Over and over and over again, I note the inherent dangers embedded in non-objectivism. For example, those moral nihilists who are able to rationalize slavery or child labor or sweat shops…or a world in which a teeny tiny percentage of gazillionaires own more wealth and exercise more power than 90% of all the rest of us combined.
Or those sociopaths who don’t give a fat fuck about the philosophical parameters of ethics, but are content simply to rape and murder and inflict mayhem on anyone who gets in the way of their own perceived selfish gratification.
All I can do is to suggest that, for all practical purposes in a No God world, perhaps the best of all possible worlds revolves around the extent to which, in any given context, moderation, negotiation and compromise are an option.
I Know! Why don’t phoneutria and Sauwelios start a new thread. A thread where they discuss abortion or Marxism. Or some other moral and political conflagration “in the news”.
They can discuss it in the manner in which the thread might become a template for all others who wish to explore what, philosophically, something really is.
I would suggest that objectivism is the better option … the more effective option. And not just when dealing with extreme behaviors. It’s also better to be decisive and not to wobble in ordinary situations.
It reduces the problems of paralysis-by-analysis and leadership-by-committee.
What ZN doesn’t realize is that iambiguous has already achieved this level. His rhetoric is obviously insincere and he has gone the full circle back to accepting his communistic bias.
The argument goes something like this. Can we know? We can’t know. So since we can’t know, we might as well assume my communist bias, which checks all my feelings boxes (including the self-righteousness of altruistic morality) and act with more consequence on it than if it actually were real. After all, why would what is real need defending?
The reason iambiguous places his writings before this stage, is that he is at war, and all warfare is the art of deception.
I don’t get it. I made a complete and utter fool out of you over on the corner. On your own turf! You got so pissed off at me you were reduced down to [as with phoneutria and others] “foeing” me.
Yet here you pop up on my corner and post intellectual drivel of this sort. Stooge stuff.
I mean, come on, really, if you are foolish enough to believe that I am still a Communist, well, that makes you even dumber than I thought. That’s Kidstuff my friend.
So pick a context and show that moderation, negotiation and compromise are the preferable way to handle it.
How about health care in the USA. Moderation, negotiation and compromise has produced the patchwork mess that you have. Universal health care paid by taxation would be a benefit to the entire population. You just need some objectivists to ram it through.
Yeah, health care in America is the classic example of political and legal agendas that revolve around moderation, negotiation and compromise. If, on the other hand, libertarians and Ayn Rand objectivists had all the power, everything would revolve around the market…supply and demand, survival of the fittest.
But: If, on the other other hand, socialists were in power, everything would revolve around the state, the government.
The left wing and the right wing objectivists in other words.
The same with things like abortion, capital punishment and gun laws. Neither might makes right nor right makes might prevails. Something in the messy middle revolving around democracy and the rule of law does instead.
Though always within the context of the crony capitalist political economy.
In other words, through elections, people are put in power who advocate as both liberals and conservatives. So the government is very much involved in “socializing” some aspects of health care but nothing at all like the programs that exist in every other modern industrial nation.
Look, I’m the very first to admit that she is both extremely bright and an exceptionally talented artist. But I’m only interested in her insofar as she addresses the philosophical issue – in a philosophy forum – that still most obsesses me: “I” at the existential juncture of identity, value judgments and political economy.
The part of any particular individual’s “self” that acquires certain moral and political convictions…and then runs them by the points I raise in my signature threads.
In particular runs them by this:
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
And is then willing to discuss with me why they either believe or do not believe it is applicable to them…given a particular set of circumstances involving conflicting goods that most here will be familiar with.
Again, you don’t show that moderation, negotiation and compromise are the preferred approach to health care.
Nor do you show the inherent dangers in an objectivist approach to health care. Sure you might get worse health care but you could also get better health care. It depends on the specifics of the objectivists rather than a failing of objectivism/objectivists in general.
All these years going back and forth and you still actually believe that I am making an attempt here to “show” this.
Now concentrate…
My whole point has always been that my own preference here is no less an existential contraption rooted subjectively in dasein derived from the actual experiences in my life…coupled with all of the particular information, knowledge and ideas I came across. Philosophical or otherwise. Meaning this: that had my experiences been very, very different and had I come across other, very, very different knowledge, information and ideas, I might be attempting instead to argue that my own political convictions about healthcare reflect that which all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to accept themselves.
You really don’t grasp this, do you?!!
