Hello all,
I hope my english is up to your standards, if not, well, there’s not much I can do about it. I have good confidence I can get my point across.
Now I don’t know just how advanced I am in philosophy. In fact, I don’t know how to identify you how advanced someone is in philosophy. I don’t know how someone can prove that he is more advanced than someone else in philosophy, or if it has some importance for that matter.
I am the kind of person who needs a code to live by. Maybe it is to calm my anxious nature, I don’t know.
But I’ve been reading more books about psychology and philosophy (including religious texts) than I would care for. I sometimes have the impression that I will die, laying on a book with little to no conclusion of security for that reason.
Which brings me to the main point of this topic: The Lucifer principle by Howard Bloom.
Has anyone read this book?
Before I read this book, I was hooked on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I’ve read this book so many times and underlined so many things and understood so many ideas, I thought Rand’s way of seeing life was the best one (for me). I felt a calming sensation, peace. Now I had found a code of ethics, a way to help me make the right decision in life. But I have examined Rand’s work too much and read too many things and discovered a flaw in her logic. Anxiety rose up, I needed something else to reassure me, to convince me that not everything was incertitude and doubts.
A friend of mine told me:“You should be careful, you believe everything you read, you’d be good sect material.”
Now, I don’t agree that I believe to everything. But what I think is the result of sorting throught the beliefs of thousands of other people and assembling my own philosophy from bits and pieces of everyone.
At first, I felt like a fraud, like I could not think by myself. But how can you think by yourself. Your parents raise you according to their own beliefs. Can you truly think by yourself?
In other words, can you truly create your own originial philosophy? If so, how would that be possible?
When you come down to the very root of it, one’s own philosophy is only a repetition of previously stated thoughts and ideas. In other words, can we advance in philosophy? Wouldn’t be scary if we couldn’t? If we just came on this earth and recycled our parents and peers ideas, albeit not always concsiously?
Now, you may notice my thoughts are a bit confused, and they are. I won’t apologise, I’ve got a lot on my mind and I will be reading with intense interest every single replies, every single scrap.
The point of this thread is that I have found something that just doesn’t work in Bloom’s perception on life. He pictures humanity in a very honest and scientifical sort of way, brutally honest some would say.
When I read Bloom, I wasn’t under the impression that he believes in human virtues. He pretty much demonstrate the fallacy of justice, peace and freedom with convincing and scientifical points.
Here is the flaw to Bloom’s logic (this will only make sense to those of you who’ve read it).
If the goal of existence is the reproduction of genes, thoughts (ideas (“mèmes” in french) and social preseance, why do some humans help other humans out of compassion?
Why do some rich north americans send out money to the poor? This doesn’t help reproduce their genes, means they have less money and encourages justice. A kind of justice which would eventually lead to the diminution of his advantages to the profit of the augmentation of others.
If, like Bloom explains, there will always be an order among human beings, than why would the strong help the weak out?
Thanks for reading this. I will drink your ideas and maybe it will quench, if temporarily, my thirst for security.
Etienne