[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1BDHh6I_vw[/youtube]
On Dasein
Since this was posted in the philosophy forum, I guess we will have to take it seriously.
Okay…
Here is the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein [small d]:
[b][i]a man amidst mankind…
That is the paradox, right? I am an individual…a man; yet, in turn, I am but one of 6,500,000,000 additional men and women that constitutes what is commonly called “mankind”. So, in what sense can I, as an individual, grasp my identity as separate and distinct from mankind? How do I make intelligent distinctions between my personal, psychological “self” [the me “I” know intimately from day to day], my persona [the me “I” project – often as a chameleon – in conflicting interactions with others], and my historical and ethnological self as a white male who happened adventiously to be born and raised to view reality from the perpective of a 20th century United States citizen?
How does all of this coalesce into who I think I am? And how does this description contrast with how others grasp who they think I am? Is there a way to derive an objective rendering of my true self? Can I know objectively who I am?
No, I don’t think so.
Identity is ever constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed over the years by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of variables—some of which we had/have no choice/control regarding. We really are “thrown” into a fortuitous smorgasbord of demographic factors at birth and then molded and manipulated as children into whatever configuration of “reality” suits the cultural [and political] institutions of our time.
On the other hand:
In my view, one crucial difference between people is the extent to which they become more or less self-conscious of this. Why? Because, obviously, to the extent that they do, they can attempt to deconstruct the past and then reconstruct the future into one of their own more autonomous making.
But then what does this really mean? That is the question that has always fascinated me the most. Once I become cognizant of how profoundly problematic my “self” is, what can “I” do about it? And what are the philosophical implications of acknowledging that identity is, by and large, an existential contraption that is always subject to change without notice? What can we “anchor” our identity to so as to make this prefabricated…fabricated…refabricated world seem less vertiginous? And, thus, more certain.
Is it any wonder that so many invent foundationalist anchors like Gods and Reason and Truth? Scriptures from one vantage point or another. Anything to keep from acknowledging just how contingent, precarious, uncertain and ultimately meaningless our lives really are.
Or, of course, is that just my foundation?[/i][/b]
So, sure, let’s explore the extent to which the video above either does or does not concur with the points I raise.
Maybe it’s better to think of what you are, rather than who you are. In that context the words “true self” don’t really mean much.
I don’t get what the paradox is? it doesn’t make any difference how many other people there are, or how different/similar they are.
Iamb, the video says something about being to oneself, Dasein. Responsibility is contingent to environment. Self is a fiction, but a valuing can pull off that fiction and become a being. For that it needs an environment that is an extension of what it.
This is why universal morals are uncertain like all non-local phenomena.
So Im wondering if doesnt address what you’re all about.
But Pezer says that the lesson is that regardless of anything to do with your perspective on your environment, your environment exists and it changes, and will be continue to be there.
I dont think that contradicts what I said but he does.
Once you understand consciousness and the self at the philosophical level, even if only “implicitly”, all of this “I am contingent and can never know who I really am” malaise and nonsensical teenage angsty despair is revealed for what it really is— simply a lack of a philosophical center to one’s ideas.
Reason is always already grounded in truth, this is at bottom what “reason” even means. The fact that reason can make mistakes, is partial, most people don’t value it highly and so on, is not at all a critique against the fundamental fact of what reason itself is, and what it means to be a reasoning being in the existential subjectivity sense.
Authenticity so called is about natural orientation to truth, and this really means that we already know something without knowing it: we know that the whole angsty cynical malaise thing of bad existentialism is nonsensical and absurdly unrealistic. The exceptions only always justify the rule states. But the bad philosophers never understand this because they are too busy gleefully undermining their own philosophizing self for the sake of some pathologically rooted euphoria of self, whereas a “normal” non-philosophical person, despite being trapped in so many delusions and illusions and also possessing pathologies, at least never needs to violate this most basic relationship which alway constituted the self in the first place. The very fact that non-philosophers do not understand themselves is what protect themselves from cynically undermining and attempting to destroy themselves in the way that for example Iambiguous is doing.
There would seem to be aspects of my existence that are in fact in sync with reality objectively.
I am sitting here in my recliner at this particular point in time at this particular place in space typing these particular words on this particular computer.
And any number of additional facts about my life can be noted. Again, here I am as solid as you are.
It is only when we begin to judge the behaviors of others that we become entangled in the manner in which I construe the meaning of “I” as dasein above.
Only when I ask the question, “how ought I to live?” do I become entangled in my dilemma.
Otherwise, I am basically the same as everyone else: embedded in a particular set of facts about my life that I either do or do not have the option to change.
But change for the better?
In some ways this can be measured, sure, but in other ways it becomes embodied [in a profoundly problematic manner] in personal [subjective] opinions and in political prejudices.
