as is well known, you cannot get to an answer until you get
a question…the great thinkers who have defined the world, both
modern and ancient, first had to work out what the questions were,
before they could answer them…you cannot come up with an answer
until you understand the question…Einstein for example, his greatness
is not in his answers, but in formulating the questions…
so in this regards, we must seek the questions that define the modern age,
before we can answer them…
question one: as I have demonstrated, we do not have a universal ethical theory…
(in my ethics and morality thread) and we only have an “ad hoc” theory of ethics/morality
which means, we really have situational ethics, the situation dictates the ethics…
which is fine, but that means there is not a universal, complete theory of ethics/morality
that we can turn to…so, how do we, or can we even create a universal ethical/moral
theory?
question two: what is the relationship between the one and the community?
we still haven’t, after all these years, come to some sort of understanding
of what is our individual relationship with the state and the state
relationship with the one, the individual…
question three: what is the goal? I don’t see anyone coming up with some sort
of goal or destination for us to reach for, either individually or collectively…
what are we doing and why? we seem to be drifting because we don’t any type
of goal that we are trying to reach… we have many possible goals we can
try for… eliminating poverty for example can be one such goal or conquering
space is another such goal that we can reach for collectively…but the problem
is that we don’t have any such overall goal in mind… we seem to be
going through life, “ad hoc” which is to say, we are focus on dealing with
specific task, such as ending the pandemic, which is good, but what happens after
that? and that is the problem… we think short term and we act short term,
but existence requires us to think beyond 6 months or a year… what is the goal
for us one year from now? or what is the goal 5 years from now?
what is the goal, 20 years from now?
the 4th question is this: what values shall we hold ourselves to?
we simple have no sense of what our values should be… are we to hold
to values like honesty? or to hope or to love or to hate or to anger?
what values shall we engage with both individually and collectively?
the 5th question: “what are we to do?”… what is it we are going to do
collectively? I have rejected the modern ideal of seeking the baubles of
existence… money, fame, titles, power… there is no point in seeking those
things because there cannot be beyond those things… in other words,
if you seek money, that is all you can get… there is nothing beyond that…
if you seek fame, there is nothing beyond that… but if
you seek a value that means something, like love or hope, seeking those
values lead you to something beyond those values…for in seeking love,
we find ourselves being rewarded by other values like esteem, belonging,
the psychological values that we human beings must have… seeking love
is one way to find the psychological needs we have…whereas seeking
money or fame, doesn’t answer our psychological needs nor does it
answer our biological needs of food, water, shelter, education… so on…
and the first part of the question of existence is to meet the basic needs
that we have, both physical and psychologically… the second part is
to find out what we should be seeking… so we meet our needs and
then we create our meaning, our purpose in existence…both individually
and collectively…
so, we first meet our needs and then we move beyond them…
so what is outside of, beyond just meeting our needs?
seek that question…
Kropotkin