I am having trouble with finding answers to the questions of life.
I see what has failed in our lives, both personally and within society and
civilization. The answers that has sufficed in the past have failed today and we are
paying the price for that failure. Religions have failed for a variety of reasons,
most religions are invested in the personal salvation of humans whereas the larger question
of society and civilization is ignored. Religions focused on the small and we need both small answers
and large answers. Ideologies have failed because for the most part they are ill-equipped to answer
the pressing problems of today. The ideologies of failure include the American dream, the Monroe doctrine,
the expansion of the west, you can become whoever you want, Stalinism and Leninism, capitalism. Come to think
it, virtually every single ISM has failed for a wide variety of reasons. A lot of their failure comes from the fact that
people don’t believe in them anymore. So what do we replace them with if we decide to replace them. Nietzsche
was the first modern philosophy to try to address the problem which is how do we live without religion and god.
Without those rules, what rules do we have to base our lives on? The question for Nietzsche was about morality, but it is
far bigger for me because it is not just about morality or our individual lives but the larger question of community and society
and civilization. We need society as much as it needs us for as the Greeks taught us, we only become truly human within
a society, not individually by ourselves. As I search the various possibilities such as politics, atheism, economics,
personal and collectively, I don’t see any answers, I see failures. I see myself as being like John the Baptist, noting the
failure of society but not being the bearer of any type of answer. The modern world has failed but what to replace it with is the
real question, the real meaning of life. WE have failed and now the only possibility is to find a replacement.
Jesus answered this question during the last years of the Greco-Roman empire and this carried us for over a thousand years
until we could find a replacement. I somehow understand part of our failure is due to our being unable to adapt
because of our reliance on fixed ideologies that don’t keep up with changing times. This failure must be addressed
in the next answers. The ability to adapt and change as the conditions require, instead of being boxed in with
ideologies that cannot adapt, like Stalinism and capitalism and even democracy as it is right now.
The solutions are not present right now to me. I wish I see my way clear to some answers of the new path and if we
fail to find a new path the modern world is doomed. I see another thousand years of the middle ages in our future if we
fail. I seek less an answer here as much as trying to see my way clear to an answer that will save the modern world.
All of the answers have been spoken, just waiting to be heard.
On the present course, there isn’t going to be any thousand years for humanity, “The Sixth Extinction”. But changing the momentum of a train heading full speed down hill to a cliff, might take more time than humanity has. It takes momentum to alter momentum. Finding the direction to change toward (“finding the answer”) is easy (already done). Seeing it and sticking with it such as to ensure sufficient momentum is the serious challenge. The blind do not see nor have faith in what they cannot clearly see.
James S Saint: All of the answers have been spoken, just waiting to be heard.
K: as I see it all the spoken answers are already failures. They have been heard and have failed.
I am trying to see myself clear of an answer that has not failed and have failed in that.
James: On the present course, there isn’t going to be any thousand years for humanity, “The Sixth Extinction”. But changing the momentum of a train heading full speed down hill to a cliff, might take more time than humanity has. It takes momentum to alter momentum. Finding the direction to change toward (“finding the answer”) is easy (already done). Seeing it and sticking with it such as to ensure sufficient momentum is the serious challenge. The blind do not see nor have faith in what they cannot clearly see. "
K: I don’t at this moment see the end of humanity although I must admit I wouldn’t be surprised at it. I see
the whole of human history as being cycles of up and down and soon we shall be on the downward cycle but
how to prevent that downward cycle is the question. You are correct in this question of momentum but the right answer
is not present at this time. One can easily see the dinosaurs hard at work trying to maintain a dying world, just think conservatives. The blind are blind because they cannot see, not because they have or don’t have faith. I am trying to
find a vision of the future that they can see and understand and follow. I will almost certainly fail but I must try if for no
other reason then to give hope to others so that they may begin their search answers. What will lie ahead will be terrible
and many millions if not billions will die, but the answers are there, not found but waiting to be formulated. Not old wine in
old skins but new wine in new skins.
Answers do not precede the formulation of the problems to which they come as a response. Problems are productive: they produce answers according to the questions asked. How nihilistic it is to think that all the answers have already been spoken, even before the problems they might resolve have been constructed. And how anthropocentric, for questions and answers are not strictly linguistic phenomena.
Yes. And if finding is the quest, then I would think it obvious that seeing better is the answer.
Have you considered seeking how to enhance sight of such things?
Or are you “only looking where the light is” and concluding that what you don’t already see, isn’t there?
I guess that answers my above question.
Can’t you see a pattern in what you write?
The real and provable answer is simpler than you imagine and has never left your eyes.
But those who already think they see, are the ones who are not looking in the right places.
That which cannot be corrupted is simply that which is dedicated to absolute incorruptibility. It is not “all powerful” in the conventional sense. It is simply immutable. What do you think you would get if you sought “incorruptible sight”?
I know, I know. You have already seen that one cannot have incorruptible sight. One certainly cannot be certain, right?
“None are so blind as those who Will to not see.”