I really do not understand what you [or he] are trying to convey here regarding the manner in which I construe the meaning of “dasein” out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view.
In any number of concrete ways the manner in which we think about our “selves” is in sync with the world as it almost certainly is. And in that respect I am not a “fiction” at all. But as soon as I set about “valuing” some things and not others, I become entangled in the dilemma that is rooted in the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of dasein above.
But always dasein with a small “d”. To differentiate it from Martin Heidegger’s considerably more obtuse “epistemological” rendition. From Heidegger I came to fixate on the idea of “I” being “thrown” adventitiously into a particular world.
Da sein. Da “there”, sein “being”. Being there.
And because it is thrown there and not here, then and not now, how does that impact on the manner in which we do come to see our “self” out in this particular world?
And if others claim not to be so entangled in my dilemma then I am interested in exploring how they have come to understand the choices that they make when what they have come to value precipitates conflicts with others.
Truly, if that part is of little or no interest to someone, then they should move on to others.
Note to others:
Please translate this into a narrative that I am least likely to make no sense of. 
You value oxygen positively, and feces negatively. This is not confusing at all. It is permanent, stable, it defines a couple of crucial limits to what you are. It is part of what defines you.
Dasein is a German noun, and all German nouns are capitalized.
Yes. That is what it means. There-being. So not just ‘being’ but being in a determinate place.
That is what it is all about.
Now call to mind Oxygen.
It is a value, that designates a place, a “there”. In this case, the Earths atmosphere.
It is very simple. I just doubted all of my premises until, at 34, I discovered a way of making sense of value contradictions. Since then, I am able to regard my own values as, simply, what makes me, defines me, and I understand that the fact that I have values and other organisms have others, is precisely what makes the world turn; what makes it possible for anything to exist.
If one values the world, one must also value value-conflicts, as this is what the world is ‘made of’ - time unfolds as a function of the differences between tendencies, wills, valuings, perspectives, directions, powers, measures, paradigms, reference frames, standards, things, entities, objects, subjects --; beings.
In my instinctive standards I am essentially Parmenidean, like Nietzsche.
My premise is pure skeptic empiricism, I dont take words to define contexts, but contexts to define words; so let me give you a Parmenidean context.
The world is evidently necessary, and necessity is good. For If one uses the word good at all, it would be insane to understand good as anything other than necessary.
From the certainty that the worlds existence is good, it follows that value conflicts are good.
This is not the end-all to VO. The word is the end-all to it and the world has no end. But it is a tangent you can follow into the curve I’m riding.
You’re not wrong. Essentially all clarity comes in the form of a question. It’s just that your question can be developed much deeper.
Could one not argue that “better”, in the sense of hypotheticals, therefore entails that necessity can be improved upon? 
Valuing oxygen has considerably less to do with the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein above. To value oxygen is to value life itself. Without it we die.
But suppose someone places a bag over her head in order to prevent oxygen from reaching her lungs. She chooses this method to commit suicide.
That’s the part that revolves considerably more around my understanding of dasein here. Why did she choose to do this? Is this something that she ought not to have done?
And who knows how many men and women might possibly value shit in a way that most of us do not. And how could that not be the embodiment of dasein?
Okay, cite a few examples of this. Note particular moral and political values that you now subscribe to. Note how you react to others you come into contact with who embrace conflicting or opposite values.
My own argument is that whatever values you embody here and now they are derived largely from the life that you have lived, the experiences that you have had. And that had this life and those experiences been considerably different, you would likely have different values. And that given the manner in which human interactions are awash in contingency, chance and change, you are likely to come upon new experiences, relationships, sources of information/knowledge etc., that precipitate still more shifts in your perspective.
That, finally, there does not appear to be a way for philosophers to transcend this in concocting – using the tools at their disposal – a moral or political narrative/agenda that is argued to be the obligation of all rational men and women to embrace and to embody.
Iamb - my personal answer:
Values are per definition not hypothetical.
On the other hand, “values per definition” are, well, anything that you define them to be.
And, provided they stay that way [“in your head”], they remain that way.
Consequently, if I ask you “what on earth does that mean?” and you choose not to go there, all that remains is what you have managed to convince yourself that “by definition” values are.
Trust me: I get that part.
I don’t, but anyway, what about what I wrote?
Nooo… You most certainly do not.
You can tell Iambig “what on earth” it means in terms of actual human behavior and he will still insist that you are just making up a definition which could JUST AS EASILY been different. “What about the narcissist’s definition? Who can say that there is anything wrong with a narcissist’s thinking?”
And on and on it goes …
The final answer is the one you give when you walk away from a discussion with Iambig. There is no other final answer.
More important than any answers, is the first question.
It’s impossible to even get to that point.
I feel like I am the one capable of defeating Iambig.