Whenever I use a word like “inherent”, given my understanding of human interactions pertaining to conflicting moral and political value judgments encompassed in my signature threads, I do not exclude myself from the components of my own moral philosophy!
I’m not arguing that because I use a particular word to mean a particular thing, others are obligated to use the same word to mean the same thing. Well, other than regarding the overwhelming preponderance of interactions in the either/or world.
And ever and always I come back to the part where in a world awash in contingency, chance and change, new experiences, new relationships and new ideas might result in me thinking something altogether different from what I think now. And I know this in part because of all the many times in the past it has already happened to me.
But: What disturbs the objectivists is when I suggest that this is applicable to them to. Only they may or may not come to find their own sense of identity actually fractured and fragmented.
I mean, look at you. When we first starting exchanging posts, I don’t recall you reaching the point where you would agree with me that human existence is essentially meaningless. But then on one post a few months ago you said you did agree.
And how can thinking this not be a profoundly new way to think about your own existence?
But do you grasp that when you write about the dangers of objectivism, people interpret that as identifying a problem and having a solution in mind or seeking a solution.
Then when they try to discuss it with you, you are not interested in their take on the problem and their solutions.
You just restate your interests and your contraptions.
People find that confusing and frustrating.
That’s what I just did in this thread. I expressed an interest in discussing whether compromise produces a better heath care than some objectivist “steamroller”.
But you don’t tune into my interests at all or KT’s or Felix’s or Zinnat’s or Phon’s or anyone’s.
You’re completely obsessed with yourself. Everyone here is just entertainment and audience for you.
Good one, but not true. You’re taking that remark out of context—the context I’d been building from my very first post in this thread. You may want to check my use of the word “embrace”. People do not usually distinguish themselves from their value judgments; they feel that they are making those judgments, whereas I feel those judgments arise and then freely embrace them.
Anyway, I will now stop using the format of block quotes within block quotes, at least for a bit. I will now provide you with a crucial step in what you asked for, going back and tracing the path that led me into what I call perfect nihilism. That is, I won’t just be doing so introspectively. Thus here are some things I wrote mid October 2019:
If you grasped it even a little bit you wouldn’t be arguing that “you don’t show that moderation, negotiation and compromise are the preferred approach to health care.”
Unless by “show” you mean something other than what I think you mean.
Well, if they’d bring intellectual contraptions like this down to earth and explore objectivism pertinent to a situation we are all familiar with, we could explore their interpretation more definitively.
Note to others:
Let’s take this to a new thread. Let’s explore the potential dangers embedded in both objectivism and subjectivism. In regard to a specific context. Then as the exchange unfolds you can note specifically what you think he means here. You can explain why you find my arguments “confusing and frustrating”
Yes, and I noted how, in America, we have the inputs of both. But how are the arguments embedded in “better” not going to be embodied in conflicting subjective perspectives rooted in dasein? How are yours not? And how might philosophers transcend that and propose an argument more in sync with, say, “right makes might”?
Again, let’s start a new thread and you [or they] can point specifically to my failure here.
I wouldn’t say that’s altogether untrue, but given the gap between what I think motivates me and all that I would need to know in order to be more certain, I’m back to this:
He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles
Something about it always seems to grab me. There is also another very long passage in the Magus – at Nicholas Urfe’s “trial” – that comes even closer. But it’s just too long type out here.
I’m saying “that’s not how the sandbox game that I want to play is supposed to be played. You’re not playing the game. You’re still playing the ‘dasein game’. We already played the ‘dasein game’. We always play the ‘dasein game’.”
You invite people to start a new thread. But every new thread is exactly like the old thread.
There is no point in starting any new threads.
They don’t necessarily find your arguments confusing and frustrating. They find your behavior confusing and frustrating.
You invite them to a discussion and then you proceed to ignore and negate everything that they say. (I’m basing this on my experience and comments that posters have made after having interacted with you.)
Who says that it’s not “rooted in dasein”?
Everything is “rooted in dasein”. The word is so broad and abstract that it covers everything.
Look, if I’m interested in “how ought I live?”, then saying that the question and answer is “rooted in dasein” doesn’t add anything useful for me.
It doesn’t move me forward/backward/sideways.
The same is true for health care. All solutions are “rooted in dasein”. One still needs to choose and act. One is constantly choosing and acting. It’s unavoidable.
It’d be a pretty poor argument. But from what you write here, among other things, it’s clear that if anyone’s at war, it’s him. And then applying what he said to himself means that he’s the one with the agenda.
