Then came the ‘‘all hail the nation’’… and it was one step closer
to being a universal… and a thousand years of the dark ages, and
we, in the western Europe anyway, said, ‘‘all hail the church’’
and members of the church was one… and it was one step closer
to becoming a universal…For that is what Catholic means,
universal… but the ‘‘universal’’ church overreached…
and tried to include everyone, but not peacefully, it used violent
methods, to insure obedience to the church… violence in keeping
people in line never works for long… eventually, people no longer
choses to belong to a church that demands complete obedience…

and then the call returned to ‘‘all hail the nation’’ and the rise of
nations began anew… but that call wasn’t universal because it
separated out people into being French, or German or English…
and the call became ‘‘all hail being French’’ or ‘‘all hail being German’’
but that too isn’t universal… it is part of being a separate nation,
which is not universal…In America, until the Civil War, it was
common to identify one self from what part of the country you came from,
thus it was ‘‘all hail the south’’ or all hail us Yankees’‘…
which too is not universal… it is partial… people from different
parts of the nation, and who identify themselves as ‘‘Southerners’’
or ""Northerners’’ now identified themselves as American’s…
again, ‘‘all hail America’’ which is a larger area of identification
than the tribe or city or area… but it is not a universal…
‘‘all hail America’’ is still local, partial, some of the people,
not all people…

But there are other factors that are involved… ''All hail the Whites""
which is also not a universal, but a partial, and ‘‘all hail Christians’’
is not a universal… it too is partial…

and at every step of human existence, since the time of tribes, the
‘‘all hail’’ has included ever larger and larger areas… but it is still
incomplete, partial, lacking and fragmentary… So, how do we go
from partial, incomplete to becoming universal?

by actually striving for a universal that does actually include us,
all of us… and that universal is this ‘‘all hail human beings’’ at this
point we are no longer engaged in partials, fragments.. we have in fact,
become inclusive of all human beings, and this inclusion is universal…
for it includes all human beings… you want a universal, that is it…
and until we include everyone, we are still dealing with partials,
fragments, individuals, specifics…

if the goal is to seek out the universal, the place to begin is
seeking out what is actually universal in all of us… and that answer
is us… we combine to become a universal… ‘‘all hail human beings’’
that is finally something universal… for it includes everyone who
is human…but it is clearly not a universal… for what is universal
is the inclusion of all life… ‘‘all hail life’’ to become universal, we
must actually include everyone… and the change will come
one we have aliens from space landing on Earth… for then,
then we can say, ‘‘all hail human beings’’ for then we have
something that is larger than us… and to be universal at that
point does require us to proclaim, ‘‘all hail life’’ including
aliens from outer space…

Now note the pattern presented here… we are going from one, to a few
to some to many and then finally all… from I, to we, to the tribe, to a city,
then to a city/state, to a nation and then to all… and any honest look
at human history will lead us to this understanding of human beings,
we have grown socially, politically, economically, philosophically,
from one to a few, to some too many to all… that is the path of
human existence… from the small to the big… that is part of the
human condition… and it is also true of us personally…

at birth, I am one, then as I grow, I become a family, then I become
part of every larger state/society… the path, we follow both
individually and collectively is remarkable the same… from one to
few, to many to all…

So, today I might say, ‘‘all hail Americans’’
but soon, we will say, ‘‘all hail human beings’’
and with the arrival of aliens, we will say, ‘‘all hail life’’ in
its many different and diverse forms… for that is the path of
being human… from the small to the large…

Kropotkin

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So, if you read your own suggestions here, how does this, if it does, change the way you will related to MAGA, for example. It’s implicit in all hail americans, but are you explicitly affected by your own idea and if so how? Note: this is not wondering if you now agree with or will vote with MAGA people and conservatives on many issues. Not at all. But does it affect how you will think of and write about them?

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Human beings are tribal and have different kinds of tribal identities or affiliations.

Trying to abolish all of them or get rid of them all is a fools errand that doesn’t respect differing human cultures.

:clown_face:

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As you may or may not remember, I have spoken
of my past where I ran both track and Cross-country…
and one aspect of that is there’s a road, and down this
road are the various runners… now some runners are
in front, and most are in the middle and then there are
those who are in the back… to every runner because of
training or natural talent, they are somewhere on this road…
Now, was I a great runner, nope, adequate at best…
I did win a few races but mostly finished mid pack…
but everyone who was running, was running in a different
place on the road… I am in a different place on the road
then you are, and others, depending, are also on the road,
some ahead some behind…

Now think of that road not just as runners, but as human beings…
we are in different places on the road, because of education or
birth or talent or even luck… I am trying to get others to think
exactly where they are on that road… those who hold to tribes as being
the answer, they are way in back on the road, those who accept
and understand, ‘‘all hail the city’’ or ‘‘all hail the nation’’
are in another spot on the road, and those who see the bigger
picture, they are further along the road then those who can only
see tribes or the city-state as the ultimate expression of being human…
it is perspective I am looking at… what is your perspective of
being human? it is my belief that those who see bigger or
have a larger viewpoint of what it means to be human, are
the ones who advance the cause of being human…
the broader picture one see’s the further along the road one is…
the humans who see humans as being more than just tribes or
city-state are the ones who are further along the road…
think of the ones we put statues of, Jesus, Socrates, Gandhi,
MLK, Goethe, they are the ones who see us as being more
than just a tribe, but they see humans as traveling down the path
of becoming… recall that Nietzsche believed in the path or road
of being is the path from being animal to becoming human,
and that is part of the path that we must think about…
what is the next step? how do I become ‘‘more’’ human?

so, how do you become? that is what it means to be human…
the growth and change within us, is the point, the objective…
life is not an answer, but a question and the question is
‘‘where am I on the road, and what will it take to move further
along the road, closer to becoming human’’

that is the question… how do I get from here to there…
and can I use the lives of those who have gone further down
the road as examples? In other words, use the life of Jesus
or MLK or Gandhi or Socrates as examples of moving further
down the road of becoming, of becoming human…

it isn’t answers that drive me, but questions…

Kropotkin

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I don’t think you answered my question, which you are free to not do, but since it was a direct reply to my post, I’ll at least note that.

I’ll try to see what you are saying and part of it seems to be a humble self-evaluation. Here being a runner is a metaphor for becoming human. Not being a super-runner would mean you still have flaws as we all do. Great.

But I see a split in your philosophy or philosophies. On the one hand you have very noble ideals where other people are not to be dehumanized, placed in us/them positions, and put outside, beyond the pale. But then I see very strong us/them tendencies in relation to certain groups, conservative ones in specific.

When you portray their positions it is often in binary terms. There is no valid reason for any of their concerns about some of the policies and practices related to trans people. There is nothing to worry about in how children are put in positions where they can decide to radically alter their own endocrine systems. Just an example. No, conservatives only hate diversity. They hate change. They want to go back in time, which must be bad.

There are the good people and the bad people.

I get that you and the rest of us are not perfect. But when I read the OP by you, it is expressing values that seem to run counter to your practice, I wonder if you notice. So, I pointed it out. Here is an opportunity to become a better runner. To look with charitable interpretation at the positions of conservatives. Perhaps there is some overlap. Perhaps what gets batched under wokism has some problematic areas. Perhaps other problems they have been pointing out are in fact problems. This doesn’t mean they are binarily right and you must capitulate. But large numbers of fellow americans - all hail america - and citizens in other countries are reacting in very diverse ways. If the way you describe and interact with them is woke good period, we know that, your concerns are wrongheaded at best and bad at core, how well does this fit with broadening all hail?

Here we are in real time, a real situation where you could learn how to mid-race shift to using your arms more for one K, to rest other parts of your body or whatever physical measures can be an analogy for becoming more human. Because including in the all hail is obviously about the tricky areas, including as fully human people where for whatever reasons it isn’t easy for you.

And let’s talk for a moment about MLK, since he has for white america become the kind of nice inclusive black activist. And someone like Malcolm X not one of the nice ones. You will rarely see white people bring mr. X up in this kind of let’s be better people type essays.

The ironic thing is they were moving towards each other’s positions in the years before they were murdered. MLK stopped thinking that whites were allies in the same way he had before. He stopped seeing the South as THE problem, when he challenged housing practices in Chicago and met hatred from whites that he felt matched the hate he faced in the South.

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”

“The Negro cannot achieve emancipation by passively waiting for the white race voluntarily to grant it to him… White America is not even prepared to admit which is at the heart of its problem—that the white majority wants to retain the upper hand.”

His speeches got angrier, more skeptical.

“The white backlash is nothing new. It is the surface expression of a deeply embedded irrationality and hostility that has lived in the white mind for centuries… Overwhelmingly America is still struggling with irresolution and contradictions. It has been sincere and even ardent in welcoming some change. But too quickly apathy and disinterest rise to the surface when the next logical steps are to be taken.”

and not just in content but in vocal tone.

And note: I am not being critical of MLK. I think his new skepticism and us/them positioning had a lot of truth in it. My point is that he gets used as a symbol of all hail inclusiveness, not as a human developing his ideas over time and certainly not as someone he, in his last three years, viewed things in a much more us/them way than he had before.

Malcolm X, on the other hand, regretted his excluding of whites as potential allies and not just a little. In fact what would likely have been extremely scary for the powers that be is the very strong chance that they could work together, as they overlapped more and more. But they were both killed. In any case, was MLK becoming less human as his sense of distance from whites increased at the end of his life?

You also mention four people as examples. I find it ironic in the extreme that there are not only religious people (Socrates is a very complicated example of this) but certainly the first three are not merely religious people, theists, but utterly and completely centered in their religions. They would see religion as utterly central to anything of value in their positions. Not they are religions and then they also have good things to add to how we related to one anotherl But that what they have to offer comes directly from their theism and relationship with God and Scripture. But you have often painted religion and belief in the numinous (which batches Socrates with the other three) as a problem, a serious problem, one that blocks becoming fully human. And yet the examples you reach for, time and again, come from that very category.

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All questions have to turn into one big question which is your question. That question becomes so overwhelmingly demanding of an answer, so important so as to take priority over everything else in life. Then once you realize that the question “how to I reach the state of being fully human” originates from the intellect where the questioner resides and finally once the questioner is determined to be an interloper trying to gain something that a smooth, peaceful, physically operating existence Is not interested in, the question fades away and burns itself out.

What remains is a fully functioning human being where the intellect is instrumental for survival purposes